Bolen pressed his hand against the surface of the copper pillar.
His fingers moved slowly along the metal lines.
Then, his movements stopped.
"There are inscriptions." His fingers rested on the copper surface, his fingertips trembling slightly.
He used the copper-bristle brush to clean the pillar more carefully.
The scavenger fungus fell away in layers, revealing the patterns beneath.
Inscriptions.
But Lu Yuan could tell that these inscriptions were different from the ones on the city wall.
The lines were rougher, and the gouges were deeper, as if they had been chiseled out with brute force rather than finely carved.
The style of the characters was also different. The turns in certain strokes lacked the smooth curvature of the city wall inscriptions.
They were more primitive.
"The foundation," Bolen muttered. "This is a foundation-level conduction structure."
His fingers found a place where the inscriptions were interrupted.
The characters ended abruptly there, and the edges of the gouges showed signs of being torn apart by external force.
"The break is here." Bolen stood up, his gaze following the direction the copper pillar extended into the depths of the mud wall. "This pillar extends all the way down, and so does the break."
He turned to look at Lu Yuan.
"Can we continue downward?"
Lu Yuan did not answer immediately.
He crouched down and placed his hand on the copper pillar.
The metal was icy cold.
The surface was rough.
But he felt more than just temperature and texture.
At the edge of his vision, greyish-white text began to flicker.
【Target detected: Special structural entity (damaged)... Analysis failed... Insufficient knowledge...】
【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +0.2... 13.0/100】
Lu Yuan watched the greyish-white prompts pop up, then silently withdrew his hand and stood up.
"Continue."
The passage grew deeper and deeper.
The incline was increasing.
The air was also changing.
The stench of rot remained, but it was joined by a new scent.
A damp, mineral smell.
After walking for about another ten minutes.
Lu Yuan noticed something.
The scavenger fungus was thinning out.
It wasn't being purified.
It was thinning naturally.
The material of the passage walls gradually changed from soil to rock, interspersed with fragments of copper structures.
The scavenger fungus clearly had less grip on the rock surface than on the soil, forming only a thin layer. In some places, the bare stone was even exposed.
"The scavenger fungus can't take root anymore," Bo Er noticed as well.
"Because of the copper," Bolen said without looking back. "The deeper we go, the denser the copper structures become. Scavenger fungus is naturally suppressed by copper. It's just that the copper above has failed and can't hold it back.
But the deeper it is, the higher the copper concentration, and the harder it is for the fungus layer to survive."
This was good news.
But Lu Yuan's attention was not on the scavenger fungus.
He noticed a change in the echoes.
Earlier in the passage, the sound was muffled, mostly absorbed by the fungal layer.
But now, their footsteps began to ring with echoes.
And the echoes were growing longer.
The space was getting larger.
"Everyone, slow down," Lu Yuan lowered his voice.
The team's speed decreased.
An arched opening appeared at the end of the passage.
It was three times wider than the passage itself.
The light orbs on the nuns' shoulders could not reach the walls on the other side of the opening.
The light shot inside as if it were being swallowed up.
Lu Yuan walked to the opening and stopped.
Wind.
It wasn't the stagnant air movement of the passage.
It was a real wind, blowing up from below, carrying a damp and mineral scent.
There was also an extremely faint humming sound.
A low, continuous drone, like something massive was resonating.
Lu Yuan took a copper powder pellet from his waist and threw it into the darkness ahead.
The pellet traced an arc.
Then it began to fall.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
There was no sound of it hitting the ground.
Bo Er's expression changed.
"Agnes." Lu Yuan turned his head. "Can you expand the light?"
Agnes did not speak.
She walked to the opening and pressed her hands together. The holy light in her palms suddenly intensified.
A golden light orb rose from her shoulder and expanded, like a miniature sun blooming in the darkness.
The light pushed outward.
Ten meters.
Twenty meters.
Fifty meters.
The darkness retreated piece by piece.
The scene gradually emerged at the edge of the light.
Everyone fell silent.
They were standing on the edge of a cliff.
Below them was a massive, nearly vertical void.
The holy light could not reach the bottom.
The light began to fade after pushing out fifty or sixty meters, and anything further was swallowed by the darkness.
But judging by the airflow and the interval of the echoes, the depth of this void far exceeded their imagination.
The cliff walls were densely packed with tunnel entrances.
Large ones, small ones.
Regular, irregular.
Layer upon layer, they extended downward.
Like a honeycomb.
Every opening was a passage.
Leading to even more nests.
Lu Yuan's gaze followed the cliff wall toward the opposite side.
The other side was about eighty meters away.
The holy light barely illuminated the silhouette.
Copper pillars.
Protruding from the cliff walls.
Slanting into the abyss.
It wasn't just one.
It was a row of them.
Some were straight, some were curved.
The largest one would require at least dozens of people to embrace.
It pierced out from the rock layer overhead, slanting downward along the cliff wall, extending into the depths where the holy light could not reach.
Its surface was densely covered in inscriptions.
Under the illumination of the holy light, those inscriptions did not glow, nor did they show any energy fluctuations.
But their presence was overwhelming.
Every gouge was at least two fingers deep into the copper body.
The spacing between the lines was precise to an incredible degree.
This wasn't just carving on metal.
This was turning an entire copper pillar into an inscription artifact.
Bolen stood at the edge of the cliff, his body stiff.
His cane fell to the ground.
His lips trembled slightly.
His fingers involuntarily reached out toward those copper pillars.
"This isn't a conduction structure," his voice was so raspy it was almost inaudible.
"The city wall runes on the surface... they are just the extremities."
"This place is the heart."
Kail walked to his side and whispered, "Teacher?"
Bolen did not hear him.
His entire attention was consumed by those copper pillars.
Lu Yuan did not interrupt him.
Because he was looking for himself.
The greyish-white text at the edge of his vision was flickering wildly.
【Target detected: The Bronze Sin (special bronze creation)】
【Perhaps this is the last of the bronze inscription artifacts...】
【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +0.5... 13.5/100】
It had jumped by 0.5 all at once.
But Lu Yuan noticed more than just the experience points.
At the very end of that long string of text, there was another line.
【...Minor resonance detected...】
【Environmental Perception: Large number of pollution sources detected...】
Resonance?
Agnes had mentioned that word on the surface.
Lu Yuan immediately withdrew his gaze.
He stopped looking at the copper pillars.
He turned toward Agnes.
The nun's expression remained calm, but her gaze was not on the copper pillars.
She was looking down into the abyss.
"What do you feel?" Lu Yuan stared at her face.
Agnes was silent for two seconds.
"There is something below," her voice was very soft. "Something huge, but it's not a ghoul."
She turned to look at Lu Yuan, her gaze more serious than it had ever been on the surface.
"We should not go any further down."
Lu Yuan nodded.
He hadn't intended to go deeper anyway.
Today's purpose was reconnaissance, not an assault.
"Bolen," he called out.
The old man did not react.
"Bolen!" Lu Yuan raised his voice.
Bolen looked as if he had been startled from a dream. "Ah? What?"
"Remember what you've seen. It's time to go."
Bolen's expression struggled for a moment.
He took one last greedy look at those copper pillars, then bent down to pick up his cane and let out a long breath.
"...I've remembered it."
He turned to walk back, still muttering to himself.
"A perfect creation... a truly perfect creation... How on earth did they do it? How could the rumors say thirty years... There's still more hidden here..."
Kail supported him by the arm, looking back at the abyss as they walked.
The young man's face was deathly pale.
But this angle allowed Lu Yuan to see something else.
Looking up toward the ceiling from this side of the abyss, he could faintly identify where the copper pillars pierced into the rock layer.
That direction.
It was the inner city.
The inner city was not built on the ground.
It was built on the tops of these pillars.
Built on the lid of an abyss.
The team began to turn around.
Just then, Agnes's holy light began to contract.
The light orb shrank, its brightness dimmed, and its range quickly receded from fifty or sixty meters to twenty, then ten.
The abyss was swallowed by darkness once more.
But in that split second before the light completely vanished.
【Environmental Perception: Massive number of pollution sources detected... Get away immediately...】
At the same time, Lu Yuan saw it.
Inside those honeycomb-like openings on the opposite cliff wall, something was moving.
It wasn't just one hole.
It was many.
Greyish-red figures poked out from the edges of the openings, as if they had been disturbed by something.
They did not shriek.
They simply crawled out of their respective caves silently, clinging to the cliff wall and looking over here.
Greyish-white eyes without irises reflected a faint fluorescence in the last traces of holy light.
Dozens of pairs.
Scores of pairs.
Then the light went out completely.
In the darkness, those eyes also disappeared.
But the sound did not disappear.
What came from below the abyss was no longer humming and wind.
It was claws.
The sound of countless claws scraping against the rock walls.
It amplified rapidly in the darkness.
Climbing toward the edge of the cliff where they stood.
"Go!" Lu Yuan did not hesitate for a second. "Go now!"
The eight people turned simultaneously and charged into the passage they had come from.
Behind them, the first shriek erupted from the cliff edge.
Then a second.
A third.
They rose and fell, like a lit fuse, spreading from one opening to another, from one side of the cliff wall to the other.
The entire abyss was ringing.
Agnes's holy light flared up again, but it was dimmer than before.
The continuous purification had already drained much of her strength.
The radius of purification she pushed out each time had shortened to less than two meters.
Scavenger fungus had already recovered the path back.
It wasn't thick, but it was enough to make every step accompanied by the hissing sound of their boot soles being eaten by acid.
The shrieks in the passage behind them were getting closer.
But the bigger trouble was on either side.
The honeycomb openings were spread across the entire cliff wall, and the tunnels connected to these openings were interconnected with the one they were currently using.
The ghouls disturbed in the abyss wouldn't just chase from behind.
They would pour out from any exit in the entire nest network.
The first ghoul squeezed out from a crack on the right wall.
It was very fast, sliding almost against the ground.
Its skin was greyish-white and it was small in stature—a low-level vanguard type.
The Nightwatcher bringing up the rear turned, raised his gun, and fired.
The roar of the short-shotgun exploded in the passage, the slugs hitting the ghoul's chest and knocking it to the ground.
But it was still moving.
One forelimb was severed, but it continued to crawl forward using its remaining three legs.
"There are more in front!" Lu Yuan, walking at the very front, shouted.
Two ghouls emerged from a corner in the passage ahead.
Lu Yuan's revolver was already raised.
Two shots.
Two cracks of gunfire.
The first was hit in the eye socket and fell backward.
The second was hit in the front knee and stumbled, but immediately scrambled back up.
Lu Yuan did not fire a second shot.
He tore a copper powder canister from his waist, unscrewed the lid, and splashed it forward.
Sizzle...
It rolled on the ground, shrieking.
Lu Yuan ran past it.
"Keep up!"
The team accelerated through that section of the passage.
The sounds behind them were increasing.
The noise of claws scraping against stone merged into a continuous rustling sound, surging from all directions.
"The fork is just ahead!" Bo Er shouted.
Lu Yuan had already seen it.
The silhouette of the fork appeared at the edge of the holy light.
The two Nightwatchers left behind were still there.
They had heard the gunfire and had already leveled their weapons, standing back-to-back facing the five tunnel entrances.
"How many directions have movement?" Lu Yuan rushed over, keeping his voice low.
"Three." The Nightwatcher with half a pinky finger spoke with a steady voice. "The largest one has the most."
The tripwire bells hadn't rung yet.
That meant no ghouls had reached the tunnel entrances yet.
But the shrieking was close.
"Go. Go now."
The ten people merged and retreated in the direction they had come from.
Behind them, the bells rang.
More than one passage was triggered simultaneously.
Bo Er glanced back.
"They're out!"
At the fork, at least seven or eight ghouls poured out of different tunnels at once. Their paws smoked as they stepped over the copper powder blockade, but they didn't stop.
They charged through the copper powder.
The Nightwatchers at the rear turned and fired two shots.
One was knocked down, and another was hit in the shoulder but continued forward.
"Don't get bogged down in a fight!" Lu Yuan's voice was muffled by the fungus mats on the cave walls.
The team entered the ascending passage.
The incline began to slow everyone down.
Instead, Bolen and Kail were running at the very front.
Seeing more and more ghouls behind them, Bo Er proactively retreated to the very back of the team, his copper sword held across his chest.
Another ghoul caught up.
It was larger than the previous ones.
There were dark keratinous protrusions on its shoulders and back.
It wasn't a greater ghoul, but it wasn't a common vanguard either.
It was on all fours, its back arched, moving through the passage far faster than a human.
It reached Bo Er in less than three seconds.
Bo Er delivered a horizontal slash.
The copper sword cut into its forelimb, slicing through the skin, but it got stuck in the keratin layer.
The ghoul shrieked in pain, its other claw swinging toward Bo Er's face.
Bo Er tilted his head to dodge, his knee driving into the ghoul's jaw. Taking advantage of the moment its head snapped back, he pulled out the copper sword and thrust it into its throat.
The copper's burning reaction exploded within the wound.
The ghoul's shriek turned into a muffled whimper, its body twitching twice before it collapsed to the ground.
Just then, two ghouls squeezed out from a crack in the left wall.
There was no warning.
Agnes moved.
"Angel's Gate."
She did not turn around.
She flipped her left hand over, palm facing backward with fingers spread.
A beam of holy light pushed out from her palm.
It was a wall of searing white light.
It spanned the entire width from the crack opening to the passage wall.
The ghoul charging in front could not stop its momentum.
The front half of its body slammed into the light wall.
Sizzle...
The moment the ghoul touched the light wall.
Its forelimbs and half of its face disintegrated into greyish-white powder, scattering on the ground like sand.
The remaining half of its torso fell to the floor, its limbs still twitching.
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