Hall of Audience Tower
Within this city built around the temple, amid countless magnificent buildings packed tightly together, it still stood out with exceptional prominence.
Ancient and weathered, the towering structure bore the heavy style of the Empire—vast and imposing. Five high towers stood like five fingers around the temple, pointing straight toward the sky.
Naturally, it was heavily guarded.
Likewise, naturally, it was crumbling and broken.
More than five hundred years had passed since the Eternal Empire's Destruction, with no one coming to pay court or worship. Now, beneath the Tower's Shadow, only the shell of its former self remained.
Dust lay everywhere.
By the time this final group of people whom Ji Jue had screwed over stumbled and staggered their way beneath the towers, they had lost another three members, along with several cannon fodder sent ahead to scout.
They were covered in wounds and grievously injured.
They had entered a looping corridor from which escape was difficult, only to open a tiny gap beneath the illumination of an ancient Imperial Mirror; they had passed through ruins swarming with human-faced jellyfish, relying on the hypnosis of a cursed music box to survive without incident; they had cautiously crossed streets where countless afterimages gathered under the protection of a Talisman Seal; and they had steadily dealt with a splendid yet eerie gallery by expending cannon fodder...
The city appeared vast and empty, yet danger lurked everywhere. Who knew what kind of hellish thing they might encounter with a single wrong step?
Yet at this moment, everyone actually felt a trace of relief.
—They had never encountered the strange things they saw at the beginning for a second time.
Well, that was because Ji Jue had already infiltrated their ranks.
And he had even brought them a few little surprises...