Chapter 350: Going Deeper
Chapter 350: Going Deeper
Inside the hidden cave
A few hours passed in the deep meditation before Rhain slowly opened his eyes.
He turned his head, and saw the Lyra also seemed to have recovered, leaning slightly against the cave wall and looking at him with an unusual expression.
Seeing that Rhain had left his meditation, Lyra slowly pushed herself up.
The flawless Mystic-Grade pill Rhain had given her had done its job perfectly, eradicating every last trace of the toxic miasma from her meridians, and also recovering her essence to its full capacity.
She averted her crimson eyes, looking down at the rough stone floor.
"Thank you," Lyra murmured, her voice uncharacteristically soft, lacking any of its usual sharp condescension. "For the pill. And... for saving my life back there."
Rhain raised his eyebrows slightly.
This was the first time he had ever heard the words of gratitude from her mouth.
Rhain just gave a nod.
"Don’t mention it. We are in the same boat right now." he replied simply.
Hearing his completely unbothered tone, a spark of her usual irritation flared.
Lowering her head to anyone—especially to the man who had repeatedly crushed her haughty pride—was an agonizing task.
But she wasn’t ungrateful, so she forcefully suppressed it.
Instead, her crimson eyes narrowed with intense curiosity.
"Rhain," Lyra spoke up, turning to face him fully. "What exactly are you?"
Rhain was once again taken aback by her question. "What do you mean?"
"Don’t play dumb with me," Lyra scoffed, "Everyone says you came from a minor sect in the remote Outer Frontier. But that is simply impossible! The barren Outer Frontier couldn’t possibly nurture a monster of your caliber who has a surpassed all records of both martial arts and Alchemy this empire has ever seen, and even possess multiple Emperor-Grade artifacts!"
She stared intently into his dark grey eyes, trying to find a single ripple of truth.
"Are you the hidden heir of some ancient, secluded faction? Or did you receive the inheritance from some kind of god?"
Rhain let out an amused chuckle.
"You have quite the vivid imagination," Rhain said calmly, turning his back toward the cave’s exit. "The world is simply much wider than you think, Lyra."
He didn’t offer a single word of explanation, leaving her completely frustrated.
"We have wasted enough time resting," Rhain commanded, his voice turning strictly business. "It is time to hunt the mutated fire python."
With a swirl of his robes, Rhain leaped cleanly through the curtain of black sludge, stepping back into the perpetual, toxic twilight of the Sunless Umbral Basin.
Lyra gritted her teeth, thoroughly frustrated by his deflection.
But knowing that she could not pry the truth out of his mouth if he refused to speak, she merely let out a haughty snort, and followed him out.
The environment outside the cave was despairingly ominous.
Thick, swirling dark miasma blanketed the petrified forest, limiting visibility to mere feet.
"Stay close," Rhain instructed, taking the lead.
His dark grey eyes instantly ignited with a brilliant golden light.
With his Spiritual Sense still heavily restricted by the unique laws of the miasma, Rhain relied entirely on his golden gaze.
The Eyes of Truth pierced through the dense, toxic fog, revealing the hidden, natural death traps of the basin.
Guided by Rhain, the duo navigated the treacherous wasteland with an uncanny speed.
Swish....
Suddenly, rustling sounds echoed from the dead brush ahead.
Dozens of glowing, blood-red eyes pierced through the gloom, surrounding them in a wide crescent.
Mutated Bone-Hound · Late-Stage Core Formation
A massive pack of horrifying skeletal beasts emerged from the fog.
There were at least forty of them, their jaws snapping wildly as they locked onto the two intruders.
Lyra’s crimson eyes narrowed sharply.
"I’ll handle this," Lyra declared, her hand instantly dropping to the hilt of her rapier.
A spark of orange-crimson fire flickered around her fingertips, fully prepared to unleash her True Heavenly Flame and incinerate the pack in a single, devastating sweep.
But before she could even channel her essence, a strong hand clamped down firmly on her shoulder, physically stopping her.
"Save your essence," Rhain commanded strictly.
Lyra frowned, looking back at him in confusion. "They are just Core Formation beasts. I can kill them in seconds."
"And in doing so, you will light up this entire forest like a blazing beacon," Rhain stated coldly, his golden eyes scanning the darkness, "Veydris and the other late-stage Domain Master dogs are undoubtedly chasing us, and we have no idea how close they are. If they sense the massive elemental fluctuations of your Heavenly Flame, they will track the ripples directly to us."
Lyra’s eyes widened slightly in realization. She immediately understood her mistake.
Using essence or martial arts in their current situation can indeed be extremely deadly.
"But if we don’t use essence, how do we kill a horde of late-stage Core Formation beasts?" Lyra asked, her expression turning incredibly ugly.
"Like this."
Rhain simply placed his hands by his sides and walked directly toward the roaring horde of mutated beasts.
"Are you crazy?!" Lyra gasped, watching him walk completely unarmed and unshielded toward certain death.
The largest Bone-Hound, a monstrous alpha easily the size of a small house, lunged forward with explosive speed. Its venomous, razor-sharp jaws snapped shut, aiming to bite Rhain cleanly in half.
Rhain simply raised his right fist and punched forward.
No martial arts. No essence.
Just pure physical might.
BANG—!!!
The moment Rhain’s bare knuckles collided with the beast’s skull, a deafening crack echoed through the petrified forest.
The tyrannical force of the Abyssal Sovereign Physique erupted.
The alpha’s skull shattered, pulverizing into a mist of blood.
The massive beast was blasted backward like a cannonball, its lifeless body smashing through three petrified trees before crumpling into a heap.
Lyra’s mouth dropped open.
He hadn’t used an ounce of essence!
Before she could even process the shock, the rest of the horde swarmed him.
BANG! CLANG! BOOM!
Rhain swiftly moved through the pack of beasts.
His footwork was impossibly light, swaying through the horde like a phantom leaf caught in a breeze.
𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶
Swoosh!
A beast lunged from the right.
Rhain merely tilted his head a fraction of an inch to evade the venomous fangs, simultaneously bringing his elbow down onto its spine.
CRACK!
The beast’s back snapped cleanly, killing it on the spot.
BANG! CRACK! THUD!
He moved with an incomprehensible level of combat efficiency.
There were no wasted movements, no flashy techniques.
Every single step placed him perfectly out of harm’s way, and every single casual punch or kick he delivered landed with maximum lethality.
In less than ten seconds, the terrifying pack of late-stage Core Formation beasts had been completely decimated.
More than twenty lifeless skeletons littered the ground.
The few surviving Bone-Hounds whimpered in terror.
They tucked their tails between their legs and frantically scrambled back into the toxic fog, fleeing for their lives.
Rhain stopped, casually shaking a few drops of black blood from his knuckles.
He hadn’t even broken a sweat.
Standing a few paces away, Lyra was entirely dumbfounded.
’What kind of tyrannical physique is that?’ Lyra screamed in her mind, her crimson eyes trembling as she stared at the shattered corpses.
He had literally bludgeoned a horde of late-stage Core Formation beasts to death with his bare hands like he was swatting flies!
"
Let’s move," Rhain said placidly, turning back to the path.
For the rest of the day, they ventured deeper into the basin.
The environment grew increasingly oppressive and dangerous.
Along the way, they encountered a few more straggling packs of mutated beasts, but Rhain dispatched all of them with the exact same effortless physical brutality.
Finally, after a full day of walking, a faint sound reached their ears.
CLANG! BOOM!
The unmistakable sounds of clashing metal and roaring beasts echoed through the dense mist.
Rhain abruptly halted, raising a hand to signal Lyra.
"Combat," Rhain whispered.
Lyra’s eyes narrowed.
Aside from the royal assassins, it was incredibly rare to encounter anyone in the deeper zones of the Sunless Umbral Basin.
Rhain gestured for silence. Blending into the shadows of the massive, twisted trees, they moved stealthily toward a high vantage point overlooking a small clearing.
Down in the clearing, a fierce battle was unfolding.
A group of seven human cultivators, all radiating the auras of the Core Formation Realm, were locked in a desperate, bloody struggle against a pack of mutated Venom-Spitters.
Rhain’s golden eyes analyzed the scene below.
The group was clearly not a mob of rogue cultivators.
They moved with an incredibly refined, practiced synchronization.
They covered each other’s weaknesses flawlessly, a clear sign of a highly trained mercenary company or an elite sect team.
"Humans," Lyra murmured softly from beside him, her crimson eyes scanning the embattled squad. "The first ones we’ve seen other than Lucius’s men. And they are moving with incredible coordination. They must have fought life-and-death battles together for years."
Rhain watched the group with a placid, calculating gaze.
In this lawless, toxic hellhole, running into a highly organized squad of humans could rarely be a good thing.
’Let’s see who exactly these people are,’ Rhain thought, his eyes glinting with a sharp light.