Thankfully, his mask quickly went to work to conceal his true identity. However, the power levels involved surpassed imagination, and Bai Xiaochun could tell immediately that the mask would only be able to hold out for a brief moment under such intense scrutiny. If he didn’t pass this test and allow the soulsearch to confirm his identity, he wouldn't be able to teleport away, and would also be revealed as an imposter!
In the moment of time that the mask bought him, he stepped backward, away from the teleportation portal. As he did, quite a few people noticed, and strange expressions appeared on their faces.
Seeing so many eyes on him, his heart trembled nervously. Raising his voice, he said, “Ah, forget it. I'm not going anywhere. Giant Ghost City is the best place to earn a name!”
With that, he walked away.
People continued to look at him curiously until he melted into the crowd and vanished.
Some distance away, he hurried along, ashen-faced and heart pounding.
“What do I do?” he wailed inwardly. “If I can’t use the teleportation portal, how will I get home?” He wanted to cry, but no tears would come. All of his hopes had been wrapped up in the teleportation portal, and yet now, he knew he couldn’t use it....
A bit later, he blinked a few times and then sighed at how bitter his life had become. Feeling completely crestfallen, he found a random inn to stay the night. The next day, he walked out of the inn bleary-eyed.
“If I can’t get back, I guess I just need to rise to prominence here. Perhaps that’s just my lot in life. How completely annoying for a low-profile kind of person like myself.” Sighing helplessly the entire way, he headed back toward the moat....
Now that he thought about it, being a guard at Devil Penitentiary might not be that bad after all. With that status, he would be temporarily safe from the Bai Clan, which was a good thing.
He got to the moat early, whereupon he sat down cross-legged and frowned his way until evening. At that point, the whirlpool sprang up again, and one of Li Xu’s subordinates appeared. When he saw Bai Xiaochun, he gave him an expressionless nod.
“Alright, come with me,” he said. Without another word, he turned and headed back toward the whirlpool.
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Chapter
622: Devil Penitentiary
Bai Xiaochun couldn’t stop sighing in his heart about how humiliating it was for a spectacular major general like himself to be in this situation. However, considering the circumstances, he knew that he simply had to come to terms with it....
“Ah, whatever. Considering that I, Bai Xiaochun, am so outstanding and awesome, it doesn’t matter where I end up, I always earn a new level of respect!” As he tried to pump himself up, he looked at the man who had just stepped out of the whirlpool. By this point, he realized that Li Xu must be the leader of Devil Penitentiary, and also his own future superior. Furthermore, this man here must be an assistant of some sort to Li Xu.
“Get moving,” the man said, “otherwise you’ll have to wait outside for another day.”
Bai Xiaochun already didn’t like this guy.
“I didn't do anything to offend him!” he complained inwardly. However, there was no other option for him than to bow his head and hurry into the whirlpool.
They disappeared, and began to sink down toward the bottom of the moat. Considering that this man was Li Xu’s assistant, it was no surprise that he had an extraordinary cultivation base. He also had a command medallion that emanated a soft light, protecting both himself and Bai Xiaochun from the deadly black moat water around them.
Bai Xiaochun was a bit nervous as he looked out at the inky blackness. Not only could he not see anything, but he felt a sensation of profound danger just looking at the black water, as if terrifying beasts lurked within it.
He kept his guard up as they pierced their way downward. Eventually, he realized that he could see two green points of light up ahead in the black water.
They seemed to pulse with a netherworldly aura, and almost looked like eyes. Merely looking at them caused his hair to stand on end.
However, the man escorting him didn’t seem to have any reaction whatsoever, so Bai Xiaochun merely followed along, maintaining full vigilance. As they proceeded forward, the two green lights grew larger and larger.
The closer they got, the clearer things became, until Bai Xiaochun’s heart leapt; there at the bottom of the moat was an enormous stone statue!
The statue depicted a gigantic xuanwu turtle that pulsed with spatial distortions. The two green lights that Bai Xiaochun had spotted earlier were actually the turtle’s eyes.
It also seethed with a profoundly murderous aura that seemed to be contained in the area with magical seals. Were it not for those sealing marks, the aura would have seeped out and caused drastic transformations in heaven and earth.
Bai Xiaochun was already shaken, but then he realized that, for some reason, the turtle actually looked familiar. After studying it closely for another moment, his eyes went as wide as saucers, and his heart began to pound in his chest.
“That statue looks a lot like the little turtle....” The little turtle had been missing for a long time now. Bai Xiaochun had searched his bag of holding thoroughly on a few occasions looking for him, but couldn’t find him. Even still, Bai Xiaochun had the feeling that he was there inside, somewhere.
Even as Bai Xiaochun hesitated about what it all meant, the man led him toward the turtle statue's left eye. Nervous about everything, Bai Xiaochun followed along, and soon they entered the eye itself.
A diaphanous barrier kept the black water out, which the man's command medallion allowed them to pass through.
Bai Xiaochun soon found himself in a large stone cavern filled with criss-crossed stalactites and stalagmites that looked almost like vicious fangs. There were four soul cultivators waiting there, who clasped hands and bowed deeply as soon as they saw the man leading Bai Xiaochun.
“Greetings, Left Dharma Protector!”
Their voices weren’t loud and booming, but rather, bone-chillingly cold. They seemed like people who lived on the border between life and death, whose mere gazes could pierce to the heart. After looking at them for a moment, Bai Xiaochun determined that all four were Nascent Soul cultivators.
“This Devil Penitentiary isn’t some ordinary prison!” he thought. As he continued to look around, he noticed four tunnels leading off in four directions, with a fifth tunnel-like opening in the ceiling.
“Sun Peng, this is one of the new guards the warden just assigned to Cellblock D. You arrange everything for him.” After issuing his orders, the man clasped his hands behind his back and flew up into the fifth tunnel overhead.
The group of four soul cultivators clasped hands to him as he left, then dispersed into the four corridors, with the exception of an old man. Frowning, he looked at Bai Xiaochun and said, “If Li Xu personally handed you over to the Left Dharma Protector to arrange things, then logically speaking, you should have been assigned to Cellblock A, not my Cellblock D.”
The old man seemed to think something was a bit strange about the situation, but still smiled at Bai Xiaochun.
Although it was a friendly smile, it looked ghastly to Bai Xiaochun. Coupled with the old man’s sinister aura, it caused a chill to run down Bai Xiaochun’s back.
“May I ask your name, Fellow Daoist?” the old man asked.
Bai Xiaochun blinked a few times, and then carefully answered, “I'm Bai Hao.”
“Bai Hao. Bai Hao... Bai...?” After thinking for a moment, the man’s eyes went wide. “Bai Hao from the Bai Clan?”
Pleased at the man’s reaction, Bai Xiaochun proudly said, “Yeah, that’s right. I’m none other than Bai Hao from the Bai Clan.”
The old man sucked in a breath. Now he understood why Li Xu had assigned this person to Cellblock D.