Ahead of Leilin's four-person expedition team, the dark metallic corridor split into three, revealing three different directions.
At each entrance, there were no obvious markers or signs of any kind, filling the team with a vague sense of unease.
"If this is a laboratory, how can there be no proper markings?" Tonghuan was the first to voice the question.
"Perhaps there used to be, but someone deliberately erased them later. Or perhaps the wizards who worked here had their own way of conveying information—ones we simply don't know about!" The old witch shot Tonghuan a glance. "What? Now that we're here, you're having second thoughts?"
"Of course not!" Tonghuan shook his head without hesitation.
Setting aside the generous reward the old witch had promised, the sheer volume of potential spoils inside the secret realm alone was enough to keep Tonghuan from walking away.
"So then—do we split up, or deal with each path one at a time?" Leilin's question was eminently practical.
"We go as a group, obviously! This is an ancient wizard's ruin. Even working together, we might not be able to break through some of the traps. Moving separately is far too dangerous!"
As the initiator of this venture, the old witch settled the matter with finality.
"Besides, we've already set things up back in town. For the next ten days, there's no way anyone will be attracted here. That's more than enough time to clear out this entire laboratory!"
Jay was the first to agree with the old witch's reasoning, and after a moment's thought, Leilin nodded as well.
"Fine, then!"
Hearing Leilin's assent, Tonghuan could only purse his lips in resignation and go along with the plan.
The four of them selected the rightmost corridor and walked in together.
Tap! Tap!
The black leather boots scraping against the metal floor produced a sharp, grating sound.
"We need to be careful. The Soul-Slaughter Sect's tricks certainly won't be limited to something like Soul-Devouring Moths…" Leilin called out a warning as he examined the walls lining the corridor.
His clear voice echoed back and forth through the passage, faintly reverberating.
Then Leilin froze mid-step.
In the entire corridor, only his own shadow remained. The old witch, Tonghuan, and Jay had all vanished without a trace!
"What's going on?" Leilin stared intently at the red reflection on the metal wall.
"A trap triggered without any warning? It even evaded the Chip!"
A calm, composed smile appeared at the corner of Leilin's mouth. "Looks like this expedition is going to be anything but simple…"
Ding!
As though his sudden stop had triggered some mechanism, the metal walls behind him began to converge like living tissue, sealing off his path of retreat.
"Scarlet Hand!"
Leilin's hands turned crimson once more, the blood claws wreathed in blazing scarlet flames. He pressed them directly against the closing metal wall behind him.
Tsssss!
A violent hissing erupted—the sound of ice plunged into a raging inferno.
Beneath Leilin's palms, the black, unknown metal glowed red-hot and began melting away, dripping to the floor and forming spreading pools of molten metal.
After several dozen seconds, Leilin had burned a gap over a meter deep into the closing wall—yet the bottom was still nowhere in sight.
It was as though in that brief instant, every possible route of retreat had been completely sealed by this black metal.
"Based on scan data extrapolation: predicted metal wall thickness, 45 to 47 meters. High concentration of solidified Mank Alloy detected within. Estimated time required for full penetration: 30 minutes, 56 seconds."
The Chip projected a line of blue scanning data into Leilin's field of vision.
"Over half an hour. That's too long!"
Leilin had no faith that the wizard who designed this trap would be kind enough to give him time to break through.
Sure enough, as Leilin lingered longer, the black metal further down the corridor began deforming as well, closing inward as if alive.
The passage grew narrower and narrower, until finally it could barely accommodate a single person.
"I can't keep going like this, or I'll be trapped inside a massive metal sphere. Getting out would require enormous amounts of magical power and spiritual energy!"
Leilin cast one last glance at the corroded hole in the wall, then charged forward.
Whoosh!
With the combined assistance of his formidable physique and his wizardry, Leilin's speed had already surpassed the limits of ordinary mortals, leaving nothing behind him but several elongated, ghostly afterimages trailing through the air.
The corridor ahead seemed to sense his approach, and its rate of closure accelerated sharply!
"Ha!" Leilin drew a deep breath and rapidly spat out a string of clipped syllables!
In an instant, the crimson membrane of light around his body surged outward, its radius expanding to half a meter and radiating scorching luminance.
Leilin looked like some primordial fire creature reborn, his entire body sheathed in blood-red flames as he drove straight into the narrowing gap of the black metal corridor!
Boom!
The entire corridor shuddered, followed by a prolonged sizzling of corrosion.
In the nearly sealed metal passage, Leilin had forced open a human-shaped gap with brute strength. Drops of molten black metal still dripped continuously from the edges.
Leilin's charge lasted nearly a full minute. Only when his视野 opened up completely did he finally suppress the blood-fire around him.
"What an annoying corridor!"
Leilin looked back at the completely sealed black passage behind him. A corridor like this wouldn't kill a wizard outright, but it could drain enormous amounts of spiritual energy and magical power. If the wizard hesitated even slightly, the metal would close around them entirely, and breaking free would demand a massive expenditure of magic. By the time the wizard's spiritual energy and magical reserves were largely depleted, the curses and traps laid further in would be more than enough to grievously wound—or even kill—the intruder!
"This trap is designed as a chain—one link triggering the next. That means this is the next activation point!"
Leilin surveyed his surroundings.
This area appeared to have once been a botanical cultivation base or garden, covering an extremely large area. A few beams of artificial sunlight streamed down from the ceiling—remnant sunlight moss, still stubbornly performing its function. On the ground, traces of withered vegetation were still visible.
"Only a small botanical garden, but it was obviously well-tended once. What a shame it's been abandoned…"
Leilin's eyes swept rapidly across the garden.
His experience in the
"Triangle Flowers, Soul-Breaking Grass, Half-body Bats, and Inverted Lizards—these four species of flora and fauna were the main cultivated organisms in this garden!"
"Triangle Flowers require the assistance of Half-body Bats for pollination. As for the Inverted Lizards, their droppings are the ideal fertilizer for Soul-Breaking Grass! And between the plots of Triangle Flowers and Soul-Breaking Grass, there appears to have been a patch of Star Fruit—food for both the Half-body Bats and the Inverted Lizards!"
"This cultivation method…" Blue light flickered rapidly in Leilin's eyes.
"At maximum efficiency, it could increase Half-body Bat yield by fifty percent, Inverted Lizard yield by forty percent, and both Triangle Flower and Soul-Breaking Grass yields by ten percent…"
A botanical garden inside a laboratory could only have been established to supply ingredients for specific potions and other products of great value to the experiments.
Leilin's meticulous calculation of the organisms' yields was aimed at uncovering traces of those experiments.
A sufficiently accomplished wizard could, from these clues alone, determine the laboratory's approximate research scope and purpose in the ancient era.
Leilin's own knowledge had become exceedingly broad, thanks to the vast library from the Four Seasons Garden that the Chip had catalogued. Combined with the Chip's computational assistance, he could make an educated guess that was likely close to the mark.
"Chip! Based on the primary materials of these four species, search the ancient potion databases for analogous recipes!"
Although the specific potion formulas Leilin had archived were still relatively few, in the ancient era, the primary ingredients of most potions were common knowledge—only the actual preparation methods were written in cipher on the recipe scrolls. As such, the Chip had collected a fair number of such entries.
"Ding! Simulated data input. Searching database. Matching suitable potions!"
The Chip responded faithfully.
Rows of data scrolled past Leilin's eyes before halting on several entries.
"Spirit Fusion Potion: Similarity, 79%. Effect: Massively promotes the merging of different spiritual entities, producing a new hybrid consciousness."
"Spirit Rejection Nullification Potion: Similarity, 56%. Effect: Eliminates the consciousness turbulence generated during spiritual fusion, stabilizing the newly formed entity."
"Poria Potion: Similarity, 34%. Effect: Greatly enhances spiritual entity soul-force! Side effect: Partially erases the entity's original consciousness."
Leilin studied the detailed descriptions of each potion with an increasingly grave expression.
After a long moment, he slowly let out a heavy breath. "These potions all complement each other. It seems I may have stumbled onto something truly extraordinary…"
"Wuuuuuugh…"
Just as Leilin was about to continue his observations, a deep, guttural roar echoed through the space, and a massive, twisted silhouette began to emerge into his field of vision.
It was a colossal creature standing ten meters tall.
Its body was covered in horrifying sutured wounds, as though cobbled together at random from assorted corpse parts.
The creature's right hand was a grotesque, twisted mass bearing eight fingers. In place of a left palm, a massive, rust-pitted axe was fused directly into the arm.
Beyond these two enormous limbs, numerous thinner arms sprouted from the creature's upper body and back, all twitching ceaselessly.
"That's a… Wraith Abomination!"
Leilin drew in a sharp breath. "A body this enormous—how many flesh-and-blood sacrifices would it have taken to solidify its physical form to this degree?"
"Warning! Warning! High-energy biological entity approaching. Intense spiritual contamination detected on target. Based on subject's compiled data, threat level assessed at: 5!"
The Chip was now scrolling alerts at a frenzied pace.