“Are you sure we are going the right way?”

‘Affirmative, the entrance is exactly 457,45 meters north-east.’

“Ah yes, sure it is…”

Zhang Dong looked at the red marker on his minimap. While what Bob said might have been true he was calculating the distance in a straight line. At this moment in time, he was walking through some dark corridors filled with cobwebs.

This part of this secret ground was unknown to him as he had never visited it before. The last time he was here they were all shoved into the testing chamber and teleported away. All the other passages were blocked off by the Dark Palm Sect cultivators. Finally, after all these years he was able to examine this place in detail.

There was actually a series of corridors under the whole structure. When looking at his map he was now somewhere under the trial chamber. Apparently somewhere under here, there was a secret entrance that the Dark Palm Sect didn’t discover.

“Some of these tunnels had been dug up, probably they were trying to find another entrance like me.”

It was clear by how it looked down here that the Dark Palm Sect and perhaps the sects that came after it were excavating this site. There were half-finished tunnels everywhere, it was clear that they tried to dig their way behind that large chamber door.

“This rock structure… No wonder they were itching to get in.”

Zhang Dong punched one of the walls after injecting his fist full of Qi. The ground shook but instead of the wall being smashed into pieces his knuckles were injured. The material that the walls were made with was clearly something above the level of regular cultivators.

The stone was incredibly hard but not the same as the one that he discovered at the cube location. There was also no dark spot in his minimap which confirmed his theory that this was something else. The person that made this structure was probably someone with a system like him. It was possible that he either bought the knowledge on how to build this place from the system store.

He arrived at his destination. Many tunnels were leading to this large cavern that had been dugout. He could see at least half a kilometer of nothing but white walls from left to right. The cultivation nuts clearly didn’t give up lightly and tried to find some kind of weak spot here but weren’t able to continue.

‘This makes it seem that the immortal abode is here and it doesn’t just teleport us to some kind of distant location.’

These white walls spread in all directions. He could feel some spiritual energy that was reinforcing them and absorbing any hits that he delivered. In most cases, such structures required some sort of power source to keep their effects. But it could also just be some special material.

“It should be somewhere here…”

He floated up into the air, the walls were quite smooth and uniform in all directions. On the ground, he could see some destroyed tools such as pickaxes that were probably used to attempt a breach. With the help of his minimap marker, he was finally able to find the entrance spot.

“Well then, do your thing, Bob… I don’t really feel anything out of the ordinary here…”

After pressing his palm on the smooth wall he tried to examine it with his spiritual sense. There wasn’t anything that he could spot, it was clear that without the system he would be unable to venture any further.

‘Interfacing… please wait…’

Zhang Dong felt a bit apprehensive about overusing Bob. It was still unclear to him what this AI program was. For the time being it was helping him, without Bob he would have been unable to return from that other world. But this also didn’t mean that this being wouldn’t somehow betray him in the future.

There were stories of cultivators leaving a slither of their being in items. Then they would use some occult means to inject them into other cultivators. Slowly they would grow in power and finally at a certain juncture they would strike. When the cultivator was at a weak point they would try to overtake their very soul and body. What if Bob was leading him into certain doom and the person that made him would try to take over his body?

‘That’s a possibility but with how big my soul has gotten I’m not sure if they will have it easy…’

This was a possibility though it was somewhat far-fetched. For the time being, he could only throw this reasoning to the back of his head while venturing forward. As he was worrying Bob finally was done with his interfacing and a strange sound of pressurized air came from the wall.

‘...Task complete, opening… please stand by.’

He flinched slightly as a door appeared before him. It opened upwards while accompanied by screeching. It was clear that this opening had not been used for quite some time, even some dust had crept in.

‘I guess here goes nothing…’

It was finally time to take the plunge inside, he couldn’t really see much as there was no light. Even though he tried to use his spiritual sense to see what was inside he couldn’t see anything past the entrance. There was probably some kind of high level formation blocking him from peeking inside.

‘Well, I found a side entrance as I told you, I’ll be going inside now, I’m not sure how long it will take me.’

‘Please be careful.’

As he ventured forward he made sure to inform his wife as he promised. He wasn't sure how long it would take him or if he would be able to use his system to communicate with her after entering his place.

Finally, he propelled himself gently forward and vanished into the darkened room. As soon as he was inside the entrance closed behind him. Now on the inside, his golden aura lit the way forward as it was clear that the space he was occupying had not been used for many millennia.

‘The air in here is stale…’

He found himself in another corridor to the side he could see something orb-like stuck to the wall. It was some kind of round crystal that he was somewhat familiar with.

‘Bob… Can you turn on the lights?’

After a moment these round objects that were embedded in the wall started to flicker. Even though they were clearly unused, they still were in working order. The path forward continued to be illuminated before him and in the distance, he could see a fork in the road.

‘Before that… can you hear me?... hello…?’

Zhang Dong frowned as what he had feared came true. He could not contact his wife or anyone else from his sect. It was clear that this person that made this was going against the person that made the system. Thus it was natural that he would have something in place to block it from interfering.

Even then he had hoped that thanks to Bob he might be able to contact his wife and others. But even with the hacked version of the system he could not. Perhaps he would need to gain full access to this immortal abode before he could send his message.

‘Are you still working Bob?’

‘Affirmative, all systems are nominal. The faction function is being blocked, do you wish to examine the issue?’

‘Yes do that while I look around.’

Without anything else to do he moved forward. The corridor was now quite bright and even though there were no cobwebs here the place seemed quite old. It was clear that whoever lived here before was long gone.

At first, the corridor was mostly empty with the same sense blocking walls keeping him from peering outside but soon he ended up at a fork in the road. While he could see the end of the path he came from, this one stretched for far too much for him to see.

There were three paths he could take, one leading forward, one to the left, and another one to the right. He looked up in hopes of finding some kind of sign but there was none. It was clear that whoever made this place didn’t care about intruders knowing their way.

‘Everything in here is made from this strange material, I can’t sense anything…’

He could only narrow his eyes while floating up. The corridors were about four meters wide and ten meters high which allowed him to see further in. While two of the paths were the same there was something he spotted on the right side. Instead of the white walls, he noticed something out of place which made him decide on this way.

‘Is that… glass?’

It was somewhat surprising but he was sure that he was seeing a reflective surface from a distance. After arriving at the spot, the thing he discovered put things into perspective.

“Wait, isn't this… I’ve been there before…”

What he saw was not a room or anything but a wide expanse of land. It was a forest area, the same exact zone that he was sent to when he was taking the trial with the other core formation cultivators at that time.

What he found was a window that gave him a clear look down but the distance from the landmass below was quite tremendous. There must have been some kind of spatial formation here as there was far too much land down there.

Below him was the vast area where he met his wife and Huo Qiang. The memories of battling strange monsters and the trials with the seven sins folded his mind. He quickly recalled some key landmarks which were actually there. The only strange part was that there didn’t seem to be any monsters around.

“Maybe only when the trial gets triggered from the outside do the monsters appear?”

This place probably took up a tremendous amount of spiritual energy to run. It would be smart to turn it off while there are no people taking the test. The area was also shrouded in darkness and only thanks to his enhanced vision and ability to see in the dark could he see anything.

He was at the right place but where should he go? The paths continued in various directions and there was no way to know where to go. His minimap was also not showing him the way as the system blockers extended past the communication blocking.

“This might take a while… but perhaps I should go in the direction of that final trial?”

Without knowing where to go, he decided to go towards the zone where he faced off against the pride demon. There he found all of the current books and scripts that made him what he was today. Perhaps there he would find some more answers.