Sliding into the narrow passage, their bodies fell uncontrollably downward.
Theia was the first to emerge from the end of the passage, her body flipping nimbly in the air to land elegantly like a feather without making a sound.
A wooden box followed, but as it was about to hit the ground, it was caught by an invisible force and held steadily in mid-air.
Next came the disassembled raft components, followed by Lin Gui, who descended slowly with a faint airflow swirling around him.
Elvia was right behind him, performing a crisp roll to dissipate the impact and coming to a steady halt on one knee.
Last to emerge was Luo Youyou, the cat-girl, who slid out face-first and slammed into the ground.
“Meow!! Why didn’t any of you catch me, meow?!”
She looked up, her nose and cheeks covered in dust, her eyes brimming with tears of pain.
Lin Gui ignored her complaints, raising his staff and chanting in a low voice.
A soft orb of light emerged from the tip of his staff; the light from the Illumination spell dispelled the surrounding darkness, revealing the group’s environment.
This was an exceptionally wide passage, with floors and walls made of massive square stone bricks, fit together seamlessly and covered in mottled ancient patterns.
Most striking were the many large, eerie eye designs painted on the stone walls.
The lines of those eyes were coarse, yet the pupils were depicted with extreme detail, as if they were coldly watching the intruders from every angle with an unsettling scrutiny.
Lin Gui frowned and looked at Elvia, pointing at the eyes.
“Do you recognize where these come from?”
Elvia looked closely and shook her head.
“I’m not sure. When it comes to ruins and ancient civilizations, you should ask a scholar or a professional archaeologist.”
Having descended, Lin Gui didn’t delay.
His first step was to pull a seemingly aged brick from beside a wooden box.
With a “kind” smile on his face, he walked toward Luo Youyou as she stood up from the ground.
Luo Youyou looked at the brick in his hand and then at his expression; her cat ears instantly stood straight up, and her tail puffed out.
“W-w-what are you doing?!”
“Sorry, the next part of the operation involves some secrets that I can’t let you know,” Lin Gui said in a flat tone. “Just sleep for a while.”
Before he even finished speaking, the brick in his hand swung upward, carrying a faint ripple of mana.
Stun.
“Wait! I’ll close my eyes! I’ll cover my ears! I swear I won’t look at anything meow... Uwagh!”
THUD!
The brick slammed squarely onto the top of her head.
However, Luo Youyou was a Mid-tier High Rank Assassin after all, and her constitution was formidable; she only swayed and didn't fall.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
Facing an assassin a small sub-rank higher than himself, Lin Gui showed no carelessness whatsoever.
He cast the Stun spell a full thirteen times before the stubbornly resisting cat-girl finally toppled over.
Watching that familiar brick, Elvia’s mouth twitched slightly.
She remembered that she had seemingly been knocked out by him in the exact same way...
She walked over to Lin Gui and lowered her voice, her expression remaining solemn.
“I’m saying, are you really certain? That’s a Legendary!”
Lin Gui nodded, his tone still lacking any fluctuation.
“As long as they aren’t a Legendary mage, a Legendary diviner specializing in the Prophecy system, or a Legendary scout who has reached the peak of the perception field, they won't be able to see through the Shroud of the Gloomy Night.”
“??????”
Elvia knew the power of Lin Gui’s Dark-element concealment magic.
But she hadn't expected it to be so tyrannical.
Just to be safe, she confirmed again.
“How can you be so sure? A Legendary is two full major ranks higher than you! Rank suppression is absolute!”
Lin Gui didn’t answer directly but instead asked a question.
“Do you know how many Legendary Rank demons I dodged using this while crossing the Red Clay Desert Forbidden Zone?”
Elvia was stunned. “How many?”
“Three thousand, five hundred and eighty-seven...”
“??????” Elvia’s pupils contracted sharply.
“Three... over three thousand??!!”
“So, trust me.” Lin Gui tucked away the brick and looked at her calmly.
“As long as the Shroud of the Gloomy Night is active, it’s impossible for a Mid-tier Legendary Knight and a Low-tier Legendary archer to discover us.”
“Of course, don't even think about getting into a conflict with them; any one of those Legendaries could wipe us out in an instant.”
“We are only here to save people; we leave as soon as we’ve saved them.”
Theia moved the unconscious Luo Youyou onto the raft and secured her before binding all the wooden boxes tightly.
Afterward, she intended to scout ahead in the passage as usual.
But Lin Gui called her back.
“Theia, there’s no need.”
“Your scouting abilities aren't enough in the face of a Legendary archer; you might even be discovered first.”
“We’ll proceed under full concealment.”
“They shouldn’t be too far.”
He pushed the unconscious cat-girl further inward and sat at the very front of the raft, chanting a spell in a low voice.
The incantations for Shroud of the Gloomy Night and Levitation sounded one after another.
Sitting back on top of the wooden boxes, Theia’s eyes flickered.
She keenly noticed that Lin Gui’s chant time seemed to have shortened again!
When they were killing the Lyon Knights in the Black Demon Forest.
Levitation required about twelve seconds of complete chanting, and Shroud of the Gloomy Night needed about three seconds.
Yet now, Levitation only took two seconds, and Shroud of the Gloomy Night was reduced to a single second!
This had nearly reached the threshold of chantless casting!
Even if she wasn’t a mage, Theia knew.
Chantless casting was the sign of a mage reaching the pinnacle of mastery over a specific spell.
But very few mages would be obsessed with it, because the effort and the reward were often disproportionate.
Achieving chantless casting could certainly compensate for the fatal flaw of a mage’s long casting time.
However, to reach that realm, the time and energy spent could be measured in years.
Furthermore, the higher the spell's rank, the longer it took; the loss outweighed the gain.
Theia looked at Lin Gui’s back in confusion.
This exaggerated rate of progress... could it be that this guy had been secretly training behind their backs?
Completely unaware that his abnormal breakthrough in strength had raised doubts in his companion, Lin Gui controlled the raft.
To avoid drawing attention, he canceled the Illumination spell.
The orb of light overhead vanished silently, and the path was instantly swallowed by pure darkness.
Lin Gui steered the raft, flying silently through the spacious passage built of massive stone bricks.
Absolute darkness did not hinder his perception.
Wind Listening provided feedback on the subtle changes in the air currents.
Combined with Theia’s whispered guidance from the side, identifying the direction was not difficult.
Before long, Theia suddenly whispered, “Stop! There’s something strange on the ground ahead.”
Under Lin Gui’s precise control, the raft came to an instantaneous halt and slowly descended.
He used Levitation to pull an unremarkable, dark-colored chunk of material from the floor toward him.
A small flicker of flame ignited on his fingertip to provide light.
Novice Magic, Ignite.
After seeing what it was, the expressions of all three darkened.
It was a piece of meat... a chunk of flesh that clearly belonged to a human, complete with skin and a few hairs.
The edges were jagged, looking as if it had been ripped off by force.
Elvia stepped forward to take a closer look, her gaze turning so dark it seemed as if it could drip ink.
“It’s the work of that lunatic Gorn.”
“That guy loves the smell of blood, so he usually carries a slave with him, or a civilian he’s 'conveniently' snatched.”
“He holds them in his arms and flays the flesh off them one piece at a time, licking the blood that flows out.”
Her voice carried a suppressed loathing.
“To prevent the person’s screams from disturbing his 'sadistic whim,' he uses specialized steel needles to pierce their vocal cords beforehand.”
Hearing this, Theia’s throat instinctively rolled as she made a faint swallowing sound.
Elvia seemed to hear it and turned her head, looking at Theia with a hint of cold mockery.
“So, half-demon, if Gorn finds out that his precious Azure Echo bow is in your hands...”
“I suggest you better pray that you have enough time to end your own life before he catches you.”
The team continued forward.
At intervals, Lin Gui would discover similar pieces of flesh on the ground.
They were like gruesome markers pointing the way.
After a corner, under Theia’s guidance.
They saw a woman's corpse, discarded in the corner like a thrown-away rag doll.
Theia stepped forward to examine it closely.
When she saw the corpse's limbs covered in dense, bone-deep cutting wounds—and the edges of the wounds were white and rolled back, clearly the result of repeated cutting—Theia’s hand holding her bow couldn't help but tremble slightly.
“So... cruel...”
At the woman's neck, a long, slender steel needle had pierced through her throat.
The expression frozen on her face was not one of pain, but a thorough numbness and emptiness.
It was as if her consciousness had already been destroyed by endless torture before death arrived.
Theia sighed and identified the woman's vague features.
“She’s one of Bob’s family members; I saw her a few times in Caran. It's not Rona.”
Hearing this, Elvia actually sighed with some disappointment, muttering in a low voice.
“What a pity. If it were Rona, we wouldn't have to keep going; we could just turn around and run for it...”
She leaned into Lin Gui’s ear and urged him again.
“See? You’ve witnessed Gorn’s brutality; he’s such a terrifying madman, so it’s best if we avoid him. Don’t you agree?”
The result was predictable.
Her attempt to persuade him to retreat had zero effect.
Lin Gui continued to control the raft, floating forward with unswerving determination.
As they went deeper, more ruin remnants emerged on the walls.
There were ancient characters carved into the debris, along with various styles of eye drawings that were equally disturbing.
None of the three understood the meaning of these symbols, so they could only ignore them for the time being.
The passage continued downward and downward, as if it were endless.
The temperature deep underground was clearly getting higher.
The air was thick with an ancient scent—a mix of dust, mold, and a faint hint of sulfur.
Lin Gui’s frown deepened.
He felt that there was something wrong with the way this ruin was constructed.
The passage didn't extend steadily forward.
Rather, it extended into the depths of the earth at a constant slope...
This didn't look like an ancient ruin naturally buried by the sands of time.
Instead, it looked like... a tomb?
Or perhaps an entrance to some deeper underground city?
Suppressing his doubts, Lin Gui continued to steer the raft forward.
Following the nauseating trail of blood markers, they floated for about ten minutes.
After encountering two more wretchedly dead corpses that had been tortured to death, they finally saw a steady light at the end of the passage that was different from the Illumination spell.
They didn't rush in.
Lin Gui canceled Shroud of the Gloomy Night and Levitation.
He maneuvered the raft into a patch of shadow near the illuminated entrance and began to meditate on the spot to restore his mana.
Maintaining the full power of Shroud of the Gloomy Night for nearly twenty continuous minutes had consumed almost a quarter of his mana reserves.
Levitation was fine; its Level 9 proficiency made its mana consumption almost zero.
As a Novice-level spell, it couldn’t compare to the mana drain of the High Rank Shroud of the Gloomy Night.
Lin Gui sat cross-legged and quickly entered a meditative state.
Beside him, Theia immediately drew her longbow, her emerald eyes scanning the surrounding darkness sharply, alert for any movement.
Elvia also drew her honorary saber and took a step sideways, standing firmly in front of Lin Gui to protect him.
It didn’t matter which of the two of them got into trouble.
As long as Lin Gui was alive and had enough mana, he could use his inscrutable concealment abilities to lead them out of danger.
Fortunately, no accidents occurred while Lin Gui restored his mana.
Just as Lin Gui finished meditating and was about to set off again, Theia frowned and whispered to the two of them.
“Do you... get the feeling that... someone is watching us?”
Hearing this, Elvia was stunned at first.
Then she acted as if she had heard something hilarious.
She pointed at the omnipresent eye murals on the wall, her voice becoming slightly louder as she spoke with a touch of playfulness.
“I say, Theia, you haven't been spooked by these painted eyes, have you? You’re scaring yourself!”
Lin Gui also nodded in agreement, adding in a flat tone.
“Yes, it should just be your imagination. They’re just murals.”
Theia was stunned and blinked her eyes.
Was... was this really the reaction she should expect from Lin Gui and Elvia, two individuals who were more cautious than foxes?
Before she could react, Lin Gui was already chanting his spell again.
The darkness of the Shroud of the Gloomy Night spread once more, enveloping the raft and everyone on it like a fine veil.
With a faint glimmer, the raft and its occupants instantly vanished from the spot.
And in the same instant the shroud descended, the playful smile on Elvia’s face vanished without a trace.
In its place was a look of absolute seriousness and coldness.
She spoke to Theia in an extremely soft, urgent voice that could only be heard nearby.
“What you said just now—are you certain?!”
Lin Gui also immediately added in a heavy voice.
“Was it only after I canceled the Shroud of the Gloomy Night that you sensed we were being watched?”
Theia immediately understood the intent behind their unusual behavior.
They were putting on an act for the potential observer!
Her heart chilled as she nodded quickly and replied in a small voice.
“Yes! I’m absolutely sure! I felt it shortly after the concealment was canceled!”
Lin Gui looked at Elvia. “Is it someone from John’s Holy Knights?”
“They don’t have those kinds of methods,” Elvia shook her head with certainty.
Subsequently, a hint of schadenfreude appeared on her face.
“It seems that besides that bunch of lunatics from the knights, there’s another group hiding in this wretched place.”
“I’m saying, Leader, things are getting more and more complicated; how about we just stop here?”
Lin Gui ignored her latest attempt to turn back and instead asked Theia.
“Can you sense the specific direction the gaze is coming from?”
Theia furrowed her brow.
Her emerald eyes were like the most precise detectors, slowly scanning every corner shrouded in darkness.
Eventually, her gaze locked firmly onto the passage walls—onto those dense, primitive eye murals.
“The eyes! It’s the eyes in these murals!” Her voice carried a hint of disbelief.
“The other party’s monitoring method is extremely sophisticated; it almost perfectly blends with these murals.”
“Maybe... maybe because we suddenly appeared, he exposed a tiny flaw for that single moment!”
“So that means they can’t see through the Shroud of the Gloomy Night either?” Lin Gui confirmed.
“It seems so. Furthermore, they don't know that we’ve already discovered them.”
Elvia clicked her tongue and patted her chest, still feeling the lingering fear.
“Good thing I reacted fast just now and put on a bit of a performance so we didn’t alert them.”
She looked at Lin Gui, seeking his opinion.
“Well? Should we wait here for a bit and see if the other side reveals themselves, to confirm their identity?”
“No,” Lin Gui flatly refused.
“Our primary objective is Rona; save her and leave immediately. We won't invite unnecessary trouble.”
Having said that, he no longer hesitated.
He controlled the raft, perfectly hidden by the Shroud of the Gloomy Night, and accelerated toward the light at the end of the passage.
Not long after they left, on the mottled mural on one side of the passage, an eye that had been motionless—looking as if it were drawn with ordinary paint—suddenly moved its pupil almost imperceptibly.
The black paint used to depict the pupil quietly transformed into a faint, nearly invisible crimson in the absolute darkness.
Within that crimson was a mixture of confusion and an unspeakable... greed.
Rate on N.U.
