Disturbing the Demon Nest
The hunched creatures numbered around four. Zheng Bingxiao's Stone Golem had been leading the way at the front, and nothing unusual had come up the entire journey. The group walking in the middle — Mu Nujiao, Mo Fan, and Liao Mingxuan — had just as little reason to suspect anything was off. The train tunnel wasn't particularly wide; Demon-Beasts couldn't have been lurking close by without someone noticing.
What none of them had anticipated was that the tunnel wall beside them had actually been carved open into a much larger gap — tall and wide enough for two fully grown adults — covered over entirely by thick black vines. The camouflage was so complete that no one had realized this side of the tunnel had no actual wall at all.
Mo Fan's flames revealed them all. It was fortunate that Zhao Manyan had released a Light Radiance earlier, flash-blinding those monsters; otherwise they would have burst through the black vines and thrown themselves straight at Mu Nujiao.
"Cave Slave Demons!!" Jingjing truly lived up to her reputation as the ultimate study fiend — from that brief flash of light, she had already identified the creatures lurking behind the black vines.
Mo Fan couldn't have cared less what they were called. The moment his flames exposed them, his left hand was already condensing streak after streak of crackling lightning into seals, which he unleashed without the slightest mercy.
The Lightning Seals transformed into writhing electric serpents and shot along the floor and up the side walls, lashing onto two of the Cave Slave Demons in an instant. Purple-black lightning wrapped around their entire bodies, jolting them into convulsions that looked almost comically like old men dancing at a rave.
**"Baaah!!!!!"**
A sound like a goat's bleat rang out — only stripped of every trace of gentleness, replaced by something impossibly sharp and ear-splitting.
Furious, the Cave Slave Demons burst out from within. One of them swung the enormous bone club fused to its arm straight at Mo Fan's head.
"These creatures love nothing more than smashing living things into pulp — watch that bone club! It'll cave your skull right in!" Jingjing called out urgently.
"If you've got time to talk, how about throwing in some magical support?!" The exasperation in Mo Fan's voice was unmistakable.
Fortunately, Mu Nujiao was quick to help. She redirected her Wind Track to Mo Fan's side, giving him the same ability to dash along its current.
Mo Fan threw himself sideways. An instant later he felt the spiked bone club slam into the spot where he'd just been standing — with enough force that the iron rail buried beneath the ground actually buckled.
Now that the Cave Demon-Slave had leaped out, Mo Fan finally got a clear look at the thing. Its body was hunched, its hind legs crooked and bent, while its forelimbs were grotesquely overdeveloped by comparison. Wrapped in skin resembling the deeply furrowed bark of an ancient tree, it was less terrifying than it was utterly hideous.
God only knew how many years these wretched creatures had spent entirely alone — there was truly no other explanation for arms that enormous. Each swing of those bone clubs was an indiscriminate wrecking-ball strike, and in the cramped tunnel there was precious little room to maneuver and deal with them in one clean sweep.
"Vine — Lash!"
The Cave Demon-Slave that had leaped out was already closing in on Mo Fan when Mu Nujiao moved.
With vines everywhere around her, Plant Element magic came as naturally as breathing. A vine tendril almost immediately snapped through the air like a whip, landing a savage blow across the creature's crooked hind legs.
The strike didn't end there. The tendril coiled around those legs, and under Mu Nujiao's control, the Cave Demon-Slave was hoisted up and left dangling upside down.
**"Aaah-baaah!!!!!"**
The Cave Demon-Slave screamed in panic, its bone club flailing wildly in every direction.
Before it could struggle for long, bolt after bolt of lightning — Furious Strike — blazed into view, each one connecting dead-on with the suspended creature.
The stench of scorched flesh spread through the tunnel in an instant. That Cave Demon-Slave had paid a brutal price for its recklessness: hanging there helpless, it was reduced to a charred, blackened husk. There was nothing remotely dignified about the way it died.
The one who had released those Lightning Seals wasn't Mo Fan — it was the trainee named Mingcong. He had gone straight to the third-level Lightning Seal: Furious Strike, and that concentrated, hammering firepower, landing entirely on one immobilized, defenseless Demon-Beast, was more than enough to kill it outright.
**"Aaah-baaah~~~~~!!!!!"**
The Cave Demon-Slave still hiding in the side cavern let out a piercing wail the moment it watched its companion die. The cry echoed easily through the narrow tunnel. Whether it was screaming in rage or shrieking in terror was impossible to say — but either way, the creature didn't dare leap out again.
"A few lowly minion creatures — nothing to worry about. Let's keep moving." Lu Zhenghe glanced over and spoke without the slightest concern.
Zheng Bingxiao nodded and was about to press on when, all at once, she spotted pairs of faint, eerie blue points of light appearing in the darkness ahead.
At first there were only a handful of pairs. Within seconds, those pale blue glows had multiplied until they filled the darkness ahead in a dense, unbroken mass — enough to make every hair on the body stand on end.
"Oh hell — it called for backup!!" someone cried out.
A chorus of rustling sounds spread through the tunnel — from ahead, and from behind.
Song Xia and Zhao Manyan both rushed to release Light Radiance again. The orbs flew forward and lit up a long stretch of tunnel at once, drawing a collective sharp intake of breath: hidden behind those same black vines, side-wall caverns were staggered in rows along the tunnel walls, one after another. Had the Cave Slave Demons not torn their own vine camouflage open, everyone would have walked through believing this was a perfectly ordinary railway tunnel.
The number of Cave Slave Demons kept growing. They seemed ready to swarm the entire passage ahead. Pairs of furious blue eyes blazed with cold light; blood-smeared bone clubs clattered against each other in a cacophonous din; and all around came those goat-like, ear-splitting shrieks...
"This is bad — we're right in the middle of their nest, and there are just as many of those side caverns behind us!!" Xu Dalong shouted.
The same scene playing out ahead of them was now repeating itself behind them. The black vines had been so thick and dense that no one passing through had suspected the side walls were entirely hollowed out — and now Cave Slave Demons were crawling out by the dozens.
"This is a Cave Demon-Slave nest. All those white bits of rubble we've been walking over — they're *bones*. Bones that these things smashed to pieces!" Zhao Manyan finally put it together.
A wave of cold dread swept through the group.
There was every chance they would end up as another layer of white rubble scattered across this tunnel floor, years from now.
These Cave Slave Demons were cunning. They had held back, waiting until the entire group had filed deep into their lair before making their move. Now everyone was surrounded from both ends. The situation was dire.
"Fire Element users — burn every last bit of black vine on both sides right now! We're being hit from front and back, we absolutely cannot afford an attack from the sides on top of it!"
"Everyone close ranks! Tighten the formation! If anyone gets cut off alone — they're dead!"