Chapter 354: The Discovery
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Nangong Wuyue left a protective enchantment around the knights who died in a violent way. This was to ensure that their bodies would be shielded from the attacks of beasts in the mountains while they waited for the rest of the troop to look for the missing knights in the morning. Nangong Wuyue and Hao Ren did not report it to any of the outposts in the mountains, because it was difficult to explain why two unregistered, foreign mercenaries, who had not filed for patrol appeared in the vicinity of where the Royal Army were deployed at night. Everybody in Leyton town was in a panic at that time, and the Royal Knights as well as the Church Knights were on high alert. Therefore, they did not want to cause any trouble.
But shortly after they left the spot, Wuyue suddenly sensed that the enchantment she left behind had been touched by some sort of uncanny energy. An incredible change had occurred around the area where the enchantment was created. She immediately stopped Hao Ren and said, "Let's turn back! Something's happening there!"
Hao Ren had no idea what was going on, but he immediately followed Nangong Wuyue and went back to the aforementioned spot. Both of them held their breath as they approached the place. By the time they got back to the little clearing, they saw an incredible scene: The bodies of the dead were gradually being swallowed by the earth!
The rugged, rocky ground sprung up and wriggled silently as it swiftly swallowed the knights' bodies into the ground. It was as if it had softened into mud. The scene looked like living swamp—strange and eerie. Many of the knights' bodies had disappeared, leaving only a small amount of blood and its lingering smell at that point. The remaining bodies were also almost completely swallowed up. When Hao Ren and Nangong Wuyue arrived, they could only see a few pieces of armour sinking into the swamp at an astonishing speed!
"What's going on?!" Hao Ren exclaimed loudly when he saw the strange scene. He was not good at holding his breath. Now that he found no enemies at the scene, he let his guard down. But at the moment he shouted, the devouring "mud" suddenly paused as though it sensed something. Then, it suddenly sped up and sputtered out more than 10 "mud" thorns, aiming to stab Hao Ren as well as Nangong Wuyue.
The "mud" quickly hardened and turned into sharp, stone thorns in the air.
Nangong Wuyue's serpentine body was huge, so she was unable to dodge. She could only coil her tail to resist the force. Hao Ren reacted quickly and rushed forward to block all the stones. Those sharp and unusually strong stones burst upon hitting his shield. They jangled loudly as they shattered into pieces and scattered themselves across the ground.
Hao Ren and Nangong Wuyue were temporarily hampered by this unexpected situation. By the time they reacted, it was over: all the bodies in the little clearing had disappeared, leaving only a little blood and a few scattered pieces of weaponry. The soft ground had also gone back to its original state. When Hao Ren stepped on it, he could feel that it was solid stone.
"What the hell was that?" Nangong Wuyue wriggled forward, a little scared. She leaned down to touch the stone and examined their surroundings with the tip of her tail.
The MDT flickered and floated towards Hao Ren as it said, "I just detected a magic reaction, but as soon as we got closed in, it quickly shifted. According to the sensitivity of the shift and the counter-attack just now, someone should be watching this place. I just wonder where this person is. There's no one in my radar's range."
"Were the bodies swallowed underground?" Hao Ren was thinking about another problem. He had just witnessed the knights' bodies being swallowed up by the earth. The scene was so strange, but he could relate it to the suspicious camp he had seen at the outpost by the lake: It was also a scene after a fierce battle with traces of blood and its smell, but there were no corpses. "Dig down!"
He released a self-regulatory machine from his Dimensional Pocket. The robotic octopus was initially surprised by its surroundings before it received instructions from Hao Ren. It then placed its tentacles under its body to form a ring-shaped drill. It emitted a bright, blue light from the tip of its tentacles as its whole body rotated rapidly and dug down.
The excavation point selected by Hao Ren was where one of the bodies had disappeared. He felt that if the body had been swallowed up by the earth, it would have at least left something behind. However, after the robotic octopus drilled more than 10 m all the way down, it only brought him some stones and gravels.
"Gone?" Hao Ren was surprised. "Was it absorbed by Dragonspine Ridge?"
"Absorbed" was the word that popped up in his mind, but that reminded Nangong Wuyue of something else. The siren immediately held her breath and put her body against the ground, trying to sense something. Hao Ren was a little curious and asked, "What are you looking for?"
"Water; the moisture I left and the moisture in the knights' bodies." Nangong Wuyue frowned and searched carefully. "I remember the water that I've just touched. I can feel it no matter where it goes, even if it turns into steam or gets absorbed by the mountain... I can feel the water moving deep underground. It's moving fast."
Hao Ren immediately stopped talking and allowed Nangong Wuyue to slowly sense it. Nangong Wuyue's talent was completely inspired. Her consciousness was spreading rapidly through the water in the atmosphere and the soil. The shape of Dragonspine Ridge was slowly being sketched out in her mind, with varying concentrations of water as lines and colours depicting a three-dimensional image that was vaguely similar to the real world. Dragonspine Ridge was a dry, unpleasant grey in this image. Farther down the image, only a few rivers in the mountain's culvert showed a crisp blue colour. Amid these peculiar shades, a shimmering hue was moving rapidly beneath the earth, and it was about to leave her sensing range.
Nangong Wuyue immediately raised her body, hissing as she quickly slithered and gave chase. "Over there! Quick!"
Hao Ren did not have time to ask about what was happening and just followed her.
They ran at top speed across the mountain road and soon, left the normal path into a primitive, mountainous area where ordinary people would find difficult to reach. Strange rocks, high slopes and steep roads; it was almost impossible to walk on the path. Nangong Wuyue followed the shortest route she could sense. She did not care if the path was a difficult one. Despite its difficulty, it was not a problem for them: Hao Ren jumped easily between the rocks like he was walking on flat ground. Nangong Wuyue was even more relaxed. She raised her upper body and her tail glided swiftly and smoothly across the rugged terrain.
"You're really steady." Hao Ren still had time to joke in such a situation.
Nangong Wuyue smiled and said, "Look up 'The Most Stable Mountain Parkour Video' on the internet. I uploaded it. I hold the record for taking a DV while travelling at top speed from the top of the mountain, all the way down. I didn't even use electronic image stabilisation during the entire process. Only two frames look blurry. Those majors in shooting will never be able to grasp my level of video shooting."
"What's the point of doing something like that?" asked Hao Ren.
Nangong Wuyue proudly showed off her image stabilisation skills and she said, "To get people to click!"
Hao Ren found the daily lives of these unusual creatures simply too interesting. How bored were they to come up with such an idea?
They were trying to catch up with the water vapours. After some time, they reached a place in the mountain where no one had ever set foot on before. The mountain rocks on both sides formed an encirclement and there was a winding road that extended down. The place in front of them seemed to be a deep valley. If you looked at it from afar, it would be covered by layers of rocks.
Nangong Wuyue sensed that the water in the depths of the ground had stopped moving so fast. Instead, it was slowly moving into the valley, spreading and gradually rising up at the same time. It appeared to have reached its destination and it was making some kind of bizarre transformation.
"Right in front of us." Nangong Wuyue lowered her voice as well as her body and said, "Be careful, I smell a strange odour. It's making me uncomfortable. The water element here is restless. Looks like, it's being forced into some kind of transformation."
While Nangong Wuyue and Hao Ren finally found some clues, Vivian and Lily had also reached the lakeside outpost. The both of them sneaked into the tunnel that they found on their previous visit.
They were moving in the opposite direction from the last time and the tunnel was stretching right before their eyes...
All the way to a place underground.