“What are you doing, Yuan Zhou?” Hissk asked as I slowly cut an incredibly complex array into the base of the cylindrical shaft.

“I am going to start compressing the metal in front of us and doing quite a bit of work on cutting out the next array. The tricky part is making the effect area a cylinder and not a sphere,” I explained. That was why a high level of precision was needed. The more area that I impacted the cost of energy would quickly rise. I would need to fuel this array myself, so I wanted to keep it as simple and precise as possible.

I could tell Hissk was looking over my work, but he didn’t say anything else. I was using a small knife to cut into the metal and my immense body control to make sure everything was perfect as I could make it. A super organization would have a machine do this at much greater precision and take more things into account like the rate of carving symbols and the order they were carved into the material.

The deeper one dove into arrays and formations, the more endless they were. That was why, I thought of myself as a clown at best with what I was doing compared to the true professionals. It took a while, but the more precise I was on the first array, the easier things would be. I floated backwards and looked it over.

I didn’t spot any problems or errors. I might be a clown, but I was an experienced clown. “Brace yourself and brace me please, Hissk. A vacuum is probably going to be made ahead of us, a large one very rapidly,” I said.

“Understood,” he replied. “You don’t care about the walls?”

“No,” I answered. His clawed feet slammed into the nearby wall that was off to my side and he wrapped both of his clawed hands around me. We created a ‘T’ shape. I felt incredibly nervous, but this was the best option since I needed to focus entirely on the array.

I floated back down and put my hands on the array and pushed my energy into it. The amount of energy built up. I was going to push it to the very limit of what was possible so we could go as far as possible. The array activated and several things happened at once. It would have been better to use a formation to stagger out the effects with multiple arrays, but I didn’t have the understanding to do that properly. I only managed before since each array had a distinct purpose.

Here things were too jumbled togeather since they all needed to refer to the same area. It would have been wildly inefficient to do multiple arrays. Also I wouldn’t have had the energy. The downside was that it was much harder to manage. Once the array activated, everything would activate at the same time.

The sides of the cylindrical shaft were spatially separated out to an incredibly far distance. The effect was incredibly weak. A regular human might only get a paper cut from the effect, but it was made to go as far through the barrier sphere as possible. If there was any change in density or material it would fail. Thankfully this barrier sphere was thick, but cheaply constructed. The demonic cultivator was powerful and had planned this, but even he had skimped out in this part of the construction process. Most likely due to time, headache, and figuring that anyone who got this far would go all the way regardless.

The next effect was to compress everything towards the center in one burst. That was it. Only those two effects on a cylindrical path as far as possible. There were multiple loud bangs and Hissk’s grip on my body tightened slightly. Looking at the space ahead of us, there was a long shaft with misshapen chunks of very dense metal floating about. It had worked.

“Good job,” Hissk said and manhandled me towards his front and in his arms. He then quickly began to go through the shaft, pushing the dense metal chunks around him and out of the way. Occasionally there would be a more jagged edge to the shaft.

Hissk zoomed through it all with incredible ease while carrying me. I just closed my eyes as he picked up speed, waiting until we got to the end, focusing on recovery. It took about an hour. The bottom was a jagged mess of ripped metal. My array skills were clearly subpar, but it they weren’t terrible.

I cut out a perfect cylinder and released the chunk behind us, before I got to work on carving another array into the fresh bottom of the shaft.

“How far did we go?” I asked Hissk, since his spatial sense would give a much better understanding of our travel than my devices.

“Decent. Not a great method of travel, but decent. About a tenth of what we were doing at the start in the same amount of time,” he explained. Annoying and slow, but still progress. Carving out the same array took less time, and we repeated the process.

Over and over, I repeated the process of cutting and compressing our path ahead. It worked out well, since I got to rest while Hissk flew through the newly formed shaft and he got to rest while I worked on making the array. While Hissk might be able to carve out the array I had made from memory, there might be other obstacles, which was why he didn’t crush me in his big scaley clawed hands.

He might memorize individual arrays, but there was far more to the skill than one would think. He clearly knew he would be a clown imitating a clown, which would limit him quite a bit if he decided he didn’t need me anymore. I didn’t like the situation, but there was no alternative.

Without Hissk, it would have taken far too long to travel through the shaft I was carving out. It truly was teamwork that was getting us through this barrier sphere.

As we reached the bottom of the shaft once more, I felt a wave of energy. “You feel that?” I asked Hissk.

“Yesss. Not energy from the demonic cultivator,” he replied as his forked tongue darted out. “Someone else. Powerful. Dangerous,” he replied. He could sense energy with his tongue and picked up on all of that. For some reason I was not surprised. He was a biological war machine and would need a way to track enemies down and evaluated their strength. Since he didn’t have any kind of danger sense, another method was needed.

“The only thing we can do is to keep cutting and moving forward. Unless you have another suggestion?” I asked.

“No. It is hard to estimate the distance. This environment is not standard. Sensing precise details at a distance is too difficult,” he replied. More information about his abilities, but they weren’t useful. A far distance for him was completely beyond me.

Hissk was probably able to attack at super far distances. If I was making a biological war machine, that would be something I would do. Still, he was right and I got to work preparing our path.

Once we reached the bottom of the next shaft we had cut out there were more pulses of energy that we picked up on. “Very dangerous. Lots of powerful beings. Technology. Many things. Hard to work out the details,” Hissk said while his tongue constantly flicked outwards.

“My sense of danger has been increasing rapidly as well. Cut slower, or are we still good to cut at a rapid pace?” I asked Hissk.

“Same pace. Your effect is weak. Barely noticeable. It won’t break from energy?” he asked.

“Maybe. Hard to say. It isn’t like I do this all the time,” I joked and got to work. Hissk didn’t reply. I didn’t know if he got humor, or was just secretly amused and kept it to himself.

After the next cut downwards, there was a pinprick of light in the distance. I turned off my lights and put them away. Hissk carried me to the entrance of the next area very carefully and we poked our heads out of the shaft hole.

The atmosphere was incredibly warm. In the far distance above us was a massive burning star. Everywhere else was just metal. We had arrived in a metal valley of some kind. There were chunks of metal scattered about and the very surface was molten. Molten metal began trickling down into the shaft we were in.

There was a massive burst of energy and an explosion in the distance. While it was very far, the explosion was the size and power of a nuclear bomb. “Strong beings are fighting. Center is in that star,” Hissk said.

I mentally cursed the demonic cultivator for seventy-seven generations and hoped whatever parts of his body he took pride in rotted off or were consumed by maggots. Even that didn’t feel like enough for this next environment and everything I had worked out.

The size of this new environment was like the Free Port, a dyson sphere. Unlike the Free Port which had gaps and used technology to manage the output of the star, this place was completely enclosed, building up heat and pressure. That was why the surface of the metal had turned molten. Molten metal wasn’t like liquid, it was more like sticky goo.

We had gone through a fairly thick layer of metal and now had to make a choice. “Retreat,” Hissk said and we retreated back down into the shaft before the molten metal sealed it off. That was why he was so dangerous, he was smart enough to go to the only safe place to think.

We retreated past the layer of molten metal and cut out a side shaft. I used the piece of the side shaft to plug the main shaft so molten metal didn’t go downwards. I noted that gravity was inverted, pushing outwards near the surface. It would probably get worse until we reached the star, where the demonic cultivator was hiding inside.

When you could build at this level, you really could make a super fortress that was incredibly annoying. “This is not good. Hissk is concerned,” he said and I agreed. If strong beings were fighting, that meant they couldn’t continue or retreat and had grown desperate.

There was a lot of energy in the molten metal at the surface. There would also be no place to rest or take shelter in. The only beings to get this far would be powerful, at the level of immortals for the most part. Hissk and I were the exception. Since these powerful beings were fighting and not going after the demonic cultivator they were trapped in the next environment.

I got out my goo and water machine to have a snack while we waited in silence and darkness, thinking about the problem above us. The occasional wave of energy would be a clear reminder of the hell that waited above us.

“Can you protect us and fly to the star?” I asked Hissk.

“No. There is a spatial suppressor around the star,” he replied. Of course, why not. A powerful immortal finally breaks through and is ready to charge the demonic cultivator. A star could be resisted, but the spatial suppressor and the outwards gravity would make it impossible to get close. The heat and light were just to make everyone uncomfortable and annoyed.

The demonic cultivator had decisively taken the high ground and left everyone looking up at him in the sky. With the lack of materials, everything up until that point had been meant to exhaust and make it impossible to find resources. One would have to travel all the way back to the gas layer to find anything of use.

The metal from the barrier sphere, or solid layer, was complete trash. The heat and energy of the final environment would make crafting anything a nightmare of epic proportions. This would create a true hell. Tempers and opinions would clash, and immortals would fight. There would be old grudges and they would think that they could get the upper hand.

“Well, when you can prepare, you can prepare. The demonic cultivator doesn’t hold back,” I muttered. Hissk didn’t reply as we both kept thinking of any possible solution.

If everyone worked togeather we might come up with a solution, but the table people were the perfect example of how everyone would react. Either with indifference or brutal fighting to quickly gain an advantage. There were no strong people hiding out in nearby buildings either to put a bit of fear in everyone and make them behave.

Also, everyone would believe they had the best idea on what to do and they would never trust others. That was perfectly understandable, since if I was the lead on a plan, I would make sure to ensure my own survival over others.

Another wave of energy washed over us. “Can you break spatial stabilizer?” Hissk asked me.

“It is a question of power and strength of arrays. The demonic cultivator will have made something incredibly powerful and precise. We would need to carry the array with us. The size I would need would be massive. With gravity, heat, and everything else against us, it is like climbing a mountain that keeps getting steeper while balancing a giant boulder on your head,” I explained.

Hissk was silent once more. “What about trying to get stronger?” I suggested.

“Dangerous. There are other hunters, waiting and watching out there.” I didn’t ask how he knew, but it was probably some kind of super instinct to let him know if he was being targeted. Every time I thought about consuming him, he might have picked up on that.

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Hissk looked at me and his tongue darted out. I tensed up slightly, but he didn’t act. “Work togeather. Knowledge is useful,” he replied.

“Agreed,” I said, but knew we would have to part ways soon.

This last obstacle was the hardest. The layer of gas was annoying, but I had increased my strength through consumption. The layer of liquid, the ocean of blood, was dangerous but quickly transversed after tempering myself. The layer of solid, the barrier sphere, was annoying but could be worked through with ingenuity. Now there was the layer of plasma, a hell layer that had stopped everyone in their tracks.

Even if we got through this and based the surface of the star, we would find the demonic cultivator’s citadel, where there would be defenses. He might also intervene personally if someone made it that far into the core of the Gu Container.

When things broke down, everything would be sandwiched, between the compression forces and the outwards gravity. It would all be compacted togeather. I wasn’t sure what would happen after that. Physical matter would probably be processed in some way to extract all the energy, which would be funneled into a central chamber of some kind to form the Gu.

There could be golems, or other things waiting to attack or intercept anyone that made it to the central citadel. We were stuck outside past the moat and outer defenses with no good way to reach the citadel to begin with.

Letting out a sigh, I knew what would have to come next. I would have to do something I absolutely hated. I would have to gamble. A lot of things I did were gambles, but most of the time I had confidence in my gambles or a way to mitigate failure. Gambling was the refuge of the desperate and the weak.

I was both unfortunately. In this place, at the final environmental barrier in the Gu Container, I was weak. I also had no way forward, so I was desperate. Going out there and hoping to get the body of an immortal was my only chance. I carefully began inspecting my equipment and weapons. I knew where everything was and could pull it out at a moment’s notice.

I had shields ready to go along with ranged weapons. If I could kill one immortal, I could kill another. Each one killed would fuel my demonic cultivation through consumption. Hissk was staring at me as I contemplated my plan.

“You plan to fight,” he finally said.

“Yes. There is no other option. I need more strength. I suggest we part ways amicably,” I replied while I held the Combat Cylinder in my left hand, ready to act at any moment. Hissk shook his head.

“Foolish, but it is your choice. A hunter must know when to strike. This is not the right time. It is better to wait,” he said.

“For what? I refuse to be like the people at that rock island just sitting around,” I replied.

“Hissk knows his limits and strengths very well. The heat is spreading through the metal, since it has nowhere to escape. Eventually escape will become impossible along with easy entry. It is best to wait until the last moment,” Hissk replied and I shook my head.

“For you perhaps. But others will think like that. It is better to understand what is happening and look for benefits before a surge of people rush to enter,” I countered.

“Benefits, up there? Ah, you are a demonic cultivator,” he said and I stiffened up. “Hissk was wondering why you looked at me like food. Smart to not do anything.” His forked tounge exited his mouth for a moment, before returning to run over his very sharp teeth.

“Are you going to try and stop me?” I asked.

“No. We are team. Hissk knows you have secrets. Dangerous secrets that will hurt. Hissk will assess situation and then strike on his own,” he replied. I hesitated as I left the side chamber, but Hissk didn’t say anything or move from his position. I wanted to say several things, but in the end I decided it wasn’t worth the headache or drama.

We were temporary teammates and that was it. Now that we had differing opinions on what to do next, it was best that we split peacefully. While I was risking my life, nothing would be gained by sitting deep underground in the barrier sphere, hoping for something to come to me. That would be a far bigger gamble, and I hated to be passive.

As I prepared another array to cut back to the surface, I carefully considered how I would handle things once I got up there. I pulled out the components of Chicken and began reassembling it and reactivating everything. While the spatial suppression would be annoying by slowing me down and limiting my height, it was better than trying to walk everywhere.

If I was fast enough, I could grab benefits before others could get to them. It would have been better with a dragon than my flying brick, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. I had to work with what I had. There was a high chance I would die or be caught up in a stray attack. I had no idea what would happen to my soul in the Gu Container, but I felt confident in assuming it wouldn’t be anything good.

I needed to make a final push to reach immortality. That was the goal. Once I had that strength, I could keep accumulating and then try and get to the demonic cultivator hiding in the star. I wasn’t sure about that last part yet, but the first problem was strength and there was only one way to solve that.

Once I felt fully ready, I cut my way back to the surface. I left a plug behind me as I flew up the shaft on Chicken. The molten metal flowed more quickly at the surface, but I could see the deformation quite deep down already as well.

The heat was probably moving outwards through the solid metal. The temperature had increased very slowly on our journey. All of it was heating up, but there was a lot of metal. A good portion was probably vaporized into the atmosphere of the central area of the Gu Container as well.

Flying up the shaft, I exited into a hot environment, strong wind, and molten metal everywhere I looked. The horizon curved upwards, since this was the interior of a sphere. It gave a strange sense of vertigo as I looked around.

At least the heat wasn’t as bad as the Great Desert under the Life Light. I had no doubt if I flew higher it would get worse, but my cultivation was stronger, my body was stronger, and I was mentally prepared for this hell. There was energy in the air, but it was chaotic, moving about in waves. I didn’t fly up that high, since I didn’t want to be easily spotted by others.

Even an immortal cultivator would struggle looking at so much. Looking about, the surprising thing was how clear everything was visually. There was no haze or distortion. It was probably the demonic cultivator. He wanted people to spot each other and come into conflict. The more we fought the less at risk he was looking down at everyone.

Below me the shaft was covered up by the molten metal as if it never existed. That was another reason I brought Chicken out, so I had some place to rest on. Just when I thought the environment couldn’t get worse, the demonic cultivator set out to prove me wrong. If I ever created a super fortress like this, I would remember this layout, the demonic cultivator Gu Container special.

While it was tempting to just fly about, that meant acting as bait. It was better to wait and keep an eye out for something interesting. The waves of energy before had stopped. I guess the fight was over, but a new one was bound to start up sometime.

The surface below me was just flat molten metal. Well there was a slight curve to create this insanely huge sphere, but there were no terrain features or anything else, just molten metal. While it might seem like a good idea to make a hole for the ocean of blood to rush through, there would be defenses against such a thing and it would do very little.

Like a pinprick on a whale or pissing into an ocean, nothing worthwhile would be accomplished. This environment was so large that only a large scale environmental change would cause a lasting impact. A small action would do nothing and just draw unwanted attention.

There was a distant explosion. Looking up towards that location. There were two figures fighting each other. One appeared quite large and blocky and the other was darting about the first figure. It was hard to make out at this distance.

Activating Chicken, I went in the direction of the battle. The closer I got, the more I was able to make out both combatants. The first one was some kind of giant war machine the size of a small office building. The other was a winged humanoid, feathers not scales, with a ranged weapon they were firing constantly.

Beams of energy struck at the war machine, which blocked the attacks with a glowing blue shield. There were massive explosions and shockwaves, stirring up the molten metal. I noted that the war machine was hovering just over the molten metal with jets of some kind.

It kept trying to angle a large weapon to target the flying humanoid that kept attacking it. The humanoid was at the level of an immortal and the war machine was a bastion of power.

“NUCLEAR BEAM!” The war bot let out a loud roar. My translator in my breathing mask struggled to translate over the immense noise. A bright white lance was emitted from the war machine. For a single moment the beam crossed across the atmosphere, headed towards the far side of the sphere. The winged humanoid had barely managed to dodge. I was squinting and could make out their blurry figure against the background of the bright white attack.

That was when the energy containment around the beam broke apart in a set manner, creating massive horizontal rings of bright white light that were emitted from the beam. These rings transversed across the distance almost as fast as the main attack, which had created a massive explosion that I could even see from here, on the other side of massive sphere.

An explosion that big was world ending. If it had hit the continent I had grown up on, there wouldn’t be a continent left. It would have been vaporized. If that was just nuclear power, then it had been increased to ridiculous levels by energy. Thankfully the emitted ring shockwaves didn’t strike me. The winged humanoid wasn’t as lucky. They let out a high pitched scream as they plummeted towards the molten metal below.

I had Chicken take off as fast as it could towards the falling figure as the molten metal surged up and down from the impacting shockwaves. Glancing at the war machine it began to adjust the positioning of secondary weapons, while its massive cannon was emitting a column of white smoke. Such an attack wasn’t something that could be spammed.

Pulling out my sword, I swung at the falling figure. They were burnt and immobilized from being hit by a shockwave of that attack, but they were still alive. Their head was separated from their body. I put my sword away and grabbed onto the corpse and the head. There was still too much energy to put them in spatial storage, but they could go on Chicken, laid over an empty seat and between my chest and the body of the vehicle.

This surprise attack took less than a second, but the war machine was already acting to attack me. I zipped away as bright white beams cut through the space I had just been on. I altered my path as my danger sense flared. Huge explosions and molten metal rained down on me.

That was when I realized a very important fact about this place. It was curved inwards, not outwards. There was no escaping beyond the horizon, since there was no horizon. I kept putting distance between me and the war machine, but it kept firing beam attacks at me, which I had to keep dodging.

Even as the distance increased the attacks didn’t relent. I began searching the being’s body, quickly pocketing anything that had energy in it that would likely cause a problem. It was a massive headache to do this while flying and under attack.

Once the corpse was stripped, I quickly tossed it off the side and pulled out my compression plate. I formed a new meatball and tossed it into my mouth. A sense of power surged through me. Whatever this being was, it hadn’t been quite powerful in life.

I had probably flown a tenth of the way around the sphere, before the war machine finally stopped attacking. There was one source of cover. The star hanging above everyone’s head. I didn’t stop, even if the attacks stopped, wanting to put a bit more distance in case the war machine decided to launch a surprise attack.

If it was annoyed enough and fired that nuclear beam attack at me, I would have no chance. I didn’t attack and only stole a corpse. It was a machine, it had no reason to want corpses. Still, it was clearly annoyed with me. I was just hoping it would stay at the level of annoyance.

I came to a stop again and looked around. The super explosion form before was fading away. In a day or so, there would be no sign it ever happened. I had gotten one step closer to reaching immortality. Two or three more meatballs of that caliber and I would be able to break through past the second bottle neck.

I plucked the cooled metal off my martial robe. It was looking slightly worn, but there was nothing I could do. It was decent quality, but it wasn’t meant to handle events of this caliber. Looking around, I kept my eyes open for my next target and to see if anyone or anything was moving in my direction. There was nothing, but I just had to wait until another fight started.

While I might not be powerful enough to win in a head on fight, Chicken gave me the courage and ability to dart into a conflict and get out before I could be heavily targeted. I checked the possessions I had recovered from my target while keeping an eye on the surrounding area.

A spatial ring, a good one. Lots of random junk with no value. I tossed all that stuff out of the ring, since it didn’t matter. They were probably personal items, but they didn’t concern me. The only grave marker for the slain being would be the Gu Container.

What was left wasn’t anything that valuable. Some basic devices, similar to what I already had. Some clothing, which would be useful if mine became more damaged, and several guns with ammo. That had been what this being had been using against the war machine. They were clearly powerful and could be stored. That was it in terms of loot.

It was quite a good haul, since I considered getting anything beyond the corpse as extra. The fact I escaped without getting hurt or knocked down, was a win in my book. Just needed to pull this off a couple more times and hopefully find something to get me up to the star to the demonic cultivator’s citadel.

Looking about again, I noticed some flashes in the far distance across the sphere, but that was very far away. It was tempting to head in that direction, but it would take over a day to circumnavigate around ten percent of the circumference. There was nothing else going on, so it might be worthwhile to show up.

If a fight lasted that long there were probably others like me honing in on the spot. If I ever started a super organization it would be nice and compact. The distances were meant to make things difficult and I was feeling that difficulty.

Looking at the fight in the distance, it was away from that war machine, so it wouldn’t be a bad thing to head in that direction. I didn’t see any other movement. I would take a chance and hopefully I would come away with another success. Since I was hunting people down trying to third party fights, hiding and waiting weren’t good strategies. Hiding was mostly pointless since there was no cover except the star. Waiting was just waiting for death in some form to find me.

I had mobility, I would use it. If things got dangerous, I would run away. I wouldn’t hesitate to run away if the opponent was too strong like that war machine. That thing was a technological terror. Too bad I couldn’t upgrade my mount to war machine. War machine beat humanoid dragon in comparing what would be the better mount. Especially with a super attack like that nuclear beam.

Perhaps someone was inside of it. Well, it didn’t matter if there were other beings hiding inside the war machine, it was clearly far out of my league. It was also concerning since they weren’t going after the demonic cultivator hiding in the star above us. Well the chaos would allow me to climb out of this place and reach the final set of obstacles.

This battlefield would also hone my fighting instincts. I would need every edge I could gather to come out ahead of the demonic cultivator if I made it that far. But I believed in myself, which was why I was thinking about future steps and if there was anything I could adjust or do to prepare. Hissk was good, but he lacked confidence to risk it all.

He was too calculative. In a situation like this, you had to look at the bigger picture, which was the Gu Container. Waiting for the collapse to reach this point or the environment to change, would only make things worse, not better. Time was a resource here. Something that a lot of immortals and powerful beings had forgotten, but not me. I had felt pressure my entire life, racing against time to reach immortality. My first life was a distant haze. Even my time in the Zhou Family was a distant memory. I struggled to recall my sister’s face. My determination hardened. I wouldn’t fall here. Even against war machines, immortals, and demonic cultivators.

My danger sense spiked! I swerved out of my path as spear shot up from the molten ground to where I had been flying.