17: Chapter 17 Remaining Map of the Sinkhole

The moment the grey-red pulse exploded, the Central Sinkhole seemed to have been ripped open.

Around the rim of the sinkhole, the Fire Marsh, Thunder-wing, Wood Spirit, and Wasteland beast hordes collided almost simultaneously.

Waves of fire rolled gravel into the sky, arcs of lightning streaked blinding white lines across mid-air, the edges of the tawan iron sand pit crumbled section by section, and the shouting and killing sounds made the mining fields tremble.

"Seize the sinkhole entrance!"

"The relic entrance has opened, charge first!"

"Don't let Lu Jingyao's side push in!"

A flame-red divine art slammed down from the north of the sinkhole, scorching half the slope into a bright glow.

On the other side, several Thunder-wing Griffins dove low, dragging shattered electric arcs beneath their claws, overturning the Wood Spirit vine walls that had just rushed up.

Everyone was looking toward the sinkhole entrance.

All eyes were drawn to that pulse.

Beneath the sinkhole, in the deepest section of an abandoned cable shaft in the old mining layer, Lu Jin didn't even raise his head.

"Move."

The bone clacker tapped lightly.

Grey Pupil charged forward first, its grey eyes shining coldly in the darkness.

It did not bring the entire army, selecting only the three squads most suited for this trip.

Eighty Tunneling Rats to clear paths, patch seams, and open side branches.

Sixty Transport Rats to drag leather bags, bone ropes, and black stone rings.

One hundred and twenty Ambush Rats, all of whom had consumed grey fire fungus and had the hardest teeth.

The remaining rat hordes stayed behind to guard the Heat-seam Main Nest, and the Breeding Cave of the White-Bellied Mother Rat was separately sealed with a layer of black stone rings.

Before leaving, Grey Pupil left behind ten of the fiercest Ambush Rats to guard the cave entrance; whoever dared to trespass would have their legs bitten off first.

The path in the old mining layer was narrow and steep.

Above, the ceiling was full of cracked black rock, and beneath their feet lay layers of cold, hard iron ash.

Every time the Central Sinkhole exploded, this path would shake, and gravel and ash would rain down, as if the entire passage might be crushed at any moment.

The Tunneling Rats ran swiftly, their front claws scraping along the edges of the old mine shaft layer by layer, clearing away the loosest ash crust first.

The Transport Rats dragged black stone rings to wedge into key corners, while the Ambush Rats pressed into the dark crevices on both sides, eyes fixed unblinkingly ahead.

Grey Pupil suddenly raised its hand.

The team stopped simultaneously.

It crouched down, its fingertips gently brushing aside a layer of accumulated ash, revealing a piece of a blackened stone tablet underneath.

The edges of the stone tablet were scorched and cracked, but there were still a few fragmented characters on its surface.

Grey Pupil stared for two breaths before whispering a sentence.

"Breeding Path Three."

"The left side has collapsed, the right side is still passable."

After speaking, it turned its claw tip and pointed directly at a narrow crevice on the right that was almost invisible.

Lu Jin glanced at it, asked nothing, and raised his hand, pressing it to the right.

"Cut through."

The Digging Squad immediately went to work.

With the Underground Tunneling entry added to them, these Gray-tailed Burrowing Rats were as fast in the mining layer as fish diving into water.

The front four dug an entrance, the rear ones cut a slope along the edges, and the two teams behind them hauled away the fallen rocks in one go.

In less than half a cup of tea, the narrow crevice had been dug into a secret passage wide enough for Lu Jin to pass through sideways.

Grey Pupil did not stop and continued forward.

The further it went inside, the steadier its movements became.

It was as if it had never been here before, yet also as if it had known this path since birth.

The heat grew heavier.

There were more and more crimson patterns on the mine walls, as if fire had flowed through the stone many years ago, only to be frozen solid halfway through.

After descending another dozen zhang, the space ahead suddenly opened up.

A relic buried beneath the sinkhole was revealed.

Black stone corridors, half-collapsed vaulted ceilings, and rows of circular pools embedded in the ground.

Those pools had long since dried up, leaving only circular fire-patterned grooves on the pool walls that converged inward.

Beside each pool stood a low stele covered in broken, ancient characters; some resembled altar remnants, while others were almost identical to the characters on the walls of the wanji ember furnace.

Lu Jin's eyes darkened.

The same source.

This place was definitely connected to the civilization behind the furnace.

At the end of the corridor was a larger main pool.

Suspended in the center of the pool was a fist-sized grey-red crystal core, inside which seemed to be sealed a tiny pulse of fire, contracting and expanding in sync with the grey-red pulse from earlier.

On the stone wall behind the main pool was embedded a half-cracked black stone slab, its surface covered in lines as dense as a spiderweb, with a clear outline of a route remaining in one corner.

Grey Pupil's pupils constricted, and it whispered, "Map."

No sooner had it spoken than a teeth-grinding friction sound suddenly came from the bottom of the main pool.

Click.

Click-clack.

The dry, cracked pool walls bulged inch by inch, and several grey-black figures burrowed out from the dust.

They were three strange creatures that looked like a cross between a rat and a lizard.

Their backs were covered in ancient stone armor, while beneath their bellies grew a row of fine, dense digging claws; the front of their skulls split into four petals, inside which circular teeth rotated like wheels.

They seemed to have guarded this place for many years, waking up as soon as the pulse did.

The one in front just raised its head, its circular teeth opening wide, biting directly at Grey Pupil.

Grey Pupil did not retreat.

It raised its hand and made a mark on the ground, its voice cold and short.

"Bite the abdominal line."

The Ambush Rat horde instantly exploded into action.

More than thirty grey shadows lunged simultaneously, hugging the ground; they didn't crash into the shells but specifically burrowed beneath the three monsters' bellies.

The Digging Squad was even more ruthless, digging in reverse along the edge of the main pool, hollowing out a circle around the already cracked pool platform.

The first stone-armored monster missed, and the moment its front claws landed, the entire pool platform suddenly sank.

Its body tilted, and the grey-white soft line beneath its belly was completely exposed.

Grey Pupil swept across the ground like a wisp of smoke, its black, glossy claw tips slicing open the abdominal line, and a dozen Ambush Rats behind it swarmed up, sinking their teeth into the tear and ripping outward.

A foul-smelling black liquid sprayed out instantly.

The second one was more violent, its circular teeth spinning wildly, and three Tunneling Rats were shredded into blood on the spot.

Lu Jin raised his hand and pressed down, his divine sense slamming into its skull, forcing its movements to slow by half a beat.

It was just this half-beat that allowed the Transport Rats to pounce from the side, dragging two loops of bone rope, entangling its hind legs, and yanking it toward the edge of the pool.

The tawan iron sand that had been buried by the pool edge collapsed with a boom, like a black quicksand pit, burying half its body.

The third one charged the fastest, lunging directly at Lu Jin.

Lu Jin didn't dodge.

He flipped the bone clacker in his hand and tapped his fingertip in the air.

He pulled a wisp of fire intent from deep within the heat pulse, which surged along the old fire-patterned grooves on the main pool floor.

The grey fire flared, striking exactly into the monster's open circular teeth.

Bang!

The stone tooth-wheel in its mouth shattered, and Grey Pupil had already jumped onto its back, stabbing its claw tips into the armor seam and slicing all the way from the back of the neck to the spine.

The main pool corridor was filled with screams and hisses.

But this chaos did not last long.

These three creatures could guard a door, but they couldn't handle underground warfare.

They were large and thick-shelled, fierce in a frontal assault, but once they entered the narrow corridors and empty platforms, they were as clumsy as meat wrapped in armor.

In less than a quarter of an hour, all three relic guardians were lying down.

Nineteen rats from the horde died, twenty-seven were severely injured, and the Digging Squad lost eight units, but in exchange, they secured the entire main pool corridor.

Lu Jin didn't waste time.

"Take the map first."

Grey Pupil had already run to the base of the stone wall.

It reached out to touch the edge of the black stone slab, its grey eyes narrowing, and whispered two fragments of characters.

"Breeding Nest…"

"Hatching Pool…"

"Sequence… Seven."

After speaking, it stabbed its claw tips into the crack and cut along the natural broken lines of the slab.

The Tunneling Rats also swarmed up to help, loosening the embedded grooves from both sides.

The black stone slab shook a few times and finally fell off in one piece.

Half of the fragmented map, obtained.

Lu Jin caught the slab; it felt heavy in his hand, yet the surface of the black stone still retained warmth.

The lines on the map were incomplete, but the structure of the nest chambers and the layout of the pool troughs in the middle were terrifyingly clear, clearly part of some large-scale breeding nest architecture.

This thing was the root of the White-Bellied Mother Rat and the future Nest Mother's route.

On the other side, the hatching crystal core in the center of the main pool was also shaking.

The grey-red pulse above was growing stronger, and the entire crystal core seemed about to be awakened by the earth pulse.

Grey Pupil took one look, and for the first time, its voice carried a hint of urgency.

"Take it quickly."

"Once the crystal core leaves its seat, this place will collapse."

Lu Jin stepped into the main pool.

The old fire patterns on the pool floor glowed faintly beneath his feet, as if recognizing something.

Just as he pressed his hand onto the crystal core, a scalding flow of information slammed into his mind.

It was not an image.

It was a serial number.

A string of ancient, cold characters, carrying the flavor of civilization archives, flashed across his Sea of Consciousness.

[Underground Tunneling Hatching Sequence: 07]

[Hatching Pool Crystal Core: Fragmented]

[Furnace Cave Catalog: Not De-registered]

Furnace Cave.

Lu Jin's pupils constricted sharply.

He had seen these two characters among the fragments of the wanji ember furnace.

This place was truly grown from the same vine as the furnace civilization.

"Rise!"

He curled his five fingers and forcibly pulled the hatching crystal core out of the pool seat.

The moment the crystal core left its seat, the entire relic shook.

The already cracked pool walls around the main pool exploded inch by inch, and dust fell like rain.

A series of thundering roars came from deep within the corridor, as if the load-bearing columns in the outer layers had all snapped.

Grey Pupil turned back and shouted.

"Retreat!"

The rat horde dragged the stone slab and the crystal core, rushing back the way they came.

The Transport Team took over from front and back, looping bone ropes around the corners of the fragmented map, dragging it in groups of six.

The Ambush Squad hugged the stone crevices on both sides, retreating while occasionally turning back to bite through the collapsing broken beam supports, buying half a breath of time for the main force.

Above, the battle had also reached its most intense moment.

Someone was roaring above the sinkhole, and divine arts were slamming into the top layer of the relic, shaking the entire underground area.

It seemed the strong teams outside had finally crashed into the heart of the sinkhole and were fighting until their eyes were red around the fake entrance.

Lu Jin understood clearly.

Every breath they spent fighting was another breath of time for him.

But the relic was collapsing too fast.

Halfway through the retreat, the old mining layer ahead suddenly collapsed completely, and a wave of ash mixed with gravel blocked the passage.

The Digging Squad didn't need Lu Jin to speak; they lunged forward and started digging.

Grey Pupil jumped onto a black stone and carved a deep mark into the right mine wall.

"Open the old cable shaft side passage!"

The Digging Squad immediately turned.

tawan iron sand mixed with hot ash slid down layer by layer, and the front-row rats' claws were dug until they bled, but they managed to tear a new opening beneath the mine wall.

Lu Jin led the main team inside, and the moment they entered, the old mining layer behind them collapsed with a roar.

A wave of dust slapped against their backs.

A hot wind rolled past.

That was close.

Half a step later, and they would all have been buried in that hatching pool relic.

The side passage was very narrow, so narrow that Lu Jin had to turn his shoulders sideways.

But no matter how narrow, there was ultimately wind ahead.

Grey Pupil was at the front, its grey eyes fixed unmoving on the speck of light ahead.

Then, it suddenly stopped in its tracks.

Lu Jin's heart sank.

"What is it?"

Grey Pupil didn't look back, only its ears twitched slightly, and its voice was extremely low.

"There is fire outside."

"A lot."

No sooner had it spoken than the thin layer of ash at the exit ahead was suddenly trampled by someone.

Several beams of firelight pressed down from above, illuminating half of the blocked slope and the faces of the group waiting outside the exit.

Fire-patterned uniforms.

Lu family retainers.

The person in front crouched down, peered into the cave entrance, and smiled grimly.

"Young Master Lu guessed correctly."

"You nest of rats really did sneak in from below."