Escape

The room was dark, humid, and oppressively hot. The walls were metallic, and the floor formed a boxed, shallow pool of thick, oily green substance.

Beneath the oily layer, there was nothing but sand, black sand.

Encased within a thick and heavy metallic box that pierced into his body, restricting his limbs and thoughts, Samael could be seen. The only visible part of his frame was his head—the only part not trapped.

Around his neck sat a collar, linked to a chain that reached up to the ceiling, right beside hundreds of cannons embedded into the metal above.

He was trapped, confined, and chained down in every imaginable way.

This place was known as the Purging Putrid Chaos Prison—a facility hidden hundreds of thousands of kilometres beneath the earth's surface.

It served as a prison of transit, reserved only for criminals of the highest order. Those confined here were later transferred to a prison in the skies, the infamous Burning Heart Prison.

Only the worst of the worst scum had the "privilege" of ending up here. And somehow, Samael had found himself among them.

There was nothing useful in the room. 

Any movement, and the cannons above would fire, reducing him to ash. Any thought of escape, and the collar around his neck would fry his brain. And if he somehow managed to free himself, it would make no difference—the room was void of qi.

The oily liquid below would kill him instantly. The black sand beneath would shatter his soul. The very walls would compress and crush him into paste.

Even if, by some absurd miracle, he survived all that, he would only find more layers of security waiting beyond. And beyond those, hundreds of thousands of soldiers stood ready—monitoring him, waiting.

There was nothing to use. No tricks to apply. No powers to call upon.

'Well, this is rather peaceful,' Samael thought, unbothered by the total darkness that surrounded him. 'They've definitely improved since last time.'

'I guess they learned,' he mused with a quiet chuckle, reminiscing. 'Still… it isn't enough.'

Across all his lives, he—the Mad Emperor—was known as a man of countless hidden cards. He had always been capable of adapting to any situation.

As long as he could think, he could find a way. And this? This was nothing compared to what he'd endured before.

'Hm. This cage is actually quite tricky.'

The metallic box encasing him was, unsurprisingly, the most restricting feature of the entire cell.

It pierced his body, latching onto his organs, veins, and nerves. It interfered with their natural functions—taking full control.

It had overridden his body. He literally couldn't move, not even to breathe. Even that was controlled.

And beyond the physical restrictions, it interfered with his soul and mind through a network of runes that reduced his mental bandwidth and shrank his thought capacity—crippling him from within.

But clearly, it wasn't enough to fully restrain him.

Samael's Qi Rings manifested before him. Though invisible to the naked eye, they appeared crystal clear to him.

They began to spin.

Slowly, they pulled in the sand and the liquid below, transmuting and refining them into pure qi.

If transmutation could be used to turn qi into matter, the reverse was certainly possible.

The qi that formed immediately began to twist and spiral into runes. These runes layered themselves into a grand formation—a parasitic structure that wired itself into the existing formations embedded in the walls of his cell.

The surveillance systems monitoring his every breath weren't shut off. Instead, they were subtly altered. The feed was warped, twisted to maintain the illusion that nothing had changed.

It wouldn't fool them for long, but long enough.

CLICK!

The cage-suit encasing his body suddenly opened. A billow of smoke escaped into the air as the device powered down, its control fading away.

Samael slipped out of it, naked.

With a wave of his hand, he transmuted a set of black robes and dressed himself.

Perching atop the now-floating cage-suit, his hand reached up to remove the collar from around his neck. Then, he paused to breathe—a moment made almost unbearable by the suffocating heat of the chamber.

'Depending on how deep we are, and how far I am from the main tunnels, this could be suicide. But if I need it, I can always synthesise air using the qi in my blood. Long-term though…'

He frowned, thinking. Then, another idea sparked in his mind.

'Can I transmute these metals into qi, then cycle it through synthesis to produce air that my lungs can use…?'

Obviously, he could. And quite easily at that.

'But can I do it with my current power, without setting up a formation…? Wait—maybe if I use the runic vein casting, I can…'

Samael's thoughts spiralled through a world of endless qi control theories. He mapped out future steps, constructing a strategy.

Minutes passed. He nodded to himself in satisfaction.

Then, spiritualising his body and attuning it to the metal element, he vanished—dissolving into the very walls of his cell.

. . .

The exterior of the cells resembled the interior of a hollow tower. The center provided a dizzying view of levels stacked upon one another—an endless vertical corridor that seemed to stretch infinitely both up and down.

Each floor shared the same design.

On each side of the square railing guarding the central drop, three black marble doors were embedded into the metallic walls.

In total, twelve prisoners were held per level.

Other than that, nothing stood out. The floors seemed eerily empty, the absence of guards and weapons unsettling.

The white lamps fixed to the walls did little to dispel the oppressive silence. If anything, they made it worse.

Perhaps that was intentional.

BANG!

Suddenly, deafening alarms screamed through the prison. Red lights flared across the walls, pulsing in sync with the noise.

Hordes of soldiers appeared out of nowhere, emerging in perfect formation as they moved with mechanical precision, clearing floor after floor.

They were searching. Hunting.

Someone had escaped.

A prisoner was loose.