63: Chapter 63 Ktugya and Yafm Za

Three days of preparation time was not very generous, but compared to being chased by Fire Vampires in the mine pit, stocking up in the city at least meant not having to worry about a crack opening up underfoot at any moment.

Mo Tang locked herself in the inn room for a whole day. The sounds coming from behind the door panel were chaotic: the screech of files grinding against metal, the rustling sound of charcoal pencils scratching on paper, and occasionally the extremely short, crackling explosion when a rune circuit overloaded.

Early the next morning, Mo Tang carried out four sets of neatly folded clothes and placed them on the stone table in the inn courtyard. Saying they were clothes, they were actually base layers worn close to the body; the material was extremely thin and light, and the surface was covered with a layer of extremely dense rune circuits.

"Geothermal silkworm silk." Beneath Mo Tang's eye sockets hung two very faint pale-gray circles, but her spirits were exceptionally good, and her speech speed was even faster than usual. "The silkworm species unique to Ranhuo City, which grow up eating geothermal mulberry leaves, and the silk they spin naturally carries fire resistance. After putting them on and circulating Spiritual Qi, the runes will automatically activate, and the body surface temperature can drop by a large margin."

Xie Feng took a set, his Spiritual Qi perception sweeping over the warp and woof of the fabric. The rune circuits were extremely dense and even, every turn was clean and crisp, and a very thin thermal insulation soft film was sealed inside the interlayer of the base layer.

Tu Ziguan turned the base layer back and forth to look at it, muttering, "If this could be embedded into the rune circuits of earth-shaking thunder…" before it was snatched back by Mo Tang. "This is for wearing, not for blowing up."

The size of the fourth set of base layers was significantly smaller by a large margin; it was made by Mo Tang for herself. She re-folded the four sets of base layers, distributed them to everyone, and then turned around to return to her room to catch up on sleep.

Tu Ziguan's preparations were done behind everyone's backs.

Master Huo entrusted an apprentice to deliver the gun barrel to the inn. After Tu Ziguan got it, he hardly left his room, and occasionally he could be heard clanging and tapping something inside the room with a very strange rhythm.

By the evening of the third day, when he came out of the room, there was an extra thing on his back. That thing was tightly wrapped in oiled cloth, and from its appearance, it was an extremely long iron tube connected to a square iron box.

"What is this?" Xie Feng's blind cane tapped the edge of the oiled cloth package.

"Secret." Tu Ziguan bounced the package on his shoulder.

"A gun?"

"We agreed it's a secret." Tu Ziguan hugged the package into his arms.

Gu Jian's preparation was the simplest.

When he came back from Master Huo's shop, there were four blue stones extra in his hands. Each piece was only the size of a thumb cover, irregular in shape, and extremely rough on the surface, looking like fragments knocked off from a larger piece of Ore. Something inside the stones was faintly flowing slowly.

That flowing thing inside the stones was actively absorbing the surrounding heat.

"Master Huo said this is cold crystal pressed in the geothermal furnace core for hundreds of years." Gu Jian distributed the stones to everyone one by one. "In the innermost part of the furnace core, where the geothermal fire is fiercest, this kind of thing will condense instead. Extreme heat engenders extreme cold. Master Huo said that embedding it on the sword guard can suppress fire-attribute Cultivation Techniques, and making it into an amulet placed against the chest can block high temperatures."

Xie Feng clutched the cold crystal in his palm. The skin of his palm touched the surface of the stone, and the chill traveled upward from the Laogong acupoint, being blocked slightly by the silver threads in the Meridians when it reached the wrist. The silver threads did not reject this chill; instead, they shrank slightly, as if making way, allowing the mana in his body and the chill of the cold crystal to stay in their respective regions.

"Extreme heat engenders extreme cold? Hehe, Cthugha and Aphoom-Zhah, right?"

No one understood what Xie Feng was talking about.

Early on the morning three days later, in the main hall of the City Defense Mansion. Qin Tianzong was already standing in front of the forging table, hanging a row of tiny carving knife leather cases at his waist. Qiao Song stood behind him, carrying an iron box on his back that was even larger than Mo Tang's wooden box. The people from the Tianque Sect had also arrived; Elder Han brought two Disciples, both above the Fourth Realm. The Imperial Guards sent two people: one was the Centurion from that day, and the other was an unfamiliar face with a standard long saber hung at his waist.

The Third Princess walked out from the side hall. She had changed into a new outfit, a mysterious black tight martial attire. The cuffs and collar were still inlaid with dark gold trim, the skirt hem was gathered very short, reaching only to her knees, and she wore a pair of extremely thin soft-soled battle boots on her feet. A strange weapon was strapped to her back. Her stature was already petite, and wearing this martial attire made her look not only unthreatening, but rather quite cute.

Then the Third Princess's gaze swept over. In Xie Feng's Spiritual Qi perception, her footsteps paused for a moment, and then she turned toward him.

"Blind man?" Her voice was still a mature elder sister's voice, and the gap with that baby face was still very large. "You're also entering the Seal?"

"Your Highness." Xie Feng nodded slightly.

"Elder Qin said you recognize the things down below." She walked up to him, tilting her head up to look at him. "How much do you recognize?"

"It depends on what it is. If it's something I recognize, then it's usually not very easy to deal with."

The Third Princess did not ask any further, turning around and walking to the geothermal furnace in the center of the main hall.

Elder Han's Disciple opened the sealing runes on the side of the geothermal furnace, and the flame beam at the bottom of the furnace suddenly surged half a foot high, its blue-white core beating in the center of the flame.

"I was wondering why this furnace stood in the middle of the City Defense Mansion, and the outer Ore veins were just a cover—this place is actually the entrance?" Tu Ziguan widened his eyes.

The entrance to the Seal was directly below the geothermal furnace, an extremely narrow vertical shaft with dense sealing runes embedded on the shaft walls. The light of the runes was already very weak. Across six hundred years of time, one could still see the brushwork when the great Cultivator carved them back then, with every single stroke sinking three points into the stone.

Qin Tianzong went down first, followed closely by Qiao Song. Then came Elder Han, the two Disciples of the Tianque Sect, the Imperial Guards Centurion and another Imperial Guard, the Third Princess, and finally Xie Feng and the others.

The vertical shaft was extremely deep and extremely hot; the lower it went, the higher the temperature, and the sulfur smell in the air became increasingly thick.

A thin layer of sweat immediately oozed onto Xie Feng's skin, but Mo Tang's base layer automatically activated the instant Spiritual Qi was poured in. The rune circuits lit up layer by layer, the temperature of the close-fitting fabric suddenly dropped by a notch, and that thin layer of sweat on his skin was stimulated by the chill, turning into extremely fine salt frost.

Reaching the bottom of the vertical shaft.

The ground had been baked by the geothermal fire for six hundred years, and the surface had already glazed over. The Spiritual Qi perception spread out, and the scene inside the Seal slowly formed in consciousness.

The core of the Seal was an extremely spacious underground dome. The dome was so high that Spiritual Qi perception could not reach the top, and a cluster of flames was suspended right in the center of the dome. It was not the kind of flame bound into a straight bundle by runes in the geothermal furnace; it was alive. It had no fixed form: sometimes spherical, sometimes elliptical, and sometimes elongated into a twisting band of light.

Its core was a dazzling blue-white, its edges were a blazing orange-red, and its surface rolled with countless extremely fine light patterns.

"This couldn't be Veltagubaya? How fierce was that great Cultivator back then anyway?" Xie Feng was somewhat dazed, carefully identifying it and feeling it didn't look quite right; this cluster of flames was bizarrely lacking any appearance of blue lightning.

Fire Vampires were cruising around the flame, not just one, but dozens, too numerous to count. They floated in the shadows of the dome like a swarm of fireflies revolving around a campfire.

The inner wall of the dome was embedded with sealing runes, but the spiritual light of those runes was already extremely dim, and some places were even completely extinguished, revealing the dark red rock burned underneath. The runes were decaying, and every extinguished rune made the flame in the center of the dome a fraction brighter.

"The temperature inside the barrier is much higher than outside." Tu Ziguan's voice came from the side, muffled. He had also activated the runes of the base layer, but when speaking, the stimulation of the heat wave to his throat could still be heard.

"We just came in." Gu Jian's voice was steady, however. Xie Feng could perceive that he had embedded the cold crystal into the sword guard, and the chill was spreading from the sword guard to the sword body.

The Third Princess walked forward a few steps, stopping on a protruding rock at the edge of the dome.

Xie Feng thought to himself that this imperial princess probably wasn't seeing this kind of scene for the first time. Wen Yushu had said that the royal family began systematically recording bizarre events a hundred years ago, which was more systematic than the databases that the Sects hid away like treasures and refused to share.

"Elder Qin." The Third Princess turned her head sideways. "According to the agreement, the Qingyun Sect is responsible for sampling the rune decay rate and Spiritual Qi concentration. The Tianque Sect is responsible for the structural detection of the sealing runes and the preliminary evaluation of the repair plan; if it cannot be repaired, the Qingyun Sect must be invited to repair it together. The Imperial Guards are responsible for security and recording. Each performs their own duties and need not interfere with one another."

Elder Han did not speak, merely nodding to the two Disciples he had brought. The two Tianque Sect Disciples each unstrapped a set of rune carving knives from their backs and walked toward the direction of the dome's inner wall.

Qin Tianzong raised his chin at Qiao Song. Qiao Song put down the large iron box on his back, inside of which was a full box of rune detection plates, the same kind Mo Tang used on the periphery, but at least twice as large. Mo Tang also opened her own wooden box, fished out a few spare detection plates from inside, and handed them to Qiao Song.

The two squatted down at the edge of the dome and began setting up sampling points with extremely tacit cooperation: Qiao Song handed the plates while Mo Tang took the wires, and Mo Tang reported the data while Qiao Song recorded.

Xie Feng did not participate in the sampling, and of course he wouldn't know how.

His Spiritual Qi perception remained locked onto the cluster of flames in the center of the dome, and the Ghatanothoa mark on his chest was hotter than the air.

Across the distance of the entire dome, that cluster of flames was looking at him. Deep within the flames, with every pulsation of the blue-white core, the sealing runes on the inner wall of the dome grew a fraction dimmer, and the Fire Vampires cruised around the flames, their numbers increasing by a few more than what he had perceived when he first came in.

"This isn't good. Can bizarre entities split into Fire Vampires? What on earth is inside this bizarre cluster of flames?"

"Elder Qin, what is the measured rate of rune decay?" Mo Tang began to ask.

Qin Tianzong was looking at the first set of data handed over by Qiao Song, his brows tightly knitted. "Four times faster than the periphery. At this rate, the innermost layer of runes won't last two days."

Xie Feng pointed his blind cane toward the center of the dome, interrupting the two people's chat.

"Elder Qin, the number of Fire Vampires is increasing. This cluster of things is definitely not a bizarre entity; what that great Cultivator of the Tianque Sect brought back from the Far North should be some kind of malice." Xie Feng wrapped his Spiritual Qi perception with mana and probed a little deeper toward the core direction.

"That is also understandable. Hundreds of years ago, the classifications of malice and bizarre entities were not yet clear, and a great Cultivator might not necessarily recognize them. However, the Seal should be effective; otherwise, this malice would have long since broken through the Seal." Qin Tianzong nodded.

Xie Feng instantly grew tense. Are you kidding me? If the thing in front of him wasn't related to Cthugha, it was related to Veltagubaros. If they really treated this thing as a bizarre entity, in a moment none of those Seventh Realm Cultivators would die, but the few of them would all turn into firewood and be burned completely clean.

Right at this moment, the movements of the three parties stopped.

The fireball above the dome slowly rotated, aiming directly at Xie Feng.