Chapter 3964: Abandoned Lab Turned Into Prison

The prison was ancient, the environment had been heavily altered by formations and the strange energies filling the deeper regions were remnants of something much older. Zhenyu’s observations gave those conclusions a proper foundation, though, and Lin Mu found that useful.

The Mad Demon Depths had originally been a laboratory and that realization alone explained a tremendous number of things: The strange creatures, the bizarre plants, the abnormal energies, the inexplicable formations and even the subterranean world itself.

The Mad Demon had apparently conducted experiments on an enormous scale.

Some involved living creatures, some involved energy and others involved the interaction between different Daos. The experiments had produced countless results, many of which were eventually abandoned.

The baleful energy occupying the deeper levels was one of those remnants and Lin Mu’s brows furrowed as he read Zhenyu’s explanation.

The energy had originally been created through failed experiments. Over countless years, it had accumulated throughout the lower sections of the Mad Demon Depths. It was unstable and harmful, and its presence had gradually altered everything around it.

Yet the Mad Demon had apparently found a way to recycle it.

"Resourceful man." Lin Mu continued reading.

The system was surprisingly efficient. The Mad Demon had designed the laboratory to reclaim waste energy from failed experiments.

Ambient Qi, vitality, baleful energy and several other forms of energy could be collected and processed through different formations before being redirected toward other parts of the laboratory.

The baleful energy was never intended to become the primary energy source. It was essentially waste being reused. Lin Mu found that particularly interesting. Even someone like the Mad Demon had apparently considered it wasteful to simply allow the energy produced by his experiments to dissipate.

The recycling system supplemented the laboratory’s main energy sources. Though, over time, however, the original laboratory had deteriorated as many formations had collapsed and several energy channels had become disconnected.

As such, entire sections of the recycling system had stopped functioning. Eventually, only a small fraction of the original system remained active.

The Heavenly Stream Guardian Sect had discovered the place long after that and rather than destroying it, they had repurposed it.

’The Mad Demon Depths became a prison.’ Lin Mu slowly nodded.

That explained why the place was simultaneously so sophisticated and so broken.

The sect had inherited an ancient laboratory and converted it into a containment facility. They had repaired enough of the existing formations to make the place useful as a prison while leaving most of the ancient infrastructure untouched.

Then there were the so-called deities.

Lin Mu’s expression became thoughtful as according to Zhenyu’s observations, the crystal skulls scattered throughout the prison were not actual divine beings. They were merely keystones.

The ancient formations recognized them as specific nodes within the energy recycling system. The prisoners had discovered some of these skulls long before Zhenyu arrived. Nobody knew who exactly had first found them or how much they had understood.

Some prisoners had apparently experimented with the skulls and over generations, those experiments had become traditions. Then the traditions became rituals and the rituals became beliefs.

Eventually, the prisoners began treating the skulls as manifestations of a deity.

Lin Mu stared at the information for a while. "So that’s how it happened."

The explanation fit everything he had seen.

The blood ritual had been real. The effects had been real. The prisoners were genuinely losing vitality. And the effigies really were absorbing it. Yet the thing receiving their blood was an ancient formation component.

There was no deity waiting beyond the skull. There was simply a system performing the function it had been designed to perform. The terrifying part was that the prisoners had developed their entire culture around that misunderstanding.

Their religion had essentially been born from a machine.

Lin Mu continued reading.

The ancient recycling system had originally been capable of processing many types of energy. Over time, most of those pathways had collapsed and now the remaining system primarily processed Qi and vitality.

That explained why the ritual was so important. The prisoners were periodically drained by the surviving formations. Their ritual behavior had become a coping mechanism, by willingly offering controlled amounts of vitality at regular intervals, they reduced the risk of the formation taking larger quantities from them later.

The practice had become self-perpetuating. New prisoners arrived and were taught the ritual by older prisoners. Those prisoners eventually became elders themselves and their descendants grew up believing in the same deity.

Nobody remembered where the practice had originated and nobody questioned why the deity needed blood. And now people had become so ignorant, some willing and some not, that they didn’t know the skulls were merely components of an ancient array.

Lin Mu shook his head. ’So this is why they still follow the old rituals.’

He had initially assumed the prisoners were simply maintaining an ancient religion because they had nothing else to believe in.

But the truth was considerably more complicated. Their rituals had a practical foundation. They actually did experience consequences when they stopped performing them. The prisoners simply misunderstood the mechanism.

Lin Mu continued and reached the information regarding the different levels.

His eyes narrowed as he remembered that the Chief had explained that there were three levels. According to Zhenyu’s observations, that was only partially correct.

The third level the Chief knew about was actually the primary storage region for the accumulated baleful energy. There was another level beneath it. That lower region contained the main reserves of vitality and Qi.

And beneath even that was the original laboratory. The place where the Mad Demon had actually performed his experiments.

Lin Mu paused. "Wait."

He reread the passage and his expression slowly changed.

"This place is the lowest level?" He looked around the white spatial environment.

The realization was strange. He had spent so much time thinking about descending deeper into the Mad Demon Depths that he had failed to recognize where he actually was. The hidden space beneath the Wild Peak crest had brought him directly to the deepest region.

The entire prison system existed above this location.

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