“So tell me Mr. Yu, why are you even interested in the student duel anyway, if you are confident that you can completely block off the attack from an avatar of a god.” asked Dolores when she saw Jianmen stepped out of his own portal and joined her and Professor Atkinson on yet another trip to the underground temple.
“Well, I have my reasons, I can tell you later. Also I just feel like it. You can always learn something when watching someone else’s fight.” Jianmen smiled: “Now, let’s go down and brave a fallen god’s temple.”
“Here’s the probe.” Professor Atkinson handed Jianmen an eye-shaped artifact: “I improved it a little since we were last here - hopefully this time it can catch whatever was down there.”
“If not, I can still put this on it.” Jianmen took out a golden metal ring and showed it to Professor Atkinson and Dolores: “But it might make the video feed a little blurry and the footage might even hurt a little to watch. Hopefully it’ll never come to that.”
“Understood. We should just be cautious first. It’s not cheap to repair.” Dolores shook her head: “Though, if we got some footage, we might have a better standing to ask for funding.”
“If you don’t mind me being a little direct - but your funding situation makes no sense to me. Did you piss off anyone from the funding committee?” Jianmen asked.
“Yeah, let’s not ruin our day where we can make some important discoveries.” seeing that Dolores was about to complain, Professor Atkinson promptly said: “Let’s go make history - I don’t think there’s many alive that could say that they’ve ventured into the temple of a fallen god.”
“Have you heard back from the library or Paulo Chang? About Fog Dwellers?” Jianmen asked.
“Well, no. We’re still waiting on the administration. Turns out rules have changed and we cannot just simply contact individuals from the elemental world anymore, especially now Paulo Chang is an Elemental Lord.” Dolores sighed: “These red tapes, I swear to god...”
“Hey, if we found anything, the process could go faster.” Professor Atkinson shook his head and said.
“Be careful.” when Jianmen was about to venture through the stairs leading downward behind the gate again, Dolores said to Jianmen: “Not that we don’t trust you, but this is an avatar of god we’re talking about.”
“No worries, even if I fail to contain it I could still easily escape.” Jianmen nodded, with his Chinese Knot in hand.
This was the second time Jianmen went down these stairs, and just like last time there was still a lot of fog around, and it got thicker the deeper Jianmen went. When Jianmen got close to the edge of the “safe zone”, he readied his Chinese Knot and asked Professor Atkinson and Dolores through the probe: “I am already at the place where I got attacked last time, can you see anything? I can see a lot of shapes of humans, animals and other creatures made of thick fog.”
“Well … I can see pieces of thicker fog.” Dolores answered.
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“The same with me. I can only see some pieces of thick fog, but I can’t make out what they look like and can’t see the details.” Professor Atkinson answered: “Looks like the probe would need more calibration.”
“I think you may need a better probe to get more detailed footage. I can sense that this probe may not have enough energy spectrum range.” Jianmen stood where he was for a short time to allow himself and Professor Atkinson and Dolores to observe the surroundings: “Or you can come down and take a look yourself later.”
Out of nowhere, the giant figure with a wide body, four arms and a long neck appeared again and charged at Jianmen. Jianmen immediately backed off and pointed the probe at the figure: “Can you see it? Tell me if you can see it!”
“No! Just a big thick piece of moving fog! Are you getting attacked again?” Professor Atkinson asked, with concern: “Be careful! ”
“Looks like it’s not always respecting the ‘safe zone’.” Jianmen hopped on the wall and evaded one swing of black scythe from the figure, the scythe swept through the air and actually did not touch any parts of the wall or the stairs, even though it was a huge swing.
Hands of fog came out of the wall and tried to grab onto Jianmen’s ankles, but Jianmen was fast enough to make them miss at the last minute. The giant figure opened its mouth and seemingly let out a soundless roar, one of its arms expanded in size and tried to claw Jianmen from the wall.
Jianmen jumped from the wall while holding the Chinese Knot in front of him with his right hand, red threads shot from the knot and circled up the figure’s arm like countless red snakes. The figure swung the scythe again at Jianmen from below, aiming at Jianmen’s waist.
Jianmen placed his left hand down to guard. The edge of the scythe almost inched closer and closer, but it was also facing the exponentially stronger squeeze and friction of an invisible force field, which chipped away its momentum and its force bit by bit. When the scythe finally made contact with Jianmen’s palm, it already lost most of its power.
The hundreds, if not thousands of red threads that shot from the Chinese Knot, on the other hand, already roped around most of the figure’s fog body. And as Jianmen pushed the knot forward with his right palm, the threads glowed in orange and golden light, forming some kind of special seal that tethered the movements and flow of power of the figure, freezing it in its place.
“Hey Professor, Dolores, you can come in now, I think the avatar is contained.” Jianmen said to the probe.
There was no response.
“Hey, Professor?” Jianmen sensed that something was wrong, he was certain that the Professor and Dolores were not harmed, because his protection spell did not trigger, “Come in, can you hear me?”
Still, there was no response. Jianmen took a look around, and he sensed that the flow of fog around him had all stopped, it was as if the freeze of the avatar also had the same effect on everything around.
Jianmen rushed back to the underground temple above with a frown on his face. And there he saw it, both Professor Atkinson and Dolores were also frozen in their places, their lives not in any sort of danger, but just frozen, without any hint of the ability to move or function.