Against The Heavens 115 Prison Cell.

There were a total of four doors located at the back of the hall, each of them exact copies of the previous door they had seen, engraved with an eagle and a fish coiling around each other. All four of the doors were sealed up with arrays, the remaining people splitting into four groups to start unraveling the arrays. Fang Ying and Li Yang sat down on the ground a short distance away from the doors, Fang Ying casting a sideways glance at the doors before turning to Li Yang.

"Alright, spill the beans, which of the four doors should lead to the best rewards?"

Fang Ying admitted that her instincts weren't as sharp as Li Yang's, especially now that he was a humanoid Divine Beast. She could see a few marks on the doors that might suggest which one was best to take, but it would not harm to consult someone else, someone more attuned to danger. Li Yang smirked and raised his chin, putting on the airs of a mysterious person while remaining silent. Fang Ying decided to humor him for a bit, but gave up after he had stayed silent for almost five minutes. Her hand quickly moved closer to his waist, giving it a vicious pinch and forcing him to spill his secrets.

"Alright alright, I'll stop! Cripes, your pinches are just getting worse with time. The door to the far right should be the one containing the best rewards. It has the least scratches, there is a lot of dust stacked up in the crack beneath the door, the array on it is a bit stronger than the three others, and it also feels like the most dangerous of the four."

The three other doors had minute scratches on their hinges and handles, marks that they had been used quite a bit more than the fourth door. The array on the fourth door wasn't just a bit stronger than the arrays on the other three doors, it was a slight bit different, the lines that formed the runes were subtly different from the other three arrays.

Fang Ying nodded her head, casting a glance at Langshen to make sure that he understood what they were planning. Langshen also gave a lazy nod of his head, calmly observing the people currently trying to break the arrays. Their group proceeded to casually chat while waiting for the other groups to break the arrays, none of them even taking a second to question whether or not it was a good idea to head into the door that felt the most dangerous, a mark of their unconscious bone-deep confidence.

After spending two hours breaking the arrays, the first three doors were opened, the groups that had broken those arrays quickly flooding into the hallways beyond the doors. They cast a few sideways glances at the groups still working on breaking the array on the fourth door, hoping that they would spend even longer so that their own groups might be able to come back in time to enter this door as well.

The array on the fourth door was only broken after another three hours, the people responsible for unraveling it working as quickly as they could so that they could see the fruits of their labor. When the door was finally pushed open, a stale wind that smelled faintly of rotting flowers blew out from it, causing the noses of the 35 people in front of it to twitch from the stench.

Li Yang's brows furrowed faintly after the stench hit him, casting a sideways glance at Fang Ying. She gave a light shake of her head, indicating that the scent did not originate from anything poisonous. She placed her hand on Langshen's head and gave it a few soft strokes, notifying him to keep a close eye on their surroundings using his control over s.p.a.ce.

The others in front of the door also felt that this door was clearly somewhat different from the rest, but they had spent too much effort on breaking the array, they had to get something out of this. They all drew their weapons and slowly stepped through the door, Li Yang and Fang Ying trailing at the back of the group and sweeping their surroundings with wary gazes.

They stepped into a hallway that was at least several kilometers long, metal doors that were placed an even distance away from each other lining the walls of the hallway. When they carefully opened one of the doors on the leftern wall, they discovered a square room that was completely empty, only a few rusted chains hanging from the walls. Looking at how large the room was, and how close the other doors had been to the door they entered, it seemed like this place had been built using techniques similar to when one created an interspatial ring.

They opened a few more doors as they made their way down the hallway, but each door only contained the same empty square room as the first door. It didn't take a lot of thought to figure out where they had arrived now, the dungeon. Li Yang could only think of two reasons for the dungeon to be located directly behind the throne room, the ones who built this place had either been idiots, or supremely confident in either the strength of their prison or the strength of their king.

It didn't take long for them to reach the end of the hallway, arriving at a large and barren metal door covered in another sealing array. Without saying a word, the ones that had unraveled the previous array got to work on breaking this one. This array was the same as the previous one, so now that they knew what to do they were able to save a bit of time, opening the door after only four hours.

The door slowly swung open under their combined efforts, quite a bit heavier than any of the previous doors. Beyond the door was another prison cell, but this one quite a bit larger than the previous ones, it was at least five kilometers in each direction. And this one wasn't empty, there was a large beast lying in the center of the room. The beast looked similar to the invisible panthers they had fought just recently, but this one was half white and half black, the two different colors actually moving around, swirling on its fur.

This panther was also over 10 meters long and had six sickle-tipped tails rather than just three, the energy it was radiating was also quite a bit stronger than that of the panthers, it had already reached the early stage of the Primordial Rune realm, the highest cultivation realm anyone here had seen since the start of the compet.i.tion.

But rather strangely, the entire body of this panther was covered in deep green vines that were covered in finger-sized thorns, the vines of the Devil's Grasp Vine. The vines came from the corner of the room, where there was a small portion where the floor had been broken apart from underneath, allowing the Devil's Grasp Vine to infiltrate the room. The smell of rotting flowers came from these vines, which were currently in the process of slowly draining the life from this panther.

The groups at first thought that the panther might be dead, but they were quickly proven wrong then when the panther opened its eyes shortly after they pushed open the door to the room. The panther's eyes were somewhat strange, one was white with a black pupil and the other was black with a white pupil, crimson veins snaking through both of them. The panther slowly stood up, the vines covering its body quickly falling limp and pretending to be normal vines, acting on instinct to preserve themselves. The panther looked at the group of people that had pushed open the door, a rumbling voice echoing through the area as its six tails stood up straight, the air around them distorting as energy started gathering in them.

"Ahh, more of you vermin arrive. If you are here, then that must mean that my children have already been slain by you. What, did they no longer serve a purpose after all these years so you decided to just get rid of them?"

As it had already reached the Primordial Rune realm, this panther was perfectly capable of human speech. Depending on how strong its Demonic beast bloodline was, it might even be able to take human form already, it didn't have to wait until it reached the Celestial Immortal realm like most Divine Beasts. The panther let out a long and mournful sigh before anyone had the chance to respond to his hate-filled question, its eyes glaring coldly at the people in front of it.

"First you killed my father, then my wife, then my children, and now you come for me. I have grown weaker over the long years, but allow me to at least drag all of you with me to h.e.l.l."