The King of Curses

Chapter 351 Ascending the Immortal Mountain

The enormous palace is expanding itself.

The eaves and buildings constantly change their arrangement and position during this process, like building blocks being deformed and twisted in a pair of large hands.

White mist swirled, and the shadows of the Heavenly Palace ruins expanded, covering the entire town. The winter morning sun was gradually obscured, as if time had already passed into the afterglow of dusk.

The townspeople could see this vast, seemingly endless "cover" simply by looking up, like the dark clouds gathering before a storm. The scene was reminiscent of alien spaceships in science fiction horror movies, descending upon a city during an invasion.

"Then, what is that?!"

"Run!"

"Get out of here!"

The town's residents panicked and packed their belongings, preparing to flee.

The palace itself is not sinister in design; its glazed tiles and white jade walls evoke a sense of holiness and solemnity. However, people's fear of enormous objects stems from deep within their hearts; even the most adorable or beautiful things become terrifying when magnified in size.

The ordinary people's escape was unsuccessful.

Whether they intend to leave the town on foot or by car, they will encounter an invisible, enormous wall just as they are about to leave the town, unable to move forward an inch.

People held their breath, gazing at the palace in the sky, and in their panic and unease, began to pray to heaven.

This invisible wall is over a hundred meters high and extends into the clouds; the area it encloses is exactly where the shadow cast by the ruins of the celestial palace is covered.

Cen Dongsheng looked into the distance and saw several streaks of light flying swiftly, jumping from the outside into the wall without encountering any obstruction.

This is a barrier that allows entry but not exit.

He flicked his finger toward a place out of sight.

The man's powerful true qi was condensed into a single stream, shooting out like an arrow from his fingertips. It struck the wall at thirty times the speed of sound, and the shockwave generated by his supersonic movement was also engulfed by the true qi.

This simple flick of the finger can unleash astonishing destructive power once it touches an object.

It crashed straight into the transparent wall, creating ripples, like a boulder thrown onto the surface of a still lake; the wall itself lost its formless quality under this violent impact, suddenly concave like a spider web, revealing a visible arc.

"boom!"

A crack appeared in the wall, large enough for a person to pass through. But Cen Dongsheng showed no sign of leaving, so after a while, it began to slowly close again.

The younger sister next to me seemed to find it interesting, and she raised her finger and pointed to the wall.

"—!"

This time, the wall didn't even have time to react before a crack silently appeared.

"The ruins themselves are more active than the people trying to enter them."

Cen Dongsheng chuckled softly.

After this test, he was able to draw his own conclusion.

If interpreted maliciously, this wall, which clearly descended from the Heavenly Palace, can be seen as a spider web for catching insects. To facilitate hunting, anything too powerful would be excluded, and the wall couldn't withstand a casual strike from a top-tier curse master.

But they have no intention of leaving.

"let's go."

Before leaving, Cen Dongsheng randomly found a few passersby and used "Tiger Soul" to alter their will, causing the group of ordinary people who were running around like headless flies to leave through the opening made by Qingyan's sister, thus saving their lives.

*
Ban Han and Qiao Wan led the curse master team of the Time Wheel Society and hurriedly headed to the location where the Heavenly Palace had been opened.

The group had originally prepared an archaeological team disguise, but it seems they won't need it now.

“The ordinary people in the town…”

They all noticed the strange phenomena that occurred near the town after the Heavenly Palace ruins emerged.

“There’s nothing we can do. The people from the Super Committee haven’t arrived yet. We’ll first gather the townspeople together, find a place to stay, and then send someone to stay behind and keep an eye on things,” Ban Han said. “The rest we can only wait until we get out, or until outside rescuers find a way to get into the town.”

Qiao Wan felt a little regretful, but she knew that this was all they could do.

The lives of the town's residents were clearly less important than reaching the ancient ruins before their competitors on the scales of "value." Compared to the other curse masters gathered at Majiazui at this time, the Time Wheel Society was already considered to be one of the more socially responsible groups.

"Isn't this ruin strange?"

Qiao Wan's gaze once again fell on the maze-like group of buildings that shifted in position.

Under normal circumstances, it would be impossible to climb up there, but for curse masters, the principle of levitation is not too profound, and she has already seen more than one group of people enter the palace.

Even ordinary people can reach it by aircraft such as helicopters.

"It had been hiding itself all along, and I always thought it would only open up at a specific time."

Ban Han pushed up his sunglasses. As someone who had been observing the Heavenly Palace ruins using the "Qi Observation" technique, he was the most qualified to speak on the matter.

“Your feeling is correct. In the past, this ruin was trying its best to keep people from seeing it; now it is actively inviting people to go up. As for why this has changed, it is not clear yet.”

"...It feels like a trap."

Even if it's a den of dragons and tigers, we have to venture in.

They weren't in a hurry to enter the ruins. Qiao Wan noticed that none of the curse masters who had taken to the sky had returned.

Just in case, the Kalachakra will leave personnel in the area, and the team leaders will communicate with headquarters in a timely manner, then gather the combat members and prepare to go to heaven.

However, the ruins themselves were more treacherous than they had imagined, and they encountered a rude awakening before they even took their first step.

……

"boom!"

The Kalachakra Expedition team, fully prepared for their mission, suddenly heard a thunderous, muffled roar coming from above.

When they looked up, several members suddenly felt a lightness in their bodies, their feet left the ground, and they floated slowly into the sky like balloons.

"gravitational?"

Being professional combat personnel, with the help of their comrades, everyone landed back on the ground and quickly collapsed.

The gravitational pull projected from the ruins above did not end there; it intensified, seemingly threatening to uproot the entire town from the ground.

The earthquake trembled and cracked open, the asphalt road surface arched into countless arcs, and the cracks spread outwards like a spider web before disintegrating into fragments of varying sizes that floated in the air.

The building, unable to withstand the weight, splintered steel bars pierced the concrete, twisting into bizarre arcs in mid-air; the house began to crumble from the top, tiles flew off one after another, and brick walls cracked. Window frames separated from the walls under immense pressure, and glass shattered into sparkling hailstones, which were then lifted into the sky by suction.

The ground seemed to have been lifted layer by layer by an invisible giant hand, with rolling debris visible everywhere.

Ban Han used his true qi to forcibly fix himself to the ground. Looking around, he noticed that several members of the spiritual sense system who were not good at direct combat had pale faces.

"Thousand Machine Box!"

"clear."

Combining mechanical arts, Taoist techniques, and modern technology, the Wheel of Time's proud artificial artifact—the Thousand Machine Box—can automatically generate weapons and equipment suitable for the current scenario based on the user's thoughts and desires. Each generation consumes a use, which can be replenished over time.

Qiao Wan patted the wooden box behind her, and an oil-paper umbrella spun into the sky, its red canopy rapidly expanding to encompass all the team members.

Where the umbrella covered, gravity returned to normal, and people fell to the ground; but outside the giant umbrella, the town was a scene of apocalypse.

The telephone poles snapped one after another with a dull thud, the taut wires whipped through the air, sending up blue sparks; trees along the roadside were uprooted, along with entire tracts of land; a telephone booth on the street corner snapped in half, its metal supports colliding and spinning into the sky in the blink of an eye.

Some of the town's residents took refuge in buildings, while those who couldn't escape screamed in terror as they were mercilessly swept away by the gravitational pull released by the heavens. The former couldn't hold out for long either; the buildings soon began to tilt and collapse, like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, before rising up from the ground...

The reinforced concrete columns groaned mournfully, and residential buildings collapsed with a deafening roar. Hundreds of tons of building debris formed a swirling vortex, gathering and taking shape beneath the clouds.

The entire town, like a toy dismantled by a giant, was scattered into chaotic parts under the sky, then pieced back together by unseen gravity into a fragmented aerial labyrinth. ...

Ban Han frowned.

A top-tier spellcaster, if prepared, can conquer a town single-handedly; but if the goal is to protect the entire town, it depends on the individual's area of ​​expertise.

Unfortunately, neither he nor Qiao Wan had that ability; they could only save those around them who were within their power.

"Look over there!"

Qiao Wan suddenly shouted.

In the basement not far away, two conspicuous plumes of air rose into the sky, which even the storm at this moment could not conceal.

A tall man held a frail girl in his arms. They barely escaped the disaster by hiding in the basement.
"that is not……"

Ban Han was startled.

Although these two are ordinary people, he has already regarded them as the future stars of the organization, and he cannot abandon them here.

Qiao Wan understood as well. She leaped directly into the gravity zone and quickly pulled them under the red umbrella for protection.

"Why are you two still here?"

Ban Han helped the young man up and asked with a serious expression.

"When we were about to leave, we bumped into an invisible wall."

The other party replied with a wry smile.

"I was still wondering what was going on, so I came back to ask you two what had happened, but I never expected..."

"...All of this happened too fast."

Ban Han sighed.

His gaze fell on the girl again.

As always, she had only eyes for the young man. Her pretty face was flushed from being held in her lover's arms, and her eyes were filled with bliss, oblivious to the drastic changes that had taken place around her.

"During this time, you will stay with us and not wander off, can you do that?"

"We will protect you."

Qiao Wan patted his shoulder casually.

"I understand, and I thank you both for your kind assistance."

"By the way, what's your name?"

"My surname is Cen, you can just call me Xiao Cen."

He behaved very modestly, and Qiao Wan smiled with satisfaction. However, Ban Han, standing to the side, seemed to remember something after hearing the surname "Cen".

"Mr. Ban?"

"……nothing."

Ban Han shook his head, banishing the unrealistic speculation from his mind.

*
A few minutes later, the immense gravitational pull disappeared. Qiao Wan folded her red umbrella, and what came into view for the group was the desolate ruins of the town, empty of people and filled only with crumbling walls.

"That is……"

Qiao Wan noticed several corpses with her sharp eyes.

It wasn't a resident of the town, but an unknown curse master.

Their remains looked as if they had been thrown into a press and crushed, a bloody mess, a truly gruesome sight.

"It's the person who trespassed into the palace earlier, who was thrown out by the gravity just now. This is some kind of warning."

The Heavenly Palace was finally revealed in its entirety.

Below the palace that floats in the air stands a towering mountain shrouded in celestial mist. A mahogany gate stands atop the mountain.

……

What should we do with these two?

“Take them with us. We don’t know what they’ll encounter if we leave them in town. They’re safest with us.”

After reaching an agreement with the siblings, Ban Han inserted his cane into the ground and used the "shrinking the earth to an inch" technique to lead the team to the wooden door.

Inside the doorway was a shimmering curtain of light, obscuring the view behind it. The spellcasters cautiously entered.

Cen Dongsheng and Yi Qingyan walked at the very back, watching them disappear one by one into another world.

"If I were to smash this door open right now, the people inside would definitely be terrified, wouldn't they?"

Yi Qingyan was joking.

She didn't dislike the game of pretense, especially when she was with her brother.

"Don't make trouble."

Cen Dongsheng stroked her hair, and the two of them finally held hands and stepped into the portal together.

*
On the other side of the door, the spellcasters looked around and exclaimed in admiration.

“It’s spectacular.”

"It's truly a heavenly palace..."

They are walking above a sea of ​​clouds.

Jade steps lead straight to the clouds, where a hundred-foot-tall vermilion palace gate floats; above the nine layers of clouds, golden-tiled buildings stretch like mountains.

"This must be the place Zhao Chengxu saw in his dream."

Cen Dongsheng sensed the situation and discovered that the person was hiding several hundred meters away, secretly observing the actions of the Shilun Society group.

"Mr. Ban, look, next we..."

Qiao Wan had only spoken halfway when she noticed that Ban Han's body was trembling slightly, and tears mixed with blood were streaming down his face behind his sunglasses.

"Mr. Ban?!"

"fine."

Ban Han waved his hand with a wry smile.

"The light here was too strong. I was too careless and got injured while observing."

Qiao Wan was about to ask another question when suddenly her body trembled, and a vast, deep, majestic, and cold voice reached her ears:
"By imperial decree, the Heavenly Gate is now opened to select immortals. Those who wish to ascend to the Jade Palace are like drifting tumbleweeds. Those who fear hardship and cling to life, or who are attached to the mortal world, shall fall into the Void and be forever severed from their immortal destiny; only those who have undergone trials and survived a hundred deaths may step into the Southern Heavenly Gate."

The spellcasters looked at each other, all of them having heard the same voice.

The next second, the scenery in front of people changed rapidly, and the surrounding light suddenly dimmed and then slowly brightened again.

What appeared before me was a vast, empty valley.

There were more people around. In addition to the members of the Kalachakra Society, dozens of curse masters had been added to this platform.

All those who entered the Heavenly Palace were gathered together, exchanging wary glances at each other.

(End of this chapter)