Chapter 25: Heaven's Fortress
Tower of Red.
Although the name contains the word "tower" and part of its structure is similar to a tower, when Xiang Ying, Xifeng and Yagad saw its full appearance on the back of a giant dragon at an altitude of tens of thousands of meters, they all held their breath.
——I think it would be more appropriate to call it an aerial fortress.
It was a massive tower rising from mid-air, enveloped in a red, flowing astral energy, built above the clouds and stretching out to the very edge of the sky. Furthermore, countless gigantic rings slowly rotated around the tower, while a long, massive structure, like an aerial corridor, ran through the tower, extending to the horizon on both sides. Nearby, several smaller towers, accompanied by countless rings, hovered near the tower.
Compared with this towering complex of buildings that is so unimaginable how it was built, all the magnificent palaces, embassies, and mansions that I have seen before have become almost like mud houses on the roadside, not worth mentioning. Even Xifeng, who has seen the world, couldn't help but be stunned.
But he immediately withdrew his thoughts. No matter how breathtaking the scenery before him was, it was not as important as Beichen's matter.
Xiang Ying on the side was also really scared - when Xiaxue told him the location of Chita, he just said that it was above the uninhabited desert of Panatu... He didn't expect it to be tens of thousands of meters high, nor did he expect this so-called tower to be so large.
Xiang Ying took a deep breath - with the technology to build such a complex in the air, it should be possible to rescue the master - yes, definitely!
After calming down, he spoke to Ying:
"Lord Ragnart, what shall we do next...?"
"Well, go to the top of the main tower."
The dragon's tone was tinged with a hint of nostalgia. It flapped its massive wings, adjusted its direction slightly, and soared toward the summit of the tower with a rumbling sound. As it drew closer, the walkway running through the tower gradually became clearer. It wasn't a walkway at all, it was a vast aerial street! On either side, massive photon fences curved upward, encircling the street. In the center stood densely packed, neatly arranged buildings, roughly the size of three-story buildings on land.
Apparently, the sense of distance is blurred because of its large size.
"Was this...a residential area before?"
He asked Ying hesitantly, and the dragon nodded its huge head as it flew.
"Yes. This is what the miko calls the 'Ark'."
“…Huh?!”
"Why, didn't the witch tell you about this?"
"...I'm afraid the witch herself doesn't know that this is the Ark. So the Red Tower and the Ark are one and the same?" Xifeng said as he turned his head to carefully observe the entire building complex - although it is huge, it can accommodate a population of - indeed, about one million people.
I see. No wonder they say the number of chosen ones can't be too many—if there were more, the Ark wouldn't be able to accommodate them.
And it is true... at this altitude of ten thousand meters, one can easily avoid disasters on the ground, so it is not difficult to understand why it is called an ark.
"Well...it can't be considered one."
The dragon responded vaguely.
"Hold on tight, I'm going to shrink."
After saying that, in a ball of golden light, the dragon's body slowly shrank to the size of the Disaster King. It was already a little crowded to accommodate three big men on its back, so Yagard called out the armor to fly with it, while Xiang Ying and Xifeng continued to stay on the dragon's back. After a few minutes, the three men and the dragon finally reached the top of the giant tower.
Landing on a large platform, everyone walked to a huge door that was dozens of meters high. As if sensing the arrival of the people, the huge door made a creaking sound that seemed a little inflexible due to the erosion of time, and slowly moved away.
After exchanging glances, the three cautiously followed the dragon inside. Xiang Ying soon discovered that, aside from the different color schemes, the interior style of this building was very similar to that of Poison Moon Selenkrad—clean and tidy, with sharp lines and various strange, unidentified facilities, but lacking any human presence.
With a guide, the goal became much clearer.
The giant dragon skillfully twisted and turned through the building, from halls to corridors to aisles. The space became narrower and narrower, and the roads became smaller and smaller. Finally, the Star Killer hummed impatiently - in a golden light, he actually changed a second time, this time into a handsome man with long black hair that reached the ground and a pair of golden eyes.
Before Xiang Ying and the other two could come to their senses, Ragnarl glanced impatiently at his long hair dragging on the ground. With a flash of golden light in his hand, he directly cut off a large section of his long hair to the ground, leaving only a small section that reached his shoulders.
"Ah—so the human form is really troublesome..."
After stretching his shoulders, the black-haired handsome man continued to wave his hand to indicate that he was leading the way, and Xiang Ying, who followed him, immediately asked hurriedly:
"Does the violent iron ghost also have the ability to transform into a human form?"
"Berserk Iron Ghost? What is that? I'm a 'Transformation Weapon'. Although I'm terrifying, I'm not violent at all."
Ragnarl turned around and complained with some dissatisfaction.
"Transfiguration weapon—"
Xifeng muttered a few words, then thought carefully—wasn't this the term Beichen had mentioned before, the one she had seen in the ruins? According to her, she seemed to have speculated that they had some connection with weapons.
"Yeah. It's pretty much the same as you guys. Ordinary shapeshifting weapons usually have two forms, but I'm special. I have three. If it weren't for my claws being unable to precisely operate the instruments, I really wouldn't want to turn back into a human."
Ragnarl muttered a little complainingly, stopped in front of a big door, then pressed a series of numbers on the operation panel above and opened the door.
"Isn't it good to be a human?"
Xiang Ying asked doubtfully, only to be met with a roll of the eyes from the other party.
"Can you imagine trying to cram an E-cup woman's breasts into an A-cup? My enormous reserves of celestial energy are being forced into such a tiny body. Of course it would be uncomfortable."
"That's true. To be honest, I've been having the same problem lately."
Xiang Ying gave a wry smile and casually replied, then his attention was immediately drawn to the view behind the door—a large room filled with densely packed instruments. Countless photon display screens hovered on small, half-man-high pillars protruding from the floor. Each pillar had a rectangular tray topped with a few tiny buttons—presumably this was some database terminal control room.
"Okay, go ahead and do your own thing. I need to find out what happened in the past ten thousand years."
Ragnarl said this and walked straight to a tray and started working on it - while Xiangying, Xifeng and Yagad looked at each other.
"Let's get started."
Yagard, who had been silent until now, spoke in a hoarse voice, walked to a larger tray and started to get busy. The strange thing was that there were originally some strange words on the screen that several people could not understand, but after being touched by Yagard, they all turned into words that everyone could understand.
Xiang Ying and Xifeng stood aside, unable to help, so they watched carefully. After observing for a while, they roughly understood how it was operated. Then they walked to another empty tray and tried to get some information from their respective terminals. Of course, they could only see some fragmentary information and could not quickly analyze it in relation to the situation and environment at the time, so they were a little confused.
Time passed slowly in the tense and silent atmosphere. Ragnarl on the side just moved the buttons from time to time, staring at the text on the screen without blinking, and occasionally an image would be played. His expression seemed a little subtle; Yagard was typing away with a serious face (?), and occasionally he would quickly call up the menu and operate a few times - probably he had found the terminal program of Pandora's Box and was trying hard to find the implanted Trojan horse, while Xiang Ying and Xifeng were trying hard to check the data stored in these terminals.
Then they gradually discovered some problems.
The data stored here is terrifyingly huge - many file strings are classified and named in a certain order, and arranged neatly. Looking closely, they are arranged in chronological order of year, month, and day, and are classified and arranged in dozens of items every day. It seems that as long as there is an event with a little weight, it will be recorded. It seems that it will take dozens of days just to read through a year.
And it is such a detailed record - a rough look at the file list shows that it has been recorded for more than 1200 years!
Xiang Ying, surprised, secretly recalled the information Xiaxue had given him—a method to command all the weapons in the world, just this once. To do that, he not only needed the power of being the number one weapon, but also needed to be in the right place and enter the right command—he had to know the location of Chita's "central power room."
After awkwardly entering "Chita Map" and pressing the "Search" button, he actually called out the structural diagram of the entire Chita. Xiang Ying immediately looked at it carefully, memorized the basic structure in his mind, and by the way, focused on finding the location of the central power room and found several different roads leading there.
──Although I can’t go now because I’m worried about Beichen, I must make this preparation because it may be the key to turning the situation around.
Although Beichen's life was not in danger, this situation made Xiang Ying unable to concentrate on other things, so he entered the keyword "Red Moon Priestess" again, hoping to obtain more information from the database, but countless files marked with keyword titles suddenly appeared on the screen. Xiang Ying was stunned - there were too many files and he didn't know where to start.
Just then, Xifeng walked up to him, tapped his shoulder, and pointed to Yagad's location with his chin.
The two of them walked to Yagad's side, and Xiang Ying asked with concern:
"Lord Agard—how's the situation with the wooden horse going?"
"No problem, it's not particularly complicated. I just copied the Trojan's data string and tried to block it on another platform. It worked."
"Really?! That's great." Xiang Ying sighed with some relief. "Then, as long as Atlas rebuilds the master's heart and transplants it, we can disable the Trojan program and restore the master, right?!"
"That's the theory, but—"
Yagard frowned, then turned around and typed a series of commands on the tray.
Then a strange scene appeared on the screen: Lian Cang and Xing Ge were sitting leisurely in the center of the cocoon and chatting, while Beichen had a long knife stuck in his chest, and Yaye, Shuangzi, and Gu Yinyue were standing motionless holding the hilts of the knife.
"What's going on? Are these four crazy?!"
West Wind's golden pupils shrank suddenly, and he became angry, but Yagad shook his head. He moved the cursor on the screen to a recently recorded file string in the database, found a video, and played it again.
──It was the scene where nine of the Thirteen Moon-Slaying Seats had arrived at the scene.
With the help of clear sound and images, Xiang Ying and the others immediately understood the whole story and breathed a sigh of relief.
It seems that the problem of Block Thirteen, which they were most worried about, was resolved to some extent while they were away.
Xifeng tapped his arm with his fingers:
"In other words, we can use the observation system here to find out whether Beichen's heart has been transplanted properly, right?"
"Um."
Yagad nodded.
"The system should be able to observe the Red Moon Priestess in real time. Now all we need to do is wait. Wait for Atlas to return from the Poison Moon."
"Well, that's good." Xiang Ying stared at Beichen on the screen, then suddenly came back to his senses.
"By the way, Lord Yagad, have you been to Chita before?"
"No, not really."
"Then... how are you so familiar with all this... and even able to find that 'Trojan Horse' so easily?"
"This knowledge was directly instilled into my mind by Chiyue. To me, it's like a war machine being born knowing how to speak and read—although humans aren't like that, I am special after all."
Yagad stared at the screen expressionlessly.
"Although it doesn't feel good to be indoctrinated with knowledge, but... as long as it's useful to Miss Beichen, I won't resist it no matter how much knowledge I receive."
The huge room was silent for a while.
Xifeng patted Yagad's shoulder - he knew that this knight was not much better off than them.
"Although we can look up information now, those guys have already sneaked into Beichen's spiritual world. I think we can't fall behind. Is there any way here--"
"We can't enter Miss Beichen's spiritual world from here, but we can use the data recorded by the pseudo-shell to see what happened in Feinheim. Perhaps this will be very useful intelligence."
Xiang Ying was stunned for a moment and then immediately came back to his senses:
"False Shell—ah, you mean the master's grandmother?"
"Yes, it was through her that I was able to observe how Miss Beichen grew up."
Xifeng couldn't help but twitched his lips:
"...You voyeur."
"It's not peeping." The knight shook his head, "but... No, there's nothing to say. Anyway—"
He opened a file string with a special mark, which started with "SX".
"Then let's start reading. The information starting with SX is all Feinheim's observation records. We should be able to find some clues. I hope that can help Miss Beichen."
"Um……"
"Yes... Master, please be safe..."
The three of them focused their attention on the screen with the same worried expression.
SX821428503_0.1
Title: ◆Fake Shell·Xiang Zhiyan Refuses to Carry Out the Mission of Transforming into a Witch and Successfully Defects◆
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