After reading the details, Zhou Chen absorbed the Shield passive skill.
In the blink of an eye, he felt a transparent and almost invisible defensive layer on his body. This defensive layer was weightless, but he could feel its existence.
“This thing seems to be airtight…”
Zhou Chen realized that his breathing had been blocked by this shield.
Helpless, he immediately deactivated this Shield passive skill.
Although he could hold his breath for a few hours in an oxygen-less environment because of the Breath Holding passive skill, he would not deliberately seal his breath when there was no need to.
“I will just use this passive skill as an active skill.”
After some thought, he decided to activate this passive skill only during battles.
He could be so willful because of the Passive Plunderer talent.
“I wonder if the Shield can refresh if it is deactivated after it is broken…”
He thought of this, but he felt that it was most likely not possible. Otherwise, this passive skill would be broken by him.
Zhou Chen left the cave and continued his exploration.
Before long, he encountered another group of monsters, but unfortunately, these monsters were quite weak and did not give any passive skills.
He passed through winding cave passages and arrived at an obviously unusual place.
In his Dark Vision, he saw that the stones in the cave ahead were golden in color. They looked like some kind of metal ore.
“These are… gold mines?”
He walked forward and looked carefully.
However, he was not a professional appraiser, so he could not give a definite conclusion. He could only say that the stones here were most likely very valuable.
“This large area of stones is suffused with golden color, and there are a lot of them.”
Zhou Chen continued along the passage and found a few human corpses more than ten minutes later. These corpses looked like some native workers because they were surrounded by pickaxes and mining carts.
The cause of their death was similar to the previous batch. Their necks and chests had been destroyed, and judging from the methods, it was most likely done by the vampire.
“These people are too unlucky. They came to mine, but they encountered the vampire.”
While he was pondering, Zhou Chen discovered something new. He sensed some blood circulation not far from the mining site.
Following the guidance of the Bloodthirst passive skill, Zhou Chen walked through the winding passage and arrived in front of a seemingly ordinary golden stone. The flowing blood he sensed was inside.
He extended his spear and knocked on the ore, determining that it was quite thick and difficult to break open.
“The blood I am sensing is about three meters deep inside. It feels like there are three humans.”
Zhou Chen did not understand why there were people inside this stone. He began to observe the surroundings and then noticed a protruding stone on the right that was separated from the other stones at the edges.
He felt that this might be a mechanism and pressed it.
After a few attempts, when he used about twice the strength of an adult man to press the stone in, a low sound of something moving sounded, and the stone in front of him moved to the side.
After the stone door that looked no different from the surrounding stones moved away, a square stone room was revealed.
Immediately, Zhou Chen felt a dense smell of blood.
Inside the room were a gorgeous table and chairs. On the table was a golden goblet.
To the right of the table was a stone coffin with a lid that was carved with mysterious patterns. Beside the stone coffin were some broken human bones with blood stains.
A few meters to the left of the table and chairs was an iron cage. Inside the iron cage were three young women who were squeezing in a corner. All of them were trembling as they hugged each other and looked at Zhou Chen’s direction in fear.
Because there were some unknown glowing stones embedded in the wall of this room, they could see Zhou Chen’s appearance clearly.
Zhou Chen looked at the clothes and appearance of the young women in the iron cage, looked at the wounds on their wrists and their pale faces, and understood what was going on.
“This should be the vampire’s nest, and these three women are the source of its blood intake.”
Zhou Chen had a guess about the entire sequence of events. At the beginning, that mercenary group had discovered that there was a gold mine in this monster-ridden cave and had occupied this place. They had begun to clear the monsters and prepared to mine, but they had accidentally disturbed a vampire who was living nearby and were hunted down.
Just as Zhou Chen was thinking and picking up the goblet on the table to check if it was made of pure gold, a woman in the cage spoke.
“Are… are you human?! Please save us!”
This woman held the bars of the cage and shouted at Zhou Chen nervously.
“Don’t worry, I’ll let you out.”
Zhou Chen replied calmly and placed the golden goblet in his pants pocket.
He then walked to the open stone coffin and found some gems and gold coins inside.
“This vampire’s hobby is not bad…”
Zhou Chen’s eyes lit up. He found a gorgeous box in the room and placed all the gems and gold coins in it.
After collecting the items, he gave the room a once over and confirmed that he had not missed anything.
“This vampire didn’t collect any supernatural items…”
Zhou Chen did not even find one item marked by the system here.
After the plundering, Zhou Chen walked to the iron cage. Then, he clenched two adjacent iron rods and pulled them to the side, forming a space that allowed a person to pass through.
After forcing apart the rods, Zhou Chen retreated, and the young woman who had spoken earlier ran out impatiently.
“Thank you for saving us!”
The moment she ran out, she knelt down and thanked Zhou Chen agitatedly.
“No need to thank me. It’s not a big deal. You have to rely on yourself to escape this place.”
Zhou Chen had indeed only rescued them in passing, but it was not necessarily safe for them to come out because this was the depths of the nameless cave. Not only were the paths complicated and dark, but there were also monsters..