I walked towards the palace's massive gate while avoiding getting trapped by the spider webs that were covering everything. Not even the ground was safe from the white blanket. I had to cut my way through in some areas, where the webbing was just too much. And once I went past a certain point, I found myself at the door of the palace which was speckless.

The palace carved into the volcano was untouched directly by the webbing. It was as if the spiders knew better than to defile the palace with their webs.

I got up to the massive door of the palace. It was made of bronze as it seems and had a lot of carvings on it, it looked like a giant mural made into a gate. I tried to understand what was going on, or the story that the gate was trying to tell.

Looking at it from one side to the other, I saw that there was a great battle led by demons, and on the other side of the demons was an army being led by a man and a woman standing next to each other. The war raged on with mankind taking great losses. Then an even greater demonic creature came up in front of the army. The man and woman who were leading the human army brought out a shining talisman up against the demon. It shone bright like the sun, causing a lot of the demons to shy away and escape, and even the great demon was wrathful, despising the talisman.

He could withstand the talisman's effect, even for a little, so he threw his massive spear at the couple, where the woman pushed the man away from the spear, sacrificing her life to save him.

The talisman then shone brighter and all the demons escaped to the depths of the earth. Leaving the humans all alone.

The depiction, or what I understood from it was this. But I have no idea why this is related to this place. Or if this actually happened or just a fantasy. And another thing, the gate is too damn big, unless I'm a sixty-foot giant I'm definitely not gonna be able to open it.

I tried to push the door, though I knew it would be impossible to even make it budge, the construction unlocked and opened up widely for me, causing me to trip and almost fall on my face.

Light flared up as torchs after torchs lit up leading deeper into the palace.

The palace's floor was made of gray marble, and it looked like it was making the entirety of the palace. Even its pillars ceiling and decoration. It was all made of high-quality marble. But there didn't seem to be any furniture. Nor did this palace looked like something people had lived in it.

There were however thousands of statues destroyed and broken all over the palace floor. They were broken by fist, sword, spear, or any other weapons. Not even the marble-made ground was safe from a battle that had occurred here.

As I moved about, I noticed that there was no second floor, and there were no other doors leading to other rooms. The whole palace was just a massive hall, full of pillars and a ceiling. And deadly-looking destroyed statues.

As I was thinking about how lucky for me that these things were destroyed. On a nearby pile of scrapes, something moved, and I didn't like it.

Whatever was moving underneath that pile, didn't look like it was going to be friendly.

I carefully stepped away from the moving pile, and I'm thankful I did. An automaton jumped from inside the pile of rubble and dashed past me with supersonic speeds. Just the fact that it went past me with speed far greater than I could ever match with my mere sight not to mention movement, I knew I was dead the moment this thing would stand back up.

And when it stood up, my heart rate rose, like a drum being struck with a bat, my heartbeat to a powerful rhythm. Whatever this thing was, it was far, far, far stronger, faster, and more agile than me. The automaton moved to face me. It had no eyes, no nose, and no ears, it looked like it was wearing a bucket instead of ahead.

One of its arms was torn out of its sockets, the tip of a sword embedded in where its heart should be, but as it seems, the sword didn't go in deep enough. I have no idea how I realized it, but I just did, then again, it could be the process of the Mind's Eye that Elder Yun always talked about, the ability to understand and deduce things far faster than what a mortal could do.

Yet, knowing a solution to a problem and solving a problem are two different things.

The Automaton stood still, it didn't move or budge, it was just standing there, unmoving.

I didn't know why it stopped moving and it wasn't killing me right now, but for whatever reason that happened, I'm thankful.

I slowly went down and picked up a small pebble. I placed it against my thumb and flicked it against a nearby pillar.

The moment the pebble had struck the pillar, the Automaton was a fraction of a second later than it as it crashed into the marble pillar. Breaking it with its body, then destroying whatever remained of the pillar using its only functional arm. Thankfully the automaton was crazy, as it was chasing after sound, and the sound that it, itself made when breaking the pillar was giving it false information that there was still an enemy there.

The automaton kept breaking the pillar, and with every noise his own hands made, he believed that there was an enemy. And I took that chance to move away. Compared to my low noised footsteps, the booming explosive strikes the Automaton was making were far louder.

I needed to leave this hall, so I continued looking around until I noticed a seam in one of the building's walls.

Just as I was inspecting it, the whole wall moved and pushed itself back and to the side, revealing a stair passage leading further down. I shook to my core because the moving of this door had caused the booming explosions the Automaton was making to stop. It must have heard this.

I slowly removed my boots, it was better to walk this way as to make the least sound possible.

The air didn't smell bad, it was fresh, so there seems to be a current further down. An exit is a good sign. I continued walking, hoping not to find anything as dangerous as that Automaton, and at the same time wary of any traps that I might set off. Because so far, two doors had opened up for me on their own, any sane man would immediately think that I'm being led down the rabbit hole, or to my 'untimely timely' death.

When I reached the end of the staircase, I found myself in a newer room, but something was strangely amiss. I felt my bones clattering as if something very wrong is happening right now. As if something that shouldn't happen had happened. As if I'm witnessing something that I'll never forget.

Once I peered into the room at the end of the stairs, I saw black and grayish smoke, almost transparent. It looked like that portion of the world was on a black and white filter. And the smoke moved to cause that filter to move with it.

I was unable to understand what is that thing, but I realized that it wasn't good with the number of chains, locks, talismans, and more items that were consecrated and used to suppress it. The smoke was unable to move past the round chains that were trapping it and it seems that whoever built this mechanism knew what they were doing and didn't spare a single resource.

Suddenly, a voice so deep, so mind and soul-shaking echoed from the depth of the smoke and directly into my mind.

"Come Closer!" I heard.

"Closer! Closer! Closer!" the voices echoed, even louder, and deeper. They came from the smoke. And I knew it was not good.

I looked around the room, fully ignoring whatever screamed or shouted from within that smoke. Nothing good ever came out from tampering with seals that people of old had placed. And especially seals against something this nefarious.

The whole of the room didn't go past this point. It seemed that it was the end of this palace. It didn't look like much after all. But also, this could be a conquered palace. Or it definitely was. Judging by the number of the Automatons that were destroyed, this place must have been visited, ransacked, and left with nothing but this. Yet why didn't they remove the seals? I mean, though it might look stupid, some people would actually not leave something like this lying about.

Some cultivators could use this, and others could destroy this. But neither of the options was chosen. Then that leaves me with three results.

First, no one discovered this place yet, which could be odd. After all, people who fought those Automatons and managed to destroy so many of them would definitely be able to sense this place. Unlike me who got lucky and saw the seam in the wall. This scenario is not that believable.

So, this leaves two other options:

Whatever is inside this, it's too terrorizing for any cultivator to use, so they sealed the nightmares away. The automatons could have been placed here as guards to stop people from getting their hands on this thing or just not to temper with it.

The last option is, it's too powerful for any cultivator to control and make proper use of nor were they able to destroy it, thus it was sealed. The second-best option.

However, in either case, I have no ability to control or handle something such as this.

I should leave. But before I go. I pulled out a small petal from my book. It was the Braided Mourning Petal, I dipped a few drops of my own blood on the ground and buried it a few feet away from the door where the seal was.

The Braided Mourning Petal is a nasty little plant, and when I plant a piece of it here, it shall grow to act as a poisonous seal, that will stop anyone from getting closer to the real seal.

Though I'm not proficient enough, nor knowledgeable in the art of formations, seals, and protections. This is the least I could do with my mediocre knowledge.

"I should probably leave," just as I spoke the words. And turned up the stairs, I was face to face, with the automaton that was a few moments away upstairs.

//////*****//////

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