Chapter 98: The Wall of the Nether Palace

At Nazmir, the Underworld Palace, Liu Zhi stood by the newly completed wall, gazing up at the fortress tower that had taken nearly four months to build.

For reasons of labor, raw materials, and design, among countless others, Liu Zhi had poured every ounce of thought he possessed into it, and in the end he had only managed to raise a wall on the southern side of the Underworld Palace, one that severed the palace from the gray mist.

The wall stood thirteen meters high and six meters thick. Three people could walk abreast along its crest, while its base was broad enough to make the whole structure feel imposing and weighty. It was hollow inside, with concealed barracks, an armory, a medical room, a command room, and other functional chambers.

At the center of the wall stood a massive gate nearly ten meters wide. The stone drum Liu Zhi had placed within the Underworld Palace had already been moved to the middle of the gateway, dividing it into two pedestrian lanes on the left and right.

Hanging above the gate were six serpent skulls, all bleached white after their fangs and flesh had been removed. Their jaws gaped wide, and from each one extended a rope woven from spider silk, tightly fastened to both sides of a fifteen-meter drawbridge.

When necessary, the spider silk could lift the drawbridge, using it as the gate’s first barricade.

Beneath the bridge lay a moat nearly ten meters across.

Unlike an ordinary moat, this so-called moat extended all the way from the wall into the gray mist.

The entire thing was filled, layer upon layer, with spider silk and webs, and the same was true of everything outside the wall. All of it had been spun from the powerful silk produced by the Fate-Weaving Spider Maiden over this period. So much had accumulated that the webs had now mutated; if one were caught in them by mistake, even the Fate-Weaving Spider Maiden would be unable to deal with it.

No matter who it was, anyone who touched those webs would end up doing only one thing: struggling desperately to tear themselves free. Yet the more they struggled, the more webs they would collect, until at last they were dragged into that river of silk, unable to move at all.

That was precisely why Liu Zhi had agreed to the Spider Maiden’s moat plan, and why he had her pour large quantities of spider silk potion into it every day.

Now, anyone who wanted to leave the palace and enter the gray mist could do so only by crossing the drawbridge at the gate. As for escaping by way of the moat, not even a ghost could manage it.

On either side of the wall stood two arrow towers, nearly twenty meters high, though they had not yet been fully completed, to say nothing of the walls meant to connect them along both sides.

The southern wall had already consumed every ounce of Liu Zhi’s effort and resources over this period. Even the ground inside his palace had been excavated by more than a meter before enough stone had finally been gathered.

As for the other sides, far more time and resources would be needed before they could be raised.

“Still, this is good enough,” Liu Zhi said with satisfaction from atop the wall. “I never planned to finish every wall all at once. One completed entrance is enough for me. Now, all of you come up here.”

At his command, the guard detachment that had long since been selected moved quickly from the stairs built into the wall toward their assigned positions.

These guards had been chosen from among the new troops produced by the graveyard over the past few months.

Because Liu Zhi had spent these months ambushing and pursuing the giant serpents, the graveyard had not received much new flesh to work with, and it still had no chance to reach level two.

Even so, the construction of other buildings had still improved the troops produced there.

For example, the gold skeletons no longer needed goldsmiths to hammer gold leaf little by little. Liu Zhi and the Fate-Weaving Spider Maiden had developed an alchemical formula that could melt gold into a kind of gilding lacquer. Once it was applied to a skeleton’s surface, it produced the same effect as a gold skeleton.

The skeleton goldsmiths under Liu Zhi’s command had all switched careers and were now making ornaments instead, since his city currently needed a great many gold decorations.

That said, the wall did not require many gold skeleton troops. Liu Zhi had stationed only about a dozen gold skeletons to patrol the top of the wall, while nearly forty archers armed with serpent-bone bows were assigned to stand watch here.

If any enemy ever made it into the spider-web moat, the skeleton archers could attack on their own and finish off those who had been trapped.

Two mutated walking corpses also stood at the gate.

These two corpses had been altered by the masks previously merged into the Underworld Palace. Compared with ordinary walking corpses, they were far more intimidating: over two and a half meters tall, they looked like gray-green hulks.

Liu Zhi even outfitted them in full sets of leather armor made from serpent hide and gold, dressing them so they gleamed brilliantly, and gave each of them a long wooden staff. If any enemy ever rushed from the gray mist onto the drawbridge, they would simply sweep them straight into the moat.

But after staying in the Underworld Palace for so long, Liu Zhi had not yet seen anything come charging out of the gray mist. These two mutated brute-like corpses remained, for the moment, nothing more than imposing decorations standing guard before the gate.

Trailing behind Liu Zhi, the Fate-Weaving Spider Maiden swayed back and forth as she walked, and upon hearing his words, she began chattering again.

“I told you long ago that we could keep a whole colony of spiders in the moat. They wouldn’t even need to be big, just able to move freely on the webs. They could help clear out enemies that fell into the moat, and we wouldn’t have to feed them or anything, as long as...”

Hearing her bring up the idea again, Liu Zhi did not even bother to think it over. The Spider Maiden’s abilities were useful, but this was his Underworld Palace.

During these months of study, Liu Zhi had come to understand exactly what benefits a territory of his own could bring him as a necromancer.

He also understood that among the scoring for his novice mission, there would almost certainly be a measure of how well he controlled the Underworld Palace.

He would never allow anything to go wrong at the last moment, not even an idea proposed by one of his undead servants.

The Fate-Weaving Spider Maiden kept talking as though she had not noticed Liu Zhi’s lack of interest at all, but at that moment Videnina slipped to Liu Zhi’s side and blocked the Spider Maiden from following him.

When the Spider Maiden looked confused, Videnina raised her head and cast her a cool, disdainful glance.

Though Videnina did not speak much, the challenge in her eyes was unmistakable.

The Spider Maiden gave a sharp cry. “Videnina, what’s that supposed to mean? Looking down on me? Let me tell you, I—”

But Videnina did not listen to her babbling at all. With her four arms resting on the long sword at her waist, she simply followed behind Liu Zhi and walked down toward the base of the wall.