Chapter 48: This Young Master Goes Spelunking

In the depths of nowhere a dark river was coursing. Out of those depths emerged an arm that blindly groped against slick cave stone. Eventually, a grip was found and Chen Haoran heaved himself out of the cold waters. He gasped and took in greedy mouthfuls of turbid air. A sharp pain ached in his ribs and he gently tested his bones, hissing in pain all the while. Not broken thankfully, but banged up. He had bet on the Wintersteel Essence Plate Armor combined with his enhanced durability to survive the fall, he had to ditch the armor however lest he drowned from being weighed down. The coursing currents had then carried him away and slammed him on what seemed to be every rock on the way down. His sword had been lost in the rush as well. Thankfully his storage bag was still securely strapped to his waist.

He looked around his new surroundings. He wasn’t sure where the river had dumped him, whether this was where it led to from above or if he was somehow swept into another tunnel in the aftermath of the explosion. Gingerly he stood up and felt around in the darkness. There was room for him to stand and he felt empty air on either side of him. A cavern then? If it was this wide then that hopefully meant there were other ways out, otherwise he would have to take another chance in the river. Either way, he couldn’t stay here for long. There was no telling how long it would be before Song Yuelin tracked him down. Jackass he may have been but Chen Haoran didn’t believe for a second his little trap was enough to kill the man.

Not like he intended to kill him. He felt a guilty twinge as the thought struck him. He wanted to get away. It was only natural. Whatever Song Yuelin said, whatever his intentions were, he still obeyed the Chen family completely. The fact that he so faithfully acted in their interests despite ostensibly being here on a whim was proof of that. Song Yuelin had sealed the deal really when he said he hadn’t been reporting to the family. A Chen family that had already heard about Chen Haoran’s changes was much different than one that abruptly learned about them when he showed up at their door. Not to mention whatever it was that Song Yuelin wanted out of him. He couldn’t risk that. So he risked getting away instead.

‘Even dogs need rest Young Master Chen.’

He quirked his lips in mockery. Perhaps Song Yuelin would understand why he ran off.

He too needed to rest.

With all the grand powers Chen Haoran had both seen and used it was still the subtle applications of qi that struck him the most. Qi gently cycled to his head and gathered near his nose and ears, sharpening his senses such that he could make his way through the cavern he found himself in. He picked a direction directly opposite from the river till he reached a wall. Placing a hand on the wall he followed its length until he grasped nothing but air.

He bent down and picked up a loose stone and with a brief spike of qi threw it through the space. He counted the seconds in his head, stopping at 20 when he heard the stone clatter along the ground. He didn’t hear it hit a wall.

He placed his hand along the wall of this new passage and followed it down, throwing stones every so often to gauge its dimensions. It was only when he rounded a bend that he saw a soft blue light glowing in the distance. He slowed his pace and crept forward. As he came closer to the light, hot, damp air blasted his face, and the wall he was leaning on felt wet to the touch.

A cavernous sauna greeted him at the end of the passage. The blue light he had seen was a glowing moss that covered the roof and ground. It illuminated an even larger cavern that Chen Haoran couldn’t see the end of even with qi-enhanced vision. Not helping was the steam wafting through the air that rose from the heated pools that littered the area. He approached one and dipped a finger in its water. He frowned as he felt the qi contained within it. This had to be one of Clearsprings Mountains’ famous spiritual pools. He looked around and spied hundreds of similar pools just within his field of vision alone. Assuming all the pools here were like this one then this place was a treasure indeed.

Which meant danger.

As if hearing his thoughts a body suddenly crashed into the pool in front of him. Chen Haoran cursed and jumped back as he was soaked by the hot water. The expected attack never came, however. Instead floating in the pool was… a sloth. It looked like a sloth at least, with its long arms and longer claws. Its back was coated in glowing moss. It burbled at him from the water with a glowing blue tongue and proceeded to doggy paddle around the pool. He stretched out his sense, Qi Realm Fourth-Layer. Chen Haoran looked up and saw more sloths. They stretched from stalactite to stalactite and chewed on the glowing moss that grew on them. When they lacked a stalactite to cling to they sank their claws deep into the stone and crawled along the roof.

He shuddered and took a step back from the pool and its swimming sloth. Even if it was a sloth it was still a cultivating beast, there was no telling if it would suddenly sprint over and split him open. At the same time, he wondered just how a sloth would get underground. Was it qi that let them adapt to the foreign environment? Why would they even need to stick to the ceiling anyway with so much moss on the ground?

The swimming sloth squealed and Chen Haoran ducked as something shot over his head and landed opposite him. A chittering dog-sized cricket from hell stared at him with its orb-like eyes. It rubbed its long spiny legs together in a noise that sounded like rock on a chalkboard.

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“Oh hell no.”

The monster cricket flexed its leg and shot toward him, reaching out with spike-covered arms. Chen Haoran held out his hands and two curved scimitars appeared in them. He planted his feet and slashed out at the cricket, splitting it in half down the middle. He quickly hopped back from the gooey corpse in disgust and stretched out his sense. The scimitars were like wind in his hands as he crossed them together and cleaved another ambushing cricket into three pieces. He focused his sense and relaxed his guard when he didn’t detect anything.

He whipped off the bug guts from the blades and admired how light they felt in his hands. The Canyon Carving Sword was meant to be used through a single sword so never bothered to pull out the paired blades before. The ease with which it carved through the crickets however showed how the Profound-rank weapon really was in a league of its own compared to the Mysterious Watersteel Sword.

Water splashed behind him and he whirled around to find another cricket had tried to attack the sloth in the confusion. Emphasis on tried. The claws that he had seen so easily pierce stone now stabbed through the cricket’s head. The sloth was struggling to wrench its claws free while also keeping afloat. While it might be able to free itself there were equal odds that it would drown before it could do so.

Chen Haoran sighed. “I’m only helping you because you warned me.” He waded into the pool and grabbed one end of the cricket. He carefully tried to grab the sloth’s arm and was rewarded by it attempting to swing its other arm over. “Easy you little shit,” he warned the squealing sloth. “I don’t want you to drown.” Whether it got the message or not it stopped struggling for a brief moment. Chen Haoran quickly grabbed the sloth’s arm and ripped off the cricket corpse with a flex of qi before jumping out of reach.

Thankfully the sloth was more content with paddling around the pool than trying to turn his insides into outsides. Chen Haoran watched it splash around and huffed a laugh. “Qi can make anything viable I guess.” Giant killer crickets and fast sloths. Truly they were monstrosities only this world could create.

Above them, the band of sloths called down to their fallen companion. The swimming sloth happily squealed back up at them, then looked at Chen Haoran.

He shook his head. “I draw the line at helping you get back up there.”

The sloth cocked its head and squealed at him.

Then it floated out of the water.

Chen Haoran watched in stupefied awe as the sloth defied gravity and flipped upside down before rising all the way back to the cavern roof and wrapping its limbs around a stalactite.

He stood there in silence as the band of sloths squealed at each other. Water dripped down from the wet sloth onto his head.

“What the hell is this place?”

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