Chapter 592 — Luck

"Unfortunately, I suspect this place also requires keys to enter certain places, just like the Heavenly Armor Pavilion and the courtyard before it."

"The purple tokens the two Emperors used should be this palace’s keys. If only we had one..."

His tone sounded casual and his words unintentional.

Yet Liora’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. She studied Elaouthr carefully.

In the end, however, she said nothing.

She certainly had no intention of revealing that she had obtained such a token in the Heavenly Armor Pavilion.

Choosing to ignore his words, she began examining the chamber around her.

The room contained plenty of items.

Unfortunately, none of them appeared particularly valuable. The reason they had remained intact was not because of their power, but because of the environment itself.

After a brief investigation, Liora concluded that this was nothing more than a storage room for ordinary cultivator equipment.

No treasure remained here.

Despite this, with the idea that one should never say no to free things, she swept every last object into the Cosmic Sea before finally leaving the chamber.

Outside the room’s exit stretched a long corridor.

Contrary to the palace’s majestic exterior, it was surprisingly modest. In fact, it closely resembled the residential area within the Heavenly Armor Pavilion.

Rows of identical rooms lined both sides of the corridor.

For a brief moment, Liora had to wonder whether the two buildings had been designed by the same person.

The thought quickly passed, however.

Stepping forward, she began moving deeper into the corridor.

Every so often, she would attempt to open one of the many nearby rooms.

Unfortunately, every one of her attempts resulted in failure. The rooms were locked.

No matter how much she pushed, their doors would not budge.

Even when she secretly urged the purple token hidden within the Cosmic Sea, nothing happened.

"It seems this token isn’t as valuable as Elaouthr originally thought."

"At the very least, it isn’t enough to grant unrestricted access throughout the palace. This... shouldn’t be the palace’s main key."

This was disappointing but not necessarily entirely bad news.

If she couldn’t rely on the token to access certain checkpoints, then neither could the two Emperors.

That meant everyone remained on equal footing.

From here onward, success would depend on strength, intelligence, and... luck.

Thinking of the latter, Liora briefly glanced at Elaouthr, who was trailing behind her.

After a brief pause, she silently motioned for him to continue.

The jade slip had contained much more than simply the background information regarding the City Lords.

Its previous owner appeared to have possessed a fairly thorough understanding of the City Lords and this palace in particular.

Following its directions, Liora soon left the corridor and found herself at a massive intersection.

It resembled a vast stone square.

The surroundings were almost empty, and no traces of human activity could be seen.

Only a single statue stood quietly at the center, depicting a humanoid figure. Or rather, what should have been a humanoid figure.

The statue’s face was completely blurred, making it impossible to confirm it.

No matter how carefully Liora examined it, she couldn’t distinguish even the slightest feature.

Ordinarily, this wouldn’t have been particularly strange.

She had encountered countless incomprehensible statues before. Building them was a common practice, whether because of their owners’ strength or to highlight their superiority.

However, Liora noticed neither of these was the case for the statue before her.

Its features didn’t seem to have been blurred from the beginning.

Instead, it felt as though some external force had deliberately descended and erased everything that could be used to identify it.

Had this happened before she stepped into the extraterrestrial battlefield, Liora might have dismissed it as a mere coincidence.

But now, she wasn’t so sure about this. She felt there was a more likely explanation.

Almost subconsciously, she raised her head and looked toward the ceiling. Her gaze seemed to pierce through the palace itself, continuing unabated toward the sky above it.

For a fleeting instant, she seemed to see an invisible existence towering above the entire universe, silently overlooking the world and manipulating everything according to its will.

But the next instant, the images flashing in Liora’s vision shattered.

Her consciousness returned to the intersection. In fact, it had never left.

The previous scene had merely been her imagination.

Even so, Liora became increasingly convinced about something: the statue’s condition wasn’t accidental.

Someone—or something—had deliberately erased its identity.

Most likely, it was the same mysterious power that had erased the traces of the cultivation civilization as a whole, and had repeatedly silenced the phantom whenever he approached certain truths.

Liora didn’t dwell on the thought for long. Either way, she had to continue.

Her gaze eventually moved away from the statue and toward the countless corridors branching away from the plaza.

There were simply too many of them.

However, considering the sheer size of the palace, that was hardly surprising.

The structure was practically a city unto itself.

Millions of people could likely have lived here during its prime. Navigating these corridors was probably no different from walking through the streets of a city—and not an ordinary one at that.

Soon, her consciousness stirred and spread out.

It flowed into every corridor at once, searching for any clues that could help her pinpoint her next direction.

Unfortunately, her investigation yielded no results.

Every passage seemed to be a bottomless abyss. Like the mouth of a ferocious beast, they swallowed her consciousness and returned no information.

To Liora’s senses, every path looked exactly the same.

By this point, there was no basis for making an informed choice. She could only rely on chance and hope the corridor she selected would lead to the palace’s core.

Thankfully, Liora had another trick up her sleeve.

She glanced toward Elaouthr, who was studying the countless corridors with a similarly thoughtful expression.

Her eyes narrowed slightly as she chose to confirm her earlier guess.

"Which path do you think we should take?", she asked.