“Enough.”
“I have an idea,” Lu Yuan said.
Everyone looked over.
Wolf had just straightened up, the dark red patterns on him still flickering unsteadily.
Heinrich was supporting a Holy Armored Army soldier, the light on his own armor significantly dimmed.
Bo Er leaned against the wall, his face not yet fully recovered.
“What are you going to do?” Wolf’s voice was raspy.
“Go in,” Lu Yuan said, looking at the passage entrance sealed by inscriptions. “Figure out what exactly is inside and feed it a couple of Exorcism grenades while I’m at it.”
Heinrich frowned.
“Now?” He glanced at the surrounding soldiers. “Our men are already...”
He didn’t finish, but the meaning was clear.
The Holy Armored Army’s formation chain was barely holding together, as fragile as a rope about to snap.
Two men in the Iron Guard had completely exhausted their furnace fire, and the dark red patterns on the others were much dimmer than at the start of the battle.
They had almost no strength left for another fight.
“You don’t need to fight,” Lu Yuan said, looking at everyone.
“Just wait here for me to come back.”
Wolf looked at him and didn’t speak immediately.
Bo Er stood up straight.
“Alone?”
“Alone.”
“Your Sanity is dropping too...”
Lu Yuan looked around at everyone.
“I still have plenty of Sanity. You can tell from my condition, can’t you?”
Bo Er opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Having been Lu Yuan’s partner for so many days, he knew this man never said anything he wasn’t sure of.
But he still wanted to ask... based on what?
Lu Yuan seemed to read his thoughts.
“I have a way.”
Only four words.
But Lu Yuan’s tone made Bo Er swallow his remaining questions.
Wolf watched Lu Yuan for a few seconds, then nodded.
“What do you need?”
“A few things.” Lu Yuan turned to Heinrich. “Give me two Holy Light scrolls.”
Heinrich looked at him but didn’t ask.
He pulled two scrolls from his scroll tube and handed them over.
“Bo Er, give me your Exorcism grenades.”
Bo Er unclipped the Exorcism grenades from his waist and handed them over.
Lu Yuan hung the grenades on his belt. With his own two, he now had three.
“Also, three cans of mithril were left at the vertical shaft entrance. I need one.”
He looked at the veteran missing a pinky.
“The crawlers and Living Walls on the way have retreated, so a quick trip should be fine. I’ll have to trouble you.”
The veteran glanced at Lu Yuan, asked nothing, and turned to walk quickly back the way they came.
During the wait, the catchment basin fell silent.
The Iron Guard soldiers rested against the walls; some checked the residual dark red patterns on their shortswords, while others lowered their heads and closed their eyes to regulate their breathing.
The Holy Armored Army’s formation had contracted into a tight arc, soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder, the holy light inscriptions on their armor flickering at a very slow rate.
They were using their remaining willpower to repair their own Sanity.
Bolen was still lying face down, but his mouth hadn’t stopped moving.
“That main trunk... the direction of the conduction structure and the copper pillars... if only I could see the internal distribution of the pathways up close...”
Kail listened nearby, his expression numb.
He was already used to the old man being like this.
Bo Er walked up to Lu Yuan and lowered his voice.
“You really plan on going in alone?”
“Yeah.”
“...Can you come back?”
Lu Yuan glanced at him.
“When did you become so sentimental?”
Bo Er was stunned for a moment, then grinned.
“Fair enough.” He patted Lu Yuan on the shoulder.
“I’ll wait for you here.”
Wolf also walked over.
He didn’t say anything comforting.
He just stood by, looking into the darkness on the other side of the inscribed passage entrance.
“That thing’s mental shock... what if it can do it again?”
“It won’t,” Lu Yuan shook his head.
“If it could have done it twice in a row just now, everyone here except me would be dead.”
“But it didn’t, and that’s enough.”
“And I deliberately said so much just now—why do you think I did that?”
Wolf thought for a moment and nodded.
“We’ll back you up from here.”
“Understood.”
About ten minutes later, the veteran missing a pinky ran back clutching a can of mithril.
His breathing was slightly hurried; he had made the round trip to the shaft entrance at no slow speed.
“Nothing on the way,” the veteran said, handing the mithril to Lu Yuan.
“Even the writhing of the hyphae is weaker than when we came.”
He took an extra look at Lu Yuan.
“Going in alone?”
“Yeah.”
The veteran didn’t say more. He just gave a nod and retreated to his position.
Lu Yuan took the mithril and stuffed it into his satchel.
He had everything.
He did a final mental inventory of his gear.
Three Exorcism grenades.
Two Holy Light scrolls.
Slag, one can of mithril, his revolver, and remaining ammunition.
One bottle each of Stealth Potion, Eerie-Bane Potion, and High-Efficiency Healing Potion.
A perfect quality Sanity potion.
One last thing.
“Wolf.”
Wolf looked up.
“Can your furnace fire be applied to someone else’s weapon?”
Wolf understood.
“...Yes. But it won’t last long—two minutes at most.”
“That’s enough. I’ll set out immediately after you apply it.”
Lu Yuan made his final preparations.
He walked over to Bo Er.
“Get ready to lead the team out,” he said.
But his right hand made a gesture at his side.
Bo Er saw it.
It was a Nightwatchers internal hand signal.
It meant: Retreat at any time.
Seeing this, Bo Er nodded slightly.
Of everyone present, the Nightwatchers were the weakest in combat power.
If something went wrong, Bo Er had Timekeeper, and the Holy Armored Army and Iron Guard certainly had their own means.
But the Nightwatchers following him would most likely die.
Lu Yuan handed the copper sword to Wolf.
“Apply it. The clock starts now.”
Wolf took the copper sword and gripped the blade with his right hand.
Dark red patterns spread from his palm along the copper surface, seeping into the metal.
Ten seconds later, the air around the edge distorted.
It wasn’t the fierce orange-red of Wolf’s own shortsword, but a steady, dark red layer.
Enough to carbonize hyphae.
Wolf handed the sword back to Lu Yuan.
“Two minutes. Once they’re up, it’s gone.”
Lu Yuan took the copper sword and turned to face the inscribed passage entrance.
From this moment, the countdown began.
The dark gold light curtain shimmered before him.
Lu Yuan reached out and passed through the light curtain.
A wave of warmth came from his palm; the energy of the inscriptions flowed over his hand, like being soaked in warm water.
And then he was through.
On the other side.
The light in the passage dimmed instantly.
Only the dark red glimmer of Wolf’s furnace fire on the copper sword remained, illuminating a range of two or three meters in the darkness.
Hyphae were beneath his feet.
A thick layer of them.
The sweet scent in the air was still heavy.
In the darkness ahead, the main trunk vine stretched down along the passage, vanishing at the edge of his vision.
The remains of the exploded flower bud were scattered on both sides of the passage, the grey-green fragments writhing weakly, but they made no move to attack.
【Environmental Perception: High-risk pollution source detected ahead... continuously decaying...】
Still decaying.
His consciousness sank into his chest.
A trigger.
Click.
【Timekeeper · Acceleration (Activated)】
【Sanity: -1... -1...】
The world slowed down.
The writhing of the hyphae froze in mid-air.
The grey-green spores floating in the air hung motionless.
Lu Yuan gripped the copper sword; the dark red furnace fire was exceptionally clear in his accelerated vision, every thread of the pattern flowing over the copper like a living thing.
He withdrew his gaze and stepped forward, heading deep into the darkness.
The passage was wider than expected.
The entrance sealed by inscriptions was just the beginning; after walking less than ten meters in, the space expanded to the sides.
This could no longer be called a passage; it was more like a tunnel.
At least four meters high and wide enough for three carriages to pass side-by-side.
The copper walls and vaulted ceiling reflected a dim red outline in the furnace fire’s glow.
This had once been a main line in the pipe network layer.
But now, it was the domain of something else.
The main trunk vine lay right in the center of the tunnel.
A massive stem, half a meter in diameter, stretched along the ground into the depths, its surface covered in dense, pulsing pathways that throbbed slowly in the darkness.
Like a dormant snake.
Lu Yuan did not step on it.
In the accelerated vision of Timekeeper, he could clearly see the pulsing rhythm of every pathway on the surface of the main trunk vine, and see the tiny branches extending from the trunk, creeping along the walls and ceiling to weave a web that covered the entire tunnel.
He circled around the left side of the main trunk, his pace extremely fast, each step landing precisely in the gaps between the vine branches.
In the accelerated state, all movement became sluggish.
The reaction speed of the hyphae layer was far lower than his movement speed.
By the time he stepped past, the hyphae beneath his feet hadn’t even had time to contract before he had already crossed three steps.
The furnace fire on the copper sword trailed a dark red streak in the darkness.
Fast.
Faster.
There were no ghouls in the tunnel.
No crawlers.
No living creatures.
Only vines covering the walls, floor, and ceiling, and grey-green hyphae entwined between them.
This place had been completely terraformed.
And Lu Yuan was currently running inside ‘its’ body.
This thought sent a layer of cold sweat down Lu Yuan’s back, but his legs didn’t falter.
【Environmental Perception: Pollution concentration continues to drop... pollution concentration continues to rise...】
As he went deeper, the pollution concentration that had been dropping began to rise.
Lu Yuan quickened his pace.
The furnace fire was shrinking; every second counted.
He ran for about another twenty seconds.
The diameter of the main trunk vine had swollen to just over a meter.
Branching veins began to appear on both walls of the passage.
Thin vines branching off from the main trunk stabbed into the hyphae layers of the walls and ceiling like blood vessels.
The number of branches grew denser, going from a few to a dozen, then dozens.
The effective space of the passage was compressed to less than two meters wide.
Lu Yuan turned sideways to pass through a particularly dense cluster of branches, his copper sword slicing through the two most obstructive ones.
The dark red furnace fire carbonized the contact surfaces, and grey-green sap erupted from the severed ends, condensing into fine threads in the air.
Just then.
The walls moved.
All four walls of the passage bulged simultaneously.
The hyphae layer swelled inward as if being inflated; hyphae from the ceiling drooped, and hyphae from the floor rose.
From the front, from the back, from both sides... they surged from all directions at once.
The entire wall transformed into a ‘tide’.
Dense vines and hyphae stacked together like a flood, grinding toward Lu Yuan’s position.
But under the acceleration of Timekeeper, this tide was as slow as if it had been paused.
Lu Yuan could see the trajectory of every extending vine, the cracks on the surface of the hyphae layer as it expanded, and the grey-green spores gushing from the fissures, suspended in the air.
He swung the copper sword.
The furnace fire drew a dark red arc.
The densest layer of vines directly in front was sliced open, the carbonized cross-section splitting to the sides.
Lu Yuan dove through the opening.
The tide of vines closed behind him where he had just been, but it was a step too slow.
A second strike—the curtain of hyphae hanging from above was cleaved apart, carbonized debris fluttering down like black snow.
A third strike cut through a wall of vines surging from the right.
But the thickness of the tide far exceeded expectations.
Slice through one layer, and there was another behind it.
And the dark red patterns on the copper sword had already faded from orange-red to deep brown.
‘The furnace fire is running out.’
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