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

Chapter 116 Forgotten Bones

With the rooms thoroughly cleaned out, they approached the large metal door. Pan Tian used a scroll of wisdom on it just to be on the safe side. "No curse that I can tell. No traps either. But doors are tricky," Pan Tian said.

Pan Tian pulled the scarab key out of her storage ring and slotted it into the indentation. It sank into the slot and latches unlocked with a series of clicks behind the door. Pan Tian gripped the handle and moved it up, every triangle sliding smoothly together as she did so. She threw open the door, revealing a room with a transparent floor that exposed complicated gears and machinery below.

In the center of the room, on a large platform, was a purple crystalline lotus folded up into a bud. Above it was a dark, semi-transparent circle on the ceiling. Six thick pipes came down from the ceiling, through the floor, and into the machinery below. With more pipes around the outer edge of the room, exposed gears and machinery lining the walls, a large capacitor on the opposite wall, and four sarcophagi around the edges of the room.

The sarcophagi moved, stone grinding on stone as green light spilled forth and three powerful auras washed over the room. Each at the ninth star of the Expert rank.

"Get back!" Jie cried as she shoved Pan Tian and Ithilix through the doorway and back out into the corridor. She grabbed Xue and threw him out of the room, using lightning step to make her move as fast as she possibly could. She grabbed a handle on the door and slammed it closed, the locks engaging as she did so. She stood in front of the door then, between her friends and the powerful presences that threatened them.

Three heavily bandaged humanoid mummies stepped out of the sarcophagi. Each had bodies like humans but with slender tails, clawed hands, and heads that more closely resembled a cat's. Their eye sockets burned with green fire.

One mummy carried blades of inky black shadow. Another formed an orb of sickly green fire that hovered behind her head like a poisoned sun.

The third had ostentatious robes decorated with purple runes and two skeletal snakes that slithered down his body. The snakes grew as they slithered down him. When they reached the floor, they swelled in size even faster until they towered over their master. Their slender bones were wreathed in green flames as they hissed, exposing long, thin, curved fangs in jaws bigger than Jie's head.

"A brave sacrifice, interloper," hissed the one with the orb of green fire behind her head.

Jie cycled qi armor. She glanced at the fourth coffin, also open. She frowned.

Was that open before? I only sensed three auras... did I miss one? Or did they get behind the door? Jie thought. Her fears sent a spike of qi shooting through her dantian, only to slam into the barrier to her middle dantian and make her entire body tremble.

"You soil our holy ground. Use our esteemed city and even our very bones for children's games, and now refuse to speak?" snarled the one with shadow blades.

"We meant no offense," Jie said though she couldn't help feeling at least slightly guilty from the mummy's words, "and we're hardly the worst intruders you have."

"The noctilith?" said the mummy with the snakes in a harsh, empty voice, "Yesss... they are... troublesome."

"So, are we fighting or what? I mean you're undead, but if you don't want to fight, we can go our separate ways," Jie said.

The mummies laughed. "Such arrogance," said the one with the orb of fire, "first we shall kill you and your friends. Then, we will curse you to this place so you might know true suffering."

Jie looked at the empty sarcophagus again and the fear that one had somehow slipped past her and was after her friends even now sent another spike slamming into the barrier to her middle dantian.