Chapter 359: Gao Ta

The second day.

On another mountain facing Qianfeng Lingshan and Queyun Palace across the distance, Yu Sheng and a few others were walking toward the location of the Gao Ta, led by True Immortal Yuanling and Xuanche.

"There are many dangerous and treacherous things in the world that must be contained and sealed by various means; in this regard, every school has its own methods," True Immortal Yuanling said briskly as he walked along the mountain path, casually introducing things to the guests. "The Borderlands are universally recognized as the most skilled in this field. The Level 13 Containment Standards established by the Special Operations Bureau and the various containment facilities corresponding to them are often regarded as templates. Our 'Gao Ta' actually also references many containment concepts from the Borderlands..."

"Ahead is the entrance to the Gao Ta. We built it on a spiritual energy node of the Mountain-Protecting Array to borrow the array's power to enhance its defense. At the same time, there is a small array running independently beneath this node to prevent various accidents."

"The Taixu Spirit Pivot is not like the Borderlands; it does not have so many bizarre otherworlds and strange phenomena, so we have not established an overly complex containment system or many containment facilities. We have only divided different containment areas within the Gao Ta. Things with lower danger levels are stored on the upper floors, while those with higher danger levels, along with some captured utterly vicious criminals, are imprisoned below. Additionally, the base of the tower connects directly to the Divine Machinery Hall, where specialized personnel study those relatively controllable dangerous things, which is equivalent to the various levels of 'Dangerous Laboratories' in the Borderlands..."

"The Gao Ta was not built in a single day, nor has it remained unchanged since its completion. In my grandmaster's generation, there was a specialized area within the Gao Ta called the 'Hall of Evil Spirits,' which imprisoned a bizarre and dangerous spiritual entity excavated from a mine on the 'Chang'an' star. But by the time my master took charge of Lingshan, that entity was finally refined into part of the Mountain-Protecting Array, and the Hall of Evil Spirits was transformed into the Forbidden Soul Prison, used to temporarily imprison those captured evil demons and heterodox cultivators..."

True Immortal Yuanling introduced things along the way like this, and finally stopped in front of a cliff.

"We have arrived; this is the entrance to the Gao Ta."

Yu Sheng also stopped, looking in the direction pointed out by True Immortal Yuanling, and then fell into a daze together with Erin on his shoulder.

He saw before him a steep cliff as if carved by a giant blade, but on the rock face... there was no "tower," not even any visible architectural structure, only a relief of astonishing scale.

That relief was clearly part of the structure of a Gao Ta. At first glance, it gave the feeling that the main body of the tower had been "melted" into the mountain, leaving only part of the outer wall, including the main gate, "printed" on the cliff. Every detail of the relief was visible down to the finest hair, yet there was no way to enter or exit—because even that door was merely a layer of uneven carvings on the rock face.

Yu Sheng looked at the scene before him in shock. His gaze moved up along the "carvings" on the cliff wall, and he saw that the upper part of the relief actually had "people" moving about. Those figures, also printed on the stone, were lifelike human forms, yet they were walking and patrolling at the sentry post above the gate, moving with a vitality that made them seem like living people.

"Oh my..." Erin strained her neck back, one hand grabbing Yu Sheng's hair to prevent herself from falling, while she couldn't help but exclaim in surprise.

"Don't grab my hair!" Yu Sheng quickly reached out and pressed down on the little doll's surprisingly strong claws. "Do you know I've started losing hair recently!"

"This is so cool," Erin seemed not to be listening to what Yu Sheng was saying at all, simply switching to the other hand to continue grabbing the latter's hair. "Look, the figures up there are moving!"

Seeing this, True Immortal Yuanling smiled, made no further explanation, turned to face the rock wall, and lightly clapped his hands three times.

The next second, Yu Sheng saw the moving human-shaped reliefs on the rock wall stop, lower their heads as if observing something, and then two of those "reliefs" jumped directly off the rock wall. Upon landing, they had transformed into two mountain-protecting disciples clad in shimmering silver armor, with flying swords circling them, and they bowed deeply to True Immortal Yuanling.

Erin was stunned, grabbed Yu Sheng's hair with both hands, and exclaimed: "... They really are living people?!"

Yu Sheng was actually quite amazed as well, but the sensation on his head made him think first that he should probably get into the habit of wearing a hat in the future...

"It seems to be an illusion technique combined with spatial folding," Hu Li, standing nearby, squinted his eyes upon seeing this, studied it seriously for a while, and then said with great seriousness, "We learned about this in school! But I fell asleep during that class..."

Luna, standing beside him, nodded after hearing this: "Mm, correct."

Yu Sheng basically no longer tried to judge whether Luna's "Mm, correct" actually had any meaning—he even suspected it was just her unlock sound effect, meant to tell those around her that she had woken up from hibernation...

Meanwhile, True Immortal Yuanling exchanged a few words with the two mountain-protecting disciples guarding the entrance to the Gao Ta. The two then received the order and withdrew, turning back into the rock wall. Moments later, Yu Sheng heard a clattering sound coming from deep within the stone relief, and the "gate" carved into the stone slowly opened to both sides, revealing a dimly lit, deep corridor illuminated by lights inside.

"Please," True Immortal Yuanling extended his hand in invitation. "The Siege Giant Divine Soldier is currently being dismantled in the Divine Machinery Hall. True Immortal Qianji will arrive shortly. We can go to the Divine Machinery Hall to take a look first."

With expectations and curiosity in his heart, Yu Sheng stepped forward to follow the footsteps of True Immortal Yuanling and Xuanche, entering the interior of that "Gao Ta."

Just like the "building" of the Special Operations Bureau headquarters, this so-called "tower"... after walking inside, also bore no resemblance to the structure of a "tower" at all.

Yu Sheng felt as if he had walked into a huge and complex maze, and the direction of gravity within this maze was topsy-turvy. The corridors, styled in an ancient and majestic manner, crisscrossed each other. One second he was walking on normal ground, and the next moment, his vision blurred, and he found himself standing on an inverted ceiling.

After passing through many such strange corridors, he found himself stepping onto a long suspended corridor bridge. Outside the bridge were rows of mutually isolated "compartments." Those compartments were not directly connected to the corridor bridge; instead, only some floating bridges driven by massive mechanisms moved around in the air, changing the connection structure between the compartments.

Then, after advancing like this for an unknown distance, Yu Sheng's field of vision suddenly opened up—

The corridor bridge beneath his feet reached its end. Ahead lay a vast open space, resembling a massive vertical shaft. The "inner walls of the shaft" were all caves of various sizes. Some of those caves had heavy stone doors and ancient, solemn pillars; some entrances were decorated to look like pavilions; while others were just bare stone openings, yet emitting an unsettling aura of danger from within.

On the inner walls of the shaft, channels crisscrossing in all directions had been carved or constructed. There were also terrifying guardian beasts or mechanical men patrolling those channels, monitoring the status of each "prison cell"...

"The 'compartments' we just passed through are ordinary prisons, while this 'vertical shaft' is the main containment area," True Immortal Yuanling raised his hand to introduce. "This place suppresses the many demons and evil spirits subdued by Qianfeng Lingshan over the past thousand years, including many very dangerous uncontrolled entities. However, the most dangerous ones are not here; they are deeper within the entire Gao Ta—passing straight through this mountain down to the underground, sealed by the power of the earth veins."

"Of course, we do not need to go that deep today. The path to the 'Divine Machinery Hall' is over here..."

As True Immortal Yuanling spoke, he raised the whisk in his hand and lightly waved it toward the wall on one side of the "shaft."

A set of steps, originally attached to the "shaft wall" and appearing to be just an ordinary curved ramp, suddenly roared to life. Under the pull of a massive mechanism, it connected with another ramp on the opposite side of the shaft, and a previously invisible large gate appeared at the end of these steps.

Yu Sheng and his group crossed the ramp, passed the guardian divine beast and the several-meter-tall mechanical man stationed before that gate, verified their identities, and then entered the "Divine Machinery Hall" where the giant divine soldier was being dismantled.

The lights were bright, the roof was high, and inside the circular hall with its ancient and majestic style, the twelve-meter-tall "Siege Giant Divine Soldier" stood quietly on a platform. A circle of scaffolding had been erected around the platform surrounding the giant divine soldier. Lingshan cultivators wearing short robes stood on the scaffolding or floated in the air, busy working around that huge and ancient mechanical man.

When Yu Sheng walked into the hall, the chest armor and back armor of the Siege Giant Divine Soldier had already been removed, along with part of the arm guards and head plates. After those majestic and heavy armor pieces were taken off, the complex mechanism structure underneath, dazzling to the eyes, was exposed.

It looked somewhat like a "robot," but obviously not of the same school of thought.

Robots' engines would not have so many profound talismans on them.

Yu Sheng came to the side of the dismantling platform, looked up at the huge and complex mechanical creation with an expression of awe, and stared for a long time, confirming that he truly could not understand it.

But he noticed that Erin, right beside his head, was watching with particular seriousness, even with a thoughtful expression on her small face.

"Can you understand it?"

Erin answered with righteous confidence: "No, I can't!"

"Then why are you looking so seriously right here?"

Erin crossed her arms, thought for a while, and her eyes rolled around wildly. "I just suddenly had an idea..."

Hearing this, Hu Li turned his head: "Has the Benefactor's 'I have an idea' been passed on to you too?"

"Hey, don't interrupt!" Erin waved her hand vigorously, then continued looking up at the twelve-meter-tall Siege Giant Divine Soldier, speaking slowly. "Yu Sheng, is there a possibility like this: you build me a body that is one meter sixty-seven tall..."

Before the other party could finish, Yu Sheng instinctively spoke up: "Didn't we try that? When you infuse spirit, it shrinks..."

Erin: "And then I drive it from inside."

The second half of Yu Sheng's unfinished sentence "click" suddenly got stuck in his bronchial tube.

(End of this chapter)