Chapter 112: Cavern
Hearing Shang Wei’s uncontrollable complaint, Yu Lianyun shrugged her shoulders, neither confirming nor denying it.
The history recorded in the murals ended here, and the rest were all evil and cruel ritual images. Taking any one out to shoot and restore would be a global banned film, but despite this, those nauseating and insane ritual of wishing images were not without value. At least they saw an unknown escape route.
That was a circle in the center of an unknown magic array. In the ritual recording murals, this circle had been opened, revealing a dark and deep cave straight to underwater. It was like a funnel for feeding the lazy. The sea monster back then was under the cave, opening its blood basin mouth, waiting politely for the sacrifice to fall. If it wasn’t full, it would reach out its “hand” to randomly select a “lucky” audience member as dessert after the meal.
The vibrations were getting closer and more intense, leaving little time for everyone.
Although that cave leading underwater was ominous and anomalous, waiting to be packed away by the merman monsters to face certain death was still worse than jumping into the cave to the bottom and seeking a slim chance of survival. Anyone whose mind was still normal would choose the latter without hesitation.
The group had no intention of fumbling with the mechanism. According to the murals, opening the stone gate of the cave required a large amount of manpower, so imitating the ancients was obviously impractical.
Secondly, because times had changed, they installed the mini bombs they carried for breaking obstacles on the stone gate of the cave. With the help of a mystic investigator in the team who was proficient in fluid dynamics, they maximized the reasonable use of the limited bombs, planned the blasting points, and set up the bombs.
The switch to detonate the bomb was pressed, and a dazzling flash of firelight instantly swept through the stone chamber, then the firelight was covered by massive stone powder and dust, spreading as a huge smoke screen in all directions.
“It’s open!” The sharp-eyed Shang Wei noticed a pitch-black crevice appearing on the ground and said excitedly.
At the same time, the mermen who noticed the explosion commotion all located the positions of the mystic investigators. The cave outside immediately echoed with strange roars, and the footsteps of the madly charging ones were even more maddening than a chainsaw of death.
Hearing those waves of footsteps, the mystic investigators who had some hesitation in their hearts and wanted to find other ways out completely dispelled the thought, following Yu Lianyun and Shang Wei one after another into the blasted-open cave.
Plunging into the water, the roughly ten-meter diving distance made everyone feel as if at the moment of hitting the water, their whole bodies were colliding against solid objects, with a strong wave of pain impacting everyone’s flesh and blood body.
In the dark and cold water bottom, the mystic investigators turned on their illuminating wristwatches, enduring the pain and swimming underwater.
Everyone was racing against time within the limited breath-holding duration, searching for a safe way out underwater.
And it seemed heaven did not want to cut off their path completely. After swimming an unknown dozens of meters, Shang Wei luckily discovered an air pocket underwater. They swam over without hesitation, emerging from the water surface one after another and entering the air pocket.
“Hurry, don’t stop.” After landing, Yu Lianyun felt her calves cramping and trembling, but she still forced herself to stand up, telling everyone to follow her continuing forward into the depths of the underground that the air pocket led to, saying, “It’s not that difficult for those merman monsters to find us.”
If the mermen discovered that the cave led to underwater, these creatures who were naturally good at swimming would chase without hesitation. Going underwater was like returning home for them, and they would naturally find this air pocket more easily than they could.
The mystic investigators who had landed knew their situation well and followed Yu Lianyun’s footsteps even if it meant crawling.
Although they were still in danger and had not escaped it, at least their survival so far was almost inseparable from Yu Lianyun’s wise decisions.
Everyone was now in a vast underground cave with rugged strange rocks and ore rare sight. Every naturally formed rare sight entered their eyes, and eerie winds howled around their ears, unsettling their minds.
Everyone’s mood was tense. Even Yu Lianyun was still nervous and uneasy about what had happened before. They had no time to appreciate this rare underground sight because in their eyes, those strangely shaped strange rocks were hideous crouching monsters, the light scattered by the glowing ore was sharp and sinister eyes, and those wind sounds and water droplets falling were the sounds of those monsters approaching.
Had they escaped? Were they temporarily safe?
It seemed their souls were still lingering in the thrilling experience on the ground, and in fact, they were indeed still walking on a tightrope in the sky.
Yu Lianyun often extended the back of her hand into the air to feel the airflow, which was the most basic way to judge an underground exit.
But despite this, even as Yu Lianyun and the others followed the direction of the airflow, they still had not found hope of an exit.
On the silent path forward in the underground cave, a mystic investigator suddenly let out a miserable scream. He seemed to have seen something and retreated in terror.
Everyone followed his terrified line of sight and immediately felt a shock like electricity, their faces showing extreme horror.
Only to see that in the crimson stone pit was piled full of decayed and dry bones—human ones, fish ones, and skeletons of other unknown creatures, just abandoned in the stone pit.
“This shouldn’t be the mermen’s lair, is it? Is this where they handle and dump leftovers and residue?” Shang Wei couldn’t help but shiver. So they hadn’t escaped to safety; they were goods delivered free to the door, walking right into the trap.
“Calm down.” Although Yu Lianyun’s scalp was silently screaming too, she still soothed everyone, saying, “It might not be the mermen’s. This could be what that repelled sea monster once digested and excreted.”
Oh, so it was the sea monster’s.
Feeling an even more terrifying danger, the soothed teammates felt even worse.
Yu Lianyun wanted to dry laugh to ease the awkwardness, but she felt she had no extra strength to make other expressions, so she just sighed and said, “Let’s keep going.”
Next, the things everyone saw became increasingly eerie and bizarre. Thousand-hole-ridden stones bore erosion marks that time could not smooth, and the ground and walls were full of irregular deformed lines, challenging human fragile and sensitive nerves. Even one more glance was a blasphemy and ravage of humanity’s hundreds of thousands of years of aesthetic concepts.
Yu Lianyun heard some gnawing sound. Glancing sideways, she discovered a panicked and uneasy teammate unconsciously gnawing his own finger, chewing the flesh and blood he bit off as he walked, as if he felt no pain, with blood all over his mouth.
Yu Lianyun stopped the other’s behavior, and the teammate who was loudly stopped only then noticed his self-mutilating mad act in a dazed expression.
His terrified pupils trembled, he screamed and spat out the flesh fragments and bone fragments from his mouth. His reason was nearly exhausted. After vomiting everything in his stomach today, the self-mutilating mystic investigator fainted to the ground.
Abiding by the principle of not abandoning or giving up, the others hesitated repeatedly but decided to take this teammate on the verge of collapse with them. After simply treating and bandaging his wound, they also covered his mouth with cloth to prevent him from unconsciously gnawing things again, especially biting the person carrying him.
However, this interlude did not end.
Just over ten minutes later, Shang Wei, who was carrying the injured teammate, noticed the other was burning up, suspected to be feverish. Upon checking the injured hand, he found the wound had shown signs of infection and suppuration in a short time—green, blood-colored, white unknown viscous substance interwoven in the incomplete wound, with a strong fetid smell that was pungent and hard to bear.
To be safe, everyone debrided the comatose teammate again, but it was as if he was cursed by an unknown source—his condition worsened again with time, with a series of water-pox-like pimples erupting from his hand and spreading across most of his body.
Seeing this, everyone had to stop to check. They tried to wake him, but he only briefly regained consciousness, muttering obscure strange language from his mouth, then fainted again, coughing up blood unconsciously with labored breathing.
At this point, everyone was helpless and could only watch a living person die from super-fast wound infection, then watch as his corpse turned into a puddle of fetid unknown liquid.
A chill surged in the hearts of Yu Lianyun and the other two. No one knew who exactly killed this poor mystic investigator or how he died so inexplicably and incurably.
The only thing they could guess was that on the road ahead, they had to stay calm, watch each other’s expressions and actions, and ensure no one was affected in reason by the terrifying surroundings. If anyone’s behavior showed strange changes, especially self-mutilation, they must remind and stop each other.
Otherwise, that teammate whose corpse rotted rapidly would be the foreseeable same result for them.
They kept walking like this, stepping into darkness, passing through a narrow long tunnel, and when they emerged, one of the three was missing, leaving only Shang Wei and Yu Lianyun advancing like walking dead.
Uh—
Suddenly, Yu Lianyun heard a familiar and eerie low hissing sound, her brain instantly clearing. She stopped, while Shang Wei’s face was pale, mouth agape, walking in a twisted and deformed posture, each step as if tearing his bones from the joints.
“Where have I walked to? Shouldn’t we follow the airflow direction?” Yu Lianyun’s mind was clear, looking at the dim underground full of twisted eerie lines, cold sweat flooding out like tide from her body, soaking her whole body again.
She hurriedly stepped forward to grab Shang Wei, who was trapped in an unknown hallucination, and after slapping him who knows how many times, finally barely woke him up.
Shang Wei, with a bloodless face, looked at Yu Lianyun with lingering shock in his eyes: “I… what happened to me?”
“Wake up, we almost went mad just now.” Yu Lianyun said.
“I can tell, your expression…” Shang Wei swallowed saliva, looking somewhat fearfully at Yu Lianyun’s currently ferocious and somewhat deformed smile.
Yu Lianyun, unaware of this, finally noticed her loss of control upon touching her face. She tried rubbing and patting the muscles on her face to relax them back to normal.
Rubbing her sore face, Yu Lianyun said somewhat expressionlessly: “I think we won’t be chased by the mermen anymore.”
“Yeah… Even those crazy mermen, after entering a place like this, probably couldn’t stay rational like us.” Shang Wei said. He coughed, and suddenly a violent and exaggerated stream of blood sprayed from his nose, which he hurriedly covered.
“Hold on.” Seeing the mutation in Shang Wei’s body, Yu Lianyun could only encourage him powerlessly like this.
Fortunately, Shang Wei finally stopped the nosebleed, though at the cost of becoming somewhat weak.
“I’ll give you some of my stamina potion to hold out a bit longer.” Yu Lianyun gave almost all the stamina potions she carried to Shang Wei.
Shang Wei took them in a daze, drank two bottles of potion, and slightly perked up, recovering some sanity and stamina.
They continued walking in the vast underground chamber, where the terrifying twisted eerie lines around them had seriously affected their cognition. They even began to somewhat unable to distinguish if the path they were advancing was the right one, or whether they were walking or crawling. They only knew they had to keep going until they found the way out.
“That’s… light…” After walking who knows how long, Yu Lianyun seemed to see brilliant light ahead. She got excited and shook the arm of Shang Wei, whose body was swaying at its limit.
Shang Wei shook his head groggily, eyes blurry. He didn’t respond to Yu Lianyun, just silently followed behind her for a few steps, then suddenly collapsed to the ground, falling into the crevice between the lines and being swallowed by the crevice.
Seeing this, the sadness in Yu Lianyun’s eyes didn’t last long. She just gritted her teeth, lowered her head, and continued walking step by step toward the light at the end.
She smiled and reached out to touch the light, but felt a wet and cold sensation, wave after wave washing over her fingertips.
“So this is what light feels like when touched?” Yu Lianyun thought blankly, then toppled forward herself.
Thud!
Her brain felt like it was heavily struck, Yu Lianyun jolted awake, wanting to breathe but feeling sourness in her mouth and nose, uncontrollably spurting out saltwater and sand.
Consciousness muddled, Yu Lianyun blankly looked around. Half her body was soaked in seawater, fingers dug into the wet beach. She lay sitting wet on the shore like this, with several floating corpses drifting on the sea surface waves, broken yacht wreckage piled on the shore, powerlessly accepting the seawater’s washing, just like her…
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