Night had just passed, and Lu Yuan had already arrived at the Alchemy Workshop.
Standing by the wall of the Alchemy Workshop, he pulled out a bottle of perfect quality Sanity potion, uncorked it, and tilted his head back to drink it down.
【Sanity: +10... 89/120】
Better top it off while it's still light out.
In front of the first floor door, the inscriptionist was already there.
Glock had briefly introduced them last night.
The old man's name was Bolen, and the young man following him was his apprentice, Kail.
As soon as it was dawn, Bolen had Kail move the toolbox to the edge of the collapse hole.
When Lu Yuan arrived following Bolen, Kail was already prepared.
Bolen didn't hesitate; he crouched at the edge of the hole, laid his cane horizontally on the ground, and pressed his right hand against the copper ground.
His fingers moved slowly along the surface.
Kail crouched beside him, handing over tools without a word.
"How is it?" Glock, who had come along, stood behind them with his arms crossed.
The old man ignored him.
His fingers slid for about another meter before stopping.
"It's broken." His voice held a hint of gravity.
"What's broken?" Glock stepped closer.
"The conduction structure." The old man stood up and brushed the dust off his knees.
"The dissemination of runes on the city wall requires conduction, and there's a set of copper conduction networks beneath this that leads energy from the wall to various parts of the city. When it collapsed, this section of the network was torn apart."
He pointed his cane at the circle of discolored, blackened copper ground around the edge of the hole.
"The copper is still there, but it's already 'dead copper.' Without the infusion of energy, the restriction on the ghouls will be much weaker."
Glock's expression changed.
"Can it be reconnected?"
"The part on the ground should be reconnectable." The old man turned to look at the hole.
"But the root of the network is deeper."
A few seconds of silence followed.
"It's further down."
After saying that, he turned and crouched back at the edge of the hole, placing his hand back on the copper ground to continue feeling.
Glock looked at Lu Yuan.
"The number of ghouls that came out last night was abnormally low," Lu Yuan spoke.
"We'll go down today while they're still retracted below."
"Four to five hours at most. We must be out before sunset."
Glock nodded.
"You arrange the manpower."
Lu Yuan turned to look at Bo Er.
Bo Er was already standing there; no need to ask, his expression said, "If you say go, I'll go."
"Me, Bo Er, and three more Nightwatchers." Lu Yuan thought for a moment, then looked at Bolen. "You and Kail count as two more."
Bolen didn't even look up. "Mm."
"One more thing." Lu Yuan's gaze swept past the crowd toward the rear of the position.
The nuns were packing up the holy light artifacts from last night.
The lead nun noticed his gaze and slowly turned around.
"There's no sunlight underground," Lu Yuan said to Glock. "The density of scavenger fungus underground will only be higher than on the surface. Without purification methods, we won't even be able to walk."
Glock understood. "I'll go coordinate with the Holy Church."
Half an hour later, Glock returned.
"The Holy Church agreed to send three nuns to descend with the team. The leader is named Agnes, and she'll lead them personally." He glanced at Lu Yuan. "The remaining nun will stay on the surface to maintain the holy light barrier around the hole."
"And the conditions?"
"There's one: if any abnormal mental pollution source is found below, the nuns have the right to demand the entire team evacuate immediately."
Lu Yuan nodded.
"That's fine."
At nine in the morning.
The team was assembled.
Lu Yuan, Bo Er, three Nightwatchers, Bolen, Kail, and three nuns.
Ten people in total.
The equipment list was simple.
Each Nightwatcher had a short-shotgun or a revolver with plenty of ammunition.
Bo Er carried extra copper powder canisters and two alchemical grenades.
Lu Yuan's ammunition belt was filled with silver-plated bullets, and he had Eerie-Bane Potion, Stealth Potion, and high-efficiency healing potion hanging from his waist.
Bolen only brought his toolbox and cane.
Kail carried another, larger box, his steps steady.
The nuns carried no weapons.
Their weapons were themselves.
Agnes walked up to Lu Yuan.
"I will determine the pace of purification below; you are responsible for combat command. If I say retreat, we retreat."
"Understood."
"Also." Agnes looked at him.
"The aura on you is very complex. I won't question it for now, but while underground, do not do anything that might cause a resonance."
She turned and walked away after speaking.
Lu Yuan stood in place, his gaze darkening slightly.
'What is resonance, though?'
Bo Er walked over and handed him a rope.
"Tie this on. We don't know what the terrain is like down there."
Lu Yuan took the rope and tied it around his waist.
The ten people approached the collapse hole in turn.
The ten meter wide hole gaped in the ground, its edges of copper floor breaking and sinking inward.
Lu Yuan's gaze swept across the edge of the hole, seeing the marks left from last night.
Five deep gouges, each half a finger deep; the copper plates had been twisted and deformed by the grip, their upturned metal edges glinting coldly in the morning light.
Left by that big fellow.
No one mentioned the events of last night.
But everyone steered clear of those gouges as they passed.
Sunlight shone down from above, illuminating the first few meters of the hole.
But further down, the light was completely banished.
Lu Yuan looked down into the hole.
A vast, pitch-black void.
Moreover, the stench of rot here was many times stronger than what could be smelled from a distance.
"Before we go down," Agnes suddenly spoke.
She took a small copper box from an inner pocket of her habit and opened it.
Inside was a layer of greyish-white paste that emitted a faint scent of pine.
"Apply this to the sides of your neck and your wrists." She unscrewed the lid and handed the copper box over. "Breath-masking ointment, used by the Church to enter contaminated areas. It can suppress the body temperature and blood fluctuations of living people, lasting for about two hours."
She looked at everyone present.
"Those things hunt by scent; to them, a living person going down is like ten balls of fire."
No one wasted any time.
The copper box passed through the hands of the ten people.
The paste felt cool, and once applied, it felt as though a thin film covered the surface of the skin.
Lu Yuan took an extra look at his wrist.
Where the breath-masking ointment had been applied, a very faint greyish-white layer appeared on the skin's surface, almost invisible.
But a line of text jumped at the edge of his vision.
【Status: Life aura suppressed... Duration: Long...】
"I'll go down first." Lu Yuan checked his revolver and holstered it.
He didn't jump into the hole immediately but waited a bit longer, staring into the darkness below.
【Environmental Perception: Minimal sources of pollution detected...】
Lu Yuan gestured to the people behind him—it was safe, but they should keep quiet.
Then he grabbed the rope and began his descent.
His movements were slow.
With every step down, he first tested the foothold with the toe of his boot to see if it was stable, only shifting his weight once he confirmed it wouldn't give way.
The rope slid silently through his gloves.
There were grooves in the walls of the hole left by climbing ghouls, densely packed; in some places, deep gouges had been scratched into the copper surface by claws.
Lu Yuan tried his best not to touch the edges of those grooves to prevent making any unnecessary noise.
Bo Er followed behind him at a distance of two meters.
His short-shotgun was slung diagonally across his back, and his hands gripped the rope, his face tense.
Everyone was controlling their breathing.
No one spoke.
Every movement was deliberately lightened and slowed.
A distance of twelve meters, which would normally take half a minute to descend.
This time, it took nearly ten minutes.
Bolen was an exception, jamming his cane into a crack in the wall to use as a fulcrum while gripping the rope with one hand, making his descent speed actually faster than the young people's.
Yet it was quiet.
Every one of the old man's movements was so precise there was no extra sound, as if he had been doing this his whole life.
Kail followed closely behind with the box, his steps steady.
The nuns came down last.
Before their feet even touched the ground, the holy light shone.
But it wasn't the large-scale light membrane from last night.
It was three extremely restrained golden light orbs, their brightness dialed down to the minimum, each hovering above a nun's shoulder, illuminating only a blurry outline within a three to four meter radius.
Just enough to see the path at their feet.
The moment Lu Yuan landed, his boots met a sticky sensation.
He looked down.
Scavenger fungus.
The ground was covered in a thick layer of greyish-green fungal growth, denser than anywhere else he had seen on the surface.
It was at least two to three centimeters thick.
The surface was covered in downy protrusions that wriggled slightly under the holy light.
Not just the ground.
It was on the walls of the hole, too.
Spreading from his feet all the way to the ceiling, the greyish-green fungal layer wrapped around the entire space like a thick skin.
In some places, it was so thick it hung down, forming translucent curtains that swayed gently in the airflow.
The stench of rot was so thick it was almost suffocating.
This was the home turf of the scavenger fungus and the favorite nest of the ghouls.
Those thin fungus mats on the surface were merely the extremities spreading out from here.
Lu Yuan looked around.
It was an irregular space, about as wide as a large room.
Things were scattered on the ground.
Bones.
Incomplete ones, gnawed down to fragments.
Scraps of cloth.
Already half-digested by the fungus, one could only tell they might have originally been clothing.
There were also dark brown, dried traces.
They were everywhere.
On the ground, on the walls, and even on the fungus curtains hanging from the ceiling.
Blood.
A lot of blood.
Bo Er's face turned very pale.
The bone fragments and dried blood on the ground already explained everything.
Agnes raised a hand, and the holy light in her palm pushed out a ripple.
The moment the light wave touched the fungal layer, the downy hairs shook violently, then quickly withered, turning from greyish-green to greyish-white, and from greyish-white to powder.
The range of purification expanded outward with her as the center, covering a radius of about three meters.
The ground beneath their feet was revealed.
It was soil and rubble.
"Purify as we step," Agnes's gaze swept across the surrounding fungal layer.
"The density of scavenger fungus here is much higher than on the surface; I can't clear the entire space at once."
"And our speed?"
"Normal movement shouldn't be a problem. But if I perform continuous high-intensity purification for more than an hour, I'll need to rest."
One hour.
Lu Yuan calculated in his head.
Factoring in the duration of the breath-masking ointment, they had just about an hour to advance.
"Continue."
The team began to move forward.
Agnes walked in a position slightly forward of the middle; with every step she took, the fungal layer at her feet receded by a circle.
The other two nuns were on either side of the team, the light orbs on their shoulders illuminating the view to the left and right.
Lu Yuan walked at the very front, with Bo Er following closely behind.
The three Nightwatchers were positioned at the middle and the rear of the team.
Bolen and Kail were sandwiched in the center of the nuns' purification range.
After walking for about thirty meters, a fork appeared ahead.
Not two paths.
Five.
Five pitch-black tunnel entrances of varying sizes extended in different directions from the space before them.
The largest one was directly ahead and slightly to the left, tall enough for a person to walk upright.
The smallest was only half a person high, requiring one to bend over to enter.
Every tunnel wall was coated in scavenger fungus, and the depths were pitch black.
Lu Yuan walked to the largest tunnel entrance; the greyish-white prompt remained unchanged.
It was still relatively safe here.
However, there were sounds in the distance of the tunnels.
Very faint, like something wriggling.
It should be scavenger ghouls.
Lu Yuan turned to the oldest of the three Nightwatchers, a man with a scruffy beard and half of his left pinky finger missing.
"You. Take one man and guard this spot. Block the other tunnel entrances with tripwires and copper powder—seal as many as you can. If anything comes out of any tunnel, sound the alarm immediately."
The Nightwatcher nodded.
"Understood."
"The rest of us will take the main tunnel."
Bo Er took the copper powder canisters and several lengths of tripwire from his backpack.
The two Nightwatchers began to set them up, moving quickly.
Copper powder was sprinkled on the ground of the four small tunnel entrances, and tripwires connected to bells were strung across the entrances at a height of half a meter.
It was crude, but it would suffice for an emergency.
Lu Yuan didn't care, though; the greyish-white prompts were the best early warning system.
Once the setup was complete, the two Nightwatchers were left to stand guard.
The remaining eight people entered the main tunnel.
As Lu Yuan walked at the very front, the greyish-white text at the edge of his vision flashed.
【Environmental Perception: Minimal sources of pollution detected...】
The amount of pollution was still very low.
But that wasn't right.
Hundreds of ghouls had crawled out of this hole last night, and the walls of the hole had been densely covered with them.
Where had those things gone?
The tunnel was wider than expected.
Two people could walk side-by-side without feeling crowded.
But the scavenger fungus on the ground and walls grew even thicker.
So thick that stepping on it felt noticeably springy, like stepping on a layer of rotting quilts.
In some places, the fungal layer on the walls exceeded five centimeters.
The pace of Agnes's purification began to change.
It wasn't slowing down, but with every step of purification, the reaction of the scavenger fungus became more violent.
As it withered, it released a pungent gas.
"Cover your mouth and nose." Lu Yuan didn't look back.
Everyone did as told.
The Nightwatchers wrapped scarves around the lower halves of their faces, and Bolen pulled up the collar of his robes.
The nuns didn't use coverings.
Holy light could filter the surrounding spores; the air was much cleaner within a half-meter radius of them, at least.
Continuing forward.
The tunnel began to slope downward.
The incline wasn't large, about fifteen to twenty degrees.
But after walking for a few minutes, Lu Yuan looked back at the way they had come; the light from the entrance was no longer visible.
Behind them, on the purified path, the scavenger fungus had already begun to spread again.
The speed was slow, but it was visible to the naked eye.
Greyish-green downy hairs extended from the tunnel walls toward the center, like two hands slowly closing.
Lu Yuan made a note of this.
After walking for another five minutes.
Bolen suddenly stopped.
"Wait a moment."
He crouched down and used his cane to push aside a particularly thick patch of scavenger fungus at his feet.
The cane hit something hard.
"Kail, the brush."
Kail took a copper-bristle brush from the toolbox and handed it over.
Bolen took it and began to brush the ground.
The scavenger fungus hissed at the touch of the copper bristles, shrinking as if it had been burned.
After brushing for about half a minute, a section of metal surface was revealed.
Copper.
But it wasn't the copper floor plating from the surface.
It was a pillar.
About the diameter of a person's embrace, it slanted into the ground from the mud wall on the left side of the tunnel, with only a short section exposed.
Most of it was buried under soil and the fungal layer, with only this segment exposed to the air when the ghouls were digging their nests.
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