He Ao didn’t know what had happened in the Central Control Room after he left. At the moment, he was making his way up a profoundly dark and deep staircase, with a Tomb Guardian Puppet following behind him.
He had been walking for quite some time, even stopping to roast meat twice. By now, two strands of Qi had been restored in his Dantian.
In this pitch-black environment, time seemed to have come to a standstill.
The staircase was not vertically ascending but spiraling upward gradually.
He Ao felt like he had climbed nearly ten kilometers vertically, but still had not reached the top.
There was originally an elevator next to this spiral staircase, but it appeared to have malfunctioned and could not be activated, leaving He Ao no choice but to continue on foot.
If it weren’t for the markers he made at regular intervals, and the fact that he had not passed any of his own markers so far, He Ao would have thought he was trapped on some kind of infinitely looping staircase.
This staircase didn’t loop; it was just excessively long.
Due to the entirely unfamiliar environment, He Ao didn’t walk fast and would often stop to check for any dangers surrounding him.
Finally, when the countdown on his hand reached the last three hours, He Ao arrived at the end of this staircase.
There was still a metal door here, but instead of being silver, it was pitch black in color.
In front of this door was still a dark monitor. He Ao lit up the monitor, which seemed to share the same data as the monitor at the entrance. The authentication mode had been changed to authorization authentication.
As He Ao operated the monitor, a vague sense of awareness arose in his heart. Somewhere directly in front of him was a safe zone where it was possible to return safely.
Indeed, the tower was not within the safe zone.
He Ao placed his hand on the monitor to verify his identity.
The pitch-black metal door slowly opened, but only a crack. He au sent the Tomb Guardian Puppet rushing out, then quickly closed the metal door behind it.
Then he focused his main consciousness on the Tomb Guardian Puppet.
Behind the metal door were still long staircases, except these were no longer spiral but shot up vertically.
He Ao, controlling the Tomb Guardian Puppet, looked up. Not far away, a spot that seemed to be the exit, a faint light was visible.
The Tomb Guardian Puppet ascended the towering staircase step by step, moving from the dark passage into the brilliance.
He Ao hadn’t seen sunlight for too long. Since entering the tower, he had spent most of his time groping in the dark, relying solely on his eyesight, using a flashlight to illuminate his path in places utterly devoid of any light source.
This brilliance made him somewhat uncomfortable.
He controlled the Tomb Guardian Puppet to pause for a moment before the last step bathed in light, then slowly stepped onto it.
The staircase illuminated by the sunlight was short, and soon the Tomb Guardian Puppet reached the end.
Then the Tomb Guardian Puppet froze in place.
As the metal door slowly opened, He Ao stepped out from behind it,
The golden sunlight spreading across the staircase gradually covered his legs, his chest, and his bloodstained cheeks.
At the end of the staircase was a platform about three meters square. Standing on this platform, He Ao looked out into the distance.
An endless sea of clouds lay beneath his feet while dim stars adorned the space behind him.
Three golden suns rose from the edge of the sky, casting a dazzling golden hue over the limitless sea of clouds,
He Ao hadn’t miscalculated; he had truly climbed ten kilometers vertically. He was now above the sea of clouds, at the edge of the stratosphere.
The Great Octopus guarding the outside had not discovered this passage.
The air here was already very thin, and only after a short while, He Ao began to feel a distinct lack of oxygen.
The stairs inside the tower, although the air becomes progressively thinner as one ascends, still have a higher oxygen concentration compared to the outside, and there was indeed a difference in air pressure between the two.
Besides hypoxia, He Ao also experienced noticeable tinnitus, a sign that the internal pressure of Qi in his body was higher than the external, implying his body was ’leaking’ Qi.
He Ao crouched down and looked at his feet, observing some traces of something having rolled down on the platform, resembling the shape of a Tomb Guardian.
The Tomb Guardian must have controlled some powerful flying exotic beast, taking him up to such high altitudes, before leaving him on this platform.
But at this moment, the Tomb Guardian was dead, and the controlled flying beast had lost its guidance.
He Ao used the Crystal Ball to sense the surroundings, but the flying beast was nowhere to be found.
Nevertheless, He Ao wasn’t panicked.
He packed his belongings into a wrap and slung it over his back, then he took out something from another bag, crumpled into a stick shape, and spread it out—a beautiful black Magician’s Top Hat appeared.
This was a Transcendent item he had brought over from Xidu City, the "Magician’s Top Hat".
Originally kept in a Mithril box, it was too much hassle for He Ao when he entered the ruins, so he crumpled it into a ball and wrapped it in the cloth bag instead.
A faint distortion crazily spread from the hat.
The Mithril box was mainly to prevent contamination from the hat and avoid accidentally harming ordinary people. He Ao himself was not afraid of these contaminations, so in the ruins on his own, he didn’t need the Mithril box at all.
He Ao unfurled the hat and threw a piece of flesh he had previously stripped from a Grade-D exotic beast dragonfly into it.
The flesh entered the hat like a sheep into a pack of wolves, rapidly being devoured to nothing.
In theory, this hat needs to be fed flesh and blood every day, provided you use it. If you don’t use it, you can simply starve it.
This was He Ao’s first time using the hat. As the powerful piece of flesh was fully engulfed by the hat, the exquisitely black top hat trembled, and then a beautiful white dove flew out from it.
Immediately after, countless white doves poured out of the hat like water from a spring, and in a blink, they gathered into a cloud formed by the convergence of doves in the sky.
He Ao placed the Magician’s Top Hat on his head and slowly raised his hand.
The pure white doves flocked towards him, swirling around him in flight.
He Ao walked to the edge of the platform, looking at the cloud sea bathed in golden radiance, and the fiery suns above it.
He took out the Miracle Wand and bowed slightly.
At that moment, he seemed like a magician standing on a stage.
The three suns in the sky were his audience, and the vast cloud sea below was his stage.
He revealed a smile, slowly turned, his back facing the cloud sea and the ten thousand meters of high altitude.
He spread his arms, like a bird, leaning backwards.
In the instant he fell backward, he saw the upper part of the tower. Even though he stood on a platform ten thousand meters high, he had not reached the tower’s summit. Above this platform, the tower still soared into the sky, the top invisible.
The cold mist caressed his cheek; he was falling.
Countless doves flew towards him, supporting his body as if they were birds with outstretched wings, drawing a long trail in the cloud sea.
Nothing could pose a challenge to a magician who had mastered the art of miracles.
At that moment, He Ao felt a step closer in his mastery over the "Magician" Talent Sequence.