Chapter 102: Embers Slumber and the Elves' Sigh

Darkness was the only thing he could perceive.

Copperbeard's heavy, ragged breathing echoed through the deathly stillness; every inhale carried the rust-and-thick-mud stench of rot, every exhale dragged tearing, searing pain from his entire body. His one remaining eye had barely adjusted to the absolute gloom deep in the pipe. The mechanical eye had been completely destroyed in the earlier explosion, leaving only an empty socket, tightly stuffed with a rough strip of cloth, with warm blood and tissue fluid still seeping out. The mechanical left arm hung heavy as lead, its internal structure severely damaged, emitting an ominous sizzling of electrical current—a lump of cold scrap iron.

He leaned his back against the cold, damp pipe wall, slick with greasy moss; before him lay the companion he had dragged in with the last of his strength.

Lin Mo lay on a thick layer of black mud. The pure stardust crystal on his chest gave off the only source of light—faint but steady, its milky halo barely illuminating the charcoal-black outline of his body. That halo seemed almost alive, pulsing faintly, pushing back against the Corrupted Claw Mark on his right arm, which throbbed ceaselessly and radiated an ominous dark-purple glow. The mark was like a living thing; each pulse made the emerald halo covering it—the light from the withered twig in Sister Xiang Lingna's arms—ripple violently, as if locked in a silent struggle.

Sister Xiang Lingna's small body curled up beside Lin Mo, her face pale as paper, her breathing so faint it was almost imperceptible. In her arms, at the tip of that withered twig of the Dried-Out World's tree, a barely perceptible speck of emerald—steady as a candle flame in the wind—kept stubbornly alight, radiating a calm, tenacious pulse of life. It was this pulse that had driven back the tide of insects trying to approach, and for now suppressed the wildest erosion of the Corrupted Claw Mark.

Wrench lay a little farther off, his whole body scorched black, one arm twisted at a grotesque angle, dried blood still clinging to his mouth and nose, utterly unresponsive.

Copperbeard's gaze dragged painfully across his companions and finally fell on himself. The wound on his chest, torn open by Sister Ai Li's claw-light, was deep enough to expose bone; its edges were blackened and curling back, and the purple-black corrosive energy clung to it like a maggot on bone. Under the dual suppression of the stardust's faint glow and the lingering ember of the twig on Lin Mo, the rate of erosion had been greatly slowed, but the agony and weakness came like cold tide after cold tide, pounding against his consciousness. The new wyvern claw wound on his back burned just as fiercely.

"Hss… hss…" he breathed in Rough and Heavy gasps, trying to gather a shred of strength. It was safe here for now. The tide of insects following them through the deep pipe seemed cowed by the twig's halo and the stardust's aura, hovering in the far-off darkness, where only the hair-raising hiss-hiss of their movement could be heard. But the safety was temporary. No food, no clean water, his companions grievously wounded and on the brink of death, and he himself was a guttering lamp at the end of its wick. He had to do something.

He struggled, using his one still-intact right hand to fumble open a battered waterskin at his waist—empty inside. He groped at the tattered pockets on his body and found only a few crumbs of compressed jerky, charred black when the furnace had exploded. This little bit wasn't even enough to stick between his teeth.

Despair, like the all-pervading darkness in the pipe, once more tried to swallow him whole.

Just then, the pipe wall he was leaning against seemed… a little different? The feel under his fingers wasn't all cold metal and slick moss; his fingertips seemed to have brushed against some kind of… carved mark? He forced himself to focus, endured the agony, shifted his body, and by the faint light of the stardust on Lin Mo's chest, leaned in to look.

On the metal pipe wall, crusted with rust and withered moss, where his back had just been pressed, some of the grime covering it had been rubbed away, revealing the faint, flowing, intricate lines beneath. The lines wove and intertwined, forming a corner of some ancient, mysterious pattern. His rough fingers trembled as he scrubbed away a larger area of filth.

A huge emblem, a great tree entwined with vines and thorns, gradually emerged! Though stained with rust, the lines were unusually clear, carrying an elegance and resilience that did not belong to the wasteland. What was even more astonishing was that at the center of this emblem, at the root of the great tree, an extremely faint yet unusually steady pale-golden light was glowing! It was this very light that had drawn him in like a beacon in the dark when he had first entered this area!

"Elves…" The word burst from Copperbeard's single eye in a blaze of disbelief, his voice a hoarse whisper. He remembered the image Sister Ai Li had pointed toward this place at the very end in the bastion ruins; he remembered the ornamentation of an ancient elven civilization that Priestess Liyana had once described! This was no natural formation—this was a… ruin? An elven artifact buried deep underground?

His heart hammered. Ignoring the pain, he used every ounce of strength to lever his body away from the pipe wall, exposing more of the emblem to the stardust's light. As the covering grime was wiped away, the pale-golden light seemed to brighten a fraction, and an indescribable, gentle, life-filled aura quietly spread out, noticeably easing the oppressive weight of this cramped space. Even the throbbing Corrupted Claw Mark on Lin Mo's right arm seemed to quiet just a little under the glow of that pale-gold halo.

Hope, like the emblem itself, stubbornly pierced through a sliver of light at the edge of the abyss of despair.

Copperbeard leaned against the pipe wall, gasping violently, his single eye fixed dead on the elven emblem radiating its warm light. Where was the entrance? Was this emblem merely a marker, or… a doorway? His companions could not wait much longer. Sister Xiang Lingna's breath was growing fainter and fainter; the stardust's glow on Lin Mo's chest was also slowly, steadily dimming; and the emerald at the tip of the twig was flickering as if about to go out.

He had to find a way into this elven ruin! Otherwise, they would all become unknown bones in this lightless underground.

In the deep darkness of the pipe, the hissing of the insect tide seemed to draw a little closer. Time was running out.