At first glance, it went without saying that this place just outside of the doorstep looked fabulous. Vast patches of land filled with nothing but golden heads of the ripe wheat, vast squares coloured in a single theme of one kind of flowers, and a grand construction in the very middle of this picturesque scenario.

Yet this sight required only a few moments of one's attention to fall apart. With no homes for the field caretakers anywhere in sight, the reality of this entire place was instantly put under question. The grandeur of the castle was impossible to achieve without devastating harm to the nearby areas done in order to obtain the building material!

Seeing those contradictions, rather than watching this great sight with my eyes directly, I switched to my altered energy vision. And just like that, all the beauty of this place turned into a hellish landscape.

As far as one could see, a field of dead ground, deprived of any bit of vegetation stretched all the way to the foothold of the fortress, decorated with more rotting bodies than there was people in the entire goose sect. Yet despite how ugly those corpses looked, in their half-decomposed state, just the difference in the clothing of each and every single one of them showcased that while they were all in the state of decay, something was stopping them from returning back into nothing more than just dust.

"Okay then, here goes nothing…"

After confirming that there was no fluctuation of the energy that would announce the closing of the entry to this place, I stepped through the doors. Yet while my energetical vision was still on, no magic was altering my other senses. That why, when I walked down the path leading to the main gate of the deadly fortress in the middle, I could watch fields filled with bones while sniffing on the lovely smell of blooming flowers.

Step by step I was getting closer to the gates while observing how the area surrounding the castle turned fuller with gore and the stench of the death. After crossing the half-way mark to the castle, the smell of the rotten flesh got so strong that even the beautiful scent of the flowers couldn't mask it.

At some point I even guessed that this place was some kind of highest trail for the sect disciples, forcing them to press forward despite what surrounded them, killing anyone who wasn't strong enough only to reinforce the looming aura of this place and make traversing it for the next batch of challenges even harder…

But with no real pressure that would stop or at least hinder me from advancing, I swiftly pushed this idea aside. In the end, even when I reached the gates of the fortress, outside of the foul stench of the rotting meat, there was no pressure weighing down on me at all!

"What should I do now…"

Speaking to myself, I placed my hand on the hardwood of the gate, hoping to learn whether it was reinforced just like the front door leading to the sect master mansion. And just like I thought, while right now it was nothing more than a piece of thick wood with some iron reinforcing it, I could trace the trail on which spiritual energy would normally flow and harden this surface.

With nothing stopping me from doing so, I simply retraced my hand behind my back, before smashing it forward!

Crack!

With no real resistance, under the pressure created by the strike alone, the entire gate collapsed on itself, breaking apart in many indistinctive pieces. With no spiritual energy reinforcing it, just the shockwave from my attack was enough to shatter it apart.

As the only blockade barring my entry to the castle was now gone, I once again made sure that all my protective measures were in place before stepping inside.

Moving over the remains of the gate, for the very first time, I could see the interior of the fortress. As I was worried that keeping my alternated energetical vision would rob me of some clues for the purpose of this place, I alternated it with my natural vision, moving along the one path that this place seemed to impose on me.

With how the plants that took over most of the area failing to grow only on a single, curvy line in the entire interior courtyard, I could tell that whoever made this place intended for all the visitors to come exactly this way. While how it was shown to my eyes differed between the types of vision that I was using, with elaborate and beautiful gardens blocking me from stepping aside when I used my physical sight and ugly, energy-filled plants only waiting for me to step inside their reach when using the improved energetical vision.

Despite my initial thought of just ignoring the recommended path and killing everything that could pose any danger to me, in the end, I decided to follow it. With how massive this place was, there was no reason for me to ignore the obvious path, as it would most likely lead to something important, while most of the other routes that I could forcefully take, most likely leading me to nothing else but a waste of time.

But as I walked through this path, for the first time since I destroyed the energy source for this place, I felt a strange pressure attempting to stop me from advancing. Alerted by the situation, I instantly scanned the entire area with all types of my visions, only to find that there was nothing, in particular, that would cause this reaction!

Yet while the judging the direction from which this pressure radiated was quite simple, the main path suddenly took a turn, attempting to make me climb the stairs and move in the exact opposite way than where this pressure was coming from!

Even though I wanted to follow the prepared way, since the source of the energy that supplied all the mechanisms in this place was already gone, then anything capable of putting enough pressure on me to even make me notice it was already worth my attention!

So if there was nothing wrong with following the main path to find out where it leads to first, there shouldn't be anything wrong with looking for the source of this pressure either!