Squeezing into the narrow passage, their bodies slid downward uncontrollably.
Theia was the first to slide out of the end of the passage, her body flipping deftly in the air to land as gracefully and silently as a feather.
A wooden crate slid out right after her, but just as it was about to hit the ground, an invisible force caught it, keeping it hovering steadily in midair.
Next came the dismantled raft components, followed by Lin Gui, who drifted down slowly with faint currents of air swirling around him.
Elvia followed close behind, executing a clean roll to absorb the impact before dropping to one knee and standing up steadily.
Finally, the catgirl Luo Youyou slid out face-first, scraping hard against the ground.
“Meow! Couldn't any of you have caught me, meow?!”
She looked up, her nose and cheeks covered in dust, her eyes tearing up from the pain.
Ignoring her complaints, Lin Gui raised his staff and chanted softly.
A soft sphere of light emerged from the tip of his staff, and the glow of 【Illumination】 dispersed the surrounding darkness, lighting up their environment.
This was an exceptionally wide passage, its floor and walls constructed of massive, tightly fitted square stone bricks, their surfaces covered in mottled, ancient patterns.
Most eye-catching of all were the numerous large, eerily styled drawings of eyes painted on the stone walls on both sides.
Those eyes were drawn with rough lines, yet the pupils were depicted with extreme detail, as if they were staring coldly at the intruders from every angle with an unsettling scrutiny.
Lin Gui frowned, looked at Elvia, and pointed at the eyes.
“Do you recognize their origin?”
Elvia looked closely, then shook her head.
“I have no idea. When it comes to ruins and ancient civilizations, you should ask scholars or professional archaeologists.”
After getting down, Lin Gui did not delay.
His first step was to pull out a brick that looked quite old from beside the wooden crates.
With a “friendly” smile on his face, he walked toward Luo Youyou, who was just standing up from the ground.
Looking at the brick in his hand and then at his expression, Luo Youyou instantly grew tense, her cat ears pinning straight up and her tail puffing out.
“W-What are you going to do?!”
“Apologies, but the next phase of our operation involves certain secrets that you cannot be privy to,” Lin Gui said flatly. “Just sleep for a while.”
Before his voice even faded, the brick in his hand was already swinging downward, carrying a faint fluctuation of mana.
【Stun】
“Wait! I'll close my eyes! I'll cover my ears! I swear I won't look at anything, meow... Waah!”
“Bang!”
The brick connected solidly with the top of her head.
However, Luo Youyou was a Mid-tier High Rank assassin after all, and her physical constitution was decent. She merely swayed a bit and did not fall.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
Facing an assassin who was a minor rank higher than himself, Lin Gui did not let his guard down in the slightest.
He cast 【Stun】 a total of thirteen times before finally knocking out the stubbornly resisting catgirl.
Watching that familiar brick, Elvia's lips 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 say, are you really sure about this? That's a Legendary Rank expert!”
Lin Gui nodded, his tone still flat.
“As long as they aren't a Legendary Mage, a Legendary Diviner specializing in prophecy, or a Legendary Scout who has reached the pinnacle of perception, they won't be able to see through 【Shroud of the Gloomy Night】.”
“?????”
Elvia knew how powerful Lin Gui's dark-attribute concealment magic was.
But she had never expected it to be this formidable.
Just to be safe, she double-checked.
“How can you be so sure? The Legendary Rank is a full two major realms higher than you! The suppression of ranks is absolute!”
Instead of answering directly, Lin Gui countered with a question.
“Do you know how many Legendary Rank demons I avoided using this when I crossed the Red Clay Desert Forbidden Zone?”
Elvia was taken aback. “How many?”
“Three thousand five hundred and eighty-seven...”
“?????” Elvia's pupils suddenly constricted.
“Th-Three thousand plus?!”
“So, trust me.” Lin Gui put away the brick and looked at her calmly.
“As long as Shroud of the Gloomy Night is active, a Mid-tier Legendary knight and a Low-tier Legendary archer cannot possibly discover us.”
“Of course, don't even think about clashing with them. Any single Legendary expert on their side could easily wipe us out.”
“We are only here to rescue someone. Once we do, we leave.”
Theia carried the unconscious Luo Youyou onto the raft, secured her, and then tightly bound all the wooden crates.
After that, she intended to scout ahead in the passage as usual.
But Lin Gui called out to stop her.
“Theia, there's no need.”
“Your scouting skills aren't enough in front of a Legendary archer. You might even be detected first.”
“We will proceed fully concealed the entire way.”
“The location shouldn't be too far.”
He pushed the unconscious catgirl further in, sat at the very front of the raft, and began to chant a spell in a low voice.
The incantations for 【Shroud of the Gloomy Night】 and 【Levitation】 rang out one after another.
Sitting back on top of a wooden crate, Theia's eyes flickered slightly.
She keenly sensed that Lin Gui's spellcasting chant time seemed to have shortened yet again!
Back when they ambushed Lyon's knight order in the Black Demon Forest,
【Levitation】 required about twelve seconds of full chanting, and 【Shroud of the Gloomy Night】 also took around three seconds.
But now, 【Levitation】 only took two seconds, and 【Shroud of the Gloomy Night】 was shortened to just one second!
This had practically touched the threshold of “chantless casting”!
Even though she wasn't a mage, Theia knew.
“Chantless magic” was a sign that a mage had mastered a spell to the absolute pinnacle.
Yet very few mages would obsess over this, because the effort and the return were often disproportionate.
Achieving chantless casting could certainly make up for a mage's fatal weakness of excessively long casting delays.
However, the time and energy required to reach this state could take years.
Furthermore, the higher the tier of the magic, the longer it took, making it not worth the cost.
Theia looked at Lin Gui's back in confusion.
This absurd rate of progress... Could this guy have been secretly training behind their backs all this time?
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 【Illumination】.
The light sphere overhead vanished silently, and the path was instantly swallowed by pure darkness.
Lin Gui steered the raft, flying silently through the spacious passage made of giant stone bricks.
Absolute darkness did not hinder his perception.
【Wind Listening】 fed back the subtle changes in the airflow.
Combined with Theia's whispered guidance from beside him, navigating 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 instantly hovered to a stop and slowly descended.
He cast 【Levitation】 to draw an inconspicuous, dark-colored chunk from the ground to float before his eyes.
A small flame ignited with a puff at his fingertips, providing light.
【Novice Magic, Ignite】
After seeing what it was, the expressions of all three darkened.
It was a piece of flesh... a piece of human flesh clearly complete with skin and a bit of hair.
Its edges were jagged, looking as if it had been crudely gouged out.
Elvia stepped forward to take a closer look, her gaze turning so dark it could practically drip water.
“It's that lunatic Gorn's handiwork.”
“That guy loves the smell of blood, so he usually carries a slave with him, or some civilian he 'conveniently' snatched up.”
“He holds them in his arms, slicing off their flesh piece by piece while they are still alive, licking up the blood that flows out.”
“To prevent their screams from ruining his 'mood,' he pierces their vocal cords beforehand with a specially made steel needle.”
Her voice carried a suppressed disgust.
Hearing this, Theia's throat involuntarily bobbed, making a faint gulping sound.
Elvia seemed to hear the sound. She turned her head and looked at Theia with a cold, mocking sneer.
“So, half-demon, if Gorn finds out that his precious bow, 'Azure Echo,' is in your hands...”
“I suggest you pray that you have enough time to end your own life before he catches you.”
The group continued forward.
Every so often, Lin Gui would find similar pieces of flesh on the ground.
They were like a trail of gruesome markers.
After rounding a corner, guided by Theia,
they saw a woman's corpse, discarded in a corner like a torn sack.
Theia stepped forward to inspect it closely.
When she saw the dense, bone-deep cuts covering the corpse's limbs,
and the pale, curled edges of the wounds that were clearly the result of repeated slicing,
the hand Theia used to hold her bow couldn't help but tremble slightly.
“So... cruel...”
A long, thin steel needle had pierced straight through the woman's throat.
The frozen expression on her face was not one of pain, but of utter numbness and emptiness,
as if her consciousness had been completely destroyed by endless torture long before death finally claimed her.
Theia sighed, trying to recognize the woman's faint features.
“She's one of Bob's family members. I've seen her a few times in Caran. It's not Rona.”
Hearing this, Elvia actually let out a somewhat disappointed sigh and muttered under her breath,
“What a pity. If only it were Rona, we wouldn't have to go any further and could just turn around and run...”
She leaned in close to Lin Gui's ear and tried to persuade him once more.
“See? You've witnessed Gorn's brutality yourself. With such a terrifying lunatic around, it's best we avoid him. Don't you agree?”
The result was exactly as expected.
Her attempts to dissuade him had absolutely no effect.
Lin Gui continued to steer the raft, floating forward with unshakeable resolve.
The deeper they went,
the more ruins and debris emerged from the walls.
There was that strange script carved into the ruins,
as well as drawings of eyes in various styles, yet all equally creepy.
None of the three understood the meaning of these symbols, so they could only ignore them for now.
The passage went down and down, seemingly without end.
The underground temperature was clearly rising.
The air was filled with an ancient scent of dust, mold, and a faint hint of sulfur.
Lin Gui's brow furrowed deeper and deeper.
He felt there was something very wrong with how this ruin was constructed.
The path of the passage did not extend steadily forward.
Instead, it descended continuously into the depths of the earth at a constant slope...
This did not look like an ancient ruin naturally buried by the sands of time.
Rather, it felt more like a... mausoleum?
Or perhaps, an entrance leading to some deeper subterranean city-state?
Suppressing the doubts in his heart, Lin Gui continued to steer the raft forward.
Following the unsettling trail of blood splatters, they floated for about ten minutes.
After encountering another two corpses that had been brutally tortured to death,
they finally saw a steady light at the end of the passage, different from the glow of the Illumination spell.
They did not rush in.
Lin Gui canceled 【Shroud of the Gloomy Night】 and 【Levitation】.
He steered the raft into a patch of shadow near the lit entrance, sitting down to meditate and recover his mana.
Maintaining 【Shroud of the Gloomy Night】 at full power for nearly twenty consecutive minutes had consumed almost a quarter of his mana reserves.
【Levitation】 was fine; with its level 9 mastery, its mana consumption was practically zero.
As a Novice Magic, the mana it consumed was incomparable to 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 sharply scanning the surrounding darkness, alert for any movement.
Elvia also drew her sword, taking a step forward to stand firmly in front of Lin Gui to protect him.
It didn't matter if either of them got into trouble.
As long as Lin Gui was alive and had sufficient mana,
he could rely on his godlike concealment abilities to quickly lead them out of danger.
Fortunately, no accidents occurred during the time it took for Lin Gui to fully recover his mana.
Just as Lin Gui finished meditating and was preparing to set off again,
Theia suddenly frowned and whispered to the other two:
“Do you two... feel like... someone is watching us?”
Hearing this, Elvia was taken aback for a moment.
Then, as if she had heard something hilarious,
she pointed at the omnipresent eye murals on the walls and spoke in a slightly louder voice,
saying with a hint of playfulness:
“I say, Theia, you couldn't possibly be frightened by these painted eyes, could you? You're just scaring yourself!”
Lin Gui also nodded in agreement, chiming in flatly,
“Yes, it should just be your imagination. They're only murals.”
Theia was startled and blinked.
Was... was this how Lin Gui and Elvia, two individuals more cautious than foxes, were supposed to react?
Before she could react, Lin Gui had already chanted his spell once more.
The darkness of 【Shroud of the Gloomy Night】 spread again, enveloping the raft and everyone on it like a veil.
With a faint shimmer of light, the raft along with the people on it instantly vanished from the spot.
And at the exact moment the shroud descended,
the playful smile on Elvia's face vanished without a trace.
In its place was an expression of absolute gravity and coldness.
She looked at Theia and asked urgently in an extremely quiet voice that could only be heard up close:
“What you just said, are you sure?!”
Lin Gui also immediately added in a solemn voice,
“Was it only after I canceled 【Shroud of the Gloomy Night】 that you felt we were being watched?”
Theia immediately understood the intent behind their unusual behavior just now.
They were acting for any potential observer!
Feeling a chill in her heart, she quickly nodded and replied in a whisper:
“Yes! Very sure! I felt it shortly after the concealment was canceled!”
Lin Gui looked at Elvia. “Is it John's Holy Knights?”
“They don't have this kind of method,” Elvia shook her head with certainty.
Then, a trace of schadenfreude appeared on her face.
“It seems that besides those lunatics from the knight order, this ghostly place is hiding another group of people.”
“I say, Captain, things are getting more and more complicated. How about we call it quits here?”
Ignoring her attempt to back out again, Lin Gui asked Theia,
“Can you sense the specific direction the gaze is coming from?”
Theia furrowed her brow tightly.
Her emerald eyes, like the most precise detector,
slowly scanned every corner enveloped in darkness.
Finally, her gaze locked firmly onto the passage walls,
onto the dense, ancient-style eye murals.
“The eyes! It's the eyes on these murals!” Her voice carried a trace of disbelief.
“The other party's method of surveillance is highly sophisticated; it's almost entirely integrated with these murals.”
“Perhaps... perhaps because of our sudden appearance, they revealed an extremely tiny flaw at that moment!”
“So, they can't see through 【Shroud of the Gloomy Night】 either?” Lin Gui confirmed.
“It seems so. Moreover, they don't know that we've already discovered them.”
Elvia clicked her tongue, patting her chest with lingering fear.
“Good thing I reacted quickly just now and showed off some acting skills, so we didn't alert the enemy.”
She looked at Lin Gui, seeking his opinion.
“Well? Should we wait here to see if they'll show themselves, so we can confirm their identity?”
“No need,” Lin Gui rejected decisively.
“Our primary objective is Rona. Once we rescue her, we leave immediately without causing any unnecessary trouble.”
Having said that, he hesitated no longer.
Controlling the raft perfectly concealed by 【Shroud of the Gloomy Night】, he accelerated toward the light at the end of the passage.
Not long after they departed,
on the mottled mural along the side of the passage,
an eye that had been completely still, looking as if it were drawn with ordinary paint,
had its pupil turn ever so slightly.
The black pigment used to depict the pupil
quietly transformed into an extremely dim, almost invisible crimson in the absolute darkness.
Within that crimson lay deep confusion, mixed with an unspeakable hint of... greed.
Rate on N.U.
