More Ghosts

At the end of the stairs, they found another thick metal door. Just like he did with the earlier one one the first floor, Mayton moved forward to melt the lock, only to be stopped by Leyzhen.

''Don't! This door has a formation set on it.''

She said as she moved closer to the door and traced her fingers on the engravings of rock golems at the door's frames.

''I can destroy the formation without activating it but the controller of the formation will be alerted. We can't avoid a fight.''

She concluded with a frown after a moment of contemplation. The formation was set up as a trap for anyone who tried to trespass as well as a way to alert the members in control of the second floor. Despite Leyzhen's proficiency in the art of formations they could only avoid one part of the formation's usage.

After warning others to get ready for combat, Leyzhen destroyed one of the golem engravings with her finger. The door shined briefly as the golems engraved on the door frame started moving but they immediately fall apart as the door itself also crumbled to reveal another narrow path, completely shrouded in darkness.

The first thing greeted them in this narrow path was unearthly screams indicating the presence of the ghosts and a fireball sent straight towards them. Thankfully, they were already ready for getting attacked.

The others went on to deal with the ghosts while Mayton leaped toward the fireball with his arms opened wide as if he was trying to hug it. As soon as he made contact with the fireball a sizzling sound was heard as the fireball seemingly consumed him.

''Haha, you are done for!''

The assailant who threw the fireball, a middle aged woman in the gray robes of the Cult of Unity, let out a laugh as her face lighted up thanks to another fireball she was conjuring. But when the second fireball was in mid flight, she saw something that terrified her. The boy whom she was expecting to be burnt to the crisp was standing in front of her, trying to cover his body with his hands as he cursed at her.

''@£#$! God damn it. You old hag, I will kill you!''

Mayton was livid as he stood there stark naked. Frustrated with his inability to be of much use during their first encounter in the Tower of Screams, when he saw the fireball coming their way, he immediately lunged at it as he was confident in being able to block it and remain unscathed.

Unfortunately, in the spur of the moment, he forgot that unlike himself his clothes were not resistant to fire at all. Since he still couldn't use the fire qi out of his body as the second layer of the Fire Manipulation Art needed higher cultivation than his, he was helpless while his clothes were burning completely.

He seemingly directed all his rage to the middle aged cultivator as he charged at her like a bull that saw red* destroying the second fireball in the process. In a second he was just a single meter away from the middle aged woman with flames dancing in his eyes, making him look even more conspicuously enraged in the darkness.

Seeing the flames in Mayton's eyes, the middle aged woman who was also a fire qi cultivator thus knew exactly what this entailed, moved a single step to her right instead of running away despite the obvious difference in their strength and waited for him to come closer as a cunning smile appeared on her plump face. What she didn't anticipate was Mayton's next move.

Mayton wasn't blinded by rage at all unlike her assumption thanks to the Flame Manipulation Art and knew that there was a trap waiting for him.

From the single step the woman took, he also concluded that for the trap to affect him, he needed to be at exactly in front of the woman so when only a meter was left between them he abruptly stopped and threw his wooden staff like a javelin at the woman with all his might as he sneered.

The middle aged woman, who was getting ready to activate formation set up in front of her with a confident smile, was stricken with panic for a moment as she saw the abrupt stop of Mayton and this moment of panic proved fatal for her.

When she saw the wooden staff looming in on her, it was already too late to react. The only thing she could do was letting out an agonized shriek as the wooden staff, despite its blunt edge, went through her chest without any resistance as if she was made of cotton.

After a few seconds of struggling on the ground in a pool of her blood that gushed out of the gaping wound on her chest, the middle aged woman's body halted as she breathed her last. Mayton was long gone before witnessing her end though as he raced back to the stairs where they left their backpacks in preparation for the fight to get his spare robe.

In a few seconds, Leyzhen and others got rid of the ghosts and all fighting ceased in the hall. No one except for Celyse mentioned Mayton's nakedness, and after teasing him a bit, Celyse was also bored of it. After all, Mayton was still a less than thirteen years old boy, and there was not much to tease him about**.

''Which way are we going now?''

Zgar asked to Celyse after they regrouped and tended to Zgar's wound. Normally, the hardest part of fighting the ghosts was not overpowering them, but instead locating them accurately but Zgar was simply too weak, so despite locating and defeating the ghost he fought against, he still got wounded.

''I don't think you should continue on with us Zgar. Don't get me wrong but you are simply too young and inexperienced. I think you should wait for our return.''

Mayton said authoritatively, indicating that this topic was close to further discussion. This provoked a thoughtful look from Celyse but Mayton, who remembered how his mother used to force him to go out to play due to the similar tone she used, was in a daze, so he didn't realize the out of place reaction of Celyse.

''He is right, don't waste your breath.''

Seeing that Zgar was going to try arguing otherwise, Leyzhen cut in to support Mayton. This floor had five ghosts, and it was becoming harder and harder to defend everyone without unsealing her cultivation.

After Leyzhen told her opinion on the matter, there was nothing left to argue as far as Zgar was concerned, so he accepted to stay behind silently.

Leyzhen then proceeded to make an incantation gesture as a blurry mirror image of her appeared next to her. After that, she gave a formation plate to the mirror image for it to use in case Zgar faced any dangers when they were absent and sent them together to the outside of the tower. When she was done, they left for the right door as for some reason left side was again unguarded.

The person guarding the right door, who was a mid qi gathering cultivator, was no match for their combined power as they subdued him easily. This time they decided to capture the guard alive to get some answers out of him since now they knew that he couldn't possibly alert the people on higher floors in a short period of time.

According to the guard, the first four floors were under control of the Cult of Unity for the last few decades, and they cleared out or dominated all of the strong ghosts in these floors. From the fifth floor upwards was where the true terror of the Tower of Screams started.

The tower prohibited the entrance of people with cultivation higher than the qi gathering phase but the ghosts who evolved from pieces of souls inside the tower were exempt from this rule as their cultivation became higher and higher with the seemingly never ending supply of soul fragments present in the tower.

It was exactly because of the existence of such ghosts that the Tower of Screams remained unconquerable despite standing tall for an unknown amount of time in this world.

There was even a rumor about a ghost that was not bound by the tower's strange power to stop ghosts from crossing floors and freely moved around. Devouring other ghosts as much as it wanted as it got insanely strong in the process. They said that if it could leave the tower, it would be a calamity for the region with a magnitude never seen before.

Mayton who was getting nervous after the guard told them about this legendary ghost, heaved a sigh of relief when he heard that it normally didn't bother with the lower floors at all as long as no one used the doors at the left end of the halls.

Mayton's group just wanted to eliminate the Cult of Unity and gather some soul dew in the Tower of Screams before leaving, so this ghost shouldn't have anything to do with them.