315. Mystery of the pagoda

For a whole minute, Chen Ren simply tried to register the fact that he had received the inheritance of the Azure Immortal Sect leader.

It was something no one had been able to obtain for centuries.

That was not a small matter. It was not something he could simply accept with a nod and move past. How many cultivators had entered the Pagoda of Eternity aiming for this exact reward? How many had died on its floors, chasing the inheritance of Sect Leader Yuren?

And yet, because of luck, persistence, and a series of events that even Chen Ren could barely understand, he had somehow gotten his hands on it.

It sounded unbelievable. In the first place, he had not even been aiming for the inheritance.

His entire goal had been to find the medallion. He had failed to do that.

The only thing he had truly accomplished inside the pagoda was making sure his sect would have a lot of resources from now on. That was not a small achievement either, but compared to finding the medallion, it had always felt secondary.

Now, suddenly, he had the inheritance of a nascent soul realm cultivator. It almost sounded ridiculous.

Wang Jun seemed to agree.

“The Pagoda of Eternity is surely broken,” the severed head said, “if this is how someone can earn the inheritance.”

The Watcher shrugged. “There are no hard rules on climbing the floors.”

Wang Jun glared at him.

“In the first place,” the Watcher continued, “Sect Leader Yuren never believed any cultivator would survive the last floor. Whoever managed to do so would be a one-in-a-millennium genius. But it is not as if there is a strict path that must be followed to complete the floor.”

Chen Ren looked at him slowly. “So I ended up getting the inheritance by luck.”

The Watcher laughed at that. “The way of the heavens is truly strange,” he said. “You did work hard. No one can deny that. But compared to the time normally needed to trigger the illusion, you barely spent any time on the last floor.”

Chen Ren didn’t know whether to feel proud or insulted. Probably both.

“Then what is the usual time for that?” Wang Jun asked.

“Fifteen years.”

Chen Ren’s eyes widened. “Fifteen years?”

“Yes.”

“And how long did I spend there?”

The Watcher answered without hesitation. “Four years, six months, twenty-one days, seven hours, and three minutes.”

Chen Ren’s jaw dropped at that piece of information.

For a while, he could not believe it.

He had expected two years at most. Maybe a little more if he had truly lost track of time, but four years was far beyond what he had imagined. He had spent more than four years wandering that desert, training in it, sleeping beneath its sun, and searching for a way out.

No wonder his sense of time had broken.

The endless sand, the lack of change, and the silence had made days blur together until they no longer felt like days at all. But now that the Watcher had said the number aloud, the weight of it settled over him.

Four years.

How much would have changed in the real world? Chen Ren couldn’t even begin to think through it.

“You don’t need to worry about it too much. Time flows differently on the last floor compared to the outside world. It is completely separate. A month there is only a single day outside.”

Chen Ren let out a breath of relief at once. That changed everything.

Yalan and the others were still waiting for him to return. If Princess Yanyue had truly escaped, then she had probably already told them what happened. They should still be in the Corpse Lands, and even if fifteen years had passed inside the last floor, it would not have been much time outside.

In the end, those four years had actually been extremely beneficial for him.

He had trained more than he ever could have in the outside world. His mind cultivation, qi control, new techniques, and even his understanding of battle had all improved because of that floor. Without the time difference, losing four years would have been a disaster. With it, the last floor had become something close to a hidden training ground.

Chen Ren had heard of treasures and formations that could warp time. But this was the first time he had personally seen something like that.

Even Wang Jun, who was rarely surprised by anything, looked at the Watcher with a different expression.

As if he couldn’t quite believe it.

“How did that stupid guy make something like this?” Wang Jun muttered. “This should have been beyond him.”

The Watcher looked at him. “What do you mean? The sect leader was a nascent soul realm cultivator. He could do—”

“Stop with that bullshit,” Wang Jun cut in immediately. “He was not capable of all this.”

The Watcher fell silent.

Wang Jun’s eyes narrowed. “The pagoda itself has too many things that were not designed for it originally. They were probably added later, right?”

Chen Ren looked down at him. “Really? You never told me that.”

“I only recalled some of it while we were trapped in the desert,” Wang Jun said. “And it was not as if you were going to give me answers.”

“You should have still told me,” Chen Ren said. “That is not the kind of information you keep to yourself.”

Wang Jun clicked his tongue. “Yeah, yeah.” Then he turned his attention back to the Watcher. “So give me the answers. What exactly happened to Yuren? I am sure it has something to do with the fact that the entire region around the pagoda is now nothing but a demonic land.”

The Watcher sighed. “You are perceptive,” he said. “The memories I received of you reveal the same thing.”

Chen Ren didn’t like the way he said that, but he held back his question for now.

The Watcher paused for a moment, his gaze moving between Chen Ren and Wang Jun. “Are you sure you want to know?”

Chen Ren stared at him. “It is not as if we are going to say no now.”

“I suppose that is true.” He raised one hand, and the screen in front of them shifted again. “Well,” he said, “to put it simply, my creator, Sect Leader Yuren, was both the most fortunate and the most unfortunate cultivator in the world.”

The image on the screen changed.

“He found an otherworldly treasure,” the Watcher continued. “But at the same time, that treasure was what killed him.”

Chen Ren’s eyes moved to the screen.

“I do not have all the memories of that event,” the Watcher said. “Some were lost and some were never given to me in the first place. But I still have a few recordings.”

The screen cleared, and a new scene appeared within it.

An old bearded cultivator stood inside a quiet chamber, holding a spatial ring between two fingers. He had long white hair, beady eyes, and the kind of presence that made even an image of him feel heavy. His robes were grand but worn, the blue fabric marked with the symbol of the Azure Immortal Sect.

Chen Ren knew without being told that this was the real Yuren. The old sect leader turned the spatial ring slowly, inspecting it as if it contained the answer to something he had been searching for his entire life.

But even through the recording, Chen Ren felt uneasy.

There was something wrong with the ring. Something deep inside it moved like a shadow under water. The image changed again.

This time, Yuren was working on puppets.

Not simple wooden figures or crude constructs, but bodies that looked almost alive. Chen Ren watched as the old sect leader carved lines into artificial flesh, placed runes beneath skin, adjusted joints, and poured qi into cores that glowed like small stars.

More images followed after that.

One after another, they showed what Chen Ren assumed was Yuren improving the pagoda after it had already been built. He stood before formations, inspected floor structures, adjusted trial mechanisms, and worked on things Chen Ren could not even begin to understand.

The Watcher explained as the images flashed by.

“As you can see, Sect Leader Yuren found a spatial ring containing knowledge and resources that allowed him to transform the already miraculous pagoda into something extraordinary. Something that cannot be replicated now.”

On the screen, Yuren placed a hand over the chest of a puppet. The puppet opened its eyes.

“He worked on each puppet here to make them as lifelike as possible,” the Watcher continued. “Their minds, their reactions, their personalities, even their flaws. All of it was refined again and again.”

Wang Jun’s gaze sharpened. “Where did he find that ring?”

The Watcher shook his head. “Even I do not know.”

“You don’t know?”

“All I know is that it was not from our realm,” the Watcher said. “It came from one of the upper realms.”

Chen Ren’s eyes stayed on the screen.

“Because of that spatial ring, Sect Leader Yuren was able to improve the pagoda into what it is today,” the Watcher continued. “He modified things that should have been impossible to touch, including the qi-less desert. He changed formations, expanded rules, strengthened trials, and added functions that no cultivator of this realm should have been able to create.”

The Watcher paused.

“And through the resources he gathered from that ring, he was also able to become a nascent soul realm cultivator.”

Wang Jun snorted immediately. “Impossible.” The Watcher looked at him. “There is no way anyone can break the limits a realm imposes on them. If the world does not allow a nascent soul, then no amount of talent should let him step into that stage.”

“That is true,” The Watcher said.

“Then do not speak nonsense.”

“But Sect Leader Yuren still wanted to break through it,” the Watcher said calmly. “He believed the resources from the spatial ring could help him force open a path that this world had sealed.”

The screen changed again. This time, Yuren sat in deep meditation.

The chamber around him was filled with treasures, spirit stones, strange herbs, glowing liquids, and objects Chen Ren could not name. Qi gathered around him in layers so thick that even through the image, it looked suffocating.

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The image shifted once more. Yuren stood with both hands raised, his face pale but determined. In front of him, a dark crack formed, tearing the reality.

It widened slowly, trembling as if the world was trying to close it by force.

The Watcher’s voice grew quieter. “Eventually, he succeeded in ascending.”

Chen Ren stared at the tear on the screen.

“But that,” the Watcher said, “was also the end of him.”

But unlike the tear the Watcher had created, there was a different kind of ominous darkness inside this one.

The Watcher continued to explain. “To make sure the walls around our realm did not hold him back, Sect Leader Yuren imprinted himself with the energy of another realm. An ungoverned realm, one drifting somewhere in the wider universe.”

Chen Ren kept watching the screen.

“By using that imprint, he was able to open a portal to it,” the Watcher said. “But he did not expect the realm on the other side to be filled with demonic energy.”

The tear on the screen widened and dark qi spilled out of it at once. It was thick and violent, pouring into the chamber like smoke from a burning abyss. Even though it was only an image, Chen Ren felt his body tense. The demonic qi looked far more potent than anything he had seen in the Corpse Lands, and that alone told him how terrifying the original source must have been.

“The tear only remained open for five seconds,” the Watcher said. “Not even a second longer was possible.”

Five seconds. That was all. Yet within those five seconds, enough demonic qi escaped to poison the world around the pagoda for centuries.

“And with that qi,” the Watcher continued, “came beings from that other realm.”

The image changed again.

Chen Ren saw several demonic creatures rush out of the tear and attack Yuren. They were shaped almost like cultivators, but their bodies were twisted, their skin dark and cracked, their limbs too long, and their eyes burning with cruel light. Some had horns. Others had wings made of bone and shadow. All of them moved with terrifying speed.

Yuren fought them.

The old sect leader raised barriers, summoned weapons, and tore apart the chamber with techniques that made the entire recording shake. For a moment, Chen Ren saw what a nascent soul realm cultivator truly looked like in battle.

Then the image faded.

Chen Ren stared at the empty screen for a few seconds before speaking.

“So the result of that battle became the Corpse Lands.”

The Watcher nodded. “Yes. The battle was far too destructive. Sect Leader Yuren managed to stop the demonic beings and kill them, but the amount of qi released during the fight changed the surroundings completely.”

His voice grew quieter. “In the end, the sect leader had to give up his life to save everything.”

Chen Ren took a few seconds to absorb that.

It was a lot.

There had always been rumours that the Corpse Lands had formed because of a failed experiment. He had heard different versions, some blaming forbidden techniques, some blaming demonic cultivators, and some saying the pagoda itself had caused the disaster. But he had never known the truth was tied to an attempt to advance into the nascent soul realm.

That made the whole thing feel far bigger than he had expected.

Chen Ren also wondered why their realm was closed to higher-realm cultivators in the first place. But in the end, he did not want another long lesson right now. Not when he had barely escaped an illusion, spent years in a qi-less desert, and only just learned that the inheritance of the Azure Immortal Sect had fallen into his hands.

Also, he suspected that neither the Watcher nor Wang Jun truly knew why the realm was like that.

If there was a deeper reason higher-realm cultivators were blocked from properly existing here, it was likely far beyond the two of them. The Watcher only had the memories and records left to him, and Wang Jun, for all his age and arrogance, did not seem to have all his memories eeither.

As Chen Ren thought that, Wang Jun almost growled. “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

The Watcher looked at him.

“Yuren was always too stubborn when it came to advancement,” Wang Jun said. “And too careless. Not only did he die, but he doomed his own sect as well.”

The Watcher slowly nodded. “I understand your feelings, Senior Wang Jun. But trust me, until his final moments, Sect Leader Yuren regretted it deeply.”

“Regret does not bring back the dead,” Wang Jun said.

Chen Ren felt an argument beginning to form between them.

More than that, he could see something else in Wang Jun’s expression. Anger was there, of course, but beneath it, he could see sadness. The kind that came from learning that someone he had once known was truly gone, and that nothing he said now could reach him.

So he decided to change the topic.

“Either way,” he said, looking at the Watcher, “do you know what happened to the others? Did they survive?”

The Watcher turned to him. “Your party?”

Chen Ren nodded.

The Watcher smiled. “They did, yes. All of them used their return tickets in time and managed to leave the pagoda. Some of your sect members are still on the fifth floor, of course, but the rest should be out in the Corpse Lands by now.”

Chen Ren let out a breath of relief at once.

He had not realised how tightly that worry had been sitting inside him until it loosened. Yalan, Li Xuan, Zi Wen, the twins, and the others had all survived. They had escaped the pagoda. They were not trapped somewhere between floors or killed by the unstable portal.

He didn’t know what he would have done if one of them had died. Then another thought came to him.

“What happened to Princess Yanyue and Jun?” he asked.

The Watcher’s smile widened slightly. “I thought you would have questions like that.”

He raised a hand and the screen changed again. This time, it showed Jun.

Chen Ren’s eyes narrowed immediately.

The demonic cultivator was sitting across from someone completely unexpected.

Zombie Queen Vesrya.

The two of them were inside what looked like an old hall, speaking calmly despite the tension in the air. Chen Ren could not hear everything at first, but the topic became clear a moment later.

They were talking about lifts. More specifically, they were talking about the master lift.

As he watched, the Watcher explained.

“After you escaped, Jun searched every floor for you. When he failed to find you, he moved toward the higher floors and eventually reached the eleventh floor. He became the first person in a very long time to get there.”

Chen Ren’s expression tightened.

“But he could not climb past it,” the Watcher continued. “So now he is looking for a master lift. That is why he is trying to negotiate with Zombie Queen Vesrya. He wants her to lend him the one she has.”

He had no idea Jun knew the Zombie Queen this well. But then again, Jun was a powerful demonic cultivator, and Vesrya was not exactly normal either. Maybe it was a mutually beneficial relationship. Maybe they had met long before this. Either way, the fact that Jun was still searching for him was not good.

The Watcher waved his hand again.

“As for Princess Yanyue,” he said, “she tried to search for you for quite some time.”

Chen Ren looked at him immediately. “But the pagoda did not want the two of you to meet again,” the Watcher continued. “It kept creating illusions and mirages for her, leading her in circles until she could no longer take it.”

The screen changed. This time, Chen Ren saw Princess Yanyue standing in the desert.

She looked tired.

Not physically broken, but worn down in a way Chen Ren recognised too well. Sand moved around her feet, and her eyes searched the horizon as if she still hoped to see him somewhere in the distance. For a moment, she seemed to hesitate.

Then she took out her return ticket.

Chen Ren watched silently as she activated it and disappeared from the fifteenth floor with a heavy expression on her face.

He didn't know what to say.

There was guilt there, but also relief. She had been safe. She had escaped. She had not died in the desert trying to find him, and she had not been trapped in some illusion forever.

Everyone was safe. That was the best outcome he could have hoped for.

Chen Ren let out a visible sigh of relief. “I really thought I would see a lot of deaths in the pagoda.”

“That is normal,” the Watcher said with a small smile. “But you did it. You won. You conquered the pagoda.”

Chen Ren looked at the screen for a moment longer. “I do not know if I wanted to conquer it. It just happened.”

The Watcher grinned. “Actually, you did want to conquer it.”

Chen Ren frowned. “What?”

“More like,” the Watcher said, “you would have wanted to conquer it if you knew what the true reward was.”

Chen Ren turned toward him properly. “What do you mean?”

The Watcher slipped one hand beneath his robes. “What I mean,” he said, “is that you were looking for this, right?”

Chen Ren’s eyes widened. In the Watcher’s hand was the medallion. The same medallion he had entered the pagoda to find.

The same thing that had dragged him through danger, demonic cultivators, different floors, and the qi-less desert.

The Watcher held it up calmly, as if he was not holding the one thing Chen Ren had wanted from the beginning.

“This,” he said, “is the most precious thing in the inheritance.”

***

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