Rise of The Demon General

He started transferring his aether into the carvings of the serpent's mouth. He could feel his energy flowing into the floor vigorously once his aether made contact with the floor. Even when he didn't exert his will, his aether still flowed. It's more like the floor was sucking his aether instead of him transferring it. Pai Ning should have felt something was wrong if she paid attention, she was just too excited that she didn't realize it. But not that it would do any good. Once the process started, it didn't seem to be a way to stop it.

The glow slowly expanded again. It turned slower after getting closer to the edge. Much slower. Which alarmed Amon for a bit. Despite there being only 10% of the area left since he started, he still needed to expend more than half of his aether reserve.

When the whole floor lighted up, a click sound was heard. He then felt the pressure on his two palms subside. His aether stopped flowing. He removed his hands from the floor. No black tendrils appeared.

A hum was heard and the floor started trembling. The portion of the floor in front of him broke apart and started moving, revealing a secret entrance with stairs going down. The inside was completely dark, Amon couldn't see how far the stairs went down.

Amon just stood there and focused on his hearings, trying to hear if there was any movement from down there. It was complete silence.

After a while, Amon stepped onto the stairs. He had gone through all the trouble to open this place, might as well check it out. He didn't forget to remove Pai Ning's space ring first before going down.

After walking down a few steps of the stairs, he heard a rumble from above and turned to see the entrance was slowly closing again. He had a brief thought of running back and out before the entrance closed completely, but he stayed his feet. He had decided to come down, so he would stick to it.

When the entrance was completely closed, it was now complete darkness.

Amon fished out something from his black space ring. A strong light abruptly illuminated his surroundings. He was using the bright flare stone that was given by Lin Giru when Lin Fong tried to use a ploy to assassinate him.

The light was bright enough to illuminate a large portion of his surroundings. The stair hall was not wide. Its walls were solid stone. There was no way to go except to follow the stairs down. Amon continued his descent.

The descent went on for a long while. By his estimation, he should have already passed the base of the pyramid a long time ago. Which meant the pyramid on the ground was only the tip of the structure. Its interior went way into the underground.

After a long walk, the narrow stairway finally opened to a wide space. A very large cavern hall. This cavern hall had a single bright light that illuminate its huge space. This bright light was hanging from the cave ceiling a long distance away from Amon. It was like a small sun to this huge cavern. Amon could even feel some heat from that small sun.

With that light source, he did not need the bright flare stone, so he stored it back in his space ring. He could see the stairs he was on still had a long way down. He couldn't help but admire the space. This looked like a natural cavern but he could also see some evidence that some parts were clearly dug and shaped.

What caught his attention the most was the series of wooden walls at the center part of the cavern. It was like someone was building a house inside this cavern without putting a roof on it. He saw some furniture there. There was even a garden behind it, with a small stream, plants, and trees. How did those greeneries survive down here? He wondered.

He didn't rush over despite his curiosity. He walked down step by step while maintaining alert. He didn't sense any danger down here but he had learned to be careful whenever he was in a new place.

After a long walk, he finally reached the base of the stairs. He still needed to walk for a bit to reach that structure he had seen from above. Down here the stones were high, forming a natural barrier. He had to go through a winding path to reach that center structure. It was no problem for him, he had memorized the path when he look at them from above.

After walking a while, he frowned. The crossroad was different from what he had seen from above. Could he have remembered wrong? No. One thing he had complete confidence in was his memory. He remembered everything he had seen. Something was amiss.

He then jumped. With his current cultivation, the rock walls that formed this path should be easily scaled. However, the top of the rock wall seemed to shift higher as he jumped. He landed back on the ground and looked at the rock wall. They seemed normal.

He tried another jump. The result was the same. He just couldn't reach the top of the rock wall.

Something was preventing him from jumping out of the path. An enchanted formation? He had read about this in books. This was a kind of practice that dealt with the layout of an environment. It was a setup usually used for passive defense, it created a maze that slow down or confuse intruders. The books also said this practice had been mostly forgotten. Only the most prestigious and oldest clans still possessed such ancient knowledge.

There were two ways to pass through the maze created from such an enchanted formation. Following a set path through the maze or forcefully breaking out. The latter, however, required the person who did the breaking to have a higher cultivation level than the person who created the maze. From what Amon felt when he tried to jump out, his cultivation level was clearly not up to par.

This left him with only one way. He looked back. As expected, the path he had just passed through had changed. Once he entered this maze, he could only proceed or got trapped forever inside this formation.

He looked around. There was not much information from the books about this enchanted formation. Considering it was an ancient practice that was mostly lost to the general public, this was not strange. However, he remembered a book from a scholar studying the past mentioned that this formation's true path usually possessed some sort of a hint, some kind of similarity that marked the way. The book didn't elaborate, though.

He stayed in that place and looked around. There was nothing that caught his eyes. Unable to glean any clue, he could only continue walking. The paths he took were now completely different from what he had seen from above when he walked down the stairs. He walked for hours, but there seemed to be no end to the path.

'This is not working…,' Amon thought. But since he couldn't think of a way out, he continued walking.

After more hours of walking, he felt like he noticed something. He looked around the maze he was currently in. This part of the maze was slightly larger than the rest. If he estimated the shape of this maze, it would look like a serpent's head when he viewed it from the top.

"Could it be…," Amon mumbled. He then closed his eyes, checking his memory.

"Let's give it a try," He said and walked in a direction.

After a while, he thought that it was as he suspected. He continued walking. At every turn, he had known how the next path would turn out to be. Every now and then, he closed his eyes and checked his memory before proceeding.

After a long walk, he came out to another part of the maze that was larger than usual, similar to the one he thought to shape like a serpent's head. The difference was, in this one, he could see the house structure that was situated at the center of this cave.

'I am right,' Amon thought. He didn't find the similarity that the scholar mentioned. He, however, figured out that this maze was exactly the same as the maze drawn on the floor at the top of the pyramid. It was the maze drawing surrounding the two serpents' heads that sucked his aether to open the entrance to this place. The right path of this maze was shown in that drawing. It was the path from the head of the serpent on the right to the head on the left.

When he walked out of the maze and into the foyer of the structure in front of him, a voice greeted him from behind, "Congratulations to have passed the tests and entering this repository."