193: Pretentiousness is like the wind, always with me!

Noon the next day.

At the entrance to old Constantinople, where the ruined walls cast jagged shadows in the twilight, Lu Chen's cloth boots crushed the dried asphalt in the stone brick crevices as he heard the crisp sound of metal chains behind him.

Nita was on tiptoes, fiddling with the thorny vines wrapped around the bronze door knocker. The deep purple vines suddenly lashed out, wrapping around her wrists, but withered into ashes the moment they touched her dark red nails.

"Bloodline aura is indeed effective against the Guardian Magic Vines." Lu Chen looked at the peeling Byzantine double-headed eagle relief on the lintel, his fingertips tracing the mottled Book of Daniel scripture on the stone wall.

This underground entrance, known as the "Crying Dungeon," was wedged into the ruins of the former East Roman Empire border watchtower, its ten-story spiral structure resembling an inverted Tower of Babel.

Three or five mercenaries poked their heads out from a pile of faded tents.

A big man with a Viking-style red beard spat out the tobacco dregs from his pipe, pointed his heavy sword at the cloud-patterned sword bag at Lu Chen's waist, "A yellow-skinned brat wants to take a bloodsucker cub into the ten floors? Although this is just a Simple difficulty dungeon, you don't even seem to have any magic power, right? Hilarious! Don't throw your life away, kid."

He bit the word "blood" extremely hard, drawing jeers mixed with Latin and Slavic dialects from the surroundings.

In a place like this, there was no need to hide one's identity.

Because there were quite a few vampire adventurers here too.

Lu Chen, as if he didn't hear, formed a sword seal. The bronze door knocker suddenly trembled and spat out half a broken Roman column.

The moss-covered steps extended downward, and every ten steps, phosphorus fire crystals were embedded in the stone walls, casting Nita's pale face in flickering light and shadow.

She smelled the sulfur drifting from the damp rock walls, subconsciously clutching Lu Chen's sleeve, "There's a lava pool on the third floor... I can smell it. After becoming a bloodline, I feel like my nose is much, much more sensitive. When I was human, my five senses were never this sharp."

"The Huainanzi says, fire is born from wood." Lu Chen backhanded the tianwen sword in front of him, the Kunlun jade buckle on the sword tassel jingling.

Three gargoyles suddenly fell from the first-floor vault. Before the mercenaries' exclamations could escape, a green light wrapped in the poetry of "Silver Saddle Shining on White Horse" shattered the monsters.

In the rain of gravel, Nita's lace skirt swept over the surface of the reservoir, and the dark red energy actually froze the sewage into an ice ladder.

In the collapsed mine tunnel on the second floor, twenty-odd mercenaries holding torches were dumbfounded.

The poisonous spider nest they had spent three hours breaking through was now being stirred into fragments by Sword Qi like a blood-colored moon wheel.

A man dressed as a dual-sword ranger suddenly narrowed his eyes, "The trajectory of that girl's bone blades... is imitating Byzantine scimitar techniques? Interesting! I didn't expect there to be such a way to learn combat skills, fascinating."

"Wrong." Lu Chen's voice drifted from the third floor. A Bagua Formation Diagram suddenly rose amidst the boiling foam of the sulfur pool.

When Nita's toes tapped the surface of the magma, her dark red boots conjured afterimages like the "Lingbo Micro-steps" in Wuxia novels, her two blood blades precisely piercing the Hell hound's reverse scale.

When the lava-condensed demon dog turned into obsidian fragments, the sparks falling from her hair tips as she turned happened to form a beautiful trajectory.

The rune traps on the fourth floor caused the trailing peepers to stumble.

A mage attempting to record the battle scene had just raised his crystal ball when he saw Lu Chen's sword tip scoop up the lingering flames of Greek Fire, writing "Suspected to be the Milky Way falling from the Nine Heavens" between the cobweb-filled pillars.

The erupting flames flowed backward along the ancient defensive magic patterns, burning thirty-six curse runes into ashes.

"Fifth floor! They've reached the fifth floor!" The female priest guarding the entrance suddenly screamed, her magic book dropping into the mud with a splat.

In the image reflected by the magic water curtain, Lu Chen was tapping Nita's wrist with his sword scabbard.

"The obsidian maze must be coordinated with the flat and oblique tones of Tasha Xing. You stepped too hastily on the third step just now... Everything I teach you are Eastern Moves, you must remember them well. These are not ordinary Martial Skills, you know?"

Nita, as if in a huff, stabbed her bone spikes into the wall, and the dark red energy actually spread along the maze patterns into a blood-colored star map.

When the last stone statue guard was nailed by the tianwen sword into the sword marks of Bringing in the Wine, the girl suddenly discovered that those blood-colored veins were exactly the reflection of the ancient star map of Constantinople.

The ghost legion on the sixth floor left the spectators collectively speechless.

Lu Chen untied the sword tassel and threw it into the air; the Kunlun jade buckle suddenly manifested the green seal characters of a soul-summoning banner.

Nita took the opportunity to infuse the Vampire Charm into her bone flute. When the nether warhorse stepped to the rhythm of Pozhenyue, turning the spearheads directly, an old mercenary trembled and made the sign of the cross on his chest, "Is what he's controlling... Eastern exorcism?"

The gear mechanism room on the seventh floor finally forced a little bit of seriousness out of Lu Chen.

The tianwen sword whirled out the rounded Sword Intent of "The Desert's Lonely Smoke Goes Straight," and the refined gold gears actually re-meshed according to Lu Chen's chanting.

Nita took the opportunity to leap onto the running axis. The moment her fangs pierced the control core, the dark red energy lit up the entire layer's magic patterns along the bronze pipes—that was a combination of lost Byzantine mechanics and Eastern Qimen Dunjia.

When the poison mist on the eighth floor was split open by Lu Chen's sword wind, the magma giant on the ninth floor was instantly extinguished by a waterfall-like Sword Intent of "Flying Three Thousand Feet Down."

The mercenaries guarding the entrance had long forgotten to mock.

The healing potions they brought were steaming in their palms, but no one remembered to unscrew the caps.

Too strong!

How did he not use any driving magic?

It seems like he was truly using Martial Skills and Moves!

He isn't even a warrior with Battle Qi!

The moment the treasure chest on the tenth floor opened, the entire dungeon resonated like chime bells.

Lu Chen took a bronze bracelet engraved with magic spells from the rainbow light. As he turned around, he heard Nita's exclamation—!

The mosaic painting peeling from the dome suddenly reorganized, revealing the scene of Emperor Justinian receiving Persian envoys, and the pattern on the envoy's robe hem was exactly the same as the Eastern cloud-thunder pattern.

"So, Easterners had been here three hundred years ago in this world, and even became ministers for Persia?" Lu Chen chuckled, the sword tassel brushing past Nita's fingertips as she tried to sneakily touch the treasure chest.

When they walked back to the surface treading on the flowing phosphorus fire, the old priest guarding the door was kneeling before the remnant pages of the magic book, muttering to himself:

"...The white-clothed one from the East...? Could the prophecy be true?"

Silence outside the bronze gate.

The Viking big man who had mocked them earlier sat paralyzed beside an overturned beer barrel, and the dual-sword ranger's sword was deeply inserted into the soil.

The female mage's crystal ball froze on the image of Lu Chen shattering the tenth-floor guardian golem, and that sword-sheathing Move of "Deeply Hiding One's Name and Fame" was rippling with green light under the crescent moon of Constantinople.

Nita deliberately jingled the bronze bracelet, mischief dancing in her dark red pupils, "Who just said Eastern sword art is inferior to Roman short swords?"

Before her trailing words had faded, Lu Chen's scabbard had already tapped her on the head, laughing and scolding:

"Do not be arrogant."

Until their figures merged into the night of Constantinople, an old scholar proficient in magic rune studies suddenly rushed into the dungeon, screaming.

On the wall of the tenth-floor treasury, he discovered Han characters carved with Sword Qi — "The Feng Shui here is passable, left for those with affinity."