Cthulhu Gonfalon

To be honest, the new Rye Fortress that Sui Xiong renovated was not very beautiful, at least not from the outside.

Originally, the two towering inner and outer walls were indeed magnificent. However, with a roof of the same color over them, the walls suddenly lost their grandiosity. From afar, it was like a huge black cylinder coming out of the ground. Fortunately, its top shrunk smoothly and became smaller. All the way at the top, there was a spire. If only the roof could be a little rounder and slightly bigger…

This design was Sui Xiong’s original intention, but after he had come up with it, he felt that something was not right. No matter how he looked at it, he could not find the problem. But in his heart, the feeling that something was not right was getting stronger and stronger. Finally, he simply made a miniature model that was palm-sized, and then, he understood what went wrong.

Oh god! What a dome! Within the so-called “folk culture,” this was simply called “A Stick to the Sky!”

As an art student, Sui Xiong lacked a lot of knowledge that ordinary college students should have. But he also had a lot of knowledge that generally, universities in this world would never teach. For example, he knew that many cultural forms in the world still existed in relatively primitive areas. In these areas, there was still the worship of sex. And things like the Twin Milk Mountain and Heavenly Stick, which by the standards of the developed world would be regarded as inharmonious and unhealthy, were objects of worship.

Sui Xiong did not discriminate against such a culture. But he certainly did not want to practice it personally.

The thought of how the future generations might compare him with Steele because of this “One Stick to the Sky Fortress” gave him a toothache.

Although he did not have any teeth to start with.

He had no teeth, yet he still had a toothache. This went to show how serious the problem was. So Sui Xiong’s final choice in making the overall look of the fortress like a spike pointing to the sky was actually his last resort.

Such a shape was in fact, not considered mighty and domineering. So he had to put in more effort into the interior design.

Therefore, Sui Xiong got to work.

First, he planned to design the inside of the fortress into a maze with nine curves and eighteen rings. Unless it was someone with the right to use this secret passage, if not it would take a long time to pass through this fortress, even with a map in hand.

This was naturally an extremely effective means, but there was still work required to be done to prevent anyone from smashing through the door.

When playing board games in his own world, Sui Xiong had once encountered a kind of player known as the “Door Smashing” group. Whenever they encountered mazes or puzzles in the midst of missions, they would never do what they were asked to do honestly. They would tend to resolve the issues by using simple and crude means.

For example, someone had devised a mission as such: a village chief felt uneasy about the mass multiplication of goblins in a nearby cave. He wished to recruit a group of warriors to annihilate them. As a reward, he would give away a few of his treasured magic scrolls to the heroes who could annihilate the goblin tribe.

According to how normal people like Sui Xiong would think, of course, everyone would put together their equipment and pack their supplies, then head to the cave to fight and eliminate the goblins. Then they would return to claim their rewards. But the Door Smashing group would not do so. When Sui Xiong participated in this game, he had seen with his own eyes how a few players from the Door Smashing group blocked the entrance of the cave with several large rocks and then through the cracks found within the stones, they filled the inside of the cave with smoke. Then following the movement of smoke within the cave, they located and blocked the various vents of the cave.

They had brought enough rocks over to block all the exits of that cave, then they went to work on other things. About a month later, they returned to the cave. They unblocked the entrance of the cave and saw dead bodies of goblins strewn all over the ground.

These hapless magic beasts died of thirst. Though they could rely on killing each other, then feeding on each other’s flesh to get food, they were still stuck in a situation where they had food but no water. Under such a circumstance, they would, in fact, die much faster than not eating and drinking at all…

So the mission was accomplished. Other than using up some physical strength and time, there was nothing else that the Door Smashing group had consumed. They got their reward easily.

At that time, Sui Xiong was dumbfounded. Thereafter, he had picked up quite a handful of tricks from this Door Smashing group.

For example, if there was a treasure trove right ahead, but the door was locked, what should be done?

Ordinary people would think of finding the key to open the door or letting thieves try to pick the lock. The Door Smashing group would simply smash the door directly—because this was such a classic method, thus giving rise to the name “Door Smashing” group.

Then what if one were to encounter a maze. What should be done?

Ordinary people would carefully explore their way like how thieves would have done. They would advance while making their own maps as they carefully explored the way out. The Door Smashing group’s method was to directly smash the walls and go straight through the maze.

In addition, there were also all kinds of situations that need not be further mentioned. In short, the Door Smashing group was a dynamic and energetic existence. Yet their existence was a source of distress for anyone tasked to design mazes and missions.

Unquestionably, Sui Xiong also wanted to prevent the Door Smashing group from stirring up trouble. This was why he reinforced the walls of the mazes inside the fortress with extra strength. Want to break down the walls? If you are capable of doing so, then this fortress would be nothing to you at all.

According to his test results, which were based on conservative estimates, those who were able to break through the walls were obviously at least at the advanced legendary level.

Those who were at the advanced legendary level were no cabbages from the fields. On the entire Main Plane, the total number could probably be counted on one hand. This was why Sui Xiong was totally not worried about a wild advanced legendary being suddenly appearing to cause him any trouble.

That being the case, this maze was as steady as Mount Tai.

I think it’s best that I don’t toot my own horn. From what I can recall, the boastful ones generally receive a slap from reality.

Sui Xiong looked at the maze that was constructed purely out of massive black rocks and laughed. He wiped away all the messy thoughts in his mind and began to work on decorating it.

Question: What kind of material should be used to decorate the maze?

Answer: What else but traps!

Though the maze itself alone had a certain level of defensive power, this defensive power was not strong enough. After all, the maze itself was unable to kill anyone. So it needed something that could really hurt the enemies.

The answer to what could do harm to enemies would either be soldiers or traps. In the future, there would definitely be soldiers stationed inside the fortress. But if the traps were strong enough, they could kill some of these soldiers stationed in the fortress. If there was really a battle, it would be easier for the soldiers to destroy the enemies.

This was the reason why Sui Xiong began to lay traps in the maze. He set all the traps that he could think of inside the maze. For example, swinging beams and rolling stones, crossbows and ground spikes, lightning and poisonous gases, sticky glue and fire pillars… All kinds of traps were put together. In this maze that was not very large, there was a total of more than 1000 traps.

These traps were not isolated but interlocked with one another. A trap was mostly connected to a few other traps. Even if the enemy managed to escape from one of these traps, he might not be able to escape from the rest. Even if they were very resourceful or had all the luck in the world to be able to escape the entire set of traps, they would not be able to rejoice too soon. Because these traps were able to recover automatically.

Anyway, after all the traps were set in place, Sui Xiong had once triggered them all to activate them. Then he created a clone whose physical attributes matched that of a normal human being and tried going through the maze.

In the end… even though he knew where and what kind of traps were ahead of him, his clone could only break through slightly short of a fifth of the entire distance before falling prey to the traps.

“NICE!” Retracting his clone, Sui Xiong laughed heartily and said, “That’s the effect I wanted!”