“That was a close one.”

Zhang Dong leaned back in the chair that was still present in this strange room. On the screen, he could see the massive ice dragon’s head flying through the air after being severed by his wife. Thanks to Bob and his system he was able to figure out how this room worked. It was possible for him to alter the levels by sending over some gifts or giving pointers.

‘This feels like someone created a game for themselves.’

When he was getting used to the controls and possible things he could do, a strange feeling washed over him. It was as if someone was treating the struggle of people taking part in the tower like a strategy game. Whoever was in here could hand out items and even change the difficulty. Only a bit later he discovered that he could lessen the number of beasts that were appearing.

Everything was on the highest difficulty which made even the tenth level of this tower a struggle. He started thinking if this was left here like this on purpose or if the person that used it as a game just got bored and left. The whole thing was devoid of life with only monsters created from formations remaining. They were all generated by spiritual energy and would vanish into a mass of light particles after being defeated.

Even the huge dragon Liena killed was in the process of vanishing. Now that he turned down the difficulty it even dropped some better equipment. The only downside was that these items created in this space were limited to it. There was some kind of domain residing over this whole place that could alter reality to suit the game’s experience. Perhaps it was a grand formation that he couldn’t grasp yet as it was at the level of immortals. Nevertheless, it left a bad taste in his mouth when he imagined that someone had been here playing with other people's lives.

‘I guess a godlike being would see people as NPCs, I hope that I’m wrong though…’

While thinking about the worst possible future outcome he looked back to the monitor screens. For some reason, the person that created this whole setup gave multiple types of access to it. Bob was only able to log him in as a guest user that had limited functions. There was now a possibility that there had been more than one person in this room at some point. Perhaps there were other past immortals playing around with people as if it was a game. This explained why he could only fiddle around with a minimal amount of settings without being able to just open a path to this area.

‘The tower has a hundred levels but if they get to the 25th one they will be able to access this resting area.’

His previous assumption was that the participants would be able to enter the area he was occupying with Huo Qiang after completing ten floors. Perhaps it was due to the harder setting but another fifteen waited for Liena’s group before they came here. Thanks to Bob he could see every option that was allowed. Without shifting the setting the group of cultivators probably wouldn’t have stood a chance as this place seemed to be meant for stronger people.

‘If I go by the description, the more people there are the harder it gets. They would have no chance reaching the higher floors with so many core formation experts among them but perhaps this could be used to our advantage…’

Besides Liena and Zhang Zhi there were six other nascent soul masters with them. The rest was composed of around two hundred core formation experts. These he had inside of his faction system and some that were in the early stage had managed to advance into the middle ones. Defeating monsters in this tower area acted in a similar way to his old system. Some of the spiritual energy would make it into the people that took part in killing it. He was able to confirm this after Liena killed the dragon and some of its Qi made it into her dantian.

‘This place might have been used to progress people through the realms faster, like a tutorial before the real thing but why is it so hard?’

Zhang Dong could see that the beasts and trials inside were becoming hard even on the nascent soul masters. Liena was in the middle stage but with the help of her immortal grade cultivation technique she was much stronger than a regular master at this realm. Considering that the nascent soul was the limit of this world it shouldn’t have been hard for them at all.

The last boss should be a great circle nascent soul monster that should have been manageable. It made more sense if they continued to level up and actually managed to get past the limitations of this realm. If they continued like this, then soon enough not even the masters there would be able to contend with the boss monsters.

‘Could this place have been created before the limit was set in place? Am I in some type of Alpha test of this world?’

He had no idea of knowing how old this tower was. There were strange energy fluctuations involving the Dao of Time. After dipping his toes in its mysteries he was at least able to identify the pattern. It was possible for this tower to be hundreds of thousands of years old, perhaps even millions.

‘Perhaps the last boss is a creature at a higher realm than a nascent soul master? It would be best to get them out of there as fast as possible but…’

There was one good thing that emerged from this fiasco, the sect members that were trapped inside there were able to quickly progress their realms. If things continued like this then perhaps some of the core formation experts would be able to transcend to the next level. Thanks to his faction window he could see a few people that were slowly edging over that barrier.

‘Would have been nice to find this place earlier, will the Long Clan and that Overseer let us just train here in peace?’

When looking at the bigger picture it wouldn’t be outlandish to take this opportunity to level up. Both Zhang Zhi and Liena would perhaps be able to reach the late stage if they continued on their path. There were training facilities in this rest area which would also allow people to get stronger and Huo Qiang could use them before they leave.

‘I’ll think about it after they are safe, for now, let me focus on this game…’

Zhang Dong went back to looking at the screen and the prompts. He had a main resource that was oddly enough named the same, spirit points. The people inside of the testing region were gaining this resource for him and he could use it to help them out. Before he spent them on a large amount of recovery pills and to guide them towards the exit. Now he was using them to point his people in the right direction.

‘They can’t keep skipping the grind areas and secret treasures, if this continues I’ll run out of resources in just a few floors.’

Liena was now on the eleventh floor. This area was covered in small islands and a lot of water. Thankfully the group that was here were all veterans of the Cerulean Empress expedition and had also fought in the ocean. It would not be hard for them to defeat the underwater creatures that tried to halt them from reaching the other islands.

The stage started out with them being given a simple raft but each island they visited allowed them to upgrade it to something better. There were many hidden treasure chests along with monsters hidden away in the tropical forest areas inside. For some reason, the flight technique of every nascent soul master was severely limited and would not allow them to use it outside of the islands. Whenever they attempted a huge storm would befall them along with many sea creatures spawning to hinder their travels.

Zhang Dong identified this as a chance to get stronger as the monsters that were being spawned weren’t all that difficult to kill but dropped a lot of items. The slower they took to cross the sea the more rewards they were given before arriving at the next island. Thanks to his guiding orb he was able to somewhat communicate with his sect members. They learned to trust the light which led them to many previously ignored treasures.

While he was helping his sect members through the tasks there was one thing that he noticed. When looking at a side screen where Huo Qiang was resting, there was no noticeable change. He continued to sit back in one of the pools of water which made him exit this room. After arriving at the bathing area he measured the spiritual energy of his friend that had not recovered by much.

“Oh, you are back already Senior Brother? Did you find some clues?”

“Yeah, something like that, by the way, how long was I gone for?”

“Oh, I don’t know… about ten minutes?”

“Only that much?”

“Is there something wrong?”

“No, just keep recovering your energy and after you are finish you could try visiting one of those training chambers, the energies there will help you gain some insight into your powers.”

“I can gain some insights?”

Huo Qiang was surprised by the offer but didn’t argue with his senior brother as he knew that it had to be the truth. Zhang Dong on the other hand returned back to the room he left to discover that a lot more time had passed than he anticipated. It was clear that there was some type of time-dilation thing going on between the two areas.

‘There were half done with the floor but now they are already facing the boss?’

The tower floors were small pocket dimensions that required hours and even days to get through. Thanks to this time change they weren’t losing that much time and instead reaching new heights at a rapid pace. This was to the point of Zhang Dong wishing that he was there with them. If they could absorb the energy of monsters then he would probably also be able to. For someone like him that wanted to get as strong as he could before the confrontation with the Azure Emperor, it would have been a good chance.

‘I could use that tunnel to go where they are and join them… but that would just scale the difficulty even higher.’

There was a way for him to join them but it would potentially put them in some danger. They would also lose his guiding orb and the help that he could provide from this room. Perhaps if he wanted to join them on their adventure it was better to just wait for them to get here before making a decision…