Chapter 277: Take Her Eyes

In the dim boiler room, a young man wearing a black Zhongshan suit knelt on one knee, holding a dagger in his hand, constantly carving text on the hard floor:

【The Freim family already knows I've entered. Their family's Ascended One is on the way to kill me.】

【I have to go. You should destroy all these texts as soon as possible. They have the ability to trace back and kill people based on text information. Take care of yourself.】

Lan Shiwen studied Chinese literature in college, and his daily hobby is copying ancient stele rubbings. He has practiced a good hand of calligraphy. Even now, using a small knife or dagger to carve on a stone slab with his bare hands, he still writes in a neat and elegant style, and even the period at the end is very beautiful, to the point of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

In contrast, the reply carved by Ning Zhe was much more casual, with sloppy fonts and lazy strokes, far from being as meticulous as Lan Shiwen's.

【Got it.】

Seeing Ning Zhe's reply, Lan Shiwen breathed a sigh of relief, stood up, and left the boiler room.

Life is sometimes so unpredictable. A few hours ago, he was still eating hot pot and singing with his girlfriend in a hot pot restaurant in Jiangcheng, when he suddenly died on the spot for no reason. When he closed and opened his eyes, he returned to the previous save point, full of confusion and not knowing what happened.

He has many enemies, and there are quite a few Ascended Ones and granted ones who have the ability to kill from a distance. Lan Shiwen had long been numb to dying all day long. After a simple pause for two seconds, he immediately began to investigate the cause of his death.

After spending a lot of time and triggering several returns, Lan Shiwen ruled out most ways of dying such as poisoning, shooting, vendetta, and cursing, and finally locked the target on Ning Zhe, who had just left Jiangcheng not long ago.

Lan Shiwen used some special means to learn from Xia Yubing that this unlucky guy had been sleeping on the airship, and even if he woke up briefly a few times, he just sent people to check the information on Vanishing Castle and immediately went back to sleep.

"Ning Zhe has trained this woman to be very loyal. No matter how I ask, she refuses to reveal any information about him. Even bringing up her family can't pry her mouth open, forcing me to use granted items." Lan Shiwen tutted and gently closed the boiler room door.

Protecting one's own information is the instinct of all Ascended Ones, but sometimes keeping information too confidential can have some counterproductive effects. For example, now.

If Xia Yubing's mouth hadn't been so tight, Lan Shiwen felt he could have died a few less times.

In the darkness outside the boiler room, there was a rustling sound of fabric rubbing, bringing a suffocating feeling like being strangled. Lan Shiwen felt his chest being pressed by something, and his heartbeat and breathing became extremely difficult.

At the same time, the surrounding air became cold.

"Coming so fast, are these foreigners dogs?" Lan Shiwen's expression was gloomy. He walked quickly away from the boiler room door and disappeared into the darkness.

Inside the boiler room, Ning Zhe squatted on the ground, examining the neat handwriting on the floor.

"Taiyin..."

Pressing the sword in his hand to the ground, he rubbed it hard, and the text carved on the stone slab was instantly erased. Ning Zhe followed suit and erased the remaining few places of text in the boiler room.

After doing this, Ning Zhe pushed open the door and left the boiler room.

Although Lan Shiwen had repeatedly warned that the basement of Vanishing Castle was very dangerous, the current Ning Zhe has been enslaved by the thought steel seal carved by Jue Yuan. Apart from taking risks to try to solve the secret in the deepest part of this castle, he has no other choice.

He must solve the puzzle of Vanishing Castle, otherwise, he will go mad and lose all his personality, becoming a Disqualified One.

What Ascended Ones, they are just a group of dogs enslaved by ghosts.

Ning Zhe walked quickly in the corridor under the clock tower, and a feeling of irritability surged up, and then he quickly reacted that he was being influenced by Jue Yuan again. His irritability and anger were being concretized and extremized, and a new thought steel seal was gradually forming.

"Calm down... calm down..."

The problem of the previous thought steel seal hasn't been solved yet. If another new thought steel seal is branded at this time, he can only commit suicide, relying on Lan Shiwen's death return ability to reset himself and the whole world to the state before the thought steel seal was branded.

Actually, Ning Zhe hadn't thought about using Lan Shiwen's death return to reset the previously branded thought steel seal, but judging from Lan Shiwen's current reaction, he seemed to have already tried this attempt.

Ning Zhe didn't think he would be forced to the point of exhausting all his lives by a mere Vanishing Castle, so the truth of the matter was obvious—he had tried to use Lan Shiwen's death return to reset the thought steel seal branded by Jue Yuan, but failed. Lan Shiwen's save point seemed to be after he was branded with the first thought steel seal.

In plain language, it's a dead save.

Fortunately, although the death return actively triggered by Ning Zhe did not reset the thought steel seal, it successfully attracted Lan Shiwen here, bringing him a crucial piece of intelligence.

—There are no ghosts in Vanishing Castle.

"The abnormal time flow in the castle is because the Freim family has hoarded a large amount of 'Yin' here, which is a granted item of the ghost named 'Taiyin'."

"The castle itself is also a granted item, influenced by the fierce ghost 'Xi Zhao,' and has become the new and old Vanishing Castles in the surface and inner worlds. The two castles will synchronize each other's states, just like Xia Yubing's two notebooks." Yes, those two notebooks, like the two Vanishing Castles, are special items granted by the fierce ghost 'Xi Zhao.'

"The abnormal time flow is because of Taiyin, and the parallel worlds are because of Xi Zhao. But whether it is Taiyin or Xi Zhao, the bodies of the two source ghosts are not here, so..."

Then what exactly did the hint Bai Zhi received before mean?

【Cannot be found by 'it'】

So who exactly is it? Is it the 'Disqualified One' imprisoned in the underground prison?

"As long as this problem is solved, I can leave Vanishing Castle."

Ning Zhe walked quickly through the water-logged corridor and entered the underground warehouse for storing coal. Carts of coal blocks were neatly piled up against the wall.

Lighting the oil lamp to illuminate the Old Vanishing Castle, two of the four walls of the warehouse had collapsed. Broken wheelbarrows and worker corpses floated in the turbid accumulated water. Several shovels leaned against the coal mountain, and the ground was full of wet and sticky silt.

Covering the lamp, the dilapidated underground warehouse returned to its intact and complete appearance, leaving only the silt stuck to the soles of Ning Zhe's shoes being brought to the present, leaving muddy footprints on the floor.

Ning Zhe hung the oil lamp on his waist, rolled up his sleeves, moved the carts of coal blocks piled against the wall to the side, counted the stone bricks one by one according to his memory, and found the secret door leading to the next level in the deepest part of the coal pile.

To be precise, it was not a secret door, but the location where the secret door originally was.

At a glance, look at /p>

The New Vanishing Castle, renovated by the government, was originally opened to the public as a public place of worship. The secret passages throughout the castle were dismantled or sealed, and this secret door leading to the deeper underground of the clock tower was also abandoned.

Ning Zhe found the original location of the secret door according to the orientation mark on the design drawing. What came into view was not a deep entrance leading to the underground, but a solid concrete wall with porcelain tiles of imitation stone brick texture pasted on the outside.

Lifting the leather cover on the lamp shade, releasing the light of the corpse oil lamp again, the porcelain tiles in front of him changed quietly, and a heavy, old, and decaying cast-iron door appeared in front of Ning Zhe.

The lock on it had long been rusted beyond recognition, but there were fresh friction marks between the rust spots, as if it had been pried open again after being rusted, which saved Ning Zhe the effort of prying it open himself.

Looking at the door in front of him, a strong sense of crisis surged up, as if there was a voice whispering in his ear, issuing a warning vaguely.

【Do not open this door.】

【Do not open this door.】

【Do not approach it.】

【Do not be found by it...】

Intense fear and suffocation pressed heavily on Ning Zhe's chest, and a silent alarm bell rang in his mind.

"Hoo..."

Taking a deep breath, Ning Zhe reached for the door lock, tore off the heavy iron chain wrapped around it, and pushed the door open. A steep staircase leading straight down appeared in front of him. Ning Zhe carried the corpse oil lamp and walked slowly down the stairs, entering the secret passage in the deepest part of Vanishing Castle, all the way down.

The candlelight flickered in the darkness, and the stone steps under his feet gave a solid touch. Ning Zhe walked down a few more steps.

Suddenly, he stepped into the air, and a strong sense of falling followed. The darkness around Ning Zhe dissipated instantly, and gray-white light filled all directions.

He felt a cold wind howling around his body, and the temperature below freezing point almost froze him. The deep and narrow secret passage disappeared at some point, replaced by a gray sky. Ning Zhe looked down while falling and saw a gray-white tower spire.

That was the roof of the clock tower.

Peng—

Aurore's body fell heavily on the spire at the top of the clock tower, rolling down like a broken toy. Her left hand and ribs were broken together. Ning Zhe grabbed the protrusion of the spire dome with his only remaining right hand, hanging his broken body high on the top of the spire where the cold wind howled.

Below the high tower, the Vanishing Castle shrouded in twilight was in full view.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 278 =====