Chapter 337: Dark Castle

After a night of rest, the two set out toward Wei Ke Na's old lair again, greeting the rising sun.

The castle where Wei Ke Na resides is called the Dark Castle by the townsfolk of Wu Song Zhen.

It is a military fortress standing proudly amid the wind and snow.

After several days of travel, the two finally reached the gate of the Dark Castle; like the wilderness, the Monster guards that should have been watching the gate had already vanished.

"Be careful once you go in; the internal defense mechanisms should still be active, and the Monsters are probably inside," Naimi Xisi warned from the gate.

As the hem of his Mage robe brushed the stone steps, a flurry of snow rose; this obsidian castle towering in the blizzard made the gate look like an unbreakable massive shield.

But this "shield" was resonating with Ai Ma's sword scabbard at a frequency he could not decipher.

"Do you know the Path of First Snow?" the archway suddenly seeped liquid moonlight, which condensed in the air into frost script. The silver‑haired girl's fingertip lingered on the sword hilt's engraving, and the vine‑like protrusions grew at a visible speed, winding around the wrist of her chain‑mail gauntlet.

"Of course I know," Ai Ma said, glancing at Naimi Xisi, then mustering courage to answer, "Last winter I hunted a frost wolf."

Naimi Xisi hooked an invisible magical detection thread with his little finger. The frost script collapsed into an array of ice crystals the instant it received an answer—clearly a three‑dimensional projection of the Sword Singer's class emblem—but Ai Ma's deep‑blue pupils reflected only ordinary snow.

"Welcome," a nameless female voice said as the stone doors thundered open.

The sight beyond the doors made Naimi Xisi tighten his staff. What should have been the castle's foyer now stretched into a passage assembled from bronze gears. Each floor tile was a rotating concentric circle, and when Ai Ma's boot struck the ground, the gears' speed suddenly synced with her heartbeat.

"This mechanism is imitating me," Ai Ma frowned. Naimi Xisi noticed liquid flowing within the walls on both sides; whenever Ai Ma turned to examine the murals, corresponding ripples surfaced inside the walls— the entire corridor was a living mirror.

When they rounded the seventh bend, the cold intensified sharply. Naimi Xisi's exhaled white mist condensed in the air into luminous data turbulence, while Ai Ma's breath left no visible trace. Above them, the bronze dome cracked open a maple‑shaped fissure, and snowflakes scented with oil drifted down.

A massive humanoid machine suddenly descended from the sky.

When the towering three‑meter humanoid mechanical Golem emerged from the frost, Ai Ma's sword tip was already pressed against a seam in its bronze chest armor. Naimi Xisi began to ready a spell attack, and the gatekeeper suddenly dropped to one knee. The brass chestplate "clacked" open, and a holographic projection scented with honey wafted toward them.

"Look! It's the treehouse I lived in as a child!" Ai Ma's exclamation made the golden‑haired little girl in the illusion look up. Seven‑year‑old her was polishing a wooden sword beneath a maple, and in the dappled light fluttered blue‑winged beetles that Naimi Xisi had never seen.

Naimi Xisi stared silently at the scene; would a modern United States girl practice swordsmanship in her backyard? It seemed it lacked sufficient intelligence.

The Mage's Arcane Power vision tore the sweet illusion— the maple's growth rings were encrypted Runes, and the beetles' wing‑beat frequency matched the corridor gears perfectly. When the little Ai Ma in the illusion suddenly turned and blinked at the real Sword Singer, Naimi Xisi's prepared Ice Thorn Trap had already coiled around the Golem's core.

"You're too tense," the real Ai Ma said, swinging her sword to cleave the out‑of‑control Golem; the splashing gears on the wall formed half a human face. Until its final death, the massive bronze Golem never chose to resist.

Naimi Xisi silently stored the recording crystal, which had captured the Golem's eye's final flashing code: error1107 (object permission conflict).

The two pressed on, each silent about the recent phenomena. Naimi Xisi could faintly sense a hint of panic and self‑doubt in Ai Ma's eyes.

After passing the shattered glass screen of the audience hall, the castle's aesthetic abruptly shifted, and the spatial structure began pathological overgrowth. Naimi Xisi's boot soles sank into a fleshy floor, with vein‑like conduits pulsing beneath his feet. The vines on Ai Ma's scabbard suddenly erupted, piercing the wall and triggering a violent repulsive reaction.

The stained glass windows refracted twilight into gear‑shaped rainbows. The bronze gears that should have symbolized sealing sigils now slowly unfurled into maple‑shaped patterns. When Ai Ma's silhouette overlapped the glass totem, black slime identical to that seeping from the walls oozed from the armor seams.

"Careful!" Naimi Xisi's warning lagged by an instant. The Tie Xiu that Ai Ma blocked etched a vine pattern onto the wall surface, perfectly meshing with the metallic veins of the stained‑glass gears. The energy flow ran backward along the vines, finally converging into the chain‑mail seam on her left hand.

But the instant that black energy stream touched Ai Ma, it seemed to see some flood‑beast and receded like a tide, causing Naimi Xisi, who had intended to lend a hand, to halt.

Ai Ma could no longer ignore the oddities; turbulence swirled again in her eyes as she panicked and collapsed to the ground, "…What, what's happening?"

"Why do they seem not to hurt me? This is Wei Ke Na's trick, right?" she asked frantically, looking at Naimi Xisi like a drowning victim grasping at a final floating log, eyes full of hope.

Naimi Xisi watched the increasingly dense data turbulence in her eyes, and at last spoke; he did not want Ai Ma to reboot now.

"Yes, that's probably Wei Ke Na's scheme. But regardless of his aim, we can use it for now; since they won't harm you, it means we're temporarily safe as well."

Naimi Xisi's words let Ai Ma sigh in relief; she didn't even know what she had been fearing before, and now her mind was a blank.

It was as if… she were afraid to recall something.

The two kept moving in silence, and everything that came into view was endless bronze gears and that maddening noise, plus numerous dangerous traps and Golem Monsters. Yet before Ai Ma, they all bowed their noble heads, allowing the pair to slaughter them.

Ai Ma's mindset had shifted from initial shock to numbness. Even the fact that both had reached level 14 didn't surprise her any more.

"We've arrived; this should be the underground vault," the two said, stopping at the mouth of a descending spiral staircase.

The grinding of bronze gears vanished abruptly as they stepped onto the underground stairs. Naimi Xisi watched the barcode-like light trace on Ai Ma's nape—those once‑steady cyan vertical lines now pulsed with a breath‑like rhythm, seemingly resonating with the surrounding environment.

"This place is actively cooperating with you," Naimi Xisi said, lifting a strand of adhesive from the step with his staff tip; the slime quickly corroded a small segment of the staff's tip. Ai Ma didn't look back; her scabbard resonated with the wall, and vine‑like protrusions had covered her entire left arm.

The vault's doors collapsed without warning. The ten‑meter‑tall bronze doors shattered like broken mirrors, and the flying fragments hovered just before striking Ai Ma's armor, reassembling into a metallic torrent of arch‑guardian knights.

(End of Chapter)