The Growth of a Titan in the Cultivation World

When Sol reached the ground, he looked around only to feel that creepy sensation one usually feels when one visits an abandoned building or site.

His entire surroundings were pitch black, and ruined buildings were all around, making it a perfect scenario for Sol to see weird and bizarre images that may or may not be ghosts.

"Okay Solovin, ghosts aren't real, they aren't, how could they be? Just—crack!—hiccup!"

Sol nearly leapt into the air and ran off screaming at the top of his lungs, but he managed to stop himself.

Looking down he realized he had just stepped on a twig or something. However, when his eyes focused on the thing he had stepped on, all the hair on his back stood up as a cold chill went down his spine.

It was the rib cage of a human.

A man?

A woman?

Sol didn't know, the person was merely bones. Even looking at their clothes wasn't of any help since those had been destroyed by the passage of time. But what was even more eerie was that the body was missing its head.

Sol gulped down a large lump of saliva. If he hadn't figured out who was really the Nian Beast he and Yoon-Jae might have been one of these headless corpses right here.

"Well, now I know where all those cultivators who first came here went."

Sol figured the Nian Beast was the one to throw these dead bodies out of the arch openings. Possibly to keep the main palace clean and not let newcomers catch on to what was going on.

The building Sol was in was indeed the palace, but it was only part of the whole thing, the West Wing.

The East Wing was where Sol was heading at the moment to find where Su Jin stayed.

Sol wasn't worried about running into terrifying Spirit Beasts in the Inner Court, the Grand Formation Array still covered this area of the palace, and one could only get in or out by teleportation unless he allowed it.

As for why he and Yoon-Jae, as well as the Nian Beast, were trapped in the West Wing, it was likely due to the death of Su Jin. He must have set the Grand Formation Array to close off that area completely after he died.

In the darkness of the night, Sol's shadowy figure sped toward the East Wing as fast as he could.

He ignored the strange shadows he saw in the corner of his eyes, and he acted as if the weird noises that sounded like the wails of ghosts weren't following him.

"I-It's just buildings that have bad lighting, and the sound of the wind. Ghosts aren't real, obviously, that's just the wind... really, it's just the wind."

*Whoooosh...*

The 'wind' was heard behind Sol. Chills went down his spine, but he continued to repeat those words while increasing his walking pace.

After a few minutes, he made it to the East Wing.

It wasn't that different from the West Wing, just that there were more bodies here.

"???"

This confused Sol, however, after a closer inspection he realize these people weren't killed by the Nian Beast, but from fighting amongst each other.

"That's right. I never thought about it, but these people must have come here through servant teleportation arrays like we did, so their cultivations must have been suppressed. The fighting must have been brutal."

This was the conclusion Sol came to after examining some of the cracked skulls on the ground, like they were bashed in by a large rock, as well as the distorted spines of some bodies like their heads had been twisted violently.

It was truly gruesome if one examined the wounds and thought about the circumstances these people were in.

Well, this also meant the teleportation array he and Yoon-Jae came here with wasn't the only one. There were likely more in the other territories that were owned by the other Pavilions, and an extension, the Holy Sects and Great Clans.

Sol soon got up from examining one of the many bodies that were on the path leading into the main pavilion of the East Wing.

"They couldn't get in?"

Sol scratched his chin as he looked from the skeletal corpses and then to the large doorless entrance.

He wanted to figure out what happened here just out of curiosity. He speculated that these people were likely from the Six Holy Sects and Five Great Clans. He might even be looking at a renowned figure that was from one of those Sects or Clans that went missing.

"Oh! Oh!"

Sol suddenly got excited, and his eyes went wide as he used his Heavenly Eyes to carefully scan the ground in the darkness.

He specifically searched near the bodies, however, when he didn't find what he was looking for he became dejected.

"What's going on? Why don't I see their storage bags? No, they probably own storage rings, I read that cultivators of their level usually have storage rings instead of those ragged bags. But I don't see them on their fingers either."

Sol frowned the more he looked, but he eventually concluded that they must have crumbled into dust from how long of a time had passed.

It couldn't be that the Grand Formation Array was treating them like servants by hiding their belongings like what it had been doing with his bow and storage bag, could it?

However, that was unlikely. He had realized after acquiring a portion of the Legacy Inheritance that once someone was dead, the Grand Formation Array no longer cared for them. That was the reason why the Nian Beast could clean the main palace of the West Wing by throwing all those dead bodies outside the array.

After frowning at these unrobbable people, Sol turned and headed for the doorless entrance.

However, as the rune on his hand glowed allowing him to pass through the barrier that appeared, he felt the energy in the air shift as he entered.

Sol's heart started to beat rapidly. This shift in the atmosphere was extremely odd. After his training, his body had become overly sensitivity to any changes in the outside world, so to him, this shift was too drastic and too strange. It was like stepping into a freezing lake in the middle of summer.

'Maybe... it was nothing?'

Terrified, Sol tried to comfort himself. Maybe all these dead bodies and weird things he had been seeing and hearing while coming here had caused him to feel this way.

As Sol tried to convince himself he was just being paranoid, he began walking further into the palace.

He walked up a few flights of stairs kicking up millennium-old dust and reached a long hallway similar to the one on the West Wing.

It had arch openings to the right and everything.

Sol walked past a few before he stopped and turned to look through one of them. He activated his Heavenly Eyes and after enhancing his gaze, he saw a familiar scene. It was the hallway that was destroyed by the Nian Beast.