A conspiracy afoot

Bai Yun took the better part of the day to reach the hell pit. Bai Yun had heard that not many people would visit this place but it was worse than he had imagined. Even though there were many gates to the beast garden and only one for the hell pit, the queue for the hell pit was much shorter than the one for a single gate of the beast garden. It took Bai Yun barely any time to enter the gate and head downwards.

Once the entered the hell pit, he came upon a stairway. Hell pit was naturally formed and one of the main reasons the founder of the Bai clan chose this place to settle down. The hell pit was in the shape of an egg, with multiple levels to it, and it would get wider as it came down at first. But then after seven levels, it would start to get narrower and narrower. No one knew how many levels there were to the hell tower. The deepest anyone had gone was the eleventh level.

This stairway was initially not a part of the hell pit but later created by the Bai clan. It extended until the sixth level. The material from then on was far too hard to make a proper staircase. The people who wanted to descend from then on had to take the natural path down.

Bai Yun descended the stairway and entered the first floor. Once he entered the first floor, he came face to face with a large field. The floor of the large field was set aflame with knee-high flame. The flames were a light shade of red and almost seemed ethereal.

The large area had a few people scattered here and there. Bai Yun looked at the flames for a while and then stepped into the field. The moment he did so a few flames climbed up his legs and into his body, which he easily isolated with the god sense. He then used his qi to isolate the rest of the flames from his body.

Bai Yun then sat down and slowly started to analyze the flames. The moment he looked at this he knew that these were indeed hellfire. He slowly started to look closer at the flames. But the more he did so, the more he frowned. Bai Yun started to sense that there was something else added into the hellfire. But this thing also had the same characteristics as hellfire, meaning that it also came from hell. It was no wonder that the person who was in charge of the hell pit was unable to sense it. Only someone like Bai Yun who had personally experienced the true hellfire could see the difference. Even then it as extremely difficult. He could only tell of the existence of the extra thing from his god sense. Not even his perception or soul tendrils could grab hold of them.

Once he realized, he thought that the extra thing could be the cause of the problem. There wasn't enough of the extra thing that it itself was the added pressure. So it could be that it was simply increasing the power of the hellfire. But he couldn't be sure. This could have its origins on the deepest parts of the hell pit. In which case, he had to go down and check.

With wasting any time, Bai Yun stepped back into the stairway and went down to the second level, the region for foundation establishment cultivators. There were no checkpoints on the stairway and no one stopped him either. It someone died due to biting off more than they could chew, it was considered as the fault of that person. The Bai clan had no shortage of people. Someone would step up to take over his place.

The flames in the second level were slightly darker than the flames above and also came up to a person's thigh. Once Bai Yun entered the foundation establishment floor, he felt the increased heat hit him like a charging elephant. Bai Yun simply stood on the stairway and extended a single finger into the flames.

A second later a wisp of flame entered his body. Bai Yun isolated the flame with his god sense in an instant. But the heat of the flames was too much for Bai Yun at his current cultivation. His finger had burned due to the flame.

Ignoring his finger, Bai Yun climbed back up to the qi condensation area. On the way, he was quickly analyzing the flame he had captured. Bai Yun quickly realized that the extra ting that he found in the first level was not present in the second level, making him more confident in his hypothesis that the extra thing in the hellfire was the cause of the change.

But there was not enough of it in the flames for Bai Yun to positively identify the object in the flames. Bai Yun knew that he would have to go deeper into the region to collect more of the flames to identify the source of the problem.

Bai Yun walked straight into the deeper regions of the hell pit. He soon came into a gate in the floor, through which he could enter into the inner areas.

The rate for staying in the inner areas was one clan point per hour for the middle area, and two clan point per hour for the innermost area, where the flames where the highest. The rate was not too high since the rates for the clan's resources were based on two actors, availability, as well as energy spend to maintain the resource. The hell pit's source of strength came from the hellfires that rose up. The arrays that reduced the intensity only took up nominal energy to maintain. And the reason the gravity chamber was so costly was because each use of the gravity camber used a lot of energy.

Thus Bai Yun went through the two outer areas to reach the innermost area. The innermost area was different from the outermost area in that it contained special stone seats. There were eight hundred such seats, and thus only eight hundred people could use the innermost area at the same time. But this was not a problem as less than a hundred people were in the innermost area currently. The innermost area would only get crowded a few days before the clan competition as everyone tries to do everything they could to improve their chances for a breakthrough on the first night.

These stone seats were situated on top of some small holes through which the flames would come out, like pans on top of an oven. This would concentrate the power coming from the hell pit and allow one to easily absorb them. In the other areas the flames rose from the ground, but here the flames were only on the seats. This meant that sitting on top of these stone seats were far more effective than sitting outside.

Bai Yun went into the innermost area quickly. Once inside he went around the innermost area trying to identify the source of the extra thing he felt earlier. As he went around, he felt a few people staring at him and even heard a few snickers. At first, he was confused, but then he understood. The four year old mission must be famous. All of them must have correctly assumed what he was here for.

The first time Bai Yun went around the inner area, he couldn't see what the source for the extra thing was. The next time also left him with the same results, but he was at least able to confirm that the amount of the extra thing here was at least greater than the outside. But even then the mystery did not resolve itself.

Resigning himself to failure, Bai Yun sat down on one of the empty seats to think. But the moment he sat down, his eyes flew wide open. He could see than the concentration of the thing was even greater here than outside the seat.

Surprised about the discovery, Bai Yun quickly moved and sat on another seat. But this time, he could not feel anything different about this stone. He went about sitting on a few other stones but to no avail. He then returned to the first stone, intending to inquire about the rest of the stones after he identified the problem.

Bai Yun slowly released his perception and soul tendrils into the stone beneath his body. Slowly Bai Yun went through the stone and felt the interior to understand what was happening.

With a strat, Bai Yun felt a pain radiate through his soul. A look of horror appeared in his eyes as a trickle of blood could be seen at the edge of his mouth. He quickly recalled his perception and soul tendrils. Thankfully there was no damage done to them.

Bai Yun had realized by now what the extra thing that was. It was hellwind!

Hellwind was the sam as hellfire, wind born in hell. Hellwind collected into tornadoes could destroy everything in its path. And just like normal wind and fire, hellwind could also power up hellfire. The inferno that was made up of the combination of hellwind and hellfire was probably the most destructive thing in hell itself.

But after a while Bai Yun calmed down and started to look at this closely. If this was hellwind, he would be dead without a question. Even traces of hell wind could blow up the hell pit. This was probably just some traces of hellair, a very static and weakened version of hellwind.

A closer examination confirmed Bai Yun's hypothesis. The stone that he was sitting on was porous and it contained many small pockets and gaps within. Hellair was trapped within these small gaps. As hellfire rose and filled these gaps, it would push the hellair out and slowly. It was this hellair that rose and mixed with the hellfire outside that increased its efficiency, making the people think that it was being strengthened.

This was not good. Hellair in small amounts was fine, but continued exposure could deteriorate a person's body. Thankfully there was only a small amount of hellair. Also, this was only at the first level. People would not often visit this place, and even those who do would quickly move on from the first level.

But Bai Yun refused to believe that the sudden emergence of the hellair was a coincidence. These stones were made from when the stairway was excavated, and the walls of the hell pit, which had been long tempered by the hellfire and could withstand its heat, was made into seats. How long have these seats been here? It was inconceivable that the seats suddenly reached the tipping point and started to spew out hellair. Not only that, based on what he could see from the stone seat, the entire seat would be deprived of the hellair inside it within a month. It was not only improbable that so many seats would spew hellair in such a short time frame, it was impossible. There must be a bigger problem afoot.

Since the hellair would quickly deplete, there must be someone who was coming routinely and replenishing the hellair. Bai Yun had to investigate this. Honestly, just telling what he discovered would be enough to count as a completion of the mission. But he was afraid that the people behind this would catch wind of what he did, and hide. Or worse the person who posted the mission was part of the group and would have him silenced. But he decided to only waste a few days here. The entire thing wasn't worth slowing down his cultivation too much.

After thinking for a while Bai Yun found that the true purpose of the culprit would be the hellfire. These modified stone seats were used to trap the hellfire. But if the hellfire was trapped, then it would show up as a lack in the energy above the seats. Thus the people who were doing this filled the stone with hellair so that the small increase brought about by the hellair pushed out would make it so that all the flames would be of the same intensity. The increased intensity outside was just a side effect.

Bai Yun decided to check out the other seats. Since he knew what he was looking for, he quickly picked out two dozen empty seats that were the modified kind. Since he didn't have enough clan points to keep watch over them, Bai Yun left a small tracking mark on them.

The tracking mark that he left behind was nearly unnoticeable and the kind that would break once it entered a storage ring. This was only a simple soul technique from his previous life. Bai Yun had realized that it would be extremely difficult to extract the hellfire in plain view without anyone finding out. Thus it was easier to simply swap them out with the help of a storage ring. Since most of the stone seats were nearly full, Bai Yun figured that this should be done in the next few days.

After marking them, Bai Yun simply waited in the outermost area. At first he used the power of the hellfire to cleanse the impurities in his qi. Then he spend some time training, visualizing his different techniques, going through the Assassin God's techniques and reading books to improve his knowledge.

And finally on the fourth day, just as he was about to get impatient, Bai Yun felt one of the soul marks disappear.

He let out a deep breath and stood up.

'The prey is finally here.'