Chapter 111: One Hundred and Nine: The Karst Cave (Two-in-One)

One Hundred and Nine: The Karst Cave (Two-in-One)

Hearing Shang Wei's irrepressible grumbling, Yu Lianyun shrugged, noncommittal.

The history recorded on the murals ended there; the rest were all scenes of evil and cruel rituals. Taking any one of them to film a restoration would result in a globally banned movie, but even so, those nauseating and insane scenes of the Sacrificial Ritual were not without value—at least they had seen an unknown escape route.

It was a circle located in the center of an unknown Strange Array. In the ritual's recorded murals, this circle had been opened; it was a dark and deep hole leading straight to the bottom of the water. It was like a funnel for feeding the lazy; the sea monster had originally been beneath the hole, opening its bloody maw, waiting for the offerings to fall. If it hadn't eaten enough, it would reach out a "hand" and randomly select a "lucky" member of the audience as an after-dinner dessert.

The tremors were getting closer and more violent; there was not much time left for the group.

Although that hole leading to the water bottom was ominously Abnormal, compared to waiting to be packed away by the fish-men to face a certain death, or jumping down the hole to the water bottom to find a glimmer of survival, anyone with a still-sane mind would choose the latter without hesitation.

The few did not intend to fumble for the mechanism; according to the content on the murals, the method to open the Stone Gate of the hole required a massive amount of manpower, and letting them imitate their predecessors was clearly impractical.

Secondly, because times had changed, they installed the Micro-bomb they carried for breaking through obstacles onto the Stone Gate of the hole. With the help of a Mysterious Investigator in the team who was proficient in fluid dynamics, they maximized the rational use of the limited bombs, planned the blasting points, and set up the explosives.

The switch to detonate the bombs was pressed, and a dazzling flash of fire suddenly flickered in the stone chamber, followed by the fire being covered by a large amount of stone powder and dust, spreading in all directions as a huge smoke screen.

"It's open!" Shang Wei, with sharp eyes, noticed a pitch-black crack appearing on the ground and said excitedly.

At the same time, the fish-men who noticed the movement of the explosion pinpointed the location of the Mysterious Investigators. A series of strange roars suddenly resounded outside the cave, and the sound of running footsteps was even more maddening than a lethal chainsaw.

Hearing those bursts of footsteps, the Mysterious Investigators who had been hesitant and wanted to find another way out completely abandoned that thought, following Yu Lianyun and Shang Wei to jump into the blasted hole one after another.

Falling into the water, the diving distance of about ten meters made everyone feel as if, at the moment of hitting the water, their whole bodies were colliding with a solid object, and a burst of intense pain impacted everyone's flesh and blood.

In the dark and cold water, the Mysterious Investigators turned on their illuminating wristwatches, enduring the pain as they swam underwater.

Everyone was racing against time within their limited breath-holding capacity to find a safe way out underwater.

And it seemed that heaven did not wish to cut off their path; after swimming an unknown distance of dozens of meters, Shang Wei luckily discovered an air chamber underwater. They swam over without hesitation, broke through the water surface one after another, and entered the air chamber.

"Hurry, don't stop." After landing, Yu Lianyun felt her calves cramping and trembling, but she still forced herself to stand up, telling the group to follow her deeper into the underground where the air chamber led, saying, "It won't be that difficult for those fish-man monsters to find us."

If the fish-men discovered that the hole led to the water bottom, these creatures, who were already adept at swimming, would pursue them without hesitation. Going into the water was returning home for them, and they would naturally find the existence of this air chamber more easily than the group.

The Mysterious Investigators who had come ashore knew their situation well and scrambled to keep up with Yu Lianyun's pace.

Although they were currently in a perilous situation and had not yet escaped danger, at least the fact that they could still survive along the way was almost inseparable from Yu Lianyun's wise decisions.

The group was currently in an underground karst cave that extended in all directions; jagged rocks and strange lights from minerals, every naturally formed wonder came into view, and the whistling of eerie winds that made one feel uneasy echoed in their ears.

Everyone's mood was tense; even Yu Lianyun was still nervous and uneasy about what had happened before. They had no time to appreciate this rare underground wonder because, in their eyes, those strangely shaped rocks were crouching, hideous, and terrifying monsters, the light scattered by the glowing minerals were sharp and sinister eyes, and those sounds of wind and dripping water were the sounds of those monsters approaching.

Had they escaped? Were they temporarily safe?

It seemed their souls were still lingering in the thrilling experiences on the ground, and in fact, they were indeed still walking on a high-altitude steel wire.

Yu Lianyun often extended the back of her hand into the air to feel the airflow; this was the most rudimentary means of judging an underground exit.

Yet despite this, Yu Lianyun and the others followed the direction of the airflow all the way, but still found no hope of an exit.

Just as they were moving forward in silence in the underground karst cave, a Mysterious Investigator suddenly let out a miserable scream; he seemed to have seen something and backed away in terror.

The group followed his terrified gaze and were instantly struck as if by electricity, their faces showing extreme horror.

They saw that in the crimson stone pit, it was piled full of decaying and withered white bones—some human, some fish, and even the skeletons of other unknown creatures, just abandoned in the stone pit.

"Could this be the lair of those fish-men? Is this where they process and dump their leftovers and scraps?" Shang Wei couldn't help but shiver. It turned out they hadn't escaped to safety, but were goods delivered to the door for free, throwing themselves into the net.

"Calm down." Although Yu Lianyun's entire scalp was screaming silently, she still pacified the group, saying, "It's not necessarily the fish-men's. This could be something that the sea monster that was repelled once digested and excreted."

Oh, so it was the sea monster's.

Feeling an even more terrifying danger, the pacified teammates felt even worse.

Yu Lianyun wanted to force a laugh to express her awkwardness, but felt she had no extra strength to make other expressions, so she just sighed and said, "Let's keep going."

Next, the things the group saw became increasingly bizarre and inexplicable. Pitted and scarred stones retained traces of erosion that even time could not smooth away. The ground and walls were full of irregular, deformed lines that challenged the fragile and sensitive nerves of humans; just looking at them for one more second was a desecration and ravaging of the human aesthetic concepts of hundreds of thousands of years.

Yu Lianyun heard some kind of gnawing sound. She looked sideways and realized it was a panicked and uneasy teammate unconsciously gnawing on his own fingers. He seemed not to feel the pain, chewing the flesh and blood he had gnawed off as he walked, his mouth full of blood.

Yu Lianyun stopped the other person's behavior, and the teammate who had been loudly scolded finally noticed his own crazy act of self-mutilation in a daze.

His terrified pupils trembled, and he screamed as he spat out the blood, flesh, and bone fragments in his mouth. His sanity was about to be lost, and after vomiting up all the digestive contents in his stomach for the day, the self-mutilating Mysterious Investigator fainted to the ground.

Adhering to the principle of not abandoning or giving up, the remaining people hesitated again and again, but still decided to take this teammate who was on the verge of collapse with them. Only after giving the other person's wounds simple treatment and bandaging, they also covered the other person's mouth with cloth to prevent him from unconsciously gnawing on things again, especially biting the person who was carrying him.

However, this episode did not end.

Just over ten minutes later, Shang Wei, who was carrying the injured teammate, noticed that the other person's whole body was burning hot, suspected to be a fever. Upon checking the injured teammate's wounded hand, he discovered that the wound had shown symptoms of infection and suppuration in a short time. Green, bloody, and white unknown viscous substances were intertwined in the incomplete wound, and the strong, fishy stench was pungent and unpleasant.

Just in case, the group performed another debridement for the unconscious teammate, but he seemed to have been hit by a Curse of unknown origin. His physical condition deteriorated again with time, and a series of chickenpox-like bumps erupted from his hand, spreading all the way until they covered most of his body.

Seeing this, the group had to stop to check on him. They tried to wake the unconscious person, but the other person only woke up briefly, muttering strange, obscure, and difficult-to-understand languages, then fainted again, unconsciously coughing up blood, with difficulty breathing.

By now, the group had no other options and could only watch helplessly as a living person died from a super-fast wound infection, then watched the other person die and turn into a pool of foul-smelling unknown liquid.

A chill surged in the hearts of the three, Yu Lianyun included. No one knew who had killed this poor Mysterious Investigator, or how he had died so inexplicably and completely beyond cure.

The only thing they could guess was that on the road ahead, they had to remain calm, pay attention to each other's expressions and actions, and no one should let their sanity be affected by the terrifying environment around them. Upon discovering that someone's behavior had undergone strange changes, especially acts of self-mutilation, they must remind and stop each other.

Otherwise, that teammate whose corpse rapidly rotted was the same result they could foresee.

They walked like this, stepping into the darkness, passing through the long and narrow Tunnel, and when they came out again, there was one less person among the three of them, leaving only Shang Wei and Yu Lianyun moving forward like walking corpses.

Uh—

Suddenly, Yu Lianyun heard a familiar and strange low hiss, and her brain instantly cleared. She stopped, while Shang Wei's face was pale, his mouth wide open, walking in a twisted and strange posture; every step he took seemed to be prying his bones from his joints.

"Where have I walked to? Shouldn't I be following the direction of the airflow?" Yu Lianyun's brain was clear, looking at the underground filled with dim and twisted strange lines, cold sweat dispersed from her body like a tide, soaking her whole body again.

She hurriedly stepped forward and grabbed Shang Wei, who was trapped in an unknown hallucination, and didn't know how many slaps she gave the other person before finally managing to wake Shang Wei up.

Shang Wei, with a bloodless face, looked at Yu Lianyun with lingering fear in his eyes: "I... what happened to me?"

"Wake up quickly, we almost went crazy just now." Yu Lianyun said.

"I can tell, your expression..." Shang Wei swallowed, looking with some fear at Yu Lianyun's smile, which was currently so ferocious it was somewhat distorted.

Yu Lianyun, who was completely unaware of this, touched her face and finally discovered her loss of control. She tried to rub and pat the muscles of her face, letting them relax again, and finally returning to a flat state.

Yu Lianyun rubbed her sore face and said somewhat expressionlessly: "I think we won't be chased by the fish-men anymore."

"Yeah... even those crazy fish-men, after walking into a place like this, might not be able to keep their sanity like we do." Shang Wei said. He coughed, and his nose suddenly sprayed a violent and exaggerated stream of blood; he hurriedly covered his gushing nostrils.

"Hold on." Seeing the mutation of Shang Wei's body, Yu Lianyun could only encourage the other person powerlessly.

Fortunately, Shang Wei finally managed to stop the nosebleed, although the price was becoming somewhat weak.

"I'll share some of my Stamina Potion with you; it should help you hold on for a while longer." Yu Lianyun gave almost all of the Stamina Potion she carried on her person to Shang Wei.

Shang Wei took them with a dazed expression, and after drinking two bottles of the potion, he looked slightly more radiant, having recovered some of his senses and stamina.

They continued walking through the vast underground void, where the terrifying and distorted lines all around had severely affected their perception; they even began to struggle to distinguish whether the path they were taking was the correct one, nor did they know if they were walking or crawling, knowing only that they had to keep going until they found a way out.

"That is... light..." After walking for who knows how long, Yu Lianyun seemed to see a brilliant light appear ahead, and she immediately became excited, shaking the arm of Shang Wei, whose body was reaching its limit.

Shang Wei shook his head, his eyes blurred, and he did not respond to anything Yu Lianyun said, merely following silently behind her for a few steps before suddenly toppling over, falling into a crevice between the lines, and being swallowed by the gap.

Seeing this scene, the sadness in Yu Lianyun's eyes did not last long; she simply gritted her teeth, lowered her head, and continued walking, stepping toward the light at the end, one step at a time.

She smiled and reached out to touch the light, but felt a damp, cold sensation, which washed over her fingertips in wave after wave.

"So this is what light feels like when you touch it?" Yu Lianyun thought blankly, and she too fell forward.

Thump!

Her brain felt as if it had been struck by a heavy blow, and Yu Lianyun woke up with a start; wanting to breathe, she felt a sour, astringent sensation in her nose and mouth, uncontrollably spitting out saltwater and silt.

Her consciousness muddled, Yu Lianyun looked around blankly, half of her body soaked in seawater, her fingers dug into the damp beach; she lay sitting on the shore, soaked through, while on the ocean waves, several floating corpses drifted, and the wreckage of a shattered ship was piled on the shore, helplessly accepting the washing of the seawater, just like her...