The distribution of mithril began.
“Ten canisters plus the one we already had on the position makes eleven in total,” Lu Yuan continued.
“Bo Er and I will each take two. The Holy Armored Army and the Iron Guard will each get two. The remaining three will stay at the vertical shaft as a fallback for our retreat.”
Heinrich and Wolf both nodded without objection.
“Five exorcism grenades. I’ll take two, Bo Er will take one, and the Holy Armored Army and Iron Guard will each take one. Ten holy light scrolls—the Holy Armored Army gets six, and the remaining four stay in the rear.”
“Everyone rest for six hours before we move,” Lu Yuan said, standing up. “Ammunition will be distributed tonight.”
He looked at Bolen.
“Are the tools ready?”
Bolen patted the toolbox beside him.
“Ready whenever you are.”
The old man’s eyes were full of anticipation. Clearly, he was looking forward to re-entering the pipe network.
As the meeting adjourned, Wolf passed by Lu Yuan, and Lu Yuan felt a faint wave of dry heat.
Wolf’s body temperature seemed abnormally high.
Lu Yuan stole another glance at him, but the man didn’t notice and had already walked out the door.
...
At dusk.
Lu Yuan stood behind the Alchemy Workshop, checking his gear.
His revolver, one hundred and twenty silver-plated bullets, twelve copper-cased incendiary rounds, two canisters of mithril, and two exorcism grenades.
The laceration on the webbing of his right hand had completely scabbed over.
Bo Er walked over, holding a brand-new copper sword.
“For you,” he said, handing the sword over. “This one is a bit harder.”
Lu Yuan took it and felt its weight. It was heavier than the last one, with a thicker blade and denser hammer marks from the forging.
“It came with the supplies, standard issue for the Holy Armored Army,” Bo Er added. “Better than what we were using before.”
Lu Yuan hung the copper sword at his waist.
Night fell.
The runes lit up.
The atmosphere at the defensive position was much more relaxed than previous nights; after all, there were dozens more men and crates of weapons and ammunition.
Everyone was preparing for the early morning.
Lu Yuan sat on a wooden board, looking toward the shaft entrance.
It was quiet there, and the vertical shaft was the same.
But from the direction of the breached drainage outlet on the east side of the North Ward, the night wind carried a sweetness. It was thicker than during the day.
They couldn't wait any longer, because no one knew just how far those green hyphae in the pipe network had spread.
Three in the morning.
Everyone gathered at the vertical shaft without a word.
The twelve men of the Iron Guard stood at the very front, their dark grey longcoats motionless in the night wind.
Wolf stood at the head of the team, expressionless, his right hand resting on the ruggedly styled short sword at his waist.
The eleven men behind him wore identical standard-issue short swords, their hilts engraved with the same gear pattern as the badges on their chests.
The fifteen members of the Holy Armored Army were in the middle.
Heinrich made a gesture, and the holy light inscriptions on their silver-white plate armor glowed with a faint light.
Lu Yuan and Bo Er stood behind the Holy Armored Army.
Bolen leaned on his cane with his toolbox on his back, and Kail stayed close to him; the two were sandwiched between the front and rear formations.
Four Nightwatchers served as the rear guard. The veteran who was missing a pinky finger walked at the very back, gripping a copper sword with a steady expression.
Thirty-five people in total.
Glock remained on the surface.
Both the vertical shaft and the eastern drainage outlet needed monitoring, so he took the remaining Nightwatchers to coordinate the surface defense line.
Two men were left to guard the front of the position, including the young man who had been terrified during the last descent into the pipes; Lu Yuan didn't let him come down this time.
Agnes’s schedule had been confirmed last night; she could enter the Polymath Tower the day after tomorrow.
Once they dealt with the pipe network tonight and finished preparations, they would head to the Polymath Tower.
Hopefully, things would go smoothly.
“Descend.”
Wolf was the first to lift the cast-iron cover and vault into the vertical shaft.
The sound of the iron ladder echoed within the shaft walls.
Lu Yuan followed behind the Holy Armored Army and stepped onto the ladder. The moment his hand gripped the rungs, he noticed it—the surface of the ladder was covered in an extremely thin, greyish-green film.
It hadn't been there the last time he came down.
Although the hyphae had given up on breaking through to the surface from the shaft, it had already taken root inside the shaft walls.
The film on the ladder was very thin; it would crack directly when stepped on, revealing the rusted iron beneath.
The entire ladder, from top to bottom, had it on every single rung.
Lu Yuan didn't stop and continued down.
Bo Er muttered something when he stepped on the film behind him.
“Will direct contact cause contamination...?”
“Not this kind,” Lu Yuan replied.
They reached the bottom of the vertical shaft at the entrance to the pipe network.
The thirty-five people landed one after another, and Wolf’s men had already formed a line on both sides.
In addition to the smell of decay, the air held an extra cloying sweetness.
It was the same as what he had smelled in the night wind yesterday, but many times stronger—so sweet it was nauseating, making one instinctively frown.
Heinrich wrinkled his nose slightly.
Wolf spoke: “Everyone cover your mouth and nose. Do not breathe through your mouths.”
The Iron Guard soldiers pulled the inner lining fabric from their collars to cover the lower halves of their faces in a synchronized motion.
Lu Yuan wrapped his scarf around his face, and Bo Er followed suit.
Bolen pulled two pieces of cloth soaked in alchemical liquid from a side pocket of his toolbox, handed one to Kail, and covered his own face.
“Move,” Lu Yuan said.
The team began to advance.
Sandworm oil lamps were lit at the front of the Iron Guard, their clear white light illuminating the passage ahead.
But the moment they stepped into the pipe network, the sensation underfoot was wrong.
Last time, the ground was a hard surface mixed with a bit of standing water.
Now, the ground was soft, covered in a layer of greyish-green hyphae.
It was completely different from the scavenger fungus that had filled the passages when they went down the collapse site.
Scavenger fungus was fuzzy and released acidic spores that were highly corrosive; one couldn't even walk without holy light purification.
But this stuff under their feet showed no signs of corrosion; instead, it was quite elastic, making a squelching sound when stepped on.
Lu Yuan looked down. The surface of the hyphae layer dented slightly where he stepped, then slowly bounced back.
It wasn't the natural contraction of a material being compressed, but a very obvious writhing.
It was as if the thing beneath his feet sensed the pressure and was reacting.
With every step he took, the hyphae beneath him contracted.
The floor of the entire passage was “watching” them as they passed.
Wolf noticed it too and looked back at Lu Yuan.
“It knows we’re here?”
“It’s known since the first step we took inside,” Lu Yuan’s voice was very low. “I confirmed it when I dissected the greater ghoul—this stuff is intelligent.”
Wolf said nothing more.
The team continued forward.
Their pace wasn't fast, and the Iron Guard at the front had already gripped their long swords.
After walking for about three minutes, the passage began to narrow.
The hyphae spread from the floor to the walls, then climbed from the walls to the ceiling; the cross-section of the entire passage was being slowly consumed by the greyish-green hyphae layer.
The further they went, the thicker it became. At a certain point, the effective width only allowed two people to pass side-by-side.
Bulges and spikes began to appear on the surface of the hyphae layer, and in some places, thick bundles of threads extended toward the center of the passage, lying across the path like obstructing tree roots.
It was difficult not to touch the hyphae.
Wolf stopped, looked back at Lu Yuan, and made a gesture.
The four Iron Guard soldiers in the front row simultaneously drew their short swords.
Wolf pressed his right hand against his chest, inside his longcoat.
A flicker of dark red light lit up at his fingertips.
The color was very deep, like the color of red-hot iron in the final moment before it cools.
The light spread from his fingertips along the back of his hand and disappeared into his sleeve.
The four soldiers in the front row performed the same action simultaneously, pressing their right hands to their chests. Dark red light lit up from their fingertips at the same time, lasting for about two seconds before fading.
At the same time, the color of their short swords changed.
Dark red patterns extended from the hilts to the tips, looking like glowing iron veins floating on the metal surface. The air around the blades began to warp.
A wave of intense heat radiated from the sword bodies.
The first strike from the front row hit the bundle of hyphae blocking the passage.
The moment the blade made contact, the greyish-green hyphae contracted violently. The contact surface instantly turned black and brittle, then shattered into powder.
Clearly, the fungal layer had been carbonized.
The carbonization spread about half a meter from the cut to both sides, as if it were being conducted along the fibrous structure of the hyphae.
With one strike, a man-wide path was cleared in the center of the passage.
The hyphae layer on either side of the cut writhed frantically, contracting desperately as if it had been burned, revealing the copper pipe wall beneath.
A second strike.
A third strike.
The four Iron Guard soldiers at the front cleared the way together, their dark red blades cutting through the hyphae layer as black carbonized powder drifted down.
The air was filled with a burnt smell.
The team advanced through the passage cleared by the four men.
【Target detected: Believer transcendent ability (Furnace Pathway)】
【...Outlier transcendents who believe in the Pure Furnace... but surprisingly, dead matter gave them a response, thus they obtained the power of Pure Fire...】
【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +0.1... 14.4/100】
Lu Yuan watched the Iron Guard’s movements.
The rhythm of the four men was perfectly synchronized. The two on the left were responsible for the left wall and the ceiling, while the two on the right were responsible for the right wall and the floor. Every time they swung their swords, they brought a wave of distorted heat.
Amidst the dense green fungal layers, they forcibly carved out a path.
Wolf didn't act himself.
He walked behind the front four, his eyes scanning the cross-section of the cut hyphae layer, occasionally lingering on a certain direction.
He was observing the reaction of the hyphae, just like Lu Yuan.
‘Very strong,’ Lu Yuan noted to himself.
The texture of the walls on both sides began to change. The passage narrowed, and on the greyish-white surface, the faint silhouettes of human bodies could be seen.
The Living Wall area.
Lu Yuan spoke: “There are things embedded in the walls ahead. They will reach out. Last time they were just grabbing blindly, but I’m not sure about this time. Stay away from the walls and do not slow down.”
The Iron Guard didn't respond, but their formation tightened slightly, leaving half a step of distance on either side.
The clearing speed at the front didn't change; the dark red blades continued to cut through the hyphae, and carbonized powder covered the ground.
They entered the Living Wall area.
The greyish-white arms were still in the walls, but their surfaces were covered in greyish-green thread-like patterns. The hyphae had invaded the Living Wall.
Lu Yuan noticed that the faces embedded in the walls had all turned slightly toward the team.
They were watching.
But the Iron Guard gave them no chance to look.
The rhythm of the four in the front row remained unchanged; their dark red blades swept along the walls on both sides, carbonizing the hyphae and the Living Wall together.
Before the greyish-white arms could even reach out, they were cut into charred pieces along with the wall surface, falling to the ground and hissing with black smoke.
There were no structures of blood vessels or muscle at the cut—instead, there was a dense mass of greyish-green fibrous tissue.
The insides of these arms had been completely replaced by hyphae; the outside was human skin, but the inside was a web of fungus.
The tissue carbonized by the Pure Fire died instantly.
The eerie entities on the Living Wall clearly realized something was wrong.
A hint of fear actually appeared on those dull faces, and the pale hands and bodies half-embedded in the wall writhed constantly.
But it was useless.
The Iron Guard’s short swords cut through this kind of eerie entity as if they were slicing tofu; the blades met almost no resistance as they carved a path through.
The carbonization from the Furnace could permanently kill the hyphae tissue. This was the most important piece of information so far.
As the middle of the team passed through, a few arms still reached out from recesses in the wall that the Iron Guard’s blades hadn't reached.
One Holy Armored Army soldier’s shoulder armor was caught by two arms from above and below; the force was immense, and he was violently jerked toward the wall.
The Holy Armored Army soldier beside him reacted instantly, his copper sword slashing twice to sever the arms and pull the man back.
The copper sword didn't have the Pure Fire, and the hyphae at the cut began to writhe after a few seconds, attempting to reconnect.
The soldier looked down at his shoulder armor; there were two light greyish-green corrosion marks on the surface of the silver-white plates.
The two Iron Guard soldiers at the rear of the formation noticed this, stepped back half a pace, and made a few follow-up strikes with their short swords against the recessed walls, carbonizing all the remaining arms.
The team pushed all the way through the Living Wall area.
The arms behind them that hadn't been carbonized retracted into the wall in unison, especially those on the ceiling, which remained completely motionless and let the team pass.
The Iron Guard clearing the way ignored the walls that hadn't reached out, and the team continued forward.
As they went deeper, the situation in the pipe network became increasingly dangerous.
The entire pipeline, except for the areas where water was being discharged, was covered in a thick layer of green hyphae on its curved walls.
These hyphae were thriving.
In some places, they even hung from the walls, taking on a somewhat 'dreamlike' quality under the light of the sandworm lamps.
Ahead was the crawlers’ area.
Lu Yuan warned them in advance: “There are things on the ceiling. They fear light. If they don't attack actively, ignore them; those things are hard to kill.”
The soldiers clearing the way signaled their acknowledgement.
When the light of the sandworm oil lamps hit the ceiling, Lu Yuan saw them.
Greyish-white figures clung to the ceiling, their numbers far greater than last time, and their bodies were likewise covered in greyish-green hyphae.
The lamplight hit their faces.
They squinted slightly but didn't retreat or hiss; they just continued to stare down at the team below.
Seeing the pale green on the crawlers' faces, Lu Yuan knew they had clearly been parasitized by the hyphae.
And they seemed to have gained a 'light-resistant' ability.
‘Wait... the greater ghoul gained intelligence, and the crawlers gained light resistance... this thing can make eerie entities evolve???’
A chill rose in Lu Yuan’s heart, but no matter what, they had to eliminate them as quickly as possible this time.
The crawlers just watched the team below; this time they didn't retreat, but they didn't leave either. They moved forward as well, clinging to the ceiling and following silently, always maintaining a distance of about ten meters from the team.
Wolf looked up for a few seconds, then withdrew his gaze.
“The things above our heads—should we try to kill them? Otherwise, they might be trouble.”
“We can try.”
As Lu Yuan finished speaking...
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