Chapter 109: 107 The Mire

The gem on the stone platform was filled with green light, shining dazzlingly and soul-snatching; just one look at it gave one the feeling that their body and mind were about to be sucked in.

Li Nuowei remembered this gem; it was the Green Light Gem he had described to Drake, the source of the green lights crawling all over the walls, the nest of those green lights, and the guardian of the mire beneath the stone platform.

In the mire, faces twisted in pain let out ghostly shrieks; sometimes they would rise and fall with the waves of the mire, turning into bloated bubbles that shattered into dregs amidst harrowing, agonizing howls, only to be squeezed out again from other parts of the mire, over and over, like an Avici Hell where souls were bound.

Li Nuowei and Drake both heard those hoarse, desperate pleas and roars; Drake only felt those sounds colliding with and tearing at his fragile psyche, and strange faces appeared in his mind, being cruelly tortured by those wicked, monstrous beasts from the Netherworld Alien Realm.

Although green light bloomed all around and darkness was absent, Drake still felt a massive haze trying to crush his nerves; he felt like a sinner in the Middle Ages awaiting execution, stripped naked and about to be thrown into a pack of beasts starved to the point of madness.

Drake realized that the Alien God hidden beneath the Tunnel had appeared; just past the turn of this staircase, he would see the mire that devoured all things and the Green Light Gem that could save his life; his mood switched back and forth between fear and excitement, gradually blending together until Drake did not even know if he was pleasantly surprised or terrified.

Suddenly, Drake saw the intense green light reflecting on the walls quietly vanish, leaving only those Green Light Life forms still twisting and crawling in the cracks of the crumbling walls; he could not help but lean his head out with Li Nuowei to peek at the immense horror beyond this corner.

They saw a large expanse of foul-smelling, writhing mire churning continuously on the ground; as if it had sensed the arrival of intruders, it swallowed and engulfed the floating, irregular Green Light Gem along with the stone platform; the surging mire clung to them like bone-eating maggots, and terrifying, twisted faces wailed and roared amidst the rolling waves of the mire.

Drake felt a pain in his arm and immediately came to his senses; only then did he realize he had been staring at that sinful mire for too long, having been lured and manipulated by the voices of the vengeful spirits in the mire without knowing it, to the point that he actually wanted to step down the stairs and walk into the man-eating mire; it was Li Nuowei who had discovered it in time and grabbed him.

"Save me, save me..."

"Kill me, kill me..."

"Help..."

"&%￥@"

Drake's hair stood on end; he saw that every painful face above the mire was looking at him; those dark eye sockets, deep as whirlpools, showed no desire for survival, only black holes that seemed to want to suck everything in.

Compared to the cries for help from the mouths of those twisted faces, what they actually wanted more was to drag Drake and Li Nuowei into this endless mire cage.

The mire also discovered their presence, and the mud rose up into gray-green ropes that coiled toward the two.

Drake and Li Nuowei turned and ran, the two of them running until their faces were red and their veins were popping.

Drake's heart pounded; he looked at Li Nuowei running in front of him and thought with unwillingness: "Is this another failed ending? Is Li Nuowei going to have one more death line?"

Li Nuowei and Drake ran incessantly, but their stamina had long since reached its limit, and the mud churning with twisted faces soon caught up.

"Here!" Li Nuowei suddenly grabbed Drake and darted into a dark corner he had not noticed before, which seemed to be a dim path that had appeared out of thin air.

Surprise and doubt surged in Drake's heart: "Is everything still within Li Nuowei's control?"

Soon, reality gave Drake a heavy blow, for this dim path had come to an end; a black wall blocked the way, while the mud behind them was still closing in.

"Smash the wall." Li Nuowei gave no extra explanation, only slamming into the wall with force, his own body rattling with the sound of bones, but that seemingly thick wall broke open with clearly visible cracks.

Drake had no other choice either; catalyzed by the desire to survive, he seemed to fear no pain and kept slamming into the wall.

Boom!

The mire roared out from the broken wall, and Drake and Li Nuowei also rushed out along with the shattered flying sand and rocks; stained with foul-smelling mud, they fell from a great height.

Drake and Li Nuowei only felt a burning sensation in their bodies; it was the mire attached to them taking effect, digesting their flesh and skin; feeling the burning pain, they fell from the air into a golden ocean of metal.

And for some reason, the man-eating mire stopped its pursuit of Drake and Li Nuowei; the hateful human faces on the mud retreated back behind the broken wall with roars of unwillingness and anger.

Li Nuowei crawled out from a pile of gold coins, one arm hanging limply, the entire arm a bloated blue-purple; he called out to Drake.

But when he found Drake, he discovered that the great detective's head had already been pierced by a sharp Treasure, lying dead with eyes wide open in this unknown Hidden Treasure Vault.

"Sigh, failed again? This time I lost to luck." Seeing this, Li Nuowei let out a sigh; without hesitation, he picked up a sharp Gold Treasure from the ground, stabbed it fiercely into his neck, twisted it, and died on the spot.

"Who didn't make it?" Escaping into a temporarily safe cave, Yu Lianyun asked Shang Wei and the rest of the surviving Mysterious Investigators.

Shang Wei and the other Mysterious Investigators looked at each other, all revealing bitter expressions in unison, then reported the names of the companions who had disappeared during the escape, followed by a silence.

The moment the companions' names were reported, everyone present knew they had announced their deaths.

Now, only four people remained in the team that had come to explore the isolated island.

"Where can we escape to next?" A Mysterious Investigator sat down with a thud against the wall, dejectedly holding his head; outside the cave, the rustling footsteps and terrifying, strange roars were continuous and densely surrounding them.

Those fish-men would always find them and would always take their lives; they still could not escape death.

A sense of despair condensed the air in the cave; another C-rank Occult Investigator seemed infected by the emotion, and although he did not break down in tears, he covered his face and wept silently.

Only Shang Wei looked at Yu Lianyun with a glimmer of expectation: "Captain Yu, what can we do next?"