They turned northwest.
The main tunnel narrowed.
The air changed.
The temperature was slowly dropping.
Their breath began to form white mist.
Faint scratches appeared on the copper plates beneath their feet.
They were claw marks.
Lu Yuan stopped, squatting down to take a look.
They were very fresh.
Something had walked through here.
Lu Yuan stood up.
Greyish-white text flickered at the edge of his vision.
【Environmental Perception: Pollution concentration rising... Please stay alert...】
Lu Yuan came to a halt and raised his left fist.
The team stopped.
Everyone suppressed their breathing.
He looked into the darkness ahead.
The light from the march lamps could not reach the end.
The light was swallowed by the darkness twenty meters away.
Silence.
It was too silent.
Then, everyone heard it.
In the distance.
A very faint sound.
The sound of something's feet dragging across the copper surface.
Skritch... skritch-skritch...
It wasn't just one.
There were many.
But they did not approach.
They stayed in that darkness beyond the reach of the march lamps, maintaining their distance.
It was as if they were waiting for something.
Bo Er leaned in, his voice low.
“What's the call?”
“Unclear. There seem to be quite a few of them.”
Bo Er didn't ask further. The safety on his short-shotgun was already off.
Wolf stepped forward, standing side-by-side with Lu Yuan.
Dark red heat radiated from his body.
He didn't speak.
He simply stared into the darkness ahead.
Everyone was staring into the darkness ahead.
The friction sounds didn't stop.
But they didn't get any closer either.
The team continued to advance.
Lu Yuan lowered his revolver, signaling for a slow advance.
In the darkness ahead, the friction sounds persisted.
But they always kept their distance.
Wolf's body began to flicker with sparks of fire.
Heinrich’s holy light inscriptions lit up, and a layer of golden-white light spread out, illuminating the space the march lamps couldn't reach.
The light hit something.
At the first corner.
Several pale figures.
They were huddled behind the corner, as if lying in ambush for the team to pass.
But they were too slow.
The one at the front poked half its body out from the corner.
Pale skin, with almost no visible keratin layer. Its mouth was open, revealing two rows of sparse, pointed teeth.
Its greyish-white eyes had no pupils.
It took a step toward the team.
Its foot dragged across the copper surface.
Skritch...
It was very slow, like it had just learned to walk.
Its shoulders leaned forward, hands outstretched, wanting to attack, but its body couldn't keep up with its intent.
Greyish-white text flickered at the edge of his vision.
【Target Detected: Ghoul (Early Metamorphosis Mutant)... A Little Ghoul in its metamorphosis stage.】
Early Metamorphosis Mutant.
Lu Yuan had dissected a greater ghoul before.
He knew the physical strength of those things, but right now, this thing was actually this weak?
‘Why are there so many ghouls here? And they look like they’ve just mutated. Is there some kind of broodmother here?’
They poured out from every corner.
It seemed premeditated.
But they were too slow.
The pipe network tunnels weren't wide; three or four people side-by-side could block the entire path.
Heinrich’s copper sword swept through; their keratin was extremely thin, and the blade pierced through in one stroke.
Wolf’s furnace fire pushed forward; they charred the moment they were touched, their pale skin instantly carbonizing.
Bo Er’s short-shotgun cleared the flanks, the pellets passing through with zero resistance.
Seeing this, the nun did not act. She simply frowned and pulled back slightly.
One batch of ghouls fell, and another batch poured out from deeper within the tunnels.
They were endless.
But they were simply too slow.
The team barely slowed down.
They cleared the path as they advanced.
The pale newborn mutants crumbled like paper before them.
Then, another kind of creature mixed among them appeared.
“Bang!”
Bo Er’s short-shotgun knocked back a greater ghoul that had lunged out from behind the pale "human wall."
It had a thick keratin layer and moved on all fours at ten times the speed of the newborns.
Compared to the pale newborns, its threat was on an entirely different level.
But this time, the team was composed entirely of experts.
Heinrich’s holy light shortsword pierced the neck of a second greater ghoul.
Wolf pressed a palm against the head of a third, pouring furnace fire from his palm. The keratin carbonized and shattered from the inside out.
In less than a minute.
The area was cleared.
It was easy.
The team paused briefly.
Lake walked up from the rear guard position.
He pulled a communication crystal from the inside of his coat.
It was a pair with the one Glock had kept at the relay point.
Lake cupped the crystal and spoke into it.
“Relay point. Lake reporting.”
A few seconds later, Glock’s voice came from the crystal.
It was somewhat intermittent, clearly a result of the surrounding pollution.
“Copy.”
“Encountered a large number of low-level ghouls between the third and fourth sections of the northwest branch line. Pale, extremely slow, early metamorphosis stage, over a hundred in number, mixed with a few greater ghouls. All have been cleared.”
He paused.
“These things look like infants. Did you see any when you were clearing the pipe network before?”
The communication crystal was silent for a few seconds.
Glock’s voice came through:
“We did clear quite a few ghouls during the cleanup a few days ago, but most were greater ghouls that had fled into the pipe network layer through the sinkhole gaps. There weren't many. The bronze structure of the pipe network layer is still there, and except for the heavy damage in the North Ward, the basic structure is normal elsewhere, so they are scarce.”
“As for pale infants? Never seen them.”
Lake glanced at Lu Yuan.
Lu Yuan frowned slightly.
‘Greater ghouls escaping in through the sinkholes makes sense. But where did over a hundred infants come from?’
The bronze structure of the pipe network could suppress the eerie.
Under normal circumstances, ghouls wouldn't crawl inside.
And over a hundred of them?
“Continue the advance. Maintain contact,” Glock’s voice came from the crystal.
Lake put away the communication crystal and retreated to the rear guard position.
The team set off again.
The deeper they went, the more the frequency of encounters stabilized.
Not too many, not too few.
Occasionally, a few pale newborns would dart out from a side branch.
Occasionally, they would see the shadow of one or two greater ghouls.
But the greater ghouls knew this team was not to be trifled with.
They no longer charged blindly, instead hiding deep within the side tunnels, only daring to show their heads after the team had passed.
Lu Yuan heard the sound of claws running across copper twice, both times heading away.
Along the way, every time they passed a branch they didn't enter, Lu Yuan used his copper sword to carve an arrow and a number on the entrance wall.
There were too many branches.
The pipe network was more complex than he had imagined.
About an hour and a half later.
The structure of the tunnel ahead changed.
The copper plates were thicker.
The sound of their footsteps was deeper and more solid.
The pipes went from dense to sparse, then disappeared entirely.
The end of the tunnel was a large space.
The ceiling was more than twice as high.
There were almost no pipes on the four walls.
The copper surfaces were clean, and the patterns of the conduction pathways were extremely faint.
It looked like the terminus of some structure, appearing as if there was nothing there.
Bolen walked to the center of the space with his cane and stopped.
The old man slowly crouched down, pressing his palm against the copper surface.
His eyes were closed.
A few seconds later, a faint blue-white light seeped into the ground from his fingertips.
“There is something... inside.”
He stood up, pointing his cane at the wall directly ahead.
“Help me dig it out.”
Heinrich glanced at Lu Yuan.
Lu Yuan nodded.
Two Holy Armored Army knights used their copper swords to chisel away the surface copper plates of the wall. Behind the copper was a layer of packed earth and stone.
As the earth and stone were continuously dug away, a copper pillar was revealed.
This copper pillar was embedded inside the wall, about a meter in diameter.
The surface was covered in inscriptions, almost identical to the one in the North Ward.
But the runes on this one were lit.
A dull golden luster flowed through the inscription lines. It wasn't strong, but it was definitely functioning, nearly intact.
Bolen practically lunged at it.
He dropped his cane on the floor and pressed both hands against the surface of the copper pillar, blue-white light seeping in.
His hands were actually trembling.
Lu Yuan didn't disturb him, waiting for a long time.
Only then did Bolen turn his head and whisper.
“Captain Lu, come here.”
Lu Yuan walked over and looked at Bolen.
“Try pressing your hand against it.”
Lu Yuan realized what Bolen wanted to do.
He pressed his palm against it. It felt slightly warm to the touch, and immediately after, Lu Yuan could sense something faint flowing slowly within the copper pillar.
“Can you feel the flow of the patterns inside?”
Lu Yuan nodded.
“You felt it.”
Bolen’s eyes lit up.
“You’re a genius! Cough, cough... think about it for yourself.”
Lu Yuan nodded. Clearly, Bolen was talking about his choice of direction in Inscription.
Bolen said no more. He took out rubbing paper and a charcoal pencil from his tool bag, spread the paper against the surface of the copper pillar, and rapidly rubbed the side of the charcoal pencil over it.
His technique was extremely practiced; the patterns of the inscriptions emerged bit by bit on the white paper.
Everyone watched in silence.
A few minutes later, Bolen put away the rubbing paper, rolled it up, and tucked it into his tool bag.
He turned to face everyone.
“My deduction was correct.”
Bolen’s voice returned to normal.
“In the four cardinal directions beneath the Bronze City, there is a copper pillar at each. The flow of the conduction pathways and the style of the inscriptions are identical. They form a complete seal.”
He patted the copper pillar.
“If we dig down from here, we will surely find more structures. By then, we might even be able to unravel all the mysteries of the Bronze City's runes, perhaps even fully master this city.”
Silence fell for a few seconds.
Bolen shook his head and added a sentence to himself: “It’s just that right now it relies entirely on autonomous operation. Such a waste.”
Lu Yuan made a mental note of that sentence.
The greyish-white text flashed.
【Bronze City Status: +2... 17/50】
However, just as everyone was preparing to leave and head to the next point, Wolf was leaning against the far wall. The dark red lines in the gaps of his gloves were flickering irregularly.
Lu Yuan had just noticed it.
Wolf suddenly stood bolt upright.
His entire body stiffened. The dark red lines spread up from his gloves, from his arms to his neck, their color turning from dark red to white-hot.
“Suppress him!” Lu Yuan roared, reacting instantly.
The two members of the Imperial Iron Guard reacted the fastest.
As fellow practitioners of the Furnace Pathway, they had already moved toward Wolf the moment they saw something was wrong.
The dark red lines on their bodies lit up simultaneously, flames rising along their skin as they lunged forward from both sides, locking Wolf’s arms.
Furnace against furnace.
But it was useless.
The white-hot temperature inside Wolf far exceeded the norm.
The moment one man's palm touched him, white smoke billowed out. His forearm was scorched with a large patch of burn marks, and he let go with a muffled groan. The other grit his teeth and held on for two seconds before being flung away.
“Bang!”
He slammed into the copper wall.
Lu Yuan’s eyes quickly swept over Lake, but Lake had no intention of moving, merely pretending to be ready to act.
It was at this moment that the nun in the team moved.
Her hands crossed as she traced several hand seals.
Angel’s Blessing. A faint golden film covered everyone except Wolf.
【You have received the Angel’s Blessing. Your physical body will receive a slight enhancement for a short period of time.】
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