“Gulp.”
A clear gulping sound came from Theia's throat.
She stood on the narrow natural stone bridge, which was barely wide enough for a few people to walk abreast.
She looked down into the bottomless darkness below.
Even with her extraordinary vision, she couldn't see the end of the abyss.
There was only an all-consuming void.
Lin Gui gently tugged at her from behind.
“Don't look. Be careful not to fall.”
Theia quickly withdrew her gaze and nodded, her heart still pounding with lingering fear.
She pushed Lin Gui and Eve toward the train.
“You two get back inside the carriage.”
“The path ahead is too narrow. It's not safe.”
Aside from the warriors carrying the train, Percel and Freya who were maintaining the bubble, and the scouts, assassins, and the goblin chief leading the way up ahead, everyone else boarded the train as told.
Before entering the carriage, Lin Gui couldn't help but ask the scholar once more, “Just how deep is this abyss?”
Scholar Eli paused for a moment before slowly replying, “You... wouldn't want to know the answer.”
Lin Gui fell silent.
He understood that this depth was undoubtedly a terrifying number beyond imagination.
The team slowly stepped onto the narrow undersea ridge that spanned the Silent Abyss.
The chatting and laughing along the way came to an abrupt halt.
Inside and outside the train, a deathly silence fell.
The atmosphere was oppressively terrifying.
Only the heavy footsteps of the warriors and the faint sound of friction echoed through the air.
Lin Gui, Theia, and Eve returned to their cramped carriage.
The mood among the three of them was somewhat heavy.
Just the thought of the train traveling over a bottomless abyss meant that any minor mishap could plunge them into eternal damnation.
Theia sat on a wooden chest with her knees hugged to her chest, uncharacteristically quiet.
Eve closed her eyes, her fingertips unconsciously twisting the hem of her clothes.
Lin Gui leaned against the carriage wall, his gaze fixed on the blurry darkness outside through a gap.
“The North Wind caravan... really has it tough,” Theia sighed softly.
“To transport goods, they have to cross such a terrifying place every single time.”
She looked up at Lin Gui. “Why don't they choose another, safer route?”
Lin Gui withdrew his gaze and explained, “From the Royal Capital to Shield City, there is indeed more than one way.”
“I remember back at the Transport Guild, I saw another transport team led by a Legendary dwarf.”
“They were taking a different route.”
“That path requires going north through the entirety of Twilight Fortress and detouring around Giant's Canyon.”
“But it's a very long journey, taking about three months to arrive.”
He paused.
“Meanwhile, Captain Freya's team's estimated arrival time shown at the guild is a month and a half.”
“In terms of time, it's cut exactly in half.”
Lin Gui looked at the endless darkness outside the window and said softly, “With the transport efficiency doubled, the rewards for taking the commission are naturally much higher.”
Theia had a peculiar expression. “But Captain Freya is a Legendary Mage. Would she really be short on money?”
Lin Gui hesitated for a moment, sighing helplessly, “She might actually be the one who needs money the most.”
Theia was even more puzzled.
Beside them, Eve let out a soft chuckle and explained, “Mages are the most resource-consuming class.”
“Unlike warriors and rangers who mainly temper their own physical bodies, the types and applications of magic are far too vast.”
“A mage's entire system of magical knowledge mostly requires consuming vast amounts of magical materials just to get started and master.”
“And most of these materials come from the wilderness—for example, body parts of high-tier demons, enchanted minerals, magical plants, and so on...”
Eve paused.
“In today's Dark Age, harvesting in the wild is extremely risky.”
“This has caused prices to skyrocket to mind-boggling levels.”
“Therefore, to increase their strength, most mages have to spend far more money and resources than other classes of the same rank.”
“As for a Legendary Mage...”
Eve smiled and said, “They are existences that even an entire city-state might not be able to support.”
Enlightenment dawned on Theia. “No wonder back when I was an adventurer, I always received strange commissions, like specifically requesting the horn of a certain demon, or a particular magical plant. So they were all posted by mages.”
The carriage swayed gently with the steps of the warriors below.
Discussing such a practical topic above a bottomless abyss actually eased the tense atmosphere slightly.
Lin Gui nodded silently.
He recalled his own struggles when learning magic.
The construction of every spell model, and the precise control of mana each time, lay behind the accumulation of countless resources.
If he didn't have the system directly granting him magic and proficiency, he would probably still be struggling at the Adventurer's Guild, scraping by on commissions to earn money for materials.
Just as Lin Gui was feeling sentimental, an unnatural squirming suddenly came from the inner pocket of his mage robe.
Before he could even react, the cracked glass bead shot out of his pocket on its own, floating in mid-air.
A piercing red light flashed violently across its surface.
It began to thrash around wildly inside the cramped carriage.
At times, it was as if an invisible hand slapped it against the ceiling; at others, it slammed hard into the carriage walls.
It made muffled thuds, its trajectory completely erratic and unpredictable.
It looked exactly like a shrimp thrown into boiling water, filled with near-death terror and madness.
Lin Gui instinctively stood up to catch it.
But as a mage, his reflexes were not very agile to begin with.
In this swaying carriage, he was in an even more pathetic state.
After missing several times in a row, his posture became quite clumsy.
The bead drew chaotic arcs in the air.
Seeing this, Eve also stood up to help corner it.
As a result, in the cramped space, she and Lin Gui collided head-on.
With a collective gasp, both of them tripped and fell into a heap.
The bead seemed to have found an exit and abruptly changed direction.
Turning into a streak of red light, it shot straight toward the closed carriage window!
A fair-skinned hand shot out like lightning, snapping shut in mid-air with perfect precision.
Theia squeezed the bead, which was still vibrating violently and burning hot in her palm, her face filled with shock and suspicion. “What on earth is this thing? It can fly on its own?”
Lin Gui quickly scrambled up from beside Eve, stumbled over, and snatched the bead back from Theia's hand.
A gray light suddenly flashed in his eyes as he instantly activated his Eyes of the Netherworld.
Before he even had a chance to speak, the distorted face of the merman's soul, twisted in extreme terror, filled his entire field of vision.
“Run! Run!!”
Its scream pierced directly into Lin Gui's mind, trembling with heart-wrenching dread.
Its illusory finger pointed frantically toward the endless dark abyss beneath their feet.
“It! It's down there! It's awake! It's awake!”
The edges of its soul body fluctuated violently, looking as if they might dissipate at any moment.
“If you don't want to sink forever... if you don't want to be pinned down in this eternal abyss...”
“...then run! Right now! Immediately! Don't look back!”
Lin Gui whipped his head around to look out the window.
The vision of his Eyes of the Netherworld penetrated the barrier of the carriage window.
In an instant, the blood in his entire body seemed to freeze.
Outside, it was no longer a pure, light-devouring darkness.
The seawater of the entire Silent Abyss had come 'alive.'
It was an indescribable, viscous 'red.'
Not the scarlet of fresh blood, nor the fiery crimson of flames.
But a deeper, older, more soul-shuddering dark red.
It was as if countless venomous eyes had opened simultaneously at the bottom of the abyss.
Or as if some unimaginably colossal creature was slowly stretching its bloodshot body on the seabed.
This eerie red light did not originate from any light source.
It saturated every single drop of seawater, permeating the boundless abyss.
It dyed the once pitch-black, dead silence into a boiling pot of blood gruel.
The once clear outlines of the stone bridge and rocks grew blurry and distorted within this omnipresent dark red.
It was as if the entire abyss was squirming slightly under some sort of power.
Lin Gui could even 'see' that the red light contained countless microscopic, nerve-like threads.
They wriggled slowly, exuding a sickening malice and an ancient, icy hunger.
“You see it... you see it, right?!”
The merman's soul shrieked in his mind, its voice completely shattered.
“It's awake... It's watching us...”
“Every single... soul... that steps into its domain...”
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