Path Of The Dragon (A Dark Fantasy Cultivation Wuxia Xianxia Progression Series)

Chapter 103 Cavern Of Blood

The number of bones lining the passage walls thinned out and the passages themselves widened as white marble gave way to a mixture of other types of rock that looked natural and far older. The troughs of blood had also vanished at some point, heading somewhere else in the maze that was this dungeon.

Pan Tian led them into a massive cavern with a lake of blood that stretched off into the distance. An old wooden boardwalk was the only path forward. With forks up ahead. Some of the planks were missing and others had sunk down until they were just barely submerged in the blood rather than resting above it.

Stalagmites peeked up through the perfectly still blood lake and glowing, wriggling worms as big as Jie was hung from the ceiling amid slick, slimy webs, stalactites, and gnarled roots. They snapped their jaws at anything that buzzed nearby to their pulsing glow.

"Be on your guard here," Pan Tian said, "attacks can come from any direction."

Jie looked at the countless glowing worms on the ceiling. Their cultivation was extremely low. The strongest of them was only at the ninth star of the Disciple rank. They looked creepy, but she didn't think they were dangerous at all.

"What am I watching out for?" Jie asked as they walked along the boardwalk. Their footsteps and the creaking groan of old wood seemed impossibly loud in the quiet cavern.

"I don't know. The place changes. But, definitely watch out for bugs and blood elementals," Pan Tian said.

"The bugs don't seem very strong," Jie said.

"These ones are larvae," Ithilix said, "only babies. The rest will be stronger, Pr--Jie."

"Have you fought these things before?" Jie asked.

"The hive does its best to eradicate such pests," Ithilix said.

They continued along the boardwalk with Pan Tian leading the way and consulting her map frequently. How she made sense of the thing, Jie wasn't sure.

Occasionally, things would brush against Jie's spirit sense, somewhere beneath them in the lake of blood. But it was impossible to see into the dark liquid and not even a ripple moved across its surface.

So far, the creatures she'd sensed hadn't been all that strong, but they were definitely stronger than the worms above them, and not being able to see them bothered her.

***

They kept moving along the winding boardwalk paths. The path often split, but Pan Tian seemed to know where they were going. Jie did her best to keep track of where they were just in case they got separated and she had to find her own way back, but she lost track.

Once again, Jie was glad to have Pan Tian leading them. Though, from the glances at the map, it looked like most of the paths were unexplored. It made Jie curious about what else was out there in the cavern. It wasn't as though she could see all that far in the dim light of the glowing worms high above. Mostly, they relied on their lanterns. Everything in the cavern could probably see where they were going.

The blood under the boardwalk ahead of them bulged as something rose up out of the dark red liquid. It broke through the wooden planks and towered high above Jie and her friends.

Blood cascaded down its surface like a waterfall, revealing an enormous, monolithic statue of a familiar blood red woman with the same stern expression. Any blood that hadn't flowed off her when she emerged soaked into the red stone until it looked utterly dry and pristine.

"If they can, a smart cultivator does careful research before entering a tomb. But no matter how hard you try. No matter how well you make your plans, something will always go wrong. Can you handle a disruption to your plans? Can you adapt and overcome? Will you be one of my academy's prize students, or just another genius cut down before their prime?" asked the statue.