It was getting late, and night had fully fallen. The sky to the north was pitch black, while the gloomy clouds blanketing Beijing drifted slowly northward. Only a few scattered cars dotted the nearby road.
Shu Si was an exotic bird that moved with blinding speed—high-definition cameras could barely keep pace, making it look like teleportation on video. Ordinary people couldn’t even track its movements with the naked eye.
Dealing with them was no easy task.
By now, Shi Zui and Xie Pingzhi had charged through the mine pit’s entrance. Something had burst out from underground, and the entire pit had collapsed. Abandoned boulders and rusted equipment littered the area, while the passages teemed with awakened Shu Si. Their piercing shrieks were enough to rupture eardrums.
Shi Zui swung her blade with lethal precision—she had always excelled with cold weapons. In the blink of an eye, the lunging eagle-bird lay in pieces.
But there were simply too many. Even their pace felt sluggish now. Shi Zui could scarcely imagine how many more lurked at the mine’s heart—that was tonight’s true battlefield.
Wait…
Ning Wan’s team was still in the Central District! Their Instinct offered almost no offensive power!
Shi Zui accelerated her strikes, cleaving another Shu Si in half before frantically contacting Ning Wan.
“Well, well, Captain Shi. You finally remember us.”
Aether was still online, the comms channel functioning perfectly. The call connected swiftly, and Ning Wan huffed, her voice laced with faint echoes of gunfire.
“Does the Central District need backup?” Shi Zui brushed aside the sarcasm, cutting straight to the offer of aid—even though she and Xie Pingzhi were the ones cut off.
“The situation’s under control for now. You and Xie Pingzhi should hold off on using Instinct.”
Ning Wan replied while reloading, seamlessly shifting position to dodge a Shu Si plummeting from above.
The collapsed mine pit was now segmented by layers of rock, the compacted earth and shattered stone forming arenas reminiscent of ancient Roman gladiatorial pits. Snow-white wings filled every field of vision, their numbers impossible to tally—thousands? Tens of thousands? The specialists pushed gold bullets and cold steel to their limits in this raw fight for survival, dark beast blood spraying through the air.
“Then do your researchers have an evacuation plan?” Xie Pingzhi called out ahead of Shi Zui, charging toward the center while hefting a bag of hairtail fish.
She had no choice but to press forward—the entrance had been sealed by the captain. No Awakener would let a single exotic beast escape, not even a corpse.
“None. You really underestimate us,” Ning Wan tsked with feigned dignity. “Friend, drop the stereotypes about researchers… Shit!”
A high-speed wing slashed a sharp line of blood across her face. Ning Wan wiped the gash, gritting her teeth. “I’ll take on these damn birds!”
Shu Si were tenacious, but they were merely low-tier exotic beasts. Chaos reigned in the Central District, yet few unleashed their elements. The team tacitly held back their ultimate weapons—these Shu Si had clearly been roused from slumber, and the real threat still waited in the shadows.
Ning Wan bellowed into her communicator: “These birds are way too hyped—must be the Candle Dragon’s call! Captain Shi, take it easy on them. You might end up face-to-face with the big guy tonight!”
“What about Olivia? Time for her and her people to pitch in!” Xie Pingzhi roared, swinging her two-pound bag of hairtail fish to blast open a path redolent with braised spices—the aroma of star anise and bay leaves was mouthwateringly tempting.
“Aether’s reaching out to them now. Constance and the others are en route. This mine pit might lead straight to the Golden Hall—we need to prepare for the worst.” Ning Wan finally commandeered a half-intact computer terminal, chattering away.
“The Golden Hall?”
“Candle Dragon’s lair. That’s what Xiao Qiu glimpsed in the Mirror Domain. Ancient texts say it forged tens of thousands of tons of gold into it—only those holding a Candle Dragon Scale can enter. Talk about extravagant.”
Ning Wan shook her head in disapproval, but before the others could respond, she slapped her forehead and shouted: “Wait—this was in the task files I uploaded the other night! I sent notifications to everyone!”
Shi Zui and Xie Pingzhi exchanged a glance, opting for a silent, mutual agreement.
“Hmph, Team One’s all the same,” Ning Wan sneered. Her eyes flicked to the screen, and her tone abruptly softened. “But… should we call in Xiao Qiu, Captain Shi? Your call on your people.”
“Not yet. Tell her to gear up at the Branch Division and prioritize her own safety,” Shi Zui replied without a second’s pause. “She lacks combat experience. We’ll assess once the Shu Si are cleared.”
Ning Wan murmured in acknowledgment and hit enter to send the message.
But a glaring red failure notice flashed.
Message rejected.
Her face drained to ashen white. She scanned the map four times before accepting the truth.
“Shi Zui… Xiao Qiu—Xiao Qiu’s gone missing…”
Silence gripped the line for a heartbeat.
The next instant, scorching Black Flame erupted with pinpoint fury. The passage ignited in a roaring inferno, the searing heat engulfing every obstructing eagle-bird without warning!
Shrieks filled the tunnel in a cacophony as crisscrossing white wings crumbled to ash. Fat made the perfect accelerant—these Shu Si never dreamed their numerical advantage would herald their doom.
The path ahead toppled like dominoes. Xie Pingzhi instinctively stepped back, staring as Shi Zui advanced with an expressionless face, unleashing bellowing flames. The crimson blaze in her eyes burned fiercer than blood itself!
~~~
“Underground water generally flows toward rivers, right?” Ye Jingqiu dredged up the memory of a geography lesson she’d slept through, then glanced at the lazy little cat lounging on her Wrist Ring and sighed.
The little cat flicked its tail and blinked. “Aether’s disconnected from the network. I don’t know a thing right now.”
Ye Jingqiu sighed again, suddenly understanding why the base’s members were all so highly educated. Knowledge truly was the primary productive force—her teacher hadn’t lied!
She had no idea what godforsaken place she’d been brought to. It was so pitch-black dark that it nearly triggered her claustrophobia. Moreover, the cave was completely sealed off—only a ghost could get in here.
Both her gyroscope and locator had failed. Ye Jingqiu had no clue how many floors underground she was, and to make matters worse, there was no signal here, so the all-knowing Little Cat had instantly devolved into a somewhat unreliable light source.
Fortunately, the Will Ring had excellent battery life, allowing Ye Jingqiu to navigate by the faint glow on her wrist.
Underground spring water flowed slowly, and a layer of slick moss covered every spot where she set foot. Ye Jingqiu shuffled forward cautiously, and when she looked up, she saw that the cave ceiling’s rock slabs were unusually smooth, as if they’d been cut and polished.
An artificial cave?
Ye Jingqiu slogged through the mud, stepping deep one moment and shallow the next. She had a pretty good idea who had dragged her here.
Among the so-called Messiah Savior Organization, only they had the motive to pull something like this.
But what was the point of these lunatics’ scheme? Why had the taxi she’d been riding turned into a massive animal skeleton? Did the Base even know she was missing yet?
The Captain must be pretty worried, right?
Unconsciously, Ye Jingqiu quickened her pace. No matter what, she had to get out of here first.
Her persistence paid off. After rounding about three bends, a massive dark door finally put an end to what had seemed like an endless black tunnel. The flowing underground spring water split off to either side along grooves in front of the door.
The door was covered in a thick layer of dust. Ye Jingqiu coughed a few times from the choking particles as she groped around for a seam or crack. When her fingers brushed away the dust, they revealed a gleam of pure gold underneath.
This door was made of gold?!
Ye Jingqiu froze in shock. The humidity in this sealed cave was up to eighty percent—aside from extremely pure gold, no other metal could retain its luster under such conditions.
But who would go to such extravagant lengths? The door was as tall as the cave ceiling, roughly five meters high by her estimate. She tapped it casually and could tell the Golden Gate wasn’t just a thin sheet.
Wait… this time, it seemed like she’d found something.
Ye Jingqiu sensed that her knuckle had struck something uneven. She washed the spot with water from the spring below the door, and in an instant, the blinding gold shone even brighter.
There was a sunken circular slot right in the center of the door.
A broken token was embedded in the slot. Ye Jingqiu carefully pulled it out and saw four crooked characters in ancient script engraved on it. She had never studied ancient writing, but as she stared at the tadpole-like strokes in a daze, she miraculously understood their meaning.
“Duke Xi of Lu, Year Ten.”
Duke Xi of Lu… Wasn’t that one of the rulers from the Spring and Autumn Period? Could this Golden Gate have been built as far back as 600 BCE?
Ye Jingqiu clutched the token in a stupor. She remembered her chemistry teacher rambling about all sorts of trivia. For instance, gold was actually very hard to refine. Before electrorefining techniques existed, the gold of the Haihun Marquis represented the highest purity humans had ever achieved—99%.
That wasn’t just a matter of a few percentage points; behind such high purity lay monumental leaps in physics and chemistry. Even eighty percent purity required furnace temperatures of a thousand degrees, and throughout human history, only a handful of civilizations had mastered such smelting tech. Europe didn’t even encounter high furnaces until the fifteenth century.
So this Golden Gate was like a relic from across the ages.
It had to be thanks to Instinct again, right? Like the Captain’s Yinghuo?
Sighing in awe, Ye Jingqiu slotted the broken token back into place. With a click, it suddenly rotated within the groove. Gears meshed with weary creaks, and this colossal Golden Gate—measuring tons in weight—actually began to pull open!
An even purer golden light rushed toward her as a vast, endless passage swung fully open. The avenue, paved with precious metals, was as wide as a highway. Lamps embedded in the golden walls stood every three steps, and the most bizarre thing was that flames still flickered within them!
Ye Jingqiu stood dumbfounded. The instant her gaze swept over the candle flames, she had already drawn the Quick Knife strapped to her right leg.
Were there enemies in this place?
She held her breath and inched forward vigilantly, staring up at the dancing wicks in the lamps. Oxygen surged in faster from the now-open door, making the candles sway gently before suddenly bursting into brighter light. The flames leaped through the air, and the candles lining both sides of the golden walls connected into a blazing bridge of fire.
Shadows danced on the golden wall around the distant corner. Ye Jingqiu gripped her Quick Knife tighter and slowly crept closer.
