The shockwave from the explosion sent the four of them flying, landing heavily on a stretch of hard ground.
The mycelium behind them was briefly blocked by the blast, but it continued to spread rapidly toward them, acting just like those centipedes—unwilling to stop until they were dead.
"Let's get out of here first..." Zhu Yinxi propped himself up against the rock wall and stood. A thin trail of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth. Although the explosion had allowed them to escape, Zhu Yinxi had taken the brunt of the damage by proactively deploying a spiritual energy shield to protect the others from injury.
In the distance, the familiar rustling sound rang out again. The four of them stiffly turned their heads to look at the other side of the corridor.
"Crap!" Duan Xianxing let out a miserable shriek. Ignoring everything else, he immediately hoisted Liu Qingyang onto his back and charged forward. "How did this thing catch up again?! Argh!!!"
The four of them could no longer care about anything else. Slapping on acceleration talismans, they bolted forward. The two entities behind them seemed to have reached a tacit understanding, both choosing to deal with the four humans first.
"Who did we even provoke?! It's not like we blew up their nest or something!" Duan Xianxing shouted as he ran.
Even the other three were somewhat dazed, unable to understand why these creatures were pursuing them so relentlessly.
Just as their spiritual energy was about to run dry, Li Nanzhu suddenly pointed toward an inconspicuous fork in the path.
"Go left!"
The group drifted around the turn, nearly crashing into one another.
"Little Junior Sister, are you sure?" Duan Xianxing swallowed hard as he looked down the pitch-black corridor. "This looks even scarier!"
"Intuition!" Li Nanzhu said shortly. "Trust me!"
Li Nanzhu made this choice because she suddenly remembered in the original novel, Cang Dongqing and the others also got lost in the corridors. Later, Cang Dongqing followed her intuition and kept turning left at every intersection, eventually leading them out. Since they had no other choice anyway, they might as well gamble on it!
"Then what are we waiting for?! Little Junior Sister, I trust you!" Duan Xianxing took the lead, rushing in with Liu Qingyang on his back. "It's better than being a snack for those things behind us!"
The four of them stumbled and sprinted through the darkness. The clicking sounds drawing closer behind them made their scalps tingle.
Li Nanzhu's night-luminescent pearl illuminated the path ahead amidst the jolting run. She suddenly shouted in surprise, "There's light ahead!"
"It's the exit!" Duan Xianxing cheered. Then his foot caught on something, and he faceplanted, taking Liu Qingyang down with him.
Zhu Yinxi's temples throbbed. He simply grabbed the two of them, one in each hand, and continued charging forward like he was carrying two little chicks.
Li Nanzhu ran at the very front with Suisui in her arms, then suddenly slammed on the brakes.
"Wait! This isn't the exit!"
Only then did the group see clearly that the so-called 'light' was actually a massive karst cave, with countless glowing stalactites hanging from the ceiling.
What was even more despairing was...
"A dead end..." Duan Xianxing's face fell. "Little Junior Sister, what about your intuition?"
Li Nanzhu bit her lip hard. She had misjudged. What should they do?!
"What now?" Liu Qingyang turned back nervously. "That thing is about to catch up!"
"It's not a dead end," Zhu Yinxi suddenly pointed in a direction. "Look over there!"
In a corner of the cave, there was an inconspicuous small pool. The surface of the water was rippling slightly.
This was also the reason he hadn't objected to Li Nanzhu going left. It wasn't just her intuition; he had also sensed the sound of wind coming from the left. Wind usually indicated an exit, and now it seemed a path to life was indeed here.
"A pool?!" Duan Xianxing's face went pale. "Are you sure there's a way through down there?"
"It's better than being eaten by centipedes and mycelium!" Liu Qingyang had already pulled out the water-repelling bead, preparing to have Zhu Yinxi inject spiritual energy into it.
In the moment they hesitated, the corridor behind them suddenly collapsed. The head of a giant centipede poked out, its crimson compound eyes glinting with a vicious light in the dark, while the mycelium was about to reach their feet.
"Jump!" Zhu Yinxi made a snap decision.
Splash, splash, splash, splash. The four of them jumped into the pool.
The icy water instantly submerged them. Li Nanzhu held onto the struggling Suisui tightly and followed Zhu Yinxi as they swam deeper.
As the four of them sank into the pool, a bone-chilling cold immediately invaded their bodies.
Li Nanzhu forced her eyes open, searching for Zhu Yinxi's figure in the murky water. Suisui was struggling wildly in her arms, its white bone claws clutching her lapel tightly.
Fortunately, Liu Qingyang had tossed the water-repelling bead to Zhu Yinxi just before entering the water. However, Liu Qingyang was currently injured and was a fire-attribute cultivator; he naturally disliked aquatic environments. He could only grip Duan Xianxing's clothes tightly. Luckily, Zhu Yinxi moved quickly, spreading the effect of the water-repelling bead to encompass them all.
Seeing that all three people and the rat were present, Zhu Yinxi activated his spiritual energy once more. He used his jade flute to emit sound waves that formed guiding ripples through the current.
Li Nanzhu followed the direction of the ripples and could vaguely see a narrow opening on the rock wall ahead.
Suddenly, a violent tremor came from above the pool.
The mycelium reached into the water like a living thing, stretching and spreading through the liquid even faster than it did on land! More terrifyingly, those iron-wire centipedes also leaped into the water one after another, their hundred legs paddling with a flexibility that made one's hair stand on end.
The expressions of the four changed again. How could these things enter the water too? Fortunately, with the water-repelling bead, they raced against time to swim toward that opening.
Just as the mycelium was about to wrap around their ankles, a powerful current suddenly surged out from the opening, flushing the four of them straight inside!
The four were washed into a stone room that was half-submerged in water. The current formed a vortex, tossing them in different directions.
Li Nanzhu was thrown hard against the base of a stone statue. Ignoring the pain, she scrambled up and checked Suisui's condition with trembling hands. Fortunately, the soul fire in the little skeleton's eye sockets was flickering weakly, but it hadn't gone out.
She looked up at Zhu Yinxi and saw that her usually composed Second Senior Brother was currently in a sorry state. His jade hair crown had been lost somewhere, and his long hair was matted wetly against his pale face.
"Cough, cough... Where is this?" Duan Xianxing dragged Liu Qingyang ashore; both of them were coughing uncontrollably.
Li Nanzhu pulled the night-luminescent pearl from her storage bag. Its light illuminated the small space—the stone room was circular, the walls were covered in strange murals, and a damaged stone statue stood in the center.
Zhu Yinxi propped himself up and suddenly raised a hand for silence. "Listen!"
At the entrance to the pool, the movement of the mycelium and centipedes stopped abruptly. The monsters that had chased them into a corner were now pacing outside the stone room, refusing to enter.
"They... don't dare to come in?" Li Nanzhu looked at the water surface in disbelief.
A few strands of mycelium tentatively reached into the stone room, only to retract instantly upon touching the water, as if they had been burned.
Liu Qingyang pointed weakly at the walls. "Look at those murals..."
The murals depicted an ancient sacrificial scene: a group of cultivators were kneeling before a statue, and the statue held the same glowing mushrooms they had seen before.
Most horrifying was the final image—those moonlight mushrooms were actually being eaten by the cultivators, and dense mycelium grew out from within their bodies to consume the statue.
At the very bottom of the mural, a line of small characters was carved: "The fungal feeders will eventually be consumed by the fungi."
The handwriting was distorted and blackened, looking as though it had been written with rotting blood. At the end of the text, several claw marks stretched out, as if the person carving the words had finally been dragged away by something.
"This statue..." Duan Xianxing suddenly shivered. "It couldn't be..."
Zhu Yinxi's flute suddenly emitted a warning-like vibration.
Everyone only then noticed that the base of the broken stone statue was carved with a circle of mushroom patterns identical to those in the murals.
Even more bizarrely, at the cut where the statue's head was missing, several strands of dried mycelium remained.
Suisui suddenly jumped out from Li Nanzhu's arms, its bone claw pointing behind the statue. There was an inconspicuous groove there, its shape matching perfectly with the missing head of the statue.
"We're not supposed to..." Duan Xianxing's voice trembled. "Find its head and bring it back, are we?"
Before he could finish, the entire stone room began to shake.
The water level in the pool began to rise eerily, reaching their feet in an instant.
What was worse, the mycelium that hadn't dared to enter was now proliferating wildly outside the room, sealing the exit completely.
"The water is rising!" Liu Qingyang struggled to stand. "They want to drown us here! Even with the water-repelling bead, they can just trap us here until we die!"
Li Nanzhu suddenly rushed toward the statue. "Quick, look! There must be another exit in this room!"
The four of them searched along the walls separately. The water had already risen to their knees, and the bone-chilling cold made their teeth chatter.
Duan Xianxing suddenly found a stone brick that was somewhat loose and pushed hard!
With a clack, the wall behind the statue suddenly slid open, revealing a narrow staircase leading upward!
"Go!" Zhu Yinxi grabbed Liu Qingyang. Just as they stepped onto the stairs, several thick strands of mycelium suddenly reached out from the water, tightly entwining Duan Xianxing's ankle.
"Not again!" Duan Xianxing looked on in horror as the mycelium began to crawl up his leg.
Li Nanzhu unhesitatingly conjured several fire lotus. The mycelium temporarily recoiled in the firelight, and Zhu Yinxi's sound waves followed immediately, shattering the remaining strands into dust.
The four of them scrambled up the stairs as the secret door behind them slowly closed.
With one last look, they saw the water had already flooded most of the stone room, and the mycelium was writhing painfully in the water.
At the top of the stairs was a dry stone room, though it was incredibly dim without any light.
Duan Xianxing's fingers were still shaking as he climbed up. He was truly frightened. In a normal fight, death was just death, but facing these things left him feeling utterly helpless. Liu Qingyang's back wound had begun to turn white and fester after being soaked twice, yet he still clutched the bag of explosive flame sand tightly. Only after seeing that nothing was following them did the four of them breathe a sigh of relief.
Duan Xianxing slumped to the ground, looking at the blue traces left on his leg. "Are we... safe?"
Liu Qingyang leaned against the wall, weakly checking the wound on his back. "Those damn things really can't get in?"
Zhu Yinxi walked to the entrance and checked carefully. The passage to the pool had closed automatically, and it was quiet outside the stone door. There was indeed no sign of pursuit. He exhaled slowly. "Temporarily safe."
Li Nanzhu picked up the shivering Suisui. The soul fire in the little skeleton's eye sockets was faint, clearly showing it had also been terrified.
She gently stroked Suisui's bony head. "It's okay, we're safe."
Zhu Yinxi turned and carefully inspected the room. "This place..." He suddenly stopped, staring blankly at everything before him.
Li Nanzhu's night-luminescent pearl rolled across the floor, illuminating a shocking sight—the entire wall was covered in densely packed pill shelves, filled with all sorts of jade bottles and porcelain jars, shimmering with a soft luster under the faint light.
"This... this is..." Duan Xianxing was dazed as soon as he stood up.
Liu Qingyang leaned weakly against a medicine shelf, but his expression of shock was unmistakable. "Did we... stumble into the alchemy room?"
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