Teacher by day, Farmer by passion-Chapter 199: Abyss [7]

Ace stared at the floating castle, then back at the poem, narrowing his eyes at the second stanza.

"What kind of castle even floats?"

"In a world where no one flies,

Do they travel by boats?

Hmm... it's worth a try."

"Travel by boats... is that even possible?" Ace murmured, voice low and steady.

How would that even work? Flight was impossible but the clue is a boat?

There must be a method to reach the Palace. A structure like that doesn't simply float by accident. It's not some fairy tale where you scatter magic dust and expect the structure to float.

The more he thought a dull throb, like a hammer tapping the base of his skull.

Ace staggered slightly, grabbing his temple as a piercing jolt shot through his head.

"Tch…"

The moment he focused too hard on a solution, it was like something within the domain fought back. A force—subtle but undeniable—pushed at his thoughts, turning each layer of logic into a fresh burst of pain.

Blood began to trickle from his nose.

[Try, you might, your brain will just fry.]

The line echoed again, cruelly accurate.

He gritted his teeth, pulling back from the edge of thought. Breathing slow and shallow now, he wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve.

"Thinking is a trap..." he whispered.

Maybe... the poem wasn't a puzzle to solve, but a path to follow.

he stopped calculation and instead turned towards the Qiong Qi.

"Alright, stop crying. It's only going to hurt. Follow me,

I'll be walking."

Ace sighed and started moving forward on foot. Before he attempted anything rash, he needed to explore the land and understand his surroundings.

Qiong Qi, clearly unhappy with the situation, hesitated for a moment.

With a low growl and narrowed eyes, the little beast stomped over like a sulking child. Its fur bristled, and its tail flicked in protest.

Reluctantly, it climbed up onto Ace's back.

But not without any retaliation!

Chomp!

Its tiny teeth sank into Ace's head… or at least tried to. The beast bit down with all its might, but with Ace's sturdy physique, the bite felt more like a particularly insistent itch than an actual attack.

Ace didn't even flinch.

Qiong Qi grumbled in frustration, still latched onto his head like an angry hat.

And just like that, with a growling puffball biting his scalp and the swamp behind him, Ace began his journey into the unknown.

An hour passed, followed by another.

The rhythmic thunk of wood being chopped echoed through the swamp, slicing through the stagnant air.

Each time a chunk of wood fell, Qiong Qi would leap forward with exaggerated effort, bite into the splintered trunk, and haul it back toward the water's edge like an overzealous lumberjack beast. freewёbnoνel.com

"Why do these damn trees have to be this hard..." Ace muttered, his brow furrowed as his blade shimmered with a bluish soul light.

He swung again, cleaving the bark cleanly only because of his soul force. The impact sent a small shockwave through the surrounding air, causing ripples to dance across the nearby swamp.

He had made several key observations over the past few hours.

One, physical force was unreliable within this domain. The harder he tried to cut the trees with brute strength, the less they responded.

Two, the trees were absurdly resilient. Their grain shimmered faintly, laced with a natural resistance that only yielded under direct application of soul force.

And three, the sea ahead wasn't actually a sea at all, instead it was a veiled labyrinth of teleportation nodes.

He discovered this the hard way.

Earlier, he'd constructed a crude wooden boat with Qiong Qi's help. It was nothing elegant—just logs bound with rope, a curved plank serving as a rudder—but it floated.

He had intended to test the waters carefully.

But Qiong Qi, having grown restless, threw a tantrum, kicked the boat out prematurely, and both beast and boat slipped into the water before Ace could tether them properly.

The raft glided forward gently, seemingly uneventful, until it vanished with a pop, swallowed by nothing.

And then suddenly, Ace saw it, high above, kilometers in the air, blinking back into existence like a warped mirage.

And then, inevitably, it plummeted.

The crash echoed for minutes.

That was when Ace began testing.

He tied Qiong Qi to a second raft, this one flatter and wider, deliberately unstable.

Before sending him off, he reinforced the bindings and placed a tracking charm laced with his soul imprint.

"You're doing awesome," Ace told the disgruntled beast.

[You're doing this because I bite you earlier! Human! Just you wait!] Qiong Qi growled, tail thrashing.

Ace didn't respond. He merely touched his temple, calming his thoughts, pushing back the creeping burn in his skull.

The raft pushed off with a breath of soul wind.

As expected, it vanished… and reappeared farther out, this time lower to the surface.

Ace unsummoned Qiong Qi mid-air, just before it crashed.

Then summoned him again.

Mud-caked, furious, while also chewing on a rope.

[Lunatic! Human, You Are A Madman!]

"Thanks for the compliment," Ace replied dryly, already preparing the next raft.

He continued for hours.

Test after test, marking every ripple, every reappearance.

Still, whenever he came too close to understanding, that dull pressure returned.

He winced, eyes narrowing. Blood trickled again.

"Still worth it," he said aloud, as if daring the domain to do worse.

Eventually, a theory took shape.

There has to be a specific zone, an intersection point out at the sea where the portal didn't return the raft nearby…

But instead it leads all the way up, right next to the castle.

"If I'm right…" he whispered, wiping blood from his nose as he watched another raft vanish, "...there's a node that goes straight to the entrance. One in a thousand—but it exists."

A smile curved his lips.

"All I have to do now… is find it."

Qiong Qi whimpered behind him, trying to chew through a new length of rope before Ace called again.