Mystical Journey

Garen stood at the end of the pitch-black tunnel, ahead was a wall sealing the tunnel shut, and there were no other branches in the path.

He checked the surroundings carefully, but there was no way through.

"Is it a dead end?"

Garen narrowed his eyes, walked to the right of the tunnel, reaching out his hand to knock the hard stone wall.

And then he walked one entire round around the dead-end tunnel, continuously rapping on the hard stone walls, making tapping sounds.

Finally, he stopped in front of one part of the stone tunnel, and hammered it hard with his arm.

Bam!

The previously hard stone wall actually shattered rather easily, forming a large hole.

With a whoosh of debris cascading down, Garen extended the area around the hole, making it larger, until it was large enough for someone to enter while bent over, only then did he stop.

The hole was glowing faintly, completely different from the pale blue mist outside.

Garen crawled into the hole, and emerged in another small room.

More than ten stone tables and chairs stood neatly inside, and there were carvings of wolf beasts on the walls, there were even more than ten round nightlight gems embedded in the ceiling, forming a circle ring that lit up with a pale yellow glow.

To others, this light was just a faint glow, and they would not even be able to see things a meter away clearly, but with Garen's vision, the whole room was bright as day.

The small room was cylindrical in shape, with a diameter of more than ten meters, more than ten skeletons lying all over the floor, with a layer of white membrane like cobwebs all over them, evidently these people had been dead for too long, their blood and flesh drying out until they looked like this.

Garen walked up to these skeletons, and checked them carefully, the dozen or so skeletons were all of normal human height, and there were bits of clothes scattered around them, he just had to step on them lightly for them to disintegrate into dust.

There was also a little arch-shaped door on the right of the room, Garen could not find anything useful on the skeletons, so he could just get up and walk into the small door, there was a narrow tunnel behind the little door, with yellow nightlight gems every ten meters embedded above,

Garen walked several hundred meters ahead, and vaguely heard tiny footsteps from ahead, at first he thought it was the echo of his own footsteps, but once he listened closer, he noticed that the rhythm was not right, and he instantly stopped.

The other person had evidently heard movement here as well, and stopped at almost the exact same time.

"Nine-Headed Hydra?" There was a soft question from ahead. The voice was clear and cool, and definitely belonged to the Divine God Palace Master. The head of the nest leaders walked out from one of the three forks slowly, and faced Garen head-on.

He was still wearing that green cloak, but the hems of the cloak were all torn up, evidently a result of the many battles along the way. But there did not seem to be many injuries on his body.

"So the Divine God Palace Master has arrived." Garen smiled slightly in reply. "May I know how you've been here, Palace Master?"

"About four days." The Divine God Palace Master had no intention of hiding it, and replied casually.

Garen's heart gave a jolt, if he could reach here four days in advance, that evidently meant this person was much stronger than even Garen with Doublecast. This really raised alarms in his heart.

After all, the Divine God Palace Master was not a human, if he truly had second thoughts, it would actually be extremely troublesome to deal with him in these sealed ruins.

Garen glanced at the branches at the detour, there were three branches in total, he was standing in one, the Divine God Palace Master stood in the one opposite him, and there was another in the center without anyone there, so it was obviously the tunnel that the Cthulhu King had gone in.

Garen stared at the Divine God Palace Master, hesitating for a moment, and neither of them spoke anymore, the other person seemed surprised that Garen was the one who showed up first, rather than the Cthulhu King who led this whole expedition.

"I'll go check out how things are with the Cthulhu King's side." Garen said quietly, and walked straight down the middle branch, while remaining wary of the Divine God Palace Master's actions.

It was only after he walked a long distance down the middle branch, and the Divine God Palace Master was completely out of view, that he slowly relaxed.

Walking down the tunnel, he ran for a bit over an hour, and began to hear the sound of clashing metal in front of him.

Soon enough, the faint blue mist in the tunnel ahead slowly faded, and was replaced by an utter and complete darkness.

In the darkness, the red-robed Cthulhu King was being chased relentlessly by a darting black lightning bolt, seeming unnaturally out of his depth.

"Help me!" Seeing that Garen had arrived, the Cthulhu King instantly looked overjoyed.

Garen glanced around, there were still large shards of a chunk of the Tower Shield, it had a sharp shape, like a triangle. He kicked it up with his foot, and caught the shard in his hand with a smack.

"Leap Slash!"

He gathered up all the power in his body, twisted, and formed a shape like a spring, and then Garen released it rapidly as he took in a breath.

Bong!!

The shard in his hand instantly carved out a lightning bolt, and at the very instant the swordswoman leader connected with the half of the shield in the Cthulhu King's hand, he slashed the swordswoman's waist precisely.

With a tearing sound, the swordswoman was torn in half, chopped into half at the waist.

The body rapidly turned into black shadows and melted into the darkness, the pale blue mist filling the tunnel once more. Everything returned to being peaceful again.

The Cthulhu King panted loudly, his chin underneath the mask dripping sweat. His long robes were also soaked with sweat, plastered to his body.

"Much thanks." He leaned his back on the wall, took out his water bottle and gulped down some water, closing his eyes as he began to rest.

Garen was not too bothered either, waiting quietly at the side.

After more than half an hour, the Cthulhu King finally opened his eyes.

"I owe you one for this time."

"Don't hide anything from me anymore." Garen was slightly upset about the Shadow Demon Mirror that showed up from nowhere, this news should have revealed early on, and not tacked on later. If the Cthulhu King was able to defeat this shadow swordswoman by himself, he probably would have monopolized the Demon Mirror himself.

"It was my fault, but the Divine God Palace Master doesn't know about this either." After Garen helped him this time, the Cthulhu King's attitude was much gentler, and he was finally interacting with Garen as an equal of the same level. As for the grudges caused by the ten thousand mile chase from before, these were somewhat eased as well.

"The Shadow Demon Mirror is the main control central for the whole ruins, this was never an underground city, but a military fortress, the shadow creatures left in here had actually lasted for countless years, at first the shadow team controlled by the Shadow Demon Mirror was much larger than right now, it was just that some problems appeared after such a long time."

"I don't care about any Shadow Demon Mirror, don't forget the condition you agreed to before."

"Of course." The Cthulhu King nodded, "There are three Living Secret Techniques, one is a frost-type, one has powerful life force, and there was one more that I had booked before, it's a metal weapon-type."

"Metal weapon works too." Garen agreed after some thought.

"Garen, you never encountered a Living Secret Technique before, right?" The Cthulhu King called Garen's name, in a somewhat friendly manner, he seemed to want to ease the tension between the two of them using these small details.

"That's right."

"I have some info about them here, dunno if you're interested in it." The Cthulhu King held out an olive branch, trying to fix his relationship with Garen.

"Let's talk as we walk." Garen was just frustrated that he did not know anything about the Living Secret Techniques, so naturally he would not reject him.

There was no information at all about the Living Secret Techniques in the Kovitan royal library, these things were a secret that only peak-level fighters had a right to know, so there was no way it would be saved into any secret library.

On the way back down the road ahead, the Cthulhu King told Garen everything in detail, all the general information about the Living Secret Techniques.

Living Secret Techniques had their own innate evolution potential, if one successfully trained a normal Living Secret Technique, it would fuse all the power and blood qi in the practitioner's body, absorbing even the source of their power, fusing and shrinking it, refining it into a Seed of Strength. This Seed would follow the direction most appropriate for the secret technique, discarding all the impurities, and reabsorbing the practitioner's spirit and will once more, growing gradually, growing in a way that completely suited the practitioner's own personal secret technique state.

By then, once the secret technique was successfully trained, they would not need to learn moves anymore, and it would instead become an innate ability, almost like a talent. The so-called secret technique effect, had basically become the body's own ability.

The whole Living Secret Technique was just like a living creature, using the practitioner's will and spirit, killer moves, and power source as its nutrients, after slowly growing and maturing, it would bear fruit, that being a stronger secret technique innate ability.

It would become a natural and mysterious system rooted deep in the practitioner's body, embedding the secret technique ability that had been refined into the practitioner's body fully, forming an almost innate, terrifying ability.

On the way, Garen kept going deeper into all the information the Cthulhu King was telling him about the Living Secret Techniques, the more he understood, the more amazed he felt.

This sort of secret technique was no longer purely a secret technique, and it was instead an indescribable, mysterious seed.

"Then can one person practice two different types of Living Secret Techniques?" After digesting the information the Cthulhu King had, he asked again.

"Unfortunately not, but you can absorb the pros and cons of the two types of Living Secret Techniques, removing the strength secret technique system from one and inserting your own will and spirit into it again, plucking out the Seed of Strength from one Living Secret Technique, and turning it into your own power's Seed of Strength." The Cthulhu King explained, "The Divine God Palace Master plans to do just that. Otherwise the nest leader can't have his own Living Secret Technique at all."

"You can do that?" Garen was slightly surprised.

"Of course you can, but you need to really understand this Living Secret Technique, and at the same time your own secret technique system must not be rejected by it, only then can you maybe try it, and if you fail, the consequences are extremely dire, the spirit and will, as well the source of your power source that you inserted inside will disappear completely, and even the practitioner's many years of hard effort will be utterly wasted. This is a loss of the source from your memory and your body, and it can't be salvaged. Once you fail, the many years of power that you accumulated and tried to insert will be lost in an instant." The Cthulhu King lamented. "If the Divine God Palace Master wants to leave his destiny as a nest master, it will be very, very difficult."

Garen nodded instinctively.

The two of them walked forward for some time, and finally returned to the fork where the three branches met.

The Divine God Palace Master was still leaning on the stone wall, closing his eyes and resting.

"You're finally here." Hearing the footsteps, he opened his eyes to look at the two of them.

"We can enter the third floor now." The Cthulhu King nodded at him. He took a small yellow paper packet out of his pocket.

"If you want to open up the third floor entrance as soon as possible, this would be the easiest way. I didn't expect that I would not use it with the fire people, but ended up using it here instead."

Garen also took out his portion of the explosive packet, and the three of them put the packets together, on the floor right in the middle of the fork. The three of them retreated respectively.

The Cthulhu King took a match out of his pocket, lit it up, and simply threw it onto one of the fuses.

Psst…

A slight burning sound came from the fuse.