Chapter 283: Chapter 282: The pieces fall into place.

Yumao also realized this, he could sense it from the light in Liang Chen's eyes. He had seen something, detected something that he did not accept. And if he didn't accept it then it was bound to vanish, for Yumao knew that his father was a true force of nature, something as mundane as the opinions of other beings was of no consequence to him.

Liang Chen stopped in front of the closest palace, the one occupying the western side of the city. It followed a similar architecture as the city itself, resembling a wave surrounded by clouds, the highest part of the wave carved into a single large terrace from which you could overlook the city beneath you. A simple metal fence surrounded the small garden in front of the mansion, but it looked entirely normal so it was unlikely that it had been constructed to actually keep cultivators out.

Six guards clad in light blue armour were stationed in front of the metal gate connected to the fence, their spears held at the ready. Their bodies tensed up slightly when they spotted Liang Chen's approach, but that was the only movement they got to take before they completely froze up. They had just met his gaze, his golden pupils sinking their souls into an ocean of fear that almost froze their breathing.

"Why don't you follow me? I'd like to hear about what you like to engage in."

Liang Chen's soft and cool voice sank into their ears, his words tinged with poison that forced its way into their souls and placed them all under his control. They had no way to resist so they started to mindlessly follow him, uncontrollably spilling out everything that happened within this palace.

Liang Chen listened quietly as he kept walking, nary a change in his expression as he pushed open the pure white entrance. A decadent hall spread out in front of him, a crimson carpet forming a stark contrast with the white floor as it led deeper into the mansion. Liang Chen paid no mind to the artworks or statues that dotted the hall, his gaze landing on a door to the right of the room.

He headed for the door and stepped through it, following the descending stone staircase behind it. The staircase brought him down to what seemed to be the dungeon, a foul stench hanging in the air as stone cells sealed up by metal bars lined the walls of the dungeon, which continued downwards in a spiralling manner.

Liang Chen moved through the dungeon with quiet steps, the sound of his speartip scraping against the floor echoing against the wall, mixing with the few unsavoury sounds that came from deeper in the dungeon. The cells he walked past were occupied by corpses, some of them men but most of them female, all of them malnourished to the point of being skin and bones. There was one more point that all these corpses had in common, none of them had reached the Soaring Immortal realm, it was all people who were either normal mortals or people who had just reached the lowest cultivation realm.

Liang Chen's steps suddenly halted in front of one of the cells, his calm and nearly emotionless face shifting to the side and peering through the bars. What appeared to be a male corpse was sprawled on the wooden bed in the cell, so thin that he was practically just a skeleton.

Liang Chen had been just about to walk past it when he noticed something, it wasn't a corpse yet, the person inside was still alive, albeit barely. Liang Chen stretched out his hand, the metal bars melting as lightning crackled between his fingers. He walked up and stopped in front of the man, lowering his gaze until he could lock eyes with him.

Despair and pain, those were the main emotions he could see in the man's eyes. The six guards following him didn't know too much about what transpired here in this dungeon, but what little they did know was enough to make Liang Chen sick. To have experienced such torture, all because the people of the palace were growing tense and tired of the fragile peace, it really was a fate that could induce despair.

But while pain and despair were the main emotions in the man's eyes, they weren't the only emotions present within them. Deep within his murky brown eyes, Liang Chen spotted an emotion he was more than familiar with, anger. Anger at the man who tortured him, anger at his misfortune that made him get chosen, anger at the world that allowed it to happen.

"Do you want to live? Or is peace all that is left for your soul?"

The man's skinny body trembled slightly when Liang Chen's words snuck their way into his ears, his eyes practically exploding with light. He could barely move, even the trembling of his eyelids seemed to drain most of his energy. But even so, he did his best to nod his head, the rage hidden within his pupils slowly surfacing and turning his eyes bloodshot.

"Good, then I was able to at least save one."

Liang Chen placed his hand on the man's head and drew him into his interspatial ring, into the orb that could house living beings. But the man's state was incredibly bad, and the newly-found disciples of the Storm Wolf sect had all left so the city within the orb was empty. As such, Liang Chen had to turn to someone else to aid the man.

"Sorry, Yumao, but can I leave it to you? I want to save those that I can, so please help him survive."

"Pfft, you really are too good for all of them, you really don't need to care so much about all these mongoloids."

Yumao muttered a few complaints at Liang Chen's way of doing things, but this was a sincere request from his father so there was no way he would go against it. His father wanted that man to live, so live he would. He flapped his wings and flew down from Liang Chen's head, sinking into his interspatial ring to head into the orb.

Liang Chen turned around after he finished his business, his right arm sweeping out and slashing his spear across the six guards. Five heads left their necks and tumbled to the ground, the remaining guard regaining his senses and trembling uncontrollably.

"Do I call you lucky for being unaware of what's going on here, or a good person for not being willing to get closer to a place that made you feel uncomfortable?"

Liang Chen still had his morals, and they were the only thing keeping this sixth guard alive. He hadn't known what was going on here, and he felt uncomfortable with the air of the workplace so he hadn't tried to raise his position. He had just shown up, stood guard in front of the gate for five hours every day and then gone home, he'd never even accepted an offer to go out for a drink or a side job.

"Go, this place is not for someone like you."

Liang Chen didn't tell the man that he shouldn't work in a place where the air made him uncomfortable, nor did he tell him that he should have tried to dig deeper in case he could help others. People were different, they had different beliefs and morals, expecting others to act as you did would just lead to disappointment and sorrow.

Liang Chen continued to head deeper into the dungeon, no longer bothering to pay attention to the guard that remained. Most of the cells he passed by still contained nothing but corpses, but as he got deeper, he would occasionally come across someone who was alive but on the verge of death.

"Do you want to live? Or is peace all that is left for your soul?"

He asked the same questions to everyone he met, some of them exploding forth with vitality and a desire to life, a desire for revenge. All of these people were sent into the orb, where Yumao would take care of them. As for those whose eyes were murky and lifeless, filled with nothing but pain and a desire for release, Liang Chen only had a single thing to say to them.

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"Then find your peace in life and the pursuit of a goal."

He did not grant them the final peace that they desired, just like the others, they were sent into the orb to be taken care of. They wished to die, but Liang Chen did not wish to kill innocent people, he wanted them to live. And if possible, he thought that it would be nice if they could find a goal for themselves, a pursuit that could give them a desire to live.

He slowly made his way deeper into the dungeon, the unsavoury sounds growing louder with each step. He had already seen what laid at the end of this dungeon, and the sheer familiarity of this inhumanity chilled his heart. He eventually reached the end of the dungeon, arriving in front of a cell that contained the person who would be the 12th person he saved from this torment.

But the person in the cell wasn't alone, there was another man in the cell with her, his suit of armour haphazardly tossed to the side. The prisoner, a young girl with dirty black hair, was pressed beneath the man, the few scraps of clothing on her body only covering a bit of her feet and her stomach.

With so little of her body covered, the horrid state she was in was plain to see. Eyes that had been sewn shut, two broken legs, and two broken arms, it was a state that most mortals would not be able to survive. But she was still alive, the flame of life within her chest flickering weakly as it approached its end.

This cell was the source of the unsavoury sounds that echoed through the dungeon, bestial grunts, the wet slapping of sweaty flesh, and an occasional pained groan. Familiar, it was so disgustingly familiar, prodding at one of Liang Chen's deep memories. He had been in a travelling hidden realm back then too, when he encountered a girl who had suffered a fate very similar to this one.

Back then he had just started to embrace the goodness of man, the fact that no matter how cruel the world was, there were still good people in it. But meeting that girl had been a cruel reminder. Yes, there were plenty of good people in it, but they would always be overshadowed by the monsters wearing human skin, they would always suffer at the hands of those that the heavens should have killed long ago.

The bare back of the man who was pressing down and enjoying the prisoner suddenly shivered, all the hairs on it standing on end. A primordial fear washed over his very soul, his survival instincts simply shutting down and freezing him in place.

The metal bars melted as Liang Chen stepped towards them, an errant crack of lightning arcing out from the puddle of molten metal and sizzling across the back of the man. A scar was instantly burned into his back, the smell of burnt flesh spreading out. But even so, the man couldn't move, he was like a newborn calf frozen in fear in front of a tiger.

Liang Chen reached his side with quiet steps, his gaze lowering to meet the sewn up eyes of the girl. She couldn't see him, but she could sense him, it was as if his mere presence had changed the air. She unconsciously turned to look towards where she thought he was, his soft and gentle voice reaching her ears.

"Tell me, do you want to live? Or like that girl back then, is death really all that you can see in your future?"

Years had passed, but he could still vividly remember the pain in that girl's ruined eyes, the despair and anguish that drenched her voice. The soft touch of her bloody hand and the gentle relief in her voice as she dubbed him her angel of death, it was all so ingrained in his mind that he didn't think he could ever forget it. The girl moved her head slightly to match the position from where she had heard the voice, her dry lips opening as she croaked out with what little remained of her strength.

"Kill...I want... Kill..."

Pain and anguish, her voice was so heavily tinged by them that it had become distorted. But she managed to convey her desire, managed to pour out her heart. In some ways, perhaps she was somewhat similar to Liang Chen, in the past, he too was no more than a mortal who had suffered injustice and dreamed of nothing more than to kill the source. He had managed to move past that, at least somewhat, perhaps now it was time for her to do the same.

"Then that's how it'll be. It'll be a bit painful, but please bear with it."

Liang Chen stretched out his hand and brought out a dagger from his interspatial ring, placing it in the hand of the girl. He helped her close her fingers around the handle, her arms were broken so there was no way she could gather up enough power to hold it properly. And then, he helped her raise her broken arm, a subdued groan of pain escaping from her lips.

He helped her placed the dagger against the throat of the man that was pressing her down, his entire body still frozen by such a fear that it even shut down his survival instincts. He helped her draw a slow line across his throat, the sharp tip of the dagger easily penetrating his flesh and leaving behind a deep gash.

Blood poured out from the laceration and drenched the practically naked body of the girl, the man gasping in pain. Liang Chen supported him so that he didn't fall on top of the girl and harm her further, simply holding him in place as he died. And then, when the final traces of life left him, Liang Chen simply tossed the corpse aside.

"That's the first one, but there are many more like him out there. You should rest now, I'll let you free when I reach a place where it's safer for you."

He placed his hand on her head and drew her into his interspatial ring so that Yumao could take care of her. He gazed down at the wooden bed where she had just laid, a soft sigh eventually escaping his lips.

"One goal, and I still can't even achieve it, I'm really far too weak."

Liang Chen had a simple goal, he wanted to punish all those that should have been killed by the heavens long ago, he wanted to avoid the birth of more people like him. It was enough that the world had a single monster like him, it really didn't need more. But moving through this dungeon and seeing the state of the people here he had to come to terms with the fact that he was still far from his goal. There were still plenty of people like him out there, new ones being born every day probably.

"It all started here, perhaps it is fitting that I am reminded of the truth here."

Liang Chen couldn't help but mutter to himself as he turned around and started to leave the cell. This scene had simply been far too familiar, dug up far too many memories. Thanks to it, everything fell into place. Why the environment he arrived in felt familiar, why the gate to the hidden realm had looked so familiar, even why the architecture of the city had looked so familiar.

A travelling hidden realm, a land covered in snow and omnipresent pressure, a pure white city where Liang Chen was reminded of the wanton cruelty people could show towards those they deemed beneath them. He had grown much stronger, reached a height so much higher that he couldn't even compare it to the past him. But even so, this second visit to the Mystic's Hidden realm was playing out much like the first one. But whether or not it would end like the first one, that was something left up to Liang Chen to decide.

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