"So it's really a cursed armor?" Liu Xing asked Prince Yang Jinyan, who ran at his side.

They were descending a long, spiraling golden staircase. Liu Xing wanted to move as fast as possible; at full speed, he could reach the bottom of the castle in no time. But that would mean leaving behind Yang Jinyan, Yang Hongyin, and Yang Suyin, which was illogical. Their odds of survival were better if they moved as a group. Still, while Liu Xing considered their pace slow, a mortal would have seen the four of them as mere blurs, as difficult to spot as a jaguar in the dead of night.

Their leisurely pace was possible only because no abominations were attacking them. This was worrying. If they were not here, where were they? The giant footsteps from outside had also stopped, leaving the golden castle unnervingly quiet. The silence made Liu Xing's heart tighten as he wondered if he had forgotten something or made a mistake.

To distract himself from his anxiety, Liu Xing asked about the power of Yang Hongyin and the Twelve Sun Armor, which prompted Prince Yang Jinyan to mention again that it was, in fact, cursed.

"Yes, although I think that's either false information, or it's not cursed anymore." Prince Yang Jinyan glanced to his left, where Yang Hongyin glided down the stairs. "You don't feel like killing me, right?"

"No," she said calmly. "Not even a bit."

A curse that made the wearer want to kill the emperor of the Twelve Sun Empire—a truly dangerous treasure. After all, Prince Yang Jinyan had intended for Yang Hongyin to wear it, knowing she might try to kill him.

"Are you sure it's not because you're technically not an emperor yet?" Yang Suyin commented from Liu Xing's right. "What if after your inauguration she tries to kill you?"

"The chance is there, but it's quite slim." Prince Yang Jinyan pinched his chin. "After all, it seems Liu Xing here successfully exorcized the curse."

"I never claimed that. I only said the armor was shrouded in darkness, and as far as I know, that darkness doesn't function like a curse. Although, the last time I saw it, it was used by a demonic cultivator to enhance his techniques. One of them allowed its user to take over another's body."

"Taking over another's body can be seen as a curse, I think," Yang Suyin said. "I imagine if Yang Hongyin were truly cursed by that armor, it would probably try to hijack her body, either by completely suppressing her mind or manipulating her into killing the emperor."

"An armor that controls the wearer," Hong'er—Yang Hongyin—muttered. "It's a bad gift for your future wife, dear."

Yang Jinyan's eyes widened. "I'll give you a more beautiful dress later!"

Yang Hongyin smiled, then nodded, looking satisfied with Prince Yang Jinyan's answer.

"Anyway," Prince Yang Jinyan cleared his throat. "At the very least, she can now use the abilities of the Twelve Sun Armor without worrying that she'll try to kill me. This armor has several capabilities. You already saw one in action. It can heal the wearer from grievous wounds. It also enhances the overall quality of her qi, making her techniques stronger by leaps and bounds. But its most impressive ability is to create a qi construct that's quite large and formidable, the Twelve-Headed Bird. The armor scales with the wearer, so if she breaks through to the next stage, it will become stronger."

"There must be serious drawbacks to the armor," Liu Xing commented.

"Yes, it consumes a tremendous amount of qi. The twelve gems on her crown indicate how much power it has left. If all the gems become transparent, the armor becomes useless. That's why you must use its abilities as efficiently as possible. Legends of the second emperor say it took a hundred of years for the gems to recover their qi."

"Can it be recharged?" Liu Xing asked.

"Yes, although it needs an unimaginable amount of qi."

"All right." Liu Xing filed the information away. He was confident his own potent qi could recharge it—perhaps not to full capacity, but enough to make the Twelve Sun Armor usable again.

The conversation ended as they arrived at the bottom of the stairs.

When their feet touched the floor of a giant room that looked large enough for a party of thousands, a vibration hummed through the air. For a moment, Liu Xing thought it was an enemy, but he quickly realized the source was Yang Suyin. The communication orb clutched in her hand vibrated, glowing blue. Without hesitation, Yang Suyin opened the connection. A cacophony of shouts, explosions, and chaos erupted from the orb. "Thank the heavens it finally connected! Help us, help! Abominations suddenly came at us!"

Yang Suyin offered the communication orb to the Prince, who snatched it from him. "Where is your location? I, Yang Hongyin, Liu Xing, and Yang Suyin will come immediately. We have succeeded in getting the Twelve Sun Armor!"

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"Thank the heavens! We are at—" A loud crash echoed from the orb, and the floor beneath them vibrated. "We've regrouped with the fourth group! Near the entrance to the Emperors' Tomb!"

"All right, just hold on!"

The orb went dead. Prince Yang Jinyan sent more qi into it, trying to reconnect. It glowed faintly and hissed with static, but the connection was gone.

"Either the communication orb on their end was broken, or something is interfering with the signal," Yang Suyin said. "Weirdly, my communication orb has failed several times recently. When I tried to connect to you, Prince, I never succeeded."

"That's probably because the prince didn't pick up the orb," Liu Xing said. He remembered the prince's mental state at the time.

"I might have ignored it, but as far as I know, it never vibrated."

Something was interfering with the qi in the castle, but that was hardly a surprise. The entire structure was coated in flesh, nests, and pulsing meat. It was a wonder the orb worked at all.

"The most important thing is how we can get to the underground level as fast as possible," Prince Yang Jinyan said.

"I've been thinking about it," Liu Xing answered, "and I have a solution, if you don't mind some destruction."

Running, or even flying, was not fast enough. Instead of following the path, they needed to create a shortcut.

"Do it," the prince said.

Liu Xing nodded and kicked off the ground, rocketing toward the ceiling of the vast room. He flipped to face the floor and, as gravity took hold, channeled his potent qi into the gauntlet on his left hand. A lightning ball two meters in diameter materialized before him, and with a palm strike, he drove a massive pillar of lightning straight down. The impact shattered the stone instantly, creating a deafening rumble and sending up clouds of dust. Though he could not see through the debris, Liu Xing knew his lightning pillar was boring through the castle floors, carving a path downward.

When the lightning receded, he saw the hole plunged through dozens of floors but had not reached the bottom. He unleashed a second pillar of lightning. And as he did, he expanded his senses, probing the qi around him. The qi felt prickly and pulsed with a dangerous energy, like the hot breath of a tiger on a cold night while its claw resting on his throat. He expanded his senses further, detecting the faint signatures of human cultivators somewhere below, as well as another dark presence circling them like a predator.

When the second pillar of lightning vanished, a clean hole pierced every level of the golden castle.

"Let's go!" Prince Yang Jinyan was the first to leap into the hole, followed by Yang Hongyin, Yang Suyin, and then Liu Xing himself.

Together, they fell through the hole he had made, as if dropping into a deep, dark well. The continued silence made him anxious, his stomach churning with the feeling that he had missed something vital. Soon, the silence was broken by a shout of desperation, like someone trying to move a boulder that had crushed their legs. Hearing this, the prince, Yang Suyin, and Yang Hongyin turned to him, and he nodded. Yang Suyin was fast, and Yang Hongyin, with her Twelve Sun Armor—which did not look like armor at all—was probably strong. But he was both, so it was logical for him to go first.

He summoned his shield, kicked off it, and shot past his companions, diving toward the underground level.

Halfway down, he activated his Lightning Cloak Technique, accelerating until the world blurred around him. He formed a lightning blade on his left arm, clenched the stone blade in his right, and reloaded his gun with qi from the Ethereal Pearl.

An instant later, Liu Xing's feet hit the ground. The floor cracked under the impact, as if a boulder the size of a man had struck it. In that same instant, his eyes swept the room, taking in every detail.

The room was spacious and high, with giant golden double doors so tall a giant could walk through them. In one corner, behind him and to the right, a group of cultivators fended five with snake-like limbs, two worms, a giant black dog with a single massive eye on its back and hundreds of smaller eyes dotting its body, a grotesque fusion of five bodies with ten arms and ten legs, and a single, almost-human abomination that wore a torn red robe that revealed pustule-covered flesh. That almost-human abomination held a member of the Yang clan by the neck, its scarred face a cold mask. Feeling its qi, Liu Xing realized he was finally facing a Sun Refining abomination, likely a former member of the Yang clan.

Three members of the Yang clan lay in bloody heaps on the floor, while others looked pale with terror, as if trapped in a living nightmare.

Seeing this, Liu Xing dispersed the lightning blade from his arm, spun, and kicked off the ground, launching himself at the Sun Refining abomination with a shout. His shout worked as intended—instead of snapping its victim's neck, all the abominations turned their heads toward him.

Liu Xing gripped his stone blade with both hands and flooded it with so much potent qi that it glowed with a purple light, and tt felt as heavy as a one-ton hammer. He could not risk a ranged qi attack; it might hit the people he was trying to save. Instead, he summoned his shield, using it to accelerate until the air cracked around him. In the blink of an eye, he was beside the Sun Refining abomination.

Up close, he realized how tall it was—almost three meters, dwarfing him. From the side, Liu Xing swung his stone sword horizontally, aiming to split its stomach in two. But when his blade hit, instead of cutting, it folded the creature in half and sent it flying. The abomination slammed into the far wall with enough force to make it explode. The abomination's hand had loosened, and the man it held dropped to the floor beside Liu Xing.

"Are you all right?"

The man touched his neck, gasping for breath. Liu Xing did not wait for an answer. He launched himself at the remaining abominations, swinging his stone blade at a nearby yellow-skinned, snake-limbed creature. It had no arms on its chest, which meant it lacked the annoying ability to regenerate, but before his blade could connect, the creature dissolved into yellow light, and his sword passed through empty air.

Liu Xing's eyes widened. He had fought thousands of snake-limbed abominations and knew their variations, but he had never seen one like this.

"Strong and dangerous," the abomination said, materializing beside Liu Xing as a streak of yellow light. A red snake arm lashed out, aiming a punch at his head.

He summoned his shield in front of his face. The punch hit the shield, giving Liu Xing a precious second to dodge to the side. The abomination's face was shockingly human with a calm demeanor and normal-looking ears. It wore no clothes, yet its yellow skin was so finely detailed that it resembled fabric. Upon seeing it, Liu Xing knew without a doubt that this creature was an anomaly.

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