The Heaven Dou procession finally arrived at Spirit City. The journey had been long, spanning weeks, but the sight of the city was enough to jolt anyone from their travel-weariness. It was a marvel, a city built from a deep, grey granite that seemed to drink the sunlight, giving the air a permanent, twilight feel. The architecture was imposing, with sharp, angular spires and massive, unadorned walls that spoke of power and absolute order. The aura of spirit power here was thick, palpable, like a heavy, unseen blanket pressing down on everything.
Inside the lead carriage, a carriage that was more a moving apartment than a simple transport, Zhang Tian was lounging in pure comfort. The space was lined with soft, black furs and deep crimson silk cushions.
He was lying with his head in Zhu Zhuqing's lap. Her cool, slender fingers were idly tracing patterns on his temple, a silent, soothing touch. He, in turn, had his other hand occupied. Ning Rongrong was curled up beside him, her back pressed against his side, and his hand was playfully tucked under the hem of her shirt, his fingers splayed across the soft, warm skin of her midriff.
The two women were dressed for comfort, but also, clearly, for him.
Ning Rongrong wore a light, airy shirt of the palest blue, tied in a neat, pert knot just beneath her breasts. It left her entire midriff, her smooth stomach and tiny, perfect navel, completely bare. Her low-riding skirt did little to hide the gentle curve of her hips.
Zhu Zhuqing's outfit was even more audacious. She wore a "top" that was more of a suggestion, a band of tight, black fabric that covered the top half of her magnificent breasts, but was cut away entirely underneath, revealing the soft, heavy, pale curve of their undersides. Every time she breathed, the sight was a hypnotic, mesmerizing thing. Her own low-slung, dark pants left her own toned midriff bare.
Zhang Tian, his head pillowed on her thighs, had his face turned inwards, his nose and lips pressed against that soft, exposed skin just below her top. He would occasionally, lazily, turn his head and press a soft, warm kiss there.
"Are you comfortable, my love?" Zhu Zhuqing's voice was a low, husky purr. She deliberately leaned forward, as if to look at him, a move that caused her massive, half-exposed breasts to press against his face like two soft, warm pillows. "Is this a good pillow?"
Zhang Tian's voice was muffled against her skin. "The best pillow in the world," he grumbled contentedly. "So soft. So... generous." He nuzzled her, his hands, the one on her midriff and the one on Rongrong's, squeezing gently.
"Husband... stop it, that tickles!" Ning Rongrong giggled, squirming against his side. "Your fingers are cold! Warm them up somewhere else!"
"Oh? And where would you suggest?" he murmured, his fingers dancing lightly over her ribs, making her squeal.
"Hey! No fair!" she pouted, twisting around. "Zhuqing, you're hogging his face! I want kisses too!" She leaned over, trying to get his attention, her own smaller, but perfectly shaped, breasts pressing against his shoulder.
Zhang Tian's hand on her waist suddenly snaked down.
SMACK.
The sound was sharp and loud in the carriage. He had given her a firm, playful spank on her butt.
"Eep!" she yelped, her face flushing crimson. "Husband! Not so hard! What if someone heard that?"
"Let them hear," he chuckled, pulling her closer and planting a kiss on her bare stomach, just above the waistband of her skirt. "Let them all know how much I adore my two beautiful, perfect wives."
"You're a rascal," she huffed, but she was smiling, her eyes bright.
It was then she looked out the window. "Wow! Look at it, husband! Look, look!"
Zhu Zhuqing sat up slightly, dislodging Zhang Tian's head. He grumbled in protest at the loss of his pillow.
"It's... it's beautiful!" Ning Rongrong gasped, her face pressed against the thick, crystal-clear glass. "It's even grander than the Heaven Dou Imperial City! It feels so... heavy. But look at all the shops! We have to go shopping, husband! Please? I bet they have things here we can't find anywhere else!"
Zhu Zhuqing was also peering out the window, her expression more analytical. "It's… clean," she murmured. "Too clean. The power here is... orderly. Controlled. Not like the chaos of Heaven Dou. This place is a fortress. Every person on the street... they're walking in step. It's... unsettling."
Zhang Tian grunted, sitting up. He stretched his arms, pulling both women into a tight, possessive hug. He kissed Zhu Zhuqing's cheek, then leaned over and gave Ning Rongrong another kiss on her bare midriff. "It's just a city," he said, his voice casual. "A bigger den for a bigger, more arrogant pack of wolves. Nothing to worry about."
In the carriage behind them, the mood was far less relaxed. Dugu Yan, Yu Feng, Shi Mo, and Ye Lingling were tense, their hands resting on their knees.
"The pressure..." Yu Feng muttered, his gaze fixed on the imposing, dark spires of the city. "It's everywhere. I feel like I'm being watched by a thousand eyes."
"Even the air feels like it belongs to the Spirit Hall," Dugu Yan agreed, her own face grim. "I don't like this place. And look... even the guards at the gate are Spirit Ancestors. The common people on the streets... half of them are Spirit Masters. This... this is a city of warriors."
Their procession did not stop for inspection. A contingent of Spirit Hall's own knights, their silver armor polished to a mirror shine, was waiting for them. Every single one of them was a Spirit King.
"Welcome, Emperor Team," their captain said, his voice devoid of emotion, his eyes hidden behind a slitted visor. "We are your escort. Please follow us."
They were escorted with full honors through the wide, clean, and imposing streets. There were no spirit tools here. No mechanical carriages hummed along the roads. No spirit lamps lit the corners. It was a city of pure, raw, and traditional spirit power.
They were led to a luxurious hotel, the finest in the city, its dark, stone facade carved with intricate, angelic figures. It was reserved exclusively for the seeded teams.
They were shown to their quarters. It was not a hotel; it was a small, private palace. A full wing had been reserved for them. Each member was given their own suite of rooms, complete with servants, fine food, and plush, velvet furniture.
Zhang Tian, of course, had the main conjoined suite, with adjoining, private doors to both Ning Rongrong's and Zhu Zhuqing's chambers.
He smirked at the arrangement as the polite, robotic Spirit Hall attendant left. "How... convenient."
"Convenient for you, you mean," Ning Rongrong teased, already bouncing on the massive, silk-sheeted bed. "This is amazing! I'm going to take a bath!"
"Later," Zhang Tian said, pulling her back. "First, we explore."
After settling in, they decided to walk the city. Qian Renxue, who had traveled separately with her own imperial guards, met them in the hotel lobby, her face a mask of cool, aristocratic indifference that did not fool Zhang Tian for a second. He knew she was just as curious as they were.
The four of them—Zhang Tian, Ning Rongrong, Zhu Zhuqing, and Qian Renxue—walked the streets. The atmosphere was strange. It was orderly. It was clean. There were no beggars, no visible crime, no rowdy taverns. Everything was ruthlessly, chillingly efficient.
"This place gives me the creeps," Ning Rongrong whispered, holding onto Zhang Tian's arm. "It's so... quiet."
"It's a city of true believers," Qian Renxue murmured, her voice low and grim.
Ning Rongrong, true to her word, spotted a shop and immediately dragged them inside. "Look! A Spirit Shop!"
It was not like the chaotic, cluttered markets of Heaven Dou. This place was like a high-end jewelry store, its wares displayed in glowing crystal cases. It sold rare herbs, powerful medicines, and even... spirit bones.
"They sell spirit bones?!" Ning Rongrong gasped, her face pressed against the glass. She was looking at a 5,000-year-old arm bone, a price tag on it that made even her eyes widen. "That's... that's criminal! Who would just... sell a spirit bone?!"
"The Spirit Hall," Qian Renxue explained, her voice a low, cold sound. "They control all high-level trade. This is one of their sanctioned stores. They set the prices. They control the flow of all valuable resources. It is how they maintain their power over all other Spirit Masters and sects. You want to get stronger? You must come to them. You must... buy from them."
Zhang Tian, however, was looking at a different display. A display of... "spirit tools."
He saw a metal-wrought, clunky-looking lighter that seemed to require a significant jolt of spirit power just to produce a small, sputtering flame. He saw a small, round shield, heavy and poorly balanced.
'They're trying,' he thought, a small, contemptuous smile on his lips. 'They've seen my public designs, and they're trying to copy them. But they've missed the entire point. They're just… shells.'
"What is it, husband?" Zhu Zhuqing asked, noticing his interest.
"They've reverse-engineered the idea," he murmured, "but they've missed the soul. They don't have the array formations. They're trying to power these things with raw, brute-force spirit power, not with focused, guided energy. They're just clumsy, expensive toys."
They left the shop and continued to the heart of the city: the central plaza. It was a massive, open space, paved with flawless black marble, dwarfing even the new colosseum in Heaven Dou. And at its center, a building that seemed to pierce the heavens, a spike of black and gold aimed at the gods, stood the Supreme Pontiff's Palace.
As they stood at the edge of the plaza, a new, strange sensation washed over them. A feeling of… weight. Of… reverence.
"Do you feel that?" Zhang Tian murmured. He was feeling it. A raw, palpable energy in the air. It wasn't just spirit power. It was… faith.
It was then that Jin Xi, who had been traveling with them in Qian Renxue's carriage and had been quietly, and curiously, following them, suddenly spoke. Her crimson eyes were wide, her head tilted as if listening to a sound no one else could hear.
"The threads..." she whispered, her voice filled with awe. "So many... tiny, golden threads... they're all... flowing."
Zhang Tian looked at her, his gaze sharp. "Flowing? Flowing where, Jin Xi?"
She pointed a trembling finger at the massive, dark palace. "There. They're all flowing... into that big, pointy nest. All the... the belief... from all the humans in this city... it's like a river. A river of light."
She then frowned, her head tilting. "But... it's splitting. The river... it's going to two places. One is at the very top... it feels bright, and warm, like the sun. But the other... it's deep below. It's... dark. And... and it feels... hungry."
Zhang Tian's blood ran cold. He knew, in that instant, exactly what she was seeing.
'Two places. The sun... that's her grandfather, Qian Daoliu, the Angel God's envoy. He's basking in their worship. But the dark, hungry one... Bibi Dong. She's not just sitting on a throne. She's feeding on their faith. Just like a Rakshasa God would.'
Qian Renxue, who hadn't heard Jin Xi's words, just glared at the palace, her hands clenched at her sides.
Zhu Zhuqing and Ning Rongrong looked at the palace with a new chill. "It's… not just a palace, is it?" Ning Rongrong whispered, her voice a little shaky.
"It's a church," Zhu Zhuqing murmured, her hand instinctively finding Zhang Tian's. "And we just walked into the heart of it."
Zhang Tian broke the tension, wrapping his arms around his two fiancées. "Well," he said, his voice casual, almost bored. "The den is impressive. The wolves are numerous. But... I'm hungry. Let's find some food. All this holiness is making me sick."
He led them away from the holy palace, his mind already calculating, his own, secret plans for this city, this power, beginning to form.
While Zhang Tian and his lovers explored the city, a different, far more somber scene was unfolding back in their palatial hotel. In a soundproofed, hidden room within Zhang Tian's own suite, Xiao Wu was no longer bound.
The room was luxurious. A bed piled high with soft, silken pillows. A table laden with fine foods that she hadn't touched. A wardrobe filled with beautiful, new clothes she refused to wear. But the door was locked from the outside, and the windows were forged from spirit-infused, unbreakable crystal. It was a gilded cage.
She lay on the bed, curled in a small ball, her green Shrek uniform, which he hadn't bothered to replace, now tattered and torn. She was no longer the fiery, rebellious rabbit. She was a broken, terrified, hollow thing.
The last few weeks had been a living nightmare. The threat to Tang San, to her friends, was a chain around her soul.
The journey had been a new kind of torture. He had not violated her further, not in the way she had initially feared. He had done something… stranger. More clinical. More terrifying.
He would have her brought to his carriage. He would draw her blood, small vials of it, which he would store with a cold, academic curiosity. He would attach strange, crystal-and-metal devices to her head, her wrists, her chest, sending low, tingling pulses of energy through her that made her skin crawl.
"Summon your spirit," he would command, his voice flat, detached.
"No! I won't!" she would scream.
He wouldn't even sigh. He would just... force it. A jolt of his spirit power, and her rabbit spirit would appear against her will, trembling in the air.
He would test its properties. He would poke it. He would shoot small, non-lethal blasts of different elements at it. Fire. Ice. Lightning. He would watch it react, his eyes gleaming with a cold, academic curiosity.
"Fascinating," he would murmur, making notes in a small, leather-bound book. "The resilience is high. The recovery from the ice and fire is almost instant. The lightning... that causes a slight disruption. Interesting."
And then, he had looked at her, his smile gone. "Your spirit origin... it's preparing. It's gathering energy. You're close, aren't you? To Level 40. To your fourth ring."
That was when the true terror had begun. Xiao Wu, in her desperation, had tried to stop her own cultivation. She tried to block the flow of her spirit power, to force it back. She was terrified of what he would do when she finally had to condense her ring.
But she couldn't stop it. Her hundred-thousand-year-old foundation, her body's own natural, instinctive drive to grow, was too strong. She could feel it, a pressure building within her, a power that was demanding to be born.
She was a prisoner. A lab rat. And her own, inevitable growth was a ticking time bomb, counting down to a fate she couldn't even imagine.
She lay in her silken prison, in the heart of the enemy's city, and she wept. She wept for her lost freedom. She wept for her broken friends. She wept for Da Ming and Er Ming, who she would never see again.
And she wept for her 'Brother San', the boy she loved, the boy she was now, in her own, terrible way, betraying, just by staying alive.?"
~~
A/N: Check out my BTTH Fanfic [Doupo: Plundering the Plot with God-Tier Comprehension].
Also, check out 20 Chapters Ahead for this fanfic on my P.atreon.
Patreon link: https://www.patreon.com/c/evildragon04