Death… And Me

Chapter 4399: Shouldn’t Have Worked

Meanwhile, Fohui continued working on the silver boxes, and after several more hours, he finally reached the last different model he could find. Once he finished disabling its autonomous flight array, he contacted Rean. ’Rean, this should be the last one...’

Rean immediately snapped out of his conversation with Sister Orb and the others before replying through the RC. -R-Right! Have you checked whether it really can’t fly anymore?-

Fohui didn’t expect that question. ’Are you even watching what I’m doing?’

-Of course! I was just testing you. Hahaha!- That was a complete lie. Sister Orb’s awakening had stolen almost all of Rean’s attention for quite a while.

-Alright, since we’re done, start collecting them. Go through each type of box, grab it with your Celestial Energy, and bring it back to the airplane.-

Fohui wasn’t convinced by Rean’s excuse, but there wasn’t much point in arguing about it now. He simply followed the instructions.

There were over sixty boxes in total, and moving all of them together would’ve been far too cumbersome, so he decided to split the work into two trips. He carefully gathered roughly half of them first before glancing around the enormous warehouse. The worker cores continued hovering around without paying him any attention, while the occasional guardian core remained just as indifferent. Since no one reacted, Fohui slowly floated toward the same exit he had used to enter.

As soon as he approached the doorway, the familiar scanning process began.

The moment the system identified Fohui, the passage opened without hesitation. However, when the silver boxes followed behind him, additional scans immediately swept across them as well.

*Beep! Beep!*

The door shut right in front of him, and several error messages appeared on the nearby terminal.

’Looks like it won’t let the boxes leave,’ Fohui commented while cautiously checking his surroundings. Thankfully, neither the worker cores nor the guardian cores seemed interested in interfering.

-Yeah... I expected something like this,- Rean admitted. -Security around this place was never going to be that simple.-

If possible, Rean would’ve simply stored all the boxes inside Fohui’s Spatial Storage before leaving. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option.

Those silver boxes were spatial storages themselves.

That didn’t mean putting one spatial storage inside another was completely impossible. Rean himself carried several spare Spatial Rings inside his own ring all the time. The real problem was that these ancient storage boxes were built on a much higher level of Spatial Power than Fohui’s storage.

There was another limitation as well. Once a spatial storage contained even a single item, it could no longer be placed inside another storage. Otherwise, cultivators could endlessly stack spatial rings inside one another to multiply their carrying capacity.

Rean quickly landed the airplane near the surface entrance before jumping outside.

-Come back up for a second,- he told Fohui. -I finished making something while you were working down there.-

Fohui immediately retraced his path through the narrow tunnel and met Rean beside the airplane.

”What is this?” he asked after receiving a palm-sized metallic device.

Rean grinned. ”The airplane’s guardian core is what fools the ruins into thinking we’re one of them. This little gadget simply extends that disguise to anything attached to it. It doesn’t generate Godly Pressure or maintain the disguise itself, so building it wasn’t all that complicated. Think of it as a bridge connecting whatever it’s attached to with the airplane’s disguise array.”

”So that’s what you were doing all this time...” Fohui muttered.

”Exactly. Now hurry up and give it a try.”

Fohui returned to the warehouse once more. After attaching the device to one of the silver boxes, Rean activated it remotely from the airplane.

Only then did Fohui grab the box again and float toward the exit.

The scanners swept over both him and the box exactly like before.

This time...

Nothing happened.

The door remained open.

The ruins no longer treated the silver box as an independent object. Instead, just like Fohui himself, it had become part of the guardian core’s ”existence” as far as the system was concerned.

A few seconds later, Fohui emerged outside with the silver box floating behind him.

”It actually worked...” he said in surprise. ”That was... much easier than I expected.”

Rean laughed and shook his head. ”Easy? None of this is easy. Everything we’ve been doing depends entirely on this disguise array and on the fact that the ruins still don’t consider us hostile. If we started breaking walls or destroying things, I’m pretty sure we’d immediately become targets, disguise or not.”

Fohui nodded without hesitation. He definitely had no intention of testing that theory. ”Right... I’ll bring the rest.”

And so, trip after trip, Fohui entered and exited the warehouse, pulling more silver boxes behind him every time. It took a while before the final batch was delivered. By then, the interior of Rean’s airplane was practically packed from wall to wall, making movement inside far more cramped than before.

”Sixty-two boxes...” Rean looked over the different models with satisfaction. ”Out of all these, at least one should be responsible for entering the Light Pillar Structure.”

Roan crossed his arms. ”And how do you intend to find the correct one?”

”The simplest method possible,” Rean answered immediately. ”We’ll fly back to the Light Pillar and see whether the structure reacts to any of them. I still don’t understand the ancient array technology used here, so blindly modifying anything would be asking for trouble.”

Senkiyu glanced at the neatly stacked containers. ”Shouldn’t we at least try opening one first? Maybe we can see what’s inside.”

Rean immediately shook his head. ”Not worth the risk. I have no idea how these ancient spatial arrays were designed. If I tried forcing one open, there’s a very good chance the storage would simply self-destruct. That’s exactly the kind of safeguard I would’ve added if I were them.”

He patted one of the boxes. ”So far, we’ve been walking right along the line between what the ruins tolerate and what they don’t. I’d rather not step over it unless we absolutely have to.”

No one argued after hearing that.

Everyone boarded the airplane again, and Rean guided it back toward the towering pillar of light.

As before, the guardian cores noticed their arrival almost immediately. They surrounded the airplane while endlessly displaying the same update error messages regarding the guardian core inside, yet none of them showed the slightest intention of attacking.

Once they reached the Light Pillar Structure, Rean guided the airplane toward one of its smoother exterior walls.

Although there wasn’t any visible doorway there, he felt that would be the most logical place for one. That’s because anywhere else it would have interrupted the connections between the runes on the surface.

”In that case...” Harksha said as she stepped outside.

Using her Celestial Energy, she carefully brought the first silver box close to the wall.

Everyone waited.

Nothing happened.

She tried the second box.

Still nothing.

Then the third.

The fourth.

The fifth...

One after another, every different model was tested against the same location.

Nothing.

After finishing all sixty-two boxes, Harksha looked back toward the airplane. ”Are you sure this idea is even supposed to work?”

Rean didn’t seem discouraged in the slightest. ”It’s far too early to give up. This structure is enormous. Even if these boxes really allow us inside, expecting us to find the correct entrance on our first attempt would’ve been incredibly optimistic.”

Harksha had to admit he had a point. She climbed back aboard, and the airplane resumed its slow flight around the Light Pillar.

From then on, they repeated the same process over and over.

Harksha stepped outside.

One box after another approached the wall.

Then they moved on to the next location.

Even after testing hundreds of different spots around the structure, they had probably covered less than one percent of its outer surface. The Light Pillar was simply that massive.

Then...

*Suummmnnn...*

Several red lasers scanned the box in her hand. Right after, faint glowing lines suddenly spread across the wall directly in front of Harksha.

They expanded rapidly, outlining the shape of an enormous gate where there hadn’t been anything moments before. Brilliant white light flowed along those lines, illuminating the entire section of the wall.

Then, as though the stone itself had never existed...

The wall dissolved.

An enormous gateway silently appeared in its place.

Harksha’s eyes immediately lit up.

”It worked!”

Rean quickly jumped out of the airplane as well, but instead of looking excited, his face was full of confusion. ”...It did work,” he muttered. ”But... why? It shouldn’t have worked at all.”

Harksha and everyone else froze.

”Wait...” Senkiyu stared at him. ”What do you mean it shouldn’t have worked?!”