Garden of Shadows

by Tinalynge

  Chapter 44 - The Soul Reaping Formation

  The forbidden area was much like it had been the previous time they had entered.

  It was dark and filled with old houses that were so worn out that many of them had collapsed long ago.

  The place was ages old and had been left to the mercy of the passage of time without anyone to maintain or repair it—it was like entering a decrepit time capsule.

  At first glance, there was nothing special about these worn-out houses, but upon closer inspection, Xue Wei noticed that they were all placed in weirdly precise geometric pattern relative to one another.

  They were formed in a star shape, with a building at each of the five points of the star, and the house that Luoluo had resided in situated at the center of them all.

  “The soul power is incredibly dense here,” the King mumbled as she looked around. The closer they got to the house that had belonged to Luoluo, the denser the energy became. It became so dense that every breath they took poured soul power into their bodies at a speed so rapid that their refinement could not even keep up.

  “This is like being on the eighth floor of the Soul Tower, but without having any pressure,” Xue Wei observed. “The eighth floor had a heavy pressure as the soul power was being poured into my body, but even then, that amount of energy did not feel as overwhelming as this does.”

  “Something is gathering all the soul power from the surrounding area, and it is not Nebula Stones,” the King remarked, quite surprised from the events happening here. It was quite different from how it had been when they last visited.

  “It seems that the center of this heavy soul power is in the house that belonged to Luoluo,” Xue Wei said with narrowed eyes. His mind was clearer than it had ever been before as it was being bombarded with dense amounts of soul power, but he felt a sudden sense of danger as he walked forward.

  “Don’t go any further,” Xue Wei suddenly called out, alarmingly. “It feels as if something is wrong. Although the dense soul power is pouring into my mind, it is as if something is wrong with our surroundings. Could this be a trap?”

  Hei Gou and the King both stopped in their tracks as they heard Xue Wei’s warning, and their expressions turning solemn and grave.

  “Let us look at the surrounding houses first.” The King was not sure if Xue Wei was correct when he assumed that it was a trap, but the fact that he wished for them to be careful was reasonable enough.

  The forbidden area had always been out of bounds for everyone—even the academy leaders did not enter the place, so no one had any real understanding of what could have happened within.

  “Could it be that all the energy that was usually sent to the Soul Tower has gathered here instead?” Hei Gou voiced his concerns and theory, but Xue Wei just frowned. Something told him that it was not that simple.

  “Let us see what we can find in the other houses,” Xue Wei said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with Hei Gou’s hypothesis. It could be that he was just overthinking the situation they had landed themselves in.

  They continued forward towards a house that had long since collapsed. The roof had once upon a time been made from straw, but nothing was left apart from rotten beams that would have held the straw in position.

  Most of the beams had cracked and fallen into the house itself. Similarly, the brick wall had crumbled in many places due to the passage of time.

  Entering the house was rather difficult as it had mostly collapsed, and it contained some danger to enter as no one knew when any remnants would collapse as well, but none of them considered this danger at the moment as they climbed over the rubble and entered what, once upon a time, had been a living area with a small kitchen to the side.

  Looking at the house, Xue Wei frowned. His frown was not only because of the fact that it had become a ruin but also because there was no furniture.

  Although the house looked as if it had been built for the purpose of having someone inhabit it like most houses, there were no marks, no signs of wear or use underneath the thick layer of dust and rubble in the living area.

  The kitchen also looked old and broken down, but it did not look as if it had ever been used either. What was the point of building a house but never letting anyone live within it?

  Xue Wei continued to the second house of the outer houses that made up the star pattern, finding the same thing. This continued in each building.

  Not only were they old and in shambles, but there were no signs that anyone had ever lived within them.

  “This is somewhat wrong. Even though Luoluo’s home was old and worn out, at least it was worn out from being used. These houses seem as if they were never needed in the first place,” Xue Wei mused. He could not help but feel perplexed and confused; he had spent quite a long time examining the houses, and all he had realized was that they were useless.

  “Maybe they were placed there to hide something,” Hei Gou muttered with a quiet voice, but since there was no other sound in the forbidden area, both Xue Wei and the King could still hear it, and they looked at one another.

  “Underneath them!” the both of them exclaimed at the same time, and then rushed towards the closest building.

  “What do you mean, underneath them?” Hei Gou asked curiously, but neither Xue Wei nor the King responded. Both of them just began to move the bricks and rubble away and stack it in a pile on the side.

  Hei Gou shook his head resignedly before he too began helping. They broke up the floor and the walls, and everything was moved out of the way as quietly as they could. Fortunately, it was done rather fast with their strength, as it was much higher than what moving some stones and wooden boards required.

  Soon the house was nothing more than a massive pile of rubble and trash, baring the ground underneath the house that it had been built on. When they were finally able to see the exposed ground, the expression in their eyes became severe.

  The ground underneath the house was one massive rock, but the rock was clearly unnatural. All over the rock were carvings of what looked to be runes that belonged to a formation.

  The runes kept on for as far as the rock was visible above the cleared floor, and seemed to continue even underneath the grass and soil that was between the houses.

  “Let us try and empty every house to see if it is the same underneath them all. Let us unmask the entire formation; I would like to see how big it is, and hopefully we will recognize some of the runes,” Hei Gou said, but when he saw that Xue Wei was staring intently at the formation with furrowed brows and an expression of recognition on his face, he quieted down.

  “These runes.” Xue Wei pointed at a few of the carvings, “I saw them in the Soul Tower before.”

  The King was a specialist in formations as well, and she had attended the Garden of Shadows before she was crowned, so she looked at the runes that Xue Wei pointed at, all five of her eyes widening in surprise.

  “It is indeed the same runes,” she agreed. “Let us do as Hei Gou suggested and strip the entire place so we can see the rest of the formation, maybe we will understand more about what it does.”

  As Hei Gou suggested, the group began uprooting the entire forbidden area. They pulled out the earth, the roads, and the houses and tossed everything in a massive pile of waste materials and soil.

  The more they excavated, the bigger they found the formation. It stretched as far as all the houses that were located around Luoluo’s house, and the closer one came to the center, the more rune carvings were crammed together in the rock.

  It was obvious that it had intentionally been hidden beneath the vegetation, the roads, and the house.

  Now that it was revealed for all to see, they could easily tell that all the runes were heading towards Luoluo’s small house, the place with the densest soul energy throughout the entire forbidden area.

  “I feel like I have seen this formation before,” the King said tentatively, her brows twisted together as if she was seeing something she could almost remember but not
quite.

  “It resembles the Soul Power Gathering Formation, but there has been made some slight adjustments to the outer formation. In the middle, the one that is underneath Luoluo’s house seems very different too,” Xue Wei said as he looked at the formations in front of him.

  “This is a forbidden formation,” the King said with a grave and slightly chilling voice. “The formation drags all soul power out of a living being little by little. It is known as the Soul Reaping Formation, and it was forbidden many many years ago.

  “The Soul Reaping Formation would explain why Luoluo is so young, both physically and mentally,” the King continued. “I saw a Soul Power Transfer Formation as well. It seems that this massive formation is a combination of many formations together, and all of them have various purposes.”

  “First is the Soul Reaping Formation which slowly but surely removes all the soul power from little Luoluo, then the Soul Power Transfer Formation moves the absorbed soul power she was formed of towards the Soul Tower, and finally the Soul Power Gathering Formation gathers energy towards her house, to try and nurse her a little back to life.

  “The reason that we did not feel the dense soul power before was that Luoluo was absorbing it all, but now that she has been missing for some time, all the energy has just gathered and hasn’t been consumed by anyone.

  “As I said, it explains it all. Luoluo has slowly been drained every single day of her soul power to fuel the Soul Tower. She is a Spirit, so she is a dense cluster of soul power, but even so, she has a limited supply of energy within her.

  “She had already regressed to a five-year-old child when we found her, so it was obvious that she could not continue to have her energy dragged out of her indefinitely, and that she would die sooner or later.”

  The King looked disgusted as she thought about how the Garden of Shadows had used a living being as a prisoner and forced her to hand over her own life force for the sake of increased cultivation bases for others.

  The Garden of Shadows prided itself with being a fair and just place, but everything they had was built on a lie.

  The King looked at Xue Wei and saw his expression had darkened drastically. After listening to the King, he also now understood what it was that had caused Luoluo to have the mentality and body of a child.

  He then looked at the King with eyes that were trying to look through her.

  “I want all of Yan Dalu to know about this,” he said sternly. “I know it will change how the continent looks on the Garden of Shadows, but to ensure this never happens again, I want everyone to know what has fueled the Soul Tower.”

  “Don’t you fear that some greedy people will come after Luoluo?” The King was not against his decision; she just had to make sure that he would not regret it.

  “I already assisted the strongest people in the continent with getting Qi cultivation techniques. I am quite sure that the Yuan and Gu families will let her be, and those others who dare to touch her, I will deal with them.”

  The King nodded her head solemnly and gave a last glance at the Soul Reaping Formation on the ground.

  “Let us destroy the formation before we return,” she said, prompting Xue Wei to take action. He summoned all his Qi into a massive Qi sword which he then used to repeatedly pierce and smash up the rock that had been the medium for the formation.

  Chapter 45 - Flourish and Prosper

  Having destroyed the formation, Xue Wei felt a lot better, but it was impossible for him to be forgiving towards the academy which had used his little sister as a soul power conduit to fuel their Soul Tower.

  “Let us leave,” he said after having successfully obliterating the formations, and the others nodded their heads affirmatively. Their expressions were solemn as even they could feel the rage burning in Xue Wei’s chest.

  When they landed on the top of the wall surrounding the forbidden area, they were surprised to see that not only were the guards present at the gate, but the academy’s principals and many officials from the court were there as well, all of them observing the wall, and hence the three of them.

  They had been caught red-handed, trying to leave the forbidden area, but none of them panicked, all of them remained extremely calm.

  “Come down from up there and let us talk about you illegally breaking and entering into the forbidden area,” the principal uttered in a friendly manner, daring not to speak too impolitely when he saw that the King was amongst the three of them, but within his eyes was a burning anger.

  Looking at him calmly, Xue Wei said nothing, but his eyes showed his dislike towards the people of the academy.

  Standing on top of the wall, he looked down upon the masses like an immortal descended from the heavens above, his entire being emitted a strong sense of disdain towards the world. He was like a prince that could not be sullied, or an emperor glancing at his subjects.

  Everyone felt uncomfortable as they met his eyes. No one could help but shiver slightly and look away, and even the stronger experts were somewhat intimidated.

  It was not because he was too strong on his own, but he had the strongest backing in the entire continent, not to mention he was cunning and able to turn a bad situation into one that favored him.

  The principal saw that Xue Wei had no intention of answering him, flaring his temper up, but after looking at the King by the foreigner’s side, also looking quite aloof, he could only restrain the smoldering anger in his chest.

  Seeing that they had already been discovered, they jumped from the wall and down on the ground.

  The moment they landed, all the officials gathered around the King, fussing and looking her over as if they feared that she had suffered some grievances, or was seriously injured.

  Only when they noticed that her clothes were somewhat dirty but all intact—and that her face had a healthy, rosy tint to it—did they breathe a heavy sigh of relief.

  They scowled accusingly at Xue Wei and Hei Gou, clearly blaming these two outsiders for bringing their King on a mission that was completely inappropriate, but no one dared say anything out loud, out of fear of insulting the King.

  The principal was unhappy. If it was just Hei Gou and Xue Wei, then he could have unleashed his fury, but after seeing the King present, he knew that it was impossible to say something in anger. He had to pretend that he was not upset.

  “You should know that the forbidden area is forbidden. It is a place where you are not allowed to go, so why are you returning from there?” he asked while keeping his expression as neutral as he could manage despite his boiling emotions.

  Xue Wei glanced at him, and then looked at the rest of the people present, all of them looking right back at him, curious about his excuse.

  “If no one enters the forbidden area, then no one will know about the dark secrets of the academy,” Xue Wei stated casually, but his words were like dropping a stone into a lake, ripples erupting right away.

  The principal was stunned at first before then his expression became unsightly.

  “What are you talking about? Don’t just slander our academy because you feel mad at us for not standing up for you when you were being chased!” he said, trying to make it seem as if Xue Wei was slandering them. However, what Xue Wei said next was enough to cause a cold chill to run down the spines of everyone present.

  “You say that I am slandering you, then why did I just have to destroy a Soul Reaping Formation in there? The person who was locked inside the forbidden area for thousands of years almost gave up her entire life for the sake of others’ improved cultivation.

  “Is this how the Garden of Shadows is going to be treating its benefactors? The spirit that founded the academy had been locked up and used as a battery to fuel your Soul Tower.

  “She worked to create an academy, and in return, the academy imprisoned and tried to kill her. She did her best to help, but the thank you she got was being locked within the forbidden area, never to leave, forever left to dwindle into nothingness.”

  The prin
cipal was as shocked as everyone else when they heard the words of Xue Wei. They had never imagined that what fueled the Soul Tower was a living being—the person who had created the academy in the first place. What kind of ungrateful monsters were they?

  The principal’s face alternated between red and white. Exasperatedly, he asked Xue Wei, “What did you say?” because he truly did not understand how his predecessors could do so. He knew nothing of this; he was only aware that the source for the Soul Tower’s power was within the forbidden area, but never had he imagined that the source was a spirit and was even the spirit that had created Garden of Shadows.

  Everyone present was muttering to one another. They all felt shocked when they heard Xue Wei’s words, but no one doubted that he spoke with sincerity.

  The King was standing next to Xue Wei and had not said anything to contradict him, silently approving of everything the youngster said, and thus shocking everyone present into believing him unquestioningly.

  Xue Wei did not wait for the academy’s principal to say anything more. He and Hei Gou strode out from within the crowd and went to the courtyard where he found Luoluo, Bai Tianyi, and Lin Xiao awaiting their return.

  “We are leaving,” he said coldly. “We are not going to stay within the academy for even a moment more.”

  The others did not ask about what was going on; instead, all of them entered their rooms and started packing up their items as they were instructed.

  Not long after, the group met up in front of the house, their things all packed in their storage treasures, and together they set out from the academy.

  While they had been packing, the secret Xue Wei uncovered spread like wildfire in the academy and the capital.

  Yan Dalu prided itself in being a fair and reasonable place. A place where everyone was treated well, even if they had different capabilities or a different number of eyes. No one would be left to rot, and everyone could live a fulfilling life.

  This Yan Dalu also prided themselves in the Garden of Shadows, the frontrunner in their youth’s education on how to behave and how to cultivate—the cornerstone of their entire society.