Chapter 169: Chapter 167: Underground Waterway

The special sponges quickly wicked the moisture from their bodies.

Old Xu remarked to Li Luo, "Technology these days is incredible. Back in my day, if our clothes got wet, we had to dry them over a fire. They’d stink afterward. If we’d had these things back then, I wouldn’t have had such a hard time on the 3rd Floor of the Abyss."

"You’ve been to the 3rd Floor of the Abyss?" Li Xiangyi asked in disbelief.

"Of course." 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Old Xu reached into his cloak and pulled out a nameplate. The peculiar text engraved on it was strikingly conspicuous:

"Level 5 Hunter, the Heartless Xu Jian Country."

"A Level 5 Hunter?" Li Xiangyi was stunned.

"Mm, the deepest I’ve gone is the 5th Floor of the Abyss," Old Xu said nonchalantly. "Back then, no one dared to team up with me, so I went down alone. My title gradually became what it is now. It’s not very flattering."

He put his nameplate away as if it were nothing important to him.

"It gets pretty boring just heading straight down. As long as you keep moving toward areas with low danger levels, it’s easy enough to get to the next floor..."

At these words, both Li Luo and Li Xiangyi were left speechless.

Old Xu looked at both sides of the waterway and asked Li Xiangyi, "How long can you maintain that ribbon of light?"

"I can maintain it indefinitely," Li Xiangyi replied.

"Then follow me. I know the way, and we’ll be out of here soon," Old Xu said confidently. "Some of the exits in these underground waterways lead directly to the surface."

"But I thought we didn’t have a map? How do you know the route?" Li Xiangyi asked, confused.

Old Xu smiled faintly, pointed to one end of the waterway, and said, "The danger level in that direction is 460."

Then, he pointed in the other direction. "This way is 170. We’re going this way."

With that, Old Xu confidently started walking along the bank.

So that was it. As long as one constantly moved toward relatively safe places, they were bound to find an exit. Even if they couldn’t, they would at least end up in a safer location.

Mo Ling finally understood how Old Xu had managed to descend to the 5th Floor of the Abyss.

’As long as your luck is good enough to avoid all the dangers, then the Abyss effectively has no danger at all.’

Mo Ling gained a new understanding of Old Xu’s strange relic ability.

As they walked, Mo Ling’s vision penetrated Old Xu’s body, focusing on where his heart should be.

There was indeed a cavity there.

Yet the blood within was completely unaffected. It floated in the center of the cavity, following the original circulatory path and being pumped out with each non-existent beat.

The surrounding tissues showed no abnormalities from the missing heart, as if it had simply turned transparent.

’Could it be that his heart isn’t missing, but has just turned transparent and invisible?’ Mo Ling suddenly had this thought.

But Old Xu himself couldn’t feel his own heartbeat, and his nameplate clearly read "the Heartless," which conflicted with the ’transparent heart’ theory.

Mo Ling stared for a long time but couldn’t come to any conclusion, so they refocused their attention on the path ahead.

Along the way, Old Xu continued to demonstrate his miraculous ability.

At a fork in the path, he stopped and told the other two to wait.

Seeing him stand still for a long time, Li Xiangyi asked in confusion, "Which way has the lower danger level?"

Old Xu waved his hand. "Both are high. Let’s wait."

Sure enough, a moment later, the path ahead began to tremble. The entire waterway twisted under the force of the tremors, and even the direction of the water’s flow changed.

When the tremor stopped, the fork in the path had turned into a waterfall. Raging water crashed down, revealing a vast sunken basin before them.

"This way." Old Xu led the other two, leaping across the narrow rocks at the waterfall’s edge. Surprisingly, there was a hidden crevice here.

After a long detour through the crevice, the group emerged into the basin. The water scattered here, flowing away through various tributaries.

Because the current had suddenly dispersed, the water level was low, leaving many rocks in the basin exposed and easy to walk on.

Old Xu led the group into the basin. Though he had seemed utterly confident so far, he didn’t let his guard down as they advanced. On the contrary, he was extremely cautious.

He suddenly stopped in front of a dark pool of water and looked around.

"Something’s off about this pool. The danger level is climbing, but it’s still the safest route in the area."

Old Xu picked up a small stone and tossed it in.

Just then, a brown, toad-like creature leaped out of the pool and instantly devoured the stone in mid-air.

The toad’s entire body was covered in small pustules, each with a tiny black dot in its center.

These little dots were constantly bobbing up and down, like human eyes staring intently at the surroundings.

The toad also had a long tail, as if it hadn’t fully developed from its tadpole stage.

Old Xu quietly warned the two behind him not to move, his gaze flickering toward a nearby cave.

Although they didn’t know why Old Xu was arranging things this way, Li Luo and Li Xiangyi obediently followed his instructions.

The toad seemed to be choking on the stone. It kept its mouth open, making strange noises. Its whole body trembled with each sound, causing the pustules on its skin to jiggle and the little dots within them to churn.

"So gross."

The toad squirmed and began to crawl toward Old Xu, but he remained completely still, watching as it came right up to him.

His face showed no trace of panic, as if everything was going according to plan.

Slime from the toad dripped onto Old Xu’s hand, but he paid it no mind.

Just as the toad was about to crawl onto Old Xu, Mo Ling took aim, ready to teleport it away.

At that very moment, a giant hand shot out of the very cave Old Xu had been watching!

The hand looked like a human arm but was covered in coarse black hair, its pores clearly visible.

It had sharp nails, thick knuckles, and deep grooves like the lines on a human palm.

The moment it emerged from the cave, the terrifying giant hand snatched at the toad.

Before the toad could react, the giant hand seized it in a tight grip. It secreted endless slime, trying to escape, but the coarse black hairs acted like barbs, hooking it firmly in place.

Not only that, but the black hairs began to squirm like earthworms, burrowing deep into the toad’s skin and pinning it to the palm.

The toad could only screech continuously, its tail thrashing as it struggled to escape, but it couldn’t budge an inch.

Clutching the toad, the giant hand swiftly retracted back into the narrow cave.

Immediately after, the toad’s screeches and the sound of CRUNCHING and GNAWING echoed from the cave. After a while, only the sound of shattering bones remained.

"Let’s go. It’s safe now." Ignoring the slime covering his hand, Old Xu urged the other two to hurry up and follow.

He only relaxed slightly when they reached the entrance to a tributary at the edge of the basin.

"What was that just now?" Li Xiangyi asked, her voice laced with lingering fear.

"The hand? It’s called a Cave-Limb. It’s a creature like a hermit crab that lives parasitically in caves, hunting prey that passes by. That arm is its entire body. Disgusting, right?"

Li Xiangyi nodded frantically.

But then, Old Xu did something even more disgusting.

He took a small vial from his cloak and carefully collected the slime the toad had dripped onto his hand, treating it as if it were exceptionally precious.

After collecting it all, he even licked the rim of the vial with a look of pure enjoyment.

"Tastes good!"