Chương 386: Ghosts of the Mine (XXXII)

Our pace slowly picked up as the kids got used to doing something that had the old alchemist and Shuren wigging out a bit: suffusing pure Yang Qi into their attacks. Right. I didn't actually ever hand over Art of Surviving to Lao Shun, so he didn't know. Once the kids had experienced Yin Qi enough, they simply seemed to 'invert' its logic and project it into their own Qi, thus turning it into Yang Qi, even if it was the 'feeble' variant, as it would dissipate rather quickly.

Enough to deal with the spirits far more efficiently, though. Though Lao Shun inquired with his eyes plenty, I ignored him; I've kind of gotten tired of those looks, truth be told, as they just kept up my anxiety levels. These two seemed worldly enough, and yet even they kept getting repeatedly shocked by the kids as well as me, even. I have this morbid feeling that we will cause just a twinge of a stir in the Secret Realm, and whether that's a good thing or not...

It was about two hours into our descent that I first spotted it--a faint glint embedded in the wall. A Spirit Stone! It was an extremely low-quality one; in fact, it was worse than even the quality of stones they used to give us back in the Spirit Sword Sect. As I dug it out slowly, it nearly shattered in my hand. But, despite its abysmal quality, it was a good sign--sign that we were deep enough that the 'mine' portion of the Spirit Stone Mine has actually begun.

The walls were peppered by them soon enough, and I stopped digging. Honestly, at this point, even low-quality Spirit Stones were just... not that useful. The best I can get out of them is trading them in for higher-quality stones, but I can't imagine I can get a good deal on that anywhere. I'll still dig them out, as they can be used as currency, but I won't hand them over to kids to cultivate with.

It was at a three-hour mark that we emerged into a chamber of sorts, where the path flattened, leading us into a massive clearing that was almost blinding in its opulence--Spirit Stones lay embedded in every inch of the walls, shining and glistening at various levels. Our eyes, however, were immediately drawn to the center, where a massive beast--or, well, spirit of one from the looks of it--was currently lying down, its 'eyes' slowly opening.

It was one part tiger, one part some winged predator, and ten parts wolf. At about twenty feet long, it was kind of impossible to look away from it, to be honest. Besides, its size was hardly spared the ghoulish appearance of other spirits; its skin was torn and tattered everywhere, the pair of wings were all but skeletal remains with cloth-like webbings that barely hung on the edges of the bones, and its tail was bubbling like water in a cauldron with rot. Did you know this text is from a different site?

Read the official version to support the creator. One of its eyes was missing entirely, while the other was bulging, maggots writhing underneath them. As it stood up and gaped its maw, it revealed a sludge of flesh and blood and decay and who knows what else in a pool beneath it as it all continued to drip off its body. Despite that, it gave off pressure similar to that of the Sage we fought back in Moonlake Town. Not necessarily as strong, but thereabout, I gather.

"Fellow Daoist," Shuren called out.

"Stay back. This could get dangerous--where are you going?!" The kids walked past her, cracking knuckles and necks, ignoring her pleas.

"It's, uh, it's going to be alright." Lao Shun grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back as she looked at him in disbelief.

"That's--that's at least a sixth-tier Demonic Spirit!! Wholly incomparable to some stray Yin Spirits they've been fighting so far!"

"Yes."

"They will die!"

"No."

"Fellow Daoist Lu--" She turned toward me, yanking herself free.

"Please tell me you are not endorsing this madness! No matter how talented your Disciples are, this is too much!"

"..." What can I even say? They just walked out on their own, meaning they were confident. Besides, Long Tao was with them, meaning that he knew they'd need his assistance.

"Don't worry; should anything go wrong, I will save them."

"Fellow Daoist--""--ah, they're already fighting." She turned and faced the same direction the rest of us did--the kids surrounded the beast as it roared, yet no sound came out, eerily enough. All of them were out there, with Rayce immediately ripping up papers that sent arrays of light barreling toward other kids.

Wan Lan stepped forward first, with Dai Xiu stalking in her shadow; Xi Zhao and Xing Feng braced the flanks, while Light stayed in the rear, slowly alighting herself off the ground as the twinge of purple Qi began to churn under her feet. The Spirit Beast lunged at Wan Lan, its maw gaping further as plumes of Yin Qi rolled out like tidal waves; the latter enshrouded herself in a thick layer of Qi and pressed through, meeting the beast head-on and punching out.

She got bounced back about twenty feet, but the beast, too, took two steps back. Judging by Shuren who seems to be reexamining everything she thought she knew about the world, that wasn't common. At the same time, Xi Zhao's attack landed on the beast's back, and it roared in seeming agony as the cool, ashen teal of Yin Qi thrashed against the warm, amber Yang Qi.

Light conjured up about a dozen or so spatial rifts above the beast, spear-tipped arrays of twilight-colored light shooting out and jamming themselves into the spirit. The twilight hue began to shift and erode, revealing beneath it a scarlet color of blood. At the same time, Dai Xiu's fist struck from below, directly at the beast's 'belly'.

The gauntlets' special effect must have activated as I felt the laws of Dao twist momentarily as invisible pressure dispersed around in a ring where the fist met the rotting flesh, consuming everything in its wake. There was a gaping hole the size of a child there now, with its edges writhing in strange, iridescent black, as though energy of an entirely different nature was disallowing the rotting flesh to 'regenerate'.

Dai Xiu slid further out underneath the beast, just in time for the scarlet 'spears' to explode, forming a shower of upward-spraying blood as the beast, once again, roared. Just when it seemed it would keel over, however, its entire body shuddered and emitted a cyan glow; the kids all fell back, with Long Tao actually stepping forward and casually swinging down his sword.

The beast's recoil of energy was massive --honestly, if Long Tao hadn't 'sucked it up' and dissipated it, it may have legitimately been enough to bury us all under this mountain, and it was certainly more than enough to collapse this entire chamber. Wow. And to think, something even more terrifying awaits at the center of this goddamn thing...

"Alright, let's start digging."