The Growth of a Titan in the Cultivation World

"Did you see anything?"

Sol suddenly asked the cat as he raised it into the air.

It was male.

"Oh, I should probably name you. How about… Little Abdu? It means 'lonely midnight' in my native language. Do you like it?"

"Meow."

The cat meowed before it began cleaning the fur on its paw. It seemed oblivious to what Sol was saying.

Smiling, Sol went back to carry Little Abdu in his arms.

"Don't worry Little Abdu you don't have to be alone anymore. I'll introduce you to Little Zeel and we'll be a family."

Sol was excited as he said this, but Little Abdu was simply cleaning his fur.

Sol used his finger to rub behind Little Abdu's ear as he continued.

"But I wonder how you got here, were you always in the East Wing? Or maybe you came here through a teleportation array by accident?"

Sol suspected the latter since Little Abdu couldn't cultivate. There was simply no way it could have survived in a place like this for as long as the Nian Beast had.

"How horrible that must have been. You know there are ghosts haunting this palace Little Abdu? I swear I saw one just now! We have to be careful from now on."

Little Abdu suddenly paused cleaning his fur to look at Sol.

Sol saw that look and he couldn't help but feel Little Abdu was judging him.

Maybe if he could talk, Little Abdu would be saying, 'Ghosts aren't real."

"They are real Little Abdu. You have to believe me! We need to protect each other when that ghost tries to come for us."

Sol raised Little Abdu in the air once more, but just as he did, a loud clatter suddenly echoed behind him.

"Hiccup!"

Sol nearly jumped out of the skin, and he spun around so fast he almost got whiplash.

On the ground behind him, he saw a shattered plant pot under the boarded window.

Somehow it had fallen off the windowsill.

'How did it fall? There was obviously no breeze coming from the window.'

Sol's heart sped up, and he immediately took a step back from the window. He had come here in the hopes of finding something to deal with the Nian Beast.

Even though he had said all those things to it before he came here, in truth, he could only trap it. Killing it was an entirely different matter he couldn't solve. Any attacks he threw at it, the Nian Beast would just faze right through them.

Sol felt that sort of ability was too broken. There has to be some way to harm it, something that could prove deadly to it.

Su Jin had once escaped from the Nian Beast, so perhaps he knew of a way to harm or even kill it.

But now that Sol thought about it, if there really was a way, why didn't Su Jin use it when he confronted the Nian Beast in the office? Was it that he didn't get the chance to?

Perhaps he had wasted his time coming here. He should just go back to the West Wing, collect all the books he can, and read the ones he can't before absorbing the Legacy Inheritance and leaving this place.

Sol turned and then went to sprint out the door, however, before he could even take a step towards the door, it suddenly slam shut with a loud bang. The walls of the room rattled, and dust fell from the ceiling as a result.

All the hairs on Sol's body stood on end.

His only exit was sealed.

Sol immediately flipped over his palm and retrieved his bow from his storage bag.

But a second after the bow appeared, it was ripped from his hand by a strong force.

Sol was by no means weak physically, but even as he held onto that bow like his life depended on it, it was still ripped out of his grasp.

The bow clattered across the room, and Sol watched as the distance between it him and increased with a solemn expression.

Something wasn't right.

Bang!

Another one of the plant pots on the windowsill fell and shattered in the darkroom.

Sol's eyes narrowed into slits before he used his Heavenly Eyes to look at the windowsill.

What he saw caused all the blood in his body to run cold.

It wasn't a ghost or a person.

It was a black cat.

Sol watched as this familiar black cat casually walked towards another plant pot on the windowsill and tipped it over.

However, when it realized that Sol wasn't reacting to the sound, the black cat turned to look at him.

The cat paused when it saw that Sol was looking right at it.

"That's right, you have those peculiar eyes. How annoying."

The black cat said before it leaped onto a broken chair some distance away from the windowsill.

Sol looked away from the black cat and glanced down at Little Abdu.

There was nothing in his hands.

Sol deactivated his Heavenly Eyes and Little Abdu appeared in his hands once more, however, his body slowly began to fade away.

It was an illusion.

Sol glanced at the position where he fed Little Abdu, and he saw the pieces of meat from the dakkochi were still on the ground.

He had been duped.

Not just now, but ever since he and Yoon-Jae came to this place.

Not once did he have control over the situation in this palace like he thought he did.

'Thump...'

'Thump...'

'Thump...'

Sol took several deep breaths and tried to calm his racing heart.

He then turned to look at Little Abdu, no, the Nian Beast with a solemn expression.

The Nian Beast looked back at him casually and said.

"Don't…"

Swoosh!

Sol's figure suddenly vanished from his position in the blink of an eye and then reappeared next to his bow with his hand outstretched to pick it up.

However, before his hand could even touch the bow, his entire body froze in pace, while the Nian Beast's calm voice finished its sentence.

"...do anything you'll regret."

After saying that, the Nian Beast quietly appeared on Sol's head, and on its back a cloud of black mist began to form. From this black mist, a long arm extended out before pointing one of its claws at Sol's right eye. It was only inches away from gouging it out...