Chapter 3049: Mist Pervades

Ye Liuyun faced the diagram and inserted the key into it. After pressing it in, he turned it left and right to test.

Turning left didn't work, but turning right did. As soon as the key turned, the whole ring rotated with it.

Ye Liuyun held the triangular key and turned it all the way to the right, then released his hand and waited for the great door to open.

From inside the door came various clicking sounds of mechanisms. After a while, the door began to vibrate, then slowly opened to the side.

"Really works!" Ye Liuyun exclaimed in his heart.

And that triangular key also fell off automatically.

Ye Liuyun reached out and caught the key. Not knowing if it would be useful later, he simply put it away.

"Send in a puppet and a martial cultivator to clear the way." Ye Liuyun first commanded a puppet and a martial cultivator to go in first.

The inside was very damp; Ye Liuyun didn't know the specific situation inside, so he could only proceed cautiously.

He followed behind; finally, a puppet and a martial cultivator brought up the rear.

After they entered, inside was a downward stone stairway; lamps lit both sides of the passage, so the road was clearly visible.

After the door opened, seawater did not flood in; obviously there was a formation preventing backflow of seawater.

Ye Liuyun and the others walked down the stone steps for a stretch, turned a corner, then heard the great door emit a rumbling sound, followed by a bang. Obviously the stone door had closed again..

The two martial cultivators looked at Ye Liuyun, obviously worried they might never get out.

Ye Liuyun, however, paid no mind; if worse came to worst, he would use the Black Tower to teleport out.

"Let's keep going; there's definitely a way out!" Ye Liuyun comforted them, then had them continue exploring.

The stone steps soon ended; before them appeared a small underground cavern. The cavern was empty, except for some dreary gray mist drifting about.

Ye Liuyun sensed it; the mist was not energy, nor demonic qi or yin qi, certainly not poison, and he couldn't tell what kind of gas it was.

He thought for a moment, then released the Vermilion Bird, Shadow, and Little Blue Ice to help investigate the smell.

The three monster beasts each carefully discerned for a while, and in the end all felt it was indeed just mist, with nothing special.

"Then we'll keep moving—Shadow will turn invisible, the Vermilion Bird will burn away the mist, Little Blue Ice will pay attention to detecting the smell, and have the Soul-Seizing Pearl ready."

After Ye Liuyun made the arrangements, he led everyone forward to continue scouting.

After passing through this cavern, behind it lay a larger cavern filled with even more mist. The Vermilion Bird couldn't burn it all away, and gradually grew unwilling to waste its flame power.

But Ye Liuyun felt increasing danger as they went on. The two martial cultivators at the Return to One Eighth Level also sensed a grim, terrifying aura here.

Ye Liuyun carefully sensed it; there truly was no yin soul aura here, yet it gave people an uneasy feeling.

Here, the mist in some thick places even blocked his Golden Pupil vision.

The cavern was completely empty aside from this mist; nothing else could be seen.

He immediately had everyone stop and stay on guard, then directly sent a puppet ahead to scout the path.

The puppet's clanking footsteps echoed continuously inside the cave.

Ye Liuyun watched the puppet go far away until it was completely obscured by the mist, but they could still hear the puppet's footsteps.

Suddenly, a booming bang came from the puppet's position, after which the puppet fell completely still.

"What is it?" the Vermilion Bird asked Ye Liuyun.

Ye Liuyun also shook his head; he hadn't seen what was attacking the puppet either.

"Let's go further ahead."

They walked forward a stretch before they could faintly see the puppet's corpse lying on the ground.

But the further they went, the stronger the feeling of danger became, Ye

Liuyun also dared not go further.

"Try again!"

This time, Ye Liuyun had the two ancient demon guards release two demon beasts, and also bring along two ancient demon puppets, to go scout together.

He then led the others, keeping a distance from them to ensure he could see them.

The ancient demon guards, with the demon beasts and puppets, walked to where the previous puppet had collapsed, dragged that puppet back to Ye Liuyun. Ye Liuyun scanned it with his Golden Pupil and discovered that the puppet's energy device had been blasted open, its energy gone.

Just looking at the impact site, one couldn't tell what had blasted it open; all that could be said for sure was that it wasn't done by a yin soul.

Ye Liuyun didn't retrieve that puppet either, not knowing if it had been contaminated with something foreign; so he left it where it fell and had the ancient demon guards continue scouting ahead.

As they walked, the demon beast ahead suddenly let out a low growl toward a spot. When the ancient demon guards asked it, it merely replied that it seemed to have seen something, unsure if it was mistaken, taking the mist for a foreign object.

"Stop guarding! Use the Defense Array Plate for defense!"

Ye Liuyun immediately called a halt, also releasing a Defense Array Plate to protect himself and those nearby.

"Have the Vermilion Bird try burning a large area with fire!" Ye Liuyun this time sent a mental transmission to the Vermilion Bird via Divine Sense.

Their current position had already entered a region where the mist was denser; if something were hidden in the mist, perhaps it could really be flushed out by fire.

So the Vermilion Bird suddenly unleashed a large area of flame, turning this cave into a sea of fire.

"Ow!" several cries came from the sea of fire.

Ye Liuyun and the others followed the sound and saw several clumps of mist struggling to extinguish the flames on themselves. The mist had no fixed shape, but occasionally it could extend limbs and even reveal a human face.

However, it could now be confirmed that these monsters were indeed afraid of fire.

Little Blue Ice immediately used the Soul-Seizing Pearl to try to immobilize the nearest mist monster; unexpectedly, it worked extremely well.

The mist monster could no longer make large struggling motions, but its howling grew even more miserable; it was also the fastest to be killed by fire.

The other mist monsters kept struggling, but they all just kept howling, unable to extinguish the flames on themselves.

Ye Liuyun immediately exercised his Spatial Power to shift a mist monster closer, had Little Blue Ice fix it with the Soul-Seizing Pearl, and had the Vermilion Bird withdraw its flame. Then he released his own soul to search the mist monster's sea of consciousness.

After searching for a while, he discovered that the mist monster's sea of consciousness was actually located at the center of that mist cluster.

Ye Liuyun's soul then immediately surged in, pulled out a mist-like soul, and drew it back into his own sea of consciousness.

The Golden Light of the Ten Thousand Gods Command immediately enveloped it, swiftly devouring it. Ye Liuyun also at once employed the Soul Search Technique to see what exactly this was.

He also didn't know whether searching the soul of this thing would yield information he could understand.

However, the result of the Soul Search did not disappoint him; he could read the memory of this thing.