The Qi strands had been gathered, the Pseudo Core had been condensed, the Inferior Stage had been achieved! But how could Cheng Hao already be done with the Immortal Ascension Tower? He was far from being finished…
As a matter of fact, he had barely even started.
The only reason it had seemed to have taken so long was mainly due to the info dump. He, during this whole time, had barely done anything.
As soon as the child finished condensing the Pseudo-Core, the projection of his consciousness had become a lot more definite: although his face and features weren't fully visible, his limbs were. While he had previously only resembled a gaseous mass, at least now his figure finally resembled that of a human. Cheng Hao smiled blissfully as he felt the flow of Spiritual Energy and Qi in his meridians: when they had completed a full cycle through his body, Cheng Hao's appearance could finally be discerned.
With the retrieval of his cultivation base, the boy also felt two familiar powers move about in their slumber…
This sensation had come from both his hands. With a slight push on his part, his left palm finally released a faint chill, and the right began to emit slightly perceptible warmth. Smiling in reminiscence, the hazy Cheng Hao clenched his fists and felt the opposite attributes of cold and hot spread to his fingertips.
Cheng Hao inhaled: the Qi and Spiritual Energy had once again completed a cycle through his body! His right pupil darkened as the faint outline of a fanged mouth stood out from within the blackness; accompanying the arrival of those body-less fauces, the illusion within Cheng Hao's left eye had also grown exceptionally clear.
Feeling confident from all these abilities being startled awake from their lethargy, the child raised his head, a slightly conflicted gaze landing onto the first of the fifteen entrances.
The gate itself was pretty impressive, being ten thousand or so feet tall; from that alone it could be guessed how many hundreds of thousands of feet tall the tower really was... and just how much energy must have been used to create an object of such incredible proportions.
Dozens of locks, hundreds of chains, thousands of seals… everything that could be thought of as even barely useful to keep something slammed shut: all of it was there, all to prevent this massive door from being opened... And Cheng Hao alone knew why that was.
He looked at the restriction on top of the gates and he let out a relieved smile: many of those restrictions were presenting cracks, but had yet to completely shatter. At least he was still on time.
"You did well. Rest in peace." With a wave of Cheng Hao's hands, one of the seals grew opaque and shattered into countless light motes. Following it were one more, and another one, and another one, and another one, until every single seal had shattered! They then turned into Spiritual Energy, floating towards Cheng Hao, whom used it to feed the Pseudo-Core more and more energy, making his cultivation advance by leap and bounds. Yes, other than Qi, he also had some extra Spiritual Energy piled up, but the amount was still too small to call it heaven-defying. Most high-end Clans would probably be able to bring out elixirs and pills of even higher potency if they wished to, but this much energy was enough for the child to fully stabilize his cultivation base. With his methods plus the Pseudo-Core, were he to fight an Advanced stage cultivator right there and then, he would be able to win without too much of an effort. Then again, the one he was about to face was much, much stronger than the mere Advanced stage, seeing how its cultivation Realm was far higher than the Mortal Realm, even above the Ageless Realm!
The 'thing' trapped on the first floor of Cheng Hao's Immortal Ascension Tower... was a powerhouse at the Immortal Realm!
Following the shattering of the glowing symbols and talismans was that of the chains and the locks. One by one, the rings of the chains were dismantled, the locks shattered, until all turned into Spiritual Energy.
By that point, the first floor's gate was held together solely by a single golden blade.
It was embedded where the two doors' frames met and it seemed to be quite fragile when compared to the massive frames. The blade of this sword was completely made out of condensed golden energy, while the hilt was made of bronze. With enough imagination, it somewhat resembled a key.
Now, the fragmentation of the seals, chains, etc., had not happened in silence. Instead, each individual restriction had emitted a noise similar to that of glass shattering; when put together, a deafening 'harmony' had rang out for a full minute before the racket finally died down.
By that time, if the being had not been aware of Cheng Hao's presence there, then it surely would be now! And just as expected… BANG! BANG! BANG: something had began hammering the gates from the inside! Judging from the sound, it seemed to be a being with an incredibly massive body, so much so that the whole first floor appeared to tremble from the beast's roars alone! Slowly but surely, the colossal frames began to move…
The beautiful bronze blade embedded between them bent dangerously. However, just as it was on the verge of snapping, the gates suddenly stopped their advance and swung backwards, slamming shut! The sword also suddenly flung back into its original position and repaired itself until there wasn't even a scratch left on its surface.
The Thing behind the door kept hammering constantly, each blow more powerful than the others. The sword's edge cracked a few times, but it would repair itself right away whenever the frames had resisted the blow and it had flung back into its original state.
Yes. No matter how much the doors moved and all the effort that that 'something' would put into breaking free, those two doors would always hold on by a hair's breadth, and that breadth would more than enough to prevent the thing sealed inside from breaking free. Clearly, the bronze sword was no simple object. Cheng Hao smiled at the situation unfolding in front of him and then slowly approached the gate.
Step by step, walking on thin air, he slowly got closer and closer to the titanic golden gate...
Feeling someone approaching, the Thing inside stopped its attempts of escaping. The silence had a tinge of wonder, almost as if a big question mark had appeared in midair. Cheng Hao took the hilt of the sword in his hands and slowly... took it out from where it was embedded. The blade was shockingly long. The child spent more than five breaths before he could extract it fully. He grasped the astonishingly lengthy golden sword in his hands and its blade, as if liberated, turned back into the final bit of Spiritual Energy, which the youth gladly absorbed and then proceeded to feed to his newly formed Pseudo-Core. After he had done this, all that remained in his hands was the handle of the sword: a bronze key.
It was extremely exquisite, and the carving of a long, vicious-looking snake coiling around a cage was depicted on its handle. Cheng Hao clapped his hands together and began to make multiple hand seals in rapid succession. Following those strange hand seals, the key slowly expanded and soon grew to be hundreds of times its previous size, way bigger than Cheng Hao's projection. When it reached this point, Cheng Hao raised one of his hands and made another mysterious hand sign; immediately afterwards, the key flew towards a keyhole that had materialized when the sword had been removed.
The bronze key entered the keyhole and, when it fit in completely, Cheng Hao's hands moved again. With a loud *Clack*, the doorframes opened. The key lost its physical body and faded away...
The massive gates slowly opened until a single, gigantic, completely white eye could vaguely be discerned inside, sticking out from its dark surroundings. A rasping voice could suddenly be heard talking...
"Who..." it started, but found no one to talk to. The eye looked around and seeing the empty space behind Cheng Hao, its gaze finally fell on the youth with golden eyes... The projection now was clear enough to discern the apparent age of the boy but not enough to clearly see his face. "Who are you, human child?"
"I am Cheng Hao, and I am the Master of this tower. I am the tower's creator as well as its gatekeeper. I will not hide it, you are being held in here because of me. I built this tower to aid my own cultivation and you are a simple stepping stone that I will use to fly higher in the sky…" Cheng Hao's voice was as calm as it could get, and the shocking sentences had all been delivered with a monotone and bland tone.
Hearing this, the eye widened in surprise as it processed the information contained amongst the youth's claims. "A stepping stone, uh? Did I perhaps mishear or misunderstand? It's been quite a few hundred years since I last exchanged words with a human, did your people's language, as old as your species and remained unmodified since time immemorial... change all of a sudden during this time?" The rasping voice seemed really tired as it sighed with feeling.
"Nope, all's as usual. You also heard me correctly and clearly did not misunderstand. With that cleared up... I'll go ahead and make a contract with you. I'm in need of a servant, you were the first to come to mind when I built this tower, so the duty's fallen upon you."
Cheng Hao had disappeared: in his place was an arrogant and fearless King amongst men, a being superior to anyone else. His whole presence had changed. His hair fluttered, his eyes turned completely golden and became the only thing visible of the consciousness' true appearance... That cheerful and warm Cheng Hao that Xiao Wu had interacted with was no longer there, replaced by a lofty, lazy persona that the gigantic eye couldn't help but twitch at: why did he find that voice so annoying to hear?
"You... Are you really the one who imprisoned me here?" There was no trace of anger or rage in the eye's expression, just surprise and interest.
"Indeed. And I also plan to use you to get stronger faster. To do that I need your power! Told you once, and now confirmed it to you twice, don't ask again or I'll get annoyed." The boy's voice reverberated into the first floor of the Immortal Ascension Tower.
Suddenly, a sharp glint appeared in the depths of the gigantic eye's pupils.
"If you are this tower's master then you must be really powerful. If you are already so powerful that you were able to build this tower, why do you need to use such methods to gain even more power?" The eye suddenly seemed to notice something, "Oh, you are still only an Inferior Stage cultivator... My mistake. Child, where did you find this power?"
The eye closed as a thunderous laugh sounded in Cheng Hao's ears: the thing had suddenly burst out laughing seemingly without a reason, "WAHAHAHAHAH!"
"Very well... I won't ask, but I don't want to become one's servant just like that... How about we play a game? I shall be your pet for a thousand years if you win but if I win..." The eye blinked and gleamed strangely, "I shall be free and I will become this tower's new master! You will be imprisoned in my place until I completely use up this Tower's energy to increase my own strength... after all, we are both cultivators, even I would greatly benefit from this! After that period, I will free you and leave this place! This way, it's fair for the both of us. How about it?"
Cheng Hao stared emotionlessly at the gigantic figure whose only thing that could be seen was its eye. Cheng Hao was actually laughing loudly in his mind.
Oh, you will so regret this Little Black... No, from now on, I shall call you Blacky!
Wait... Goldy, Blacky... I'm starting to see a pattern here!
Am I really that bad at giving names? Why did nobody tell me???
The child remained silent for a few moments as if he were deeply pondering about the advantages and shortcomings of such a bet, but in the end he sighed and nodded, "What game?"
"It is pretty simple, actually: I want to get out, you want to keep me in, right? If you can keep me from coming out of this floor for, let's say, twenty breaths, you win and I become a servant for a thousand years! If I get out, then the tower becomes mine; you'll take my place here." The eerie, white eye blinked and flashed green: inside the eye, a nine-pointed star had appeared together with the descent of a strange law. In the following moment, a glittering contract appeared in front of Cheng Hao, the terms the same as the figure had just recited.
The youth nodded and exclaimed: "I, Cheng Hao, accept your terms and declare that this bet may begin-"
"ROAAAR!!!" As soon as those words were uttered, the previously calm appearance of the Thing had turned into a raging anger and fury! "You mother-fucker DARE to fucking imprison me here???"
"I said that I will make you take my place, locked in this tower… but I never specified that I will keep you alive until then! Today, I shall feast on your flesh and pleasure myself with your blood!"