After I stopped trying, a rich woman trained me into a demon emperor.

Around the equipment, twelve metal chairs were arranged in a circle.

Each chair has restraint straps on its armrests, the inside of the leather is blackened, and dried bloodstains have seeped into the stitching.

Fatty Wang touched a restraint strap and tugged on it.

"It's tied quite securely."

He looked down at the dents and fingernail scratches on the chair.

"The person who sat on it struggled."

Zhou Ran ignored the chair and walked straight to the control panel.

Qin San followed, took out a portable terminal from his backpack, and connected it to the data port on the side of the control panel.

"There is residual data; it wasn't completely cleaned up."

Qin San's fingers raced across the keyboard for a few seconds.

Three documents.

The encryption level wasn't high; they were probably in such a rush that they didn't have time to process it.

The first document was laid out on the screen.

A three-dimensional model.

A huge, grayish-white humanoid structure, with its body cavity marked with countless nodes and channels.

Zhou Ran stared at it for five seconds.

The image transmitted from the three gray lines on his golden core was highly consistent with the image.

"Diagram of the internal structure of the Heavenly Corpse."

Qin San cut the second portion.

A timetable.

The title, "Organ Activation Sequence," is neatly written.

The heart section says "Activated".

The bottom line is marked in red:

"After the entire organ is activated, the barrier will collapse on its own, with an estimated cycle of 45 days."

Zhou Ran tapped his finger on the table.

"Cut off a piece."

The third document is a communication record.

Date of dispatch: Two months ago.

Recipient: Marcus Weber.

The sender's signature is three characters.

Penglai Xu.

The content consists of only one line.

"You've come to the wrong entrance."

The real door is in the spine.

Fatty Wang leaned over and took a look.

"Penglai?"

"Is that the old man who called you?"

Zhou Ran did not answer.

The hard drive was remotely formatted, and the dust was swept away completely.

He deliberately left three files with the lowest encryption level, and the last one was signed by the person who called him yesterday.

It's the same kind of thing as that work badge that "just happened" to be left in the corner of the wall in the North City Tunnel.

It's not that the Sheng Hui Foundation didn't have time to delete it.

Someone left it for him.

Penglai Pavilion's reach extended further than he had imagined.

Zhou Ran transferred the contents of the three documents into his personal jade slip, and then had Qin San copy a copy into his memory.

"Remove that scale."

Fatty Wang walked to the resonance chamber, gripped the edge of the fixing clamp with both hands, channeled the Golden Body Technique into his upper limbs, and twisted it with gritted teeth.

The metal clamp deformed, and the bolt flew off.

Gray scales detach from the equipment.

All the lights went out.

The ring light went out, the main control panel screen went black, and even the indicator light on Qin San's portable terminal went out.

There was only one sound in the darkness.

thump.

It comes up from the soles of your feet.

Dull, slow, powerful.

My heart skipped a beat.

It's closer than ever before.

It was so close, it felt like it was only three meters away from our feet.

Zhou Ran lowered his head.

The light from the Purple-Gold Demon Eye penetrated the floor tiles.

A new gray thread is emerging from the cracks in the floor tiles.

It pierced straight into the depths, towards the heart of the Heavenly Corpse.

The starting point of the silk thread was directly below Zhou Ran's right foot, with precision down to the millimeter.

It wasn't looking for any other living people.

It's looking for him.

"Walk."

Zhou Ran stomped on the exposed section of silk thread, then turned and strode away.

The four people returned to the drainage pipe along the same route, and when they emerged from the ground, the night wind was icy cold against their faces.

Fatty Wang took a breath and shoved the scale into Zhou Ran's hand.

"Ran-ge, that line is pointing at you."

Zhou Ran tucked the scale into his pocket and didn't reply.

The black-gold dragon poked its head out from the collar and exhaled two puffs of white breath from its nostrils.

Long Tong stared intently at the ground beneath his feet, a low warning growl emanating from deep within his throat.

It was already 2 a.m. when we got back to the manor.

Zhou Ran pushed open the door to the flower room.

The white fungus was dozing in the corner of the flowerpot, its cap rising and falling rhythmically, in sync with its breathing.

Zhou Ran placed the scales next to the flowerpot.

The mycelium of the white mycelium all stood up the moment it touched the scales.

The cap bursts open first, the cap expanding from two centimeters to six centimeters, with each white hair standing upright.

Then it suddenly closed up again, shrinking back to its original size.

It took no more than three seconds.

Zhou Ran squatted by the flowerpot, waiting.

The mycelium trembled in the soil for a while before slowly climbing to the outer wall of the flowerpot.

Write in a crooked and uneven manner.

"There is a whole set of spatial folding rules within this scale."

Zhou Ran waited for it to continue.

The mycelium paused for two seconds, then continued to climb downwards.

"The body of the Heavenly Corpse is an independent plane."

Next, continue.

Halfway through writing, the mycelium retracted.

He shrank back for five or six seconds, then stretched it out again, crossed out the previous half-line, and rewrote it.

"Going in is like entering the void."

The last line was written very slowly.

The mycelium climbs three characters, pauses, shakes, then climbs three more characters.

"The shell can block the law."

People won't be directly wiped out.

There's a blank space after the character "抹" (mo), indicating that the mycelium has retracted into the mud and hasn't come out again.

Zhou Ran stared at the last line, rubbing his thumb on his knee twice.

After writing for a while, I missed the word "除" (chu), but the meaning is complete.

"Continue the research, investigate as much as you can."

He stood up and walked out of the greenhouse.

There was no one in the corridor.

Zhou Ran took out his phone and scrolled to the top of the call log for the unknown number.

He dialed back, and it rang twice before he answered.

The old voice on the other end spoke slowly and deliberately.

"Young friend, you called back so quickly. It seems you had quite a successful trip to Dongcheng."

Zhou Ran leaned against the wall of the corridor.

"You sent a message to the Sheng Hui Foundation two months ago."

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

Then Old Xu chuckled.

"Young friend, you have more intelligence channels than I expected."

"Tell Marcus, 'The real door is in the spine.'"

Zhou Ran's tone was not probing; it was a statement.

Are you helping them, or are you playing them?

"Play them for fools."

Old Xu's speech slowed down by half a beat.

That message is fake.

The spine is indeed part of the Celestial Corpse's body, but it is not the entrance.

Two months ago, I noticed that the Holy Radiance Consortium was attempting to activate the Heavenly Corpse, so I took the initiative to contact them and threw in a decoy.

"Purpose?"

"Deplete their resources."

They invested at least three billion US dollars in equipment and two hundred technicians in that direction of the spine, and it all went down the drain.

"Every day wasted is another day the Heavenly Corpse sleeps."

Zhou Ran didn't reply.

He took the gray scale out of his pocket and flipped it over between his fingertips.

That makes sense.

But for a force that has been secretly watching for decades to not put out the fire immediately, but instead to act as a bridge and pass on information, shows an excessive level of sophistication in its handling of the situation.

"Old Xu."

"Please speak, young friend."

"How many years have you, the entire Penglai Pavilion, with your Nascent Soul cultivation level, been staring at a single corpse?"

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

Zhou Ran could hear the breathing on the other side, but that breath was heavier than before.

It paused for three seconds.

"Thirty thousand years."

Zhou Ran pressed his thumb against the edge of the scale, his nail digging into the gray veins.

Thirty thousand years.

The recorded cultivation civilization on Earth is no more than five thousand years old.

The history of Penglai Pavilion is six times longer.

He switched the scales to his left hand and gripped the railing with his right.

"Thirty thousand years ago, the first master of Penglai Pavilion witnessed the fall of the Heavenly Corpse."