Garden of Shadows

by Tinalynge

  Chapter 36 - It Begins

  It didn’t feel like that long but time had flowed by like a spring stream, and suddenly three days had passed in the darkness that was the Baili family’s dungeons.

  During this time, no one had visited him. There were people surrounding him he knew—as he could sense them with his perception, but none of them had engaged in conversation or tried to give him any food or drink.

  Spiritual energy cultivators needed to eat and drink to sustain their bodies if their Qi levels had not reached a high enough realm, but Xue Wei was an Earth Knight, and he could be supported entirely on the heaven-and-earth essence.

  So apart from being slightly bored, Xue Wei felt no discomfort. He even spent the time cultivating his Qi and spiritual energy, alternating between the two. He did not want to neglect one or the other, now that they were about equal.

  It was on the fourth day that the Baili family finally started to act. In the silence of the dimly lit dungeon, Xue Wei was cultivating heartily and feeling rather pleased that the Baili family was taking this long to do anything.

  Unfortunately, this quiet period would not last forever. The elders in the Baili family had bickered about which route to take with Xue Wei, and in the end, the brutal and violent method had won.

  The biggest argument was about Xue Wei’s personality. He was not someone who would succumb to the Baili family’s coaxing, so coercion was the only way to go.

  The low thudding of steps echoed through the dungeon and Xue Wei, who had been cultivating, slowly opened his eyes as he heard them getting close. An azure gleam flashed past his pupils as he observed the hallway outside his cell.

  Not long after, an elderly man appeared in front of the cell door. It was the same elder who had spoken up the time that Xue Wei had stood in front of all the other elders of the Baili family—the one that all the others respectfully listened to.

  “I am the Grand Elder of the Baili family,” the man introduced himself. “I am here to give you one last chance,” he continued as he looked at Xue Wei with greedy eyes, like a poor man eyeing a mountain of treasures.

  “Work together with us, teach us and train us in your Qi techniques and any other valuable methods you have from your native continent, and you will be treated as an honorable guest. If you stay stubborn like this, there will be no other chances after this, and we will have to begin with harsher methods to extract the secrets out of you.”

  “What’s to say that I won’t just tell you fake pill formulas or give you flawed methods?” Xue Wei asked with a smile on his face, his words making the expression of the Elder harden and his eyes glisten with coldness.

  “You would have to treat us with sincerity,” the Elder said. “And of course, we would have you take an oath of loyalty to trust you.”

  “You talk about sincerity and an oath of loyalty in the same sentence—that’s quite an eyeopener about the Baili family,” Xue Wei mocked. “But forget it. I would rather you try your best to force me into revealing the information than take an oath of loyalty. There is no way I would ever swear another oath of loyalty.”

  “Don’t forget this is the choice you made!” the grand elder said with a sneer on his face and his body trembling with anger. He was used to being one of the most respected creatures on the entire continent, but now he was being looked down upon by a youngster. This was a first for him, and he was livid.

  Originally, Xue Wei had not needed to be captured by the Baili family. He could have run away and been on the run together with his friends for a while like he was used to, but doing so would have been bringing with it quite some downsides.

  Usually, Xue Wei would have just run away and gone somewhere else, but now, he had to get to the Demon Phoenix Continent as he had made a promise to Lan. Xue Wei was the kind of person that, when he made a promise to someone that deserved it, he would give his life to keep it, and thus why he did not make a lot of promises.

  As a result, if they ran away, how would he be capable of solving the mystery of the academy? Without resolving this unexplained mystery, Xue Wei would not be getting a lift to the next continent, and thus he had to stay at the academy.

  Alongside this, he had initially gotten close to the Yuan and Gu families just to obtain materials for the Rainbow Pills and other resources that would make life easier on Yan Dalu, but after interacting with Gu Bing’er and Yuan Bailong, he had become friends with them.

  If he ran away, it was likely that the Baili family would turn to them in an attempt to extract the secrets from them, and they were not yet ready for a fight like this. They still needed to prepare to strike if they wanted a chance of success.

  So in the end, to buy time for the Yuan and Gu families—and to ensure that he could later solve the mystery that he still really knew nothing about, he had decided to allow himself to be captured. Even if it meant that he would be subject to torture and other methods to gain knowledge of the techniques and methods he held, he would endure.

  Xue Wei had made his decision, and he was going to be sticking to it no matter what the Baili family decided to do to him. He was even slightly curious as to the healing rate of the Azure Dragon race. Could he regrow severed limbs like a salamander?

  Of course, he would prefer to have his limbs remain firmly attached, but if it should happen, then he could not do much about it.

  Unfortunately, Xue Wei had also forgotten something important. It was true that experts who cultivated Qi would see the physical body as the most important treasure to torture. However, this was Yan Dalu. Even if you were physically crippled, you could still be an expert in spiritual energy, and thus when they worked, they would instead torture the mind and soul.

  This was something Xue Wei noticed when the elder left. As he went, he made a gesture to the people who had been stealthily surrounding the cell, and they stepped forward, all of them bearing sinister expressions on their faces.

  “So it begins,” Xue Wei muttered to himself, and a wry smile was on his lips as he stood up, looking at the people coming towards him with vigilance.

  But what happened next surprised him. They did not even unlock the cell and enter as he had expected. Instead, three men sat down in front of the cell, looking at him as if they could not wait to tear him apart.

  At first, Xue Wei had been very alert because he thought the three of them would enter and beat him up, but then he remembered—these people could not beat him up. They were at most Heavenly Warriors; their physical strength would be unable to harm him in the slightest.

  So how were they going to convince him to let go of his information? Xue Wei was puzzled but also curious. His biggest worry was that they would have made him into a cripple, but after realizing that even their strongest expert would be incapable of injuring him physically, he relaxed.

  The reason he dared to relax was not that he was overconfident, but because he also had the golden dragon spirit within his mind. This spirit was capable of protecting him from mental attacks to a certain extent, and now it was time to see just how much protection it could offer.

  The three men on the ground had their eyes closed and their hands in their laps. Spiritual energy started erupting from their minds, and energy waves came crashing towards Xue Wei.

  Xue Wei was almost swept off his feet, the spiritual energy was powerful and dense, and it came at him like a tidal wave, crashing against his body and invading his mind.

  The energy that surged through him penetrated his body like sparkling rays of light going deep into his skin and started wreaking havoc through his meridians, with all of them converging towards his mind palace.

  Xue Wei felt himself stiffen as the foreign energy entered through every pore in his body, leaving him incapable of moving.

  He expected to experience excruciating pain, but this pain never arrived. As the golden rays of light entered his mind palace, the golden dragon lazily opened its previously closed eyes and simply gulped it down.

  The moment it entered the
mouth of the golden dragon spirit, the body of the spirit started to shine very faintly, but the more it consumed, the brighter the light became. Soon, much purer and refined rays of golden light were burped out from the well-fed dragon spirit, and mingled with the sea of golden energy in his mind palace, increasing his own cultivation instead.

  Xue Wei was astounded. What kind of ability was this? The golden dragon spirit was simply heaven-defying. To be able to easily consume the spiritual energy of what appeared to be Sky Knights and transform it into his own energy was a heaven-sent opportunity, and Xue Wei forced his rather stiff body to sit down.

  The three experts were unaware that the energy they had sent out had been consumed, so seeing Xue Wei’s awkward movements alongside the fact that he was forced down, they assumed that their attack had worked.

  His body was showing all the signs of having been hit by the crushing power of their spiritual energy attack, and then him sitting down, what other reasoning could be behind it other than his soul feeling the pain that lingered after being injured?

  Truth was that Xue Wei’s eyes were glistening with excitement. Who would have thought that being tortured would be the reason that his cultivation base was rising?

  The three men saw that Xue Wei was still holding on, however, so they continued to send increasingly powerful waves of energy, one after another towards the youngster, the waves going from being somewhat dense and heavy to what felt like rolling tidal waves at him.

  They were spooked and shocked by Xue Wei’s ability to withstand their onslaught. They were, after all, Sky Knights, and when they saw Xue Wei sitting still like this, with closed eyes and a rosy complexion, they started to suspect that something was wrong.

  Unrelenting from their attacks, an hour had passed like this, and Xue Wei’s cultivation had encountered a bottleneck. Just a little bit more and he would break into the fourth layer of the Earth Knight rank with his spiritual energy, but for some reason, it was as if his dragon was now incapable of producing more spiritual energy from the beams of light that it devoured.

  Although more and more energy was still being poured into his body, and the dragon kept up its consumption of it, less and less was being delivered to Xue Wei, yet the dragon spirit was growing in speed.

  Now, the dragon spirit was suddenly starting to shine with a radiant golden luster, the scales were much more prominent and visible than before, and the dragon seemed overflowing with vigor.

  Xue Wei could sense how he was growing stronger by the minute, but he was not satisfied without managing to break into the fourth layer of the Earth Knight rank, and thus he opened an eye. He could not help but stare at the three sweating experts on the other side of the cell door.

  “Is this really all that three such experts can handle?” he mocked them with a snicker on his lips, and the three men, who were on the verge of collapsing became filled with anger.

  “Brat, you’ll regret this!” one of them yelled, and suddenly the group of three all summoned their remaining spiritual energy to blast it towards Xue Wei, hoping to cripple him for good.

  Chapter 37 - Golden Dragon Spirit

  Xue Wei snickered when he felt a distortion in the air ripples appearing around him and the three experts, and crackling sounds reverberating around the room.

  Although he was eager to see whether or not the golden dragon was capable of consuming this much energy, he was also slightly apprehensive when he saw just how overwhelming it was.

  Well, he had aggravated the guards, so there was no turning back now. Instead of being nervous, he felt it was much better to be filled with self-confidence and trust in his golden dragon spirit.

  Xue Wei felt the big wave crashing down upon him, and its energy pouring into his entire body. It made him feel as if his meridians were being ripped apart.

  Although the golden dragon spirit was capable of absorbing an enormous amount of energy, there was a limit to how much energy it could absorb at once, and now the rest of the attack was wreaking havoc in his body.

  Xue Wei grit his teeth as he felt the energy surging through every pore and cell, bringing with it a destructive force. Fortunately, this energy was aimed at his soul, and thus his body—which had reached the rank of an Earth Knight in Qi levels—was more or less unharmed but still left behind a scorching pain.

  When the energy entered his body, Xue Wei had considered the option of forcing it out with his Qi dragons, but he felt that it would be a waste of energy—the energy that had been so kindly gifted to him.

  The golden dragon spirit was eager to consume all the energy that was pulsating through his body, and although its speed of absorption was rather slow compared to the previous times, he could feel that the refinement had picked up.

  The bottleneck towards the fourth layer of the Earth Knight rank was becoming looser and looser, so much so that he could feel it trembling. Then suddenly, Xue Wei felt as though something within his body had broken free, and as if a stone on his shoulder had been removed, he could breathe freely.

  He had finally broken through to the fourth layer of the Earth Knight rank for his spiritual energy. The boundless energy was now pulsating through his body with a much more pleasant effect, and it made him curious about just how much difference there was between his current and past abilities.

  Unfortunately, there was no place for him to test his breakthrough. Although he had three experts in front of him, all of them were Sky Knights, and a mere fourth layered Earth Knight would not even begin to match up to them.

  Xue Wei’s advantage over these experts existed in his Azure Dragon spirit, his golden dragon spirit, and his high Qi levels.

  Noticing that his scrunched up expression had eased a lot, the three experts became very uncomfortable. They had exhausted all the spiritual energy within their soul palace; they were at the current point rather useless as they would not be able even to kill a chicken.

  Even worse was when they sensed that Xue Wei had a breakthrough in the midst of the chaotic energy that they had summoned forth. This sudden discovery left them with a mental scar for life; their minds were reeling in shock.

  Who would be able to change the situation like this? Instead of being crippled, he had advanced, what kind of absurdity was this?

  Xue Wei could see the sudden despair in the guards’ many eyes, and he could not help but chuckle slightly.

  “Thank you for your assistance,” he said cheekily. “I could not have had such a rapid breakthrough if it was not for your assistance, make sure to send some more people my way later.”

  The more he spoke, the more infuriated and confused the guards became. Their eyes were filled with bewilderment, and their bodies trembled; one of them even coughed up blood in agitation.

  They were already incredibly weak due to having used up their entire body’s reservoir of spiritual energy and being angered like this, it was natural that their bodies were incapable of handling it.

  Although Xue Wei was rather rude and did what he could to agitate the guards, he also remained alert. The last attack had made him realize that, although he had the protection of the golden dragon spirit, there was still a limit to how much it could protect him against.

  When the three experts made an all-out attack, they had indeed caused him pain, so he reckoned that if there was a Heavenly Knight, then he would be incapable of withstanding the combined attack.

  Fortunately, Heavenly Knights were relatively rare; only a few could be found amongst the guards, while every single elder of the Baili family were Heavenly Knights, and the Grand Elder was an Earth Saint.

  Saint-ranked experts were incredibly rare on Yan Dalu. Spiritual energy became more and more difficult to cultivate, the stronger one became, and one needed lucky chances to have breakthroughs.

  Because of this, the continent was somewhat weak compared to other continents, but even so, a few crouching tigers and hidden dragons existed in the continent—with the Grand Elder being one of them.

  Xue Wei ha
d gained much information about Yan Dalu and its citizens from the exchange that Lin Xiao and Hei Gou had initiated some time ago. He knew that the strongest expert in the entire continent was the Royal Tutor, a higher layered Earth Saint who was at a rather old age already.

  The Royal Tutor and the Baili grand elder were the only Earth Saint on the entire continent. All the others were Ordinary Saints and below—even the principal of the Garden of Shadows was not an Earth Saint.

  Knowing that there was an Earth Saint in the Baili family, Xue Wei was incapable of fully relaxing. He had already acknowledged that he would be incapable of withstanding a Heavenly Knight, so an Earth Saint was a heaven-defying threat.

  Figuring that the guards were incapable of handling him, Xue Wei was betting on the fact that the Grand Elder would not lower himself to deal with him, but it was obvious that a Heavenly Knight would be sent his way soon, so he had to find a way to increase his cultivation base rapidly.

  At least the trick today had made him rise a layer, not to mention that he had bought some time and drained three Sky Knights—which was no small feat for an Earth Knight.

  Realizing that they been left with a scar in their minds from Xue Wei, he could not help but snicker. They deserved it.

  Another two days went by as the three guards went to report the information to the higher-ups and waited for them to find another person to take charge of the ‘convincing’ of Xue Wei.

  Xue Wei was correct. The next person that appeared was a Heavenly Knight. Unlike the previous three guards, this man was not arrogant, neither was he looking down on Xue Wei.

  The guard did not belittle him. He looked at him with a grave expression on his face, as if he was threatened by the existence of this creature known as Xue Wei.

  Knowing that this person could be a serious danger, Xue Wei furrowed his brows. He was slightly worried that things would not go as easily as he had hoped, his eyes never once leaving the man.