Looking down from the high bedroom window, the monastery was deserted at midnight, with the occasional monk with a lantern passing through the narrow path between the buildings and the withered bushes, his black-robed figure resembling a ghost, rather than the flickering lanterns forming a terrible ghostly fire.

Tuttle was already waiting outside the door. So we went downstairs and out of the gate, and there was not a trace of the moon or stars in the dark night sky. I was in the midst of seven or eight silent monks, following their silent footsteps, and I felt a faint sense of unease in my heart. To our surprise, our final destination turned out to be the so-called Potions Workshop.

We walked through the narrow, dark hallway into the hall, but instead of turning to the left as I had last visited, a trapdoor opened at the right end of the hall, and the dark passage to the ground was opening its abyssal mouth in an abyss. I hesitated and stood still. In the dim light, Tuttle gestured to me and motioned for me to go down with him.

"Is that where the medicine is cultivated?"

"And that's not all. ”

Tuttle's answer was golden. Then he and the other monks leaned down and walked wordlessly down the stairs below the front. I followed lightly, stepping up the steps that had been smoothed over the years into the cold, suffocating basement.

The air here was damp and smelled strange, and the walls were littered with dripping stones and peeling mortar. Based on the glass-covered tanks and other rune-engraved nurseries I saw, I concluded that Tuttle hadn't lied to me before, and that this was indeed the place where fungi and other medicinal herbs were cultivated.

However, the two floors where the medicine is cultivated are only part of the underground structure. There is also an entrance between the two workshops on the second basement floor. Soon, we continued cautiously down the narrow spiral staircase. I couldn't help but wonder if the mountain had been hollowed out inside, and it wasn't long before my idea was confirmed that the walls and steps of the lower section were carved straight out of the rock, and the sheer sheer sheer it's done. In the dimness, there are occasionally natural holes, dark and mysterious, and I don't know what deep place it leads.

I've been calculating the distance to descend vertically. Finally, deep underground below the base of the mountain, and even at the bottom of the valley below the cliffs of the back mountain, the twisting staircase reached its end. I saw a pale glow flickering strangely, and the sound of running water indicated that there was an underground river that would never see the light of day. I shuddered involuntarily—I hated the underworld and the water in it, and even more so the darkness that was as thick as substance.

But that's not all. As the stone steps and the road began to widen, a faint, mocking wail like a flute reached my ears. Soon, the vision suddenly opened up, and everything in the dim underworld came into my yin and yang eyes—the wide banks of the river were overgrown with giant umbrella-like fungi and ferns, and the murky and greasy dark river flowed from one abyssal crack to another. Pillars of eerie green flames erupted from the depths of the earth, and it was impossible to imagine what kind of terrifying hell could smelt such a copper-green flame that was filled with the smell of death and decay. In the thick darkness were creatures of varying shapes, and the strange sound of the flute emanated from where they were hiding.

I stopped in horror at the sight of my eyes, my legs as stiff as if they were poured concrete. But the rituals of the hermits did not stop with my stop. They salute the sickly flame pillars, then pluck a slimy plant-fungal symbiont that glows green and throw them into the water. I saw Master Abner standing next to a pillar of flames, holding aloft the ancient texts of the Order, and then the monks and monks saluted.

I didn't dare interrupt them silently, trying to keep myself calm. Then, at some point in the ritual, Master Abner signaled to the flute, who was barely visible in the darkness, and the tune of the flute began to change—as if summoned by the sound of the flute, and I heard the sound of the mantiumph flapping coming from the darkness of the upper reaches of the River Styx, and the source of the sound was getting closer and closer.

What finally appeared before me was a group of winged creatures that seemed to have emerged from the biochemical laboratory of some invisible person, with fangs and claws, webbed feet, and a sinister appearance that even vultures or vampire bats could match. Apparently tamed, they flew towards us with a clear purpose, carefully grabbing the hermit monks with their long claws, and then they rode on their backs as if they were resting, and one by one they followed the monsters into the dark river below.

"This ...... Is this what you call a 'monster'?"

I gasped as I watched the black-clad hermits disappear into the tumbling greasy black waters, carried by the rushing currents that gushed out of the black cracks leading to the abyss, into the unknown world behind the cracks of the terrifying abyss.

"Don't judge the essence of things based on their appearances alone. ”

Tuttle stared at me, his black eyes as deep as an ancient well.

"There are techniques in the waking world that use the leylines to move long distances, but most of the caster's lineage has long since lost information about the origin of this technique. Did you know that these kinds of spells that interfere with time and space have a deep connection to the Yellow Documents, which were born before the Yin Shang period, but these ancient records have been forgotten by the Daomen and other sects influenced by the Daomen? ”

"About that vanished history, and the forgotten faith, Cloud, you will learn more about it later, but now we don't have time to discuss it in detail. This terrifying river is not as dirty and greasy as it can be seen by the naked eye. Ride on Baiaki, we're off to go. ”

Tuttle ended the conversation in an unquestionable tone. I hesitated to glance at the monstrous creature that had perched beside me, and nodded at it with a cross-hearted look - backed by [DATA EXPUNGED] safeguards, I don't think these creatures, still made of ordinary matter, pose a real threat to me. To my slight surprise, the baiaki read what I meant, leaned down in front of me, and I jumped up and rode up.

Beneath him, Baiaki flapped his wings and flew up, then swooped down towards the rotting sapy river. I couldn't help but be frightened by the greasy, foaming surface of the river, but when I turned my head, I saw the darkness engulfed by the stone steps of the future—just like what I had seen in the underground world of strange whirlpools.

But when I finally submerged in this horrible underground river, I didn't feel the slightest feeling of being overwhelmed by the river or any other liquid, but instead I felt several erratic currents, and the air around me became colder and thinner with time. When the complete darkness receded a little, I found myself in a fog of light. My senses were so suppressed that I couldn't see anything around me, and I didn't know if Tuttle was still with me.