Chapter 48: Obsidian

"Pendragon Track." As Liu Ziyi walked past him, she looked dazed and muttered another string of numbers.

Du Zhengyi recognized it as the coordinate for a track station; it should be where Guan Xinyue had gone. He gave a slight nod to acknowledge Liu Ziyi. She had already walked away, avoiding the chaotic crowd of Mages, and went to the glass curtain wall to stare at the forest below, lost in thought.

At the other end of the hall, Battle Mages were constantly flashing into view. Du Zhengyi could perceive the trajectories of energy streaking through the void like meteors. Soon, all the Battle Mages and Senior Mages in this building—or rather, this temple—had been summoned by Zuo Yu. He had finally waited for the moment when the underground was at its most empty.

Du Zhengyi walked slowly out of the hall. The moment the door closed behind him, he slipped into Subspace and used Spatial Teleportation to reach the underground hall buried deep beneath the permafrost. The underground of Qionglin was like a bottomless Abyss; the deepest levels held too many ancient secrets and were no longer in use. Among the rooms that were still usable, the oldest one was, according to Liu Ziyi, the one currently being used to interrogate Luo Qi.

There was a reason why the Abyss was constantly being closed off; many of the Mages' ancient secrets were better left forgotten. Du Zhengyi had heard some secrets about that Interrogation Room—most were ghost stories, but it was true that everyone was wary of it. He heard there was a massive, ancient piece of Obsidian there. The Mages' civil wars were often related to Mind Mages; people could not live without Mind Mages, yet they feared them. Their world had once been ruled by Telepaths, but they had also once oppressed and slaughtered Telepaths. The contradictory behavior of Mages was sometimes no less than that of humans.

Obsidian was a special type of Storage Crystal. The greatest characteristic of the Obsidian mined by Mages was that it was better suited for storing consciousness. In the most grim eras when war turned cruel, Mages liked to use Obsidian to craft Amulets to defend against those Telepaths who launched attacks from the shadows. Great Mages would copy a segment of their own consciousness specifically designed to defend against mental attacks; that was how so-called Amulets were made, effectively providing ordinary Mages with some reliable magical bonuses.

Unfortunately, there were many times when the situation was the exact opposite. Since the crystal itself was only suited for storing consciousness, Mind Mages naturally liked to use Obsidian as well. In the most chaotic eras, countless pieces of Obsidian carrying mental traps were sold as Amulets, and many people were lost in the fog of the mind, becoming walking corpses.

In the centuries that followed, Obsidian was a forbidden item. And the massive piece of Obsidian in the Interrogation Room contained the Yajian Pianshu of several long-deceased Great Mages; the very existence of that Interrogation Room was for the purpose of interrogating Mind Mages. Yet today, Mages were much more civilized than in the past. One of the most practical reasons for this was the continuous development of magic that guarded the mind, which was sufficient to contend with Telepaths, and Mind Mages were integrated into the mainstream society of Mages as never before. The activation of the Obsidian Interrogation Room required the approval of a Venerable. Such an interrogation room, whose primary means was the torture of the mind, would almost never be approved by a Venerable. Unless the suspect was heinous or the incident was extremely major and urgent—of course, none of these applied to Luo Qi's situation.

Even though Du Zhengyi's internal suspicions were becoming increasingly clear, he also knew that the crux of the matter was that the Obsidian Interrogation Room was being abused; Luo Qi was definitely not the first innocent person to be pushed inside.

Even that human woman, Qi Yue, was not the first.

Du Zhengyi clenched his fists. He passed through the dark underground corridor. The Defense Crystal was the central energy hub for all of Qionglin, and now even the underground lighting had been lost. But he did not conjure a Fireball. He traversed the dark space silently, not using his eyes. He could feel the ground sloping downward; the corridor became narrower every fifty meters, and the foundation stones of the walls constantly changed material until they turned into ancient rock.

He walked down the slope, silently reciting different Secret Languages, casting one barrier after another upon himself to defend against mental attacks. The further down he went, the more Shields he needed. Deep underground, countless fragments of souls were whispering; he did not want to hear them, nor did he want to be heard. Just like adapting to altitude sickness, he needed to enter slowly and adapt gradually to the intrusion of the chaotic, scattered consciousnesses.

Du Zhengyi estimated his win rate for when he eventually clashed with Li Xu. His abilities were not bad, and on top of that, he might be a Telepath—a Mind Mage. If he were not a Mind Mage, he would be unable to manipulate the Obsidian Prison, and choosing that place for an interrogation would be meaningless. Not to mention that the circumstances of Qi Yue's death looked as if she had been tortured to death by a perverted murderer, which happened to perfectly match the process of a Mind Mage continuously stripping away a person's will to live and extracting their consciousness.

Thinking of this, he quickened his pace once more. Regardless of how many secrets Luo Qi himself held, that was his own problem. He might happen to hold the key to the secrets, but he was merely a boy nearing adulthood who knew nothing; no one had the power to squeeze and destroy his soul.

Du Zhengyi also had an advantage over Li Xu; his defensive magic was almost powerful enough to make him silent in the world of Telepaths. The surprise attacks he excelled at could still be effective, and his success rate for a one-hit strike against Li Xu was very high. It was just that he did not know how many people were in the Interrogation Room; the more people there were, the more troublesome things would become, and the harder it would be to clean up the aftermath.

However, he was very confident, and he knew what he was doing. Moreover, he was extremely skilled at doing the things he had to do.

The darkness grew thicker, but Du Zhengyi ignored it; he ignored the infiltration of mental power into his consciousness. He passed through the corridor silently and quickly, pausing his steps only for a silent buzz. He could not discern what the buzz penetrating his consciousness was, so he stopped considering it.

The Obsidian Prison was right in front of him. He had already prepared a Teleportation Thrust; he was poised and ready, and a dagger appeared in his right hand. But suddenly, he straightened his back and looked hesitantly at the darkness ahead.

The prison's black door was swaying back and forth in the darkness; he could see a vague shadow.

There was a faint light coming from within the prison. It was not the illumination light that interrogators should be using; the light was soft and chaotic, like the radiance of the natural world.

Du Zhengyi slowly reached out his hand and pushed open the half-ajar door. On the grim Obsidian table sat a Crystal Coffin.

He could see clearly because a sliver of blue moonlight was cast down from the stone ceiling of the prison. He suddenly remembered the illusion he had fallen into in the well beneath the Guan Family Old Residence; in the dilapidated house, the same blue moonlight was falling, and an aged, insane Luo Qi was sitting under the moonlight looking at him.

He began to tremble. There was only a strange transparent liquid in the Crystal Coffin; it looked like water, but it was not.

Du Zhengyi walked forward into the room and saw two people collapsed behind the table. He cautiously walked over to check; neither of them was Luo Qi.

It was Li Xu and Zhao Zhiyan.