novelThe World under the Desert
| ← Ch.184 | Ch.186 → |
What should the world under the desert look like?
Endless sand? Dark without light? No air? People dying from suffocation once getting in... Actually, it is more like a maze. There are a lot of zigzag tunnels and hundreds of branch roads. Some are wide and some are narrow; some lead to somewhere and some lead to nowhere.
In a wide branch road, there is a sparkling light on the wall. It might be the luminous component in the rock. In the faint light, the girl lying on the ground finally wakes up.
Lin Luoran feels that she has broken every bone of her.
She holds her body up by one arm and sits up slowly. The pain reminds her of what happened before — the relic collapsed and the ground became fluid and took them down. It was more powerful than her "Hurricane Spell". They were all taken down without time to react, and then... She lost consciousness.
As for the wound on her back, Lin Luoran assumes that it was caused by the pincers when they came down at her. Thinking about the Scorpion King, she starts to look around. She is alone in the sparkling tunnel. It seems that the four of them have fallen into different places.
Lin Luoran wants to go and find them immediately but she doesn't. She puts a "Circulation Bolus" in her mouth and holds one jade in each hand to restore Reiki. After an hour, she feels that the bolus starts to come into effect. She doesn't feel the tearing pain inside and she has restored a lot of Reiki. Finally, she stands up.
There are eight branch roads in front of her. They are all just less than one meter higher than her. Some are wide and some are narrow. Lin Luoran doesn't know which one to choose.
However, she breathes the smell of blood from one branch road... Is anyone hurt? Lin Luoran feels delighted at first, but then she realizes that her spiritual mind can only cover dozens of meters here so she cannot know what is bleeding in the branch road. Is it possible that she is not under the relic, but deeper inside the desert?
Making assumptions, Lin Luoran takes the Sword of Bright in her hand in case of emergency.
She walks in carefully. Width is changing in the tunnel from time to time. It is not entirely dark as there is sparkling light on the wall, but it is still terrifying. The sound of water dripping into the puddle is echoing in the tunnel blankly. Other than that, there is no sound at all.
Lin Luoran walks for a few hundred miles and sees the thing that is spreading the smell of blood — the Scorpion King falls here. Its body is on the ground and blocks the tunnel.
It is dead for sure. The smell of blood is caused by some gophers. They are just a little smaller than cats and they are gnawing the flesh of the Scorpion King. Lin Luoran feels uncomfortable and she wants to go back. Suddenly, something occurs to her.
She recalls that the Sword of Bright only left a trace on the shell. That means its shell is extremely hard... The scorpion is seven to eight meters long. If she can take the shell and make it into body armors, it is enough for everyone in the Lin family! Lin Luoran finally feels happy.
The gophers are busy eating while looking at her suspiciously. Lin Luoran sits next to them, showing that she is not going to grab their food. The gophers are like free labors, working for her to clean up the shell!
As was expected, in the period of time when Lin Luoran restores Reiki, the gophers clean up the flesh of the scorpion with their paws and teeth in less than an hour. They cannot eat the hard shell so they give up.
However, they are not satisfied. They put the shell aside and look at Lin Luoran, who looks more delicious — however, Lin Luoran is not the dead Scorpion King. She uses some fireballs to burns the gophers. The gophers run away and they disappear in the complicated underground maze soon.
Lin Luoran makes great effort to take the scorpion shell into the space. She puts it under the tree and the shell takes up a lot of space. Despite the complete shell, Lin Luoran also finds the toxic venom sac left by the gophers at the tail of the scorpion. She wants to keep it safely so she takes out a jade box. After packing it, she continues walking.
All the branch roads look the same, so Lin Luoran continues walking alongside this tunnel in front of her. The phoenix hairpin is shining blue lights in her hand. If anything abnormal happens, the Sword of Bright can kill the enemy at any time.
The sound of water dripping continues echoing from time to time and it seems that the tunnel is endless. Lin Luoran didn't find anything strange at first. However, when she past the same place for the third time, she figures out that she is repeating the same way.
A maze? Lin Luoran looks at the ground and finds the burnt gopher skin. This is where she packed the shell and burned the gophers. She is circling in this tunnel, no wonder why she didn't find a new way.
Her spiritual mind keeps alerting her so she is always staying alert. There is no way that she is absent-minded. It is possible that this place is so strange that it can restrain the spiritual mind and mess up with it... Normally, a maze can only cheat people's eyes. Does that mean that this maze is built to deal with cultivators?
Lin Luoran takes her spiritual mind back and only sees with her eyes. She walks alongside the tunnel.
She is correct. She has walked for less than an hour and gets rid of the maze. It seems that she has entered another branch road.
In the blank and long tunnel, there is only the sound of water and Lin Luoran's footsteps. Without a steady mind, walking in this dark and quiet underground tunnel will drive people crazy.
Lin Luoran has walked underground for two days. Her watch stops working and she makes the judgment by checking the ripening of the plants in the space.
In these two days, she has met nothing but a few gophers and really big insects like ants. She hasn't met any danger. Lin Luoran doesn't know how big this underground world is. Why is the Kalahari Desert not developed at all? Why has no one found this place? Lin Luoran moves her fingers and sees a reflection from the smooth phoenix hairpin. Seeing that Lin Luoran stops, the "thing" hides in the tunnel quickly.
Lin Luoran smiles. This little thing has been following her for one day. It's time to meet.
She suddenly disappears. The bead floats in the air for a while and drops on the ground. It looks inconspicuous.
A few seconds later, something fluffy looks at the bead at a turn of the tunnel. Making sure that there is no danger, it runs towards the bead stealthily. At first, it is not worried although it doesn't see Lin Luoran. It sniffs Lin Luoran's smell but it cannot locate her. Now it is getting worried.
It jumps to where Lin Luoran stood. There is her smell in the tunnel and it is sure about this. However... Where is her?
The little thing lowers its chin and finds the bead lying on the ground. It picks the bead up — the bead looks delicious. It wants to take a bite and Lin Luoran suddenly appears. The bead disappears and two hands with Reiki grabs its neck from behind!
It is cheeping. Lin Luoran lifts it up, "A fox?"
It is indeed a cyan fox. The color is different from the color of ordinary foxes, but Lin Luoran is sure that it is a fox.
So this is the little thing that has been following her!
Why is here a fox living in a tunnel under the desert? Lin Luoran feels curious. There are mice as big as cats, ants as big as eggs and seven-meter-long scorpion. This is the Kalahari Desert in Africa, not a place like the secret land. Why are there so many extraordinary creatures living here?
Of course, now there is a fox as well... What can a fox do? It is so skinny. Even if Lin Luoran has the heart to kill it, it is too thin to feed her. She can just let it go.
"Hey, I'll let you go. Will you stop following me?" Lin Luoran becomes a little muddled after staying here alone for a long time. She talks to a fox!
To her great surprise, the cyan fox nods its head and makes gestures to beg for mercy.
What? It can understand her? This is not an ordinary creature for sure!
Lin Luoran explores it with her cleared eyes. The cyan fox seems to feel uncomfortable and it starts shaking anxiously.
"Hey, I will not hurt you, OK?" Lin Luoran tries to comfort the fox. She doesn't know whether the fox really understands her, or it becomes hopeless. Anyway, the fox stops moving with its head down.
"What?" The cyan fox is indeed extraordinary. There is Reiki in its blood vessel, but its Reiki is even less than the Reiki of the monkey. It seems that it is not powerful at all. Lin Luoran wonders how it survives underground.
Lin Luoran thinks for a while and puts it down, "Hey little thing, stop following me. Do you understand?" This fox is strange but Lin Luoran cannot take everything she meets back home. She has something important to do and doesn't have time to play with the cyan fox. She lets the fox go.
The cyan fox understands her. After being put on the ground, it doesn't attack her. However, hearing what Lin Luoran says, it shakes its head as if it wants to follow her rascally.
Lin Luoran smiles. She has no alternative but leave it alone. She continues walking in the tunnel. The cyan fox is following her. It is not getting too close, but it is also afraid that Lin Luoran is being too fast and drops it. It looks pity.
Lin Luoran ignores it. She eats and rests whenever she wants. The cyan fox looks at her and suddenly disappears in the tunnel.
Lin Luoran looks at the direction where it goes. Finally!
However, after she takes enough rest and is ready to go, the cyan fox comes back. It holds something with its paws, puts it down in front of her and jumps away, looking at her with expectation and precaution.
Lin Luoran looks down. It looks like a rhizome and it looks very familiar with her. However, she cannot be sure only by looking at it. She picks it up and smells it — the slight smell of medicine. It is indeed the medicine she knows. What she doesn't know is that... Why is seal wort growing under the desert?
This underground world is so fascinating...
| ← Ch. 184 | Ch. 186 → |