The countless scattered points of wandering light were extinguishing, receding like a tide. The scene possessed a bizarre, stunning beauty.
The vine branch that had grown first seemed to have exhausted all its strength, collapsing into dregs and dust that fell.
Bang!
Then another blooming sphere of light exploded, once again scattering points of light that drifted through the passage space, dazzling.
The holy radiance vanished, and holy radiance bloomed again.
Bang!
A third sphere of light exploded.
This was the final scene the three senior brothers saw as they rapidly retreated.
The three dared not linger. The quantity of exploding black filaments was simply too great. If they surged forth, defense would be impossible.
Not knowing how far they could float, putting distance between themselves and the threat was naturally the best strategy.
“Something’s wrong!” Yu Qing suddenly stopped. The torch in his hand, crackling, flared bright again.
He held the torch against the stone wall, illuminating it, moving it back and forth to examine.
The two senior brothers came back. Nan Zhu asked, “What’s wrong?”
Yu Qing turned back and asked them, “Where’s the opening? Where is the opening we came through?”
Nan and Mu froze. With this reminder, they realized something was wrong. They seemed to recall not having seen the opening that led into this passage along the way.
Nan Zhu hesitated. “Is it up ahead? We haven’t reached it yet?”
Mu Aotie looked toward the direction they had fled from. “We entered through the opening. We shouldn’t have walked that far forward. The distance we just ran should have exceeded it. We should have passed the opening.”
Nan Zhu: “It can’t have vanished into thin air. Let’s walk further ahead and see.” He reached behind his back and pulled out a torch, lighting it from Yu Qing’s flame.
Mu Aotie did the same. The light immediately brightened considerably.
The three senior brothers held their torches and probed forward, illuminating the way. After walking about a hundred zhang, they still saw no opening.
Adding the distance they had run earlier, the opening they entered through couldn’t possibly be this far.
Nan Zhu: “Could we have run past it earlier without seeing it?”
The three looked at each other. One person not seeing it was understandable. But all three not seeing it?
“How about we go back and look?” Nan Zhu asked again.
Mu Aotie agreed. “There are many lethal black filaments over there. Remember to circulate your energy to protect your body. Don’t let anything get close.”
Although their cultivation had not yet reached the level of producing protective astral qi, releasing their internal energy outward to resist those light, floating things was no problem at all.
Yu Qing said in a deep voice, “Sustained outward release of internal energy for too long is exhausting. Apply the insect repellent medicine too.”
Indeed. They acted immediately. The three quickly took out the insect repellent medicine they each carried.
What stunned Nan Zhu and Mu Aotie was that after Yu Qing handed his torch to Mu Aotie to hold, he immediately stripped himself completely naked. He rapidly applied the medicinal paste all over his body, even untying his hair to rub it through once before restoring his ponytail.
The key point was, he didn’t forget to rub the soles of his feet either.
After putting his clothes back on, Yu Qing applied the remaining paste to his clothes. He used up an entire cake of medicinal paste on himself before stopping.
The two senior brothers were speechless. They truly didn’t know what to say about this half-witted fellow. Such deathly afraid behavior, yet he kept doing bold things. What kind of matter was this?
“I’m done.” Yu Qing patted his chest, cracking a grin of white teeth and chuckling. He proactively took all three torches into his own hands, gesturing for the two senior brothers to hurry.
The two senior brothers exchanged a glance. They had originally planned to just apply a surface coating. But after seeing Yu Qing’s application method, and then thinking of that terrifying way of dying after being affected, they too began to undress.
However, after stripping naked, both of them faced the wall to apply the medicine, not as shameless as Yu Qing.
Only after they were all dressed again, and the medicinal paste was all used up, did they each hold a torch and head back the way they came.
Along this road, the three respectively illuminated left, right, above, and below as they advanced, not missing a single spot.
After probing and examining for quite some time, the three gradually felt anxious. Where was the opening? The opening had actually vanished into thin air.
The problem was that along the entire way, they didn’t even see a scrap of broken root debris. They clearly remembered that when they entered, the opening had been blocked by a tangle of roots. Breaking through the opening had produced quite a bit of debris. Yet along the entire way, there truly wasn’t even a flake of dregs to be seen.
Most bizarre of all, the scene of the major incident had also disappeared.
They didn’t see those drifting lethal black filaments. They didn’t see the three corpses that had become dried skeletons.
Even more inconceivable, the three living people who had been sitting cross-legged in meditation were also gone.
At first, the three thought they might not have walked far enough. They calculated their steps and walked out approximately another two li. This had far exceeded the distance to reach the scene of the incident. Yet they still didn’t see the site of the earlier shock.
What does it mean to grow more frightened the further one walks?
Look at the deep, endless darkness before and behind them. Under the swaying firelight, it always made one feel as if something lurked in the shadows.
Silence. Only the footsteps of the three.
A nameless sense of terror gradually grew in the hearts of the three senior brothers.
Cultivators are not afraid of demons and ghosts. Rather, they fear the unknown, that nameless fear of being trapped in something inexplicable. Human hearts are made of flesh. It is unavoidable.
At least the three senior brothers, tall, fat, and thin, subconsciously walked closer and closer together.
After becoming absolutely certain they had passed the scene of the incident in terms of distance, the three stopped. They finally understood why the outside world called this place a den of evil. It was indeed uncanny.
Nan Zhu looked back. “Neatly arranged, orderly, a perfectly straight passage. How could it suddenly disappear? Is there a mechanism, some kind of formation?”
Yu Qing and Mu Aotie were also pondering what kind of situation this was.
“What about the exit? Didn’t you say if you came, you would definitely find it? I told you not to come, but you insisted on coming. Now look who’s the fool. We haven’t even seen those so-called fighting and killing evil creatures yet. Just a single road has trapped us to death. Old Ninth, I said we would sooner or later be screwed over by him to death. Wasn’t I right?”
Nan Zhu began chattering away in blame.
The problem was that after all this exhausting back and forth, the three only had one torch left in hand.
Yu Qing stared at the burning flame of the torch for a while, frowned, reached to his waist, and pulled out three sticks of incense from a bundle previously hidden in his sleeve that had slid to his waist due to undressing and dressing. He held them together and lit them from the torch.
Nan and Mu stared speechlessly. When purchasing the incense, this fellow had said it would be useful. He wouldn’t clearly say what use. Now he had lit them. They didn’t know what trick he was up to.
Yu Qing handed the torch to Mu Aotie. Holding the incense with both hands, steady and unmoving, he gazed at the green smoke rising from the incense to observe.
Seeing him unresponsive for so long, Nan Zhu said with a stern face, “Old Fifteenth, this isn’t the temple. What are you burning incense for? What exactly are you doing?”
Yu Qing said in a deep voice, “Asking the gods to show the way!”
He couldn’t possibly tell his two senior brothers the truth. He could only say this.
“…”
Nan and Mu were simultaneously speechless and choked up. They had wondered what this fellow bought incense for. It was actually for this superstitious trick?
Nan Zhu gradually said in shock, “I say, in the temple, that act of deceiving gods and ghosts was fine to fool the village villagers and set their minds at ease. But are you fucking fooling yourself too?” He couldn’t help cursing. He truly couldn’t hold it in.
“Fatty, shut your mouth!” Yu Qing shouted, clearly getting a bit angry. He too was somewhat anxious.
“You…” Nan Zhu wanted to say more, but Mu Aotie reached out to stop him.
Mu Aotie slightly shook his head, gesturing for Seventh Senior Brother to be at ease.
He also didn’t believe in this so-called asking the gods to show the way. However, he also felt Old Fifteenth was unlikely to be spouting such nonsense at a time like this. Being able to prepare incense early on meant he must have had some planned intention.
So he felt it was better to wait and see before speaking.
Nan Zhu understood the meaning. With a flick of his sleeve, one hand holding the torch, the other behind his back, he put on a stern face and waited quietly.
Yu Qing stared intently at the incense smoke. Fine beads of sweat gradually appeared on his forehead. This time he was truly somewhat anxious.
He had intended to bring out his trump card skill, to use the Observation Character Technique to probe. Who knew the incense smoke before his eyes would rise in a perfectly straight line. The slight ripples, when interpreted, were also caused by the breathing of the two senior brothers beside him.
What did this mean? It meant they were in a relatively enclosed space. It meant the opening they entered through had indeed disappeared.
If this were truly the case, with the air cut off, wouldn’t the three of them sooner or later suffocate to death here?
He observed for a while longer. It was still the same.
He was anxious in his heart, but he knew he couldn’t show it. He couldn’t lose his dignity as sect leader. To stabilize morale, after closing his eyes and concentrating for a while, he said in a deep voice, “The Patriarch told me that there is indeed a mechanism in this passage.”
Nan and Mu were stunned into foolishness by him.
Nan Zhu suspiciously asked, “Where is the mechanism?”
If he could truly point out the mechanism’s location, then he would really believe it.
Shing! Yu Qing drew his sword. Walking to a wall beside him, he swung the sword hilt like a hammer, striking the wall with loud clangs. “The opening we came through is concealed. It must be hidden behind the wall. We’ll just knock our way back like this. A wall with abnormal sound behind it is where the opening is.”
The two senior brothers were choked speechless for quite a while.
Nan Zhu stared with wide eyes, shocked again. “Old Fifteenth, this is your asking the gods to show the way? This is what the Patriarch told you about where the mechanism is? Are you not even slightly pretending, treating the two of us as complete fools?”
Yu Qing flew into a rage from embarrassment. “Fatty, you won’t even listen to the Patriarch’s words. Do you want to fight me?”
Since soft methods didn’t work, he wanted to try hard ones. It was better for everyone to look foolish together than for him to look foolish alone.
“You…” Nan Zhu looked like he was gnashing his teeth.
Mu Aotie’s face also darkened.
Seeing he had provoked public anger, Yu Qing simply went all the way. His sword flipped in his hand. Shing! He sheathed it. Gesticulating, he said, “Old Seventh, knock this wall. Old Ninth, knock that wall. I’ll calculate the walking distance. We’ll just keep knocking forward like this. Sooner or later we’ll find the exit.”
After speaking, the passage was so quiet one could hear a pin drop.
Nan Zhu and Mu Aotie stared dead at Yu Qing.
After quite a while, it was ultimately Nan Zhu who yielded first. “Old Ninth, we know in our hearts this fellow is no good thing. Yet we were bewitched and blinded, stubbornly following him in. Now there’s no other way. This is also a method. Let’s try it first. Everything can wait until we get out.” After speaking, he even shoved Mu Aotie.
He knew Old Ninth was an arrogant person, not easily yielding. He feared causing trouble. Once that kid found an excuse to act, Old Ninth would be secondary. Looking at that gaze, he would absolutely be the first to be dealt with ruthlessly.