Chapter 121: I Can Float Down
A thin, fuzzy sound rang in Saul's ears, but no matter how much he listened, he couldn't make out the meaning of it.
Unconsciously, he took another step forward, but quickly realized that it was the contamination that was luring him.
Saul's conscious mind firmly averted his eyes to diminish the effects of those contaminations, but the sounds in his ears suddenly grew louder again.
He lifted his head and looked across the crag.
Above those crags, wherever caves existed or not, there was a surprisingly large number of densely packed white arms sticking out.
Those arms were constantly stretching and waving, with their five fingers spread out in a hideous form.
Saul's brows furrowed, and he was now certain that these hands were asking for help.
It was as if he could see through these hands the countless corpses buried in the mountain walls, and see these originally incredibly powerful sorcerer apprentices and wizards, who could still only be buried in despair and helplessness in front of an even more powerful and bizarre existence.
Saul suddenly understood what it meant to be the burial ground of sorcerers, and what it meant to be the vacuum of sorcerers that the western region had turned into.
That was a cruelty that Saul could not imagine under Byron's few glib words.
And the undead that appeared at this crag in front of him was most likely just a small portion of the entire Valley of the Drooping Hand.
Those arms were unable to make a sound, and could only desperately hope for salvation by shaking and attracting the attention of others.
But Saul clearly realized that those arms weren't even soul fragments. They were just the bit of tainted resentment left by the dead under the radiation of sorcery.
After watching for a long time, Saul had the illusion that he was not standing at the bottom of the valley looking up at the towering steep cliffs, but rather flying high in the air, gazing mercilessly at the undead who were buried in the ground, powerless to break free.
Saul shook his head, feeling that his mental body was a bit unstable.
"Sol? Sol?"
Suddenly someone was calling him, and Saul, with a jolt, looked back to see the others watching him.
It was Nick who called him, "What's wrong with you? They're all about to leave."
It looked like Byron and the others had already picked an entrance.
But Saul rubbed his somewhat swollen head while saying to the three seniors, "There's something unusual about these caves in the cliffs behind us."
Byron knew Saul's ability best, and immediately walked back and carefully observed the mountain wall that he hadn't noticed at first.
Wright looked at Saul and then to the quiet mountain range, and asked skeptically, "Didn't we say that the bodies of those wizards were underground? How did they get to the side?"
"Saul is very good at observing spirits." Byron withdrew his eyes, "I trust him a lot."
Bill listened, narrowing his eyes and smiling, "That's not something I'm good at, but if you guys can determine which cave is more likely to have a spirit in it, naturally I'll listen to you."
Byron directly handed the choice to Saul, "Saul, which cave do you think is the most obviously contaminated?"
Sol wanted to say that the entire mountain wall was abnormal.
However, he still observed the caves in front of him once again, enduring the agitation of his mental body and carefully searching for the differences.
Bill saw Saul's appearance and narrowed his eyes, not knowing what he was thinking.
Wright, on the contrary, slapped his face and whispered, "Is he observing the spirit body? I've heard that there are people with particularly sensitive spiritual energy who can directly observe the residue of souls without passing through instruments. Could it be that Saul can?"
Byron didn't say anything, sort of acquiescing to Wright's speculation.
Saul swept over several nearby caves and finally settled on one.
He raised his hand and pointed at a cave that was about three meters off the ground and just over a meter in diameter.
"Here, the contamination is a bit more severe here. The possibility of the presence of evil spirits is greater."
Although Wright still couldn't read anything, he still sighed, "Saul, you just looked especially like my mentor scrutinizing a petri dish."
"Your mentor?"
"Mentor Anze, ah." Wright had a complicated look on his face, as if recalling something, "I'm only good at fighting, not experimenting. The expression on Mentor Anze's face when he looked at my lab report ... was really scary."
Bill laughed, "Maybe your brain would work better if you played with women less."
Wright rolled his eyes, "I've never played with women, I've always interacted with them very seriously every time."
Nick was still fiddling with the perception meter in his hand, but found nothing else, he could only sigh, "In the future, if someone says that wizards with only mental talent and no magical talent are useless, I will definitely use you as an example to refute them."
Bill was the most anxious, and immediately said, "Since it's been determined, what are we waiting for, let's set off now."
Byron walked over to Saul and patted him on the shoulder, "Stay close to me on the way."
The four of them immediately chose the cave that was three meters off the ground and bent down to walk in, leaving Nick alone in the camp. Watching Wright's figure, who was walking at the end of the group, disappear into the cave as well, Nick remained standing in the same spot.
His two hands were tightly clasped together, and he didn't look as calm as he appeared to be.
Because Bill and Wright were both third level apprentices, Nick couldn't use the summoning spell in front of them.
"Saul ...," he could only instruct in his mind, "Make sure you keep up with Byron."
...
The cave Saul chose wasn't spacious, and traveling within the mountain was still tougher than he thought it would be.
It was not, after all, a normal passageway used as a means of passage, and there were places that were spacious and others that were so narrow that Saul couldn't even drill through them.
When he came across such places, Wright struck out.
He majored in the earth attribute and was comfortable moving underground.
After gently extending a distance on the side of the mountain, he immediately took a sharp turn.
There were some steep places where Saul could only use his hands to thrust deeply into the soil on the side to maintain his balance.
It was pitch black beneath everyone's feet, and it was completely impossible to see how far down this descent was.
Bill, who was walking in the second-most position, had been maintaining his Shimmering Light spell, but it could only illuminate a few meters of the nearby area.
Farther away, even with Saul's current eyesight, he could only see a blurry shadow.
After roughly half an hour of walking, the foremost Wright suddenly stopped.
"No, ahead is a very deep downward passage, the angle is almost vertical."
He threw a stone down.
The stone stumbled and rolled for a long time.
"I'm afraid we'll have to fly down here, it's too much of a waste of time to climb."
"Fly?" Bill's voice rang out, "Saul wouldn't have to ask, Byron have you learned the Featherfall technique yet?"
Byron shuddered, his whole body suddenly drying out.
His throat cracked, "I can float down."
Before Saul could figure out how Senior Byron was going to float, he saw the dried up human skin-like senior's mouth suddenly lengthen, his lips opening and closing a few times before he violently inhaled.
"Hissing ..."
In just a few seconds, his entire body swelled up.
His skin was pulled almost to its limit, constantly bulging and swelling, and finally turning into a human-shaped long balloon.
He then raised two hands that were swollen like pig's hooves and gave his mouth a hard knot.
With this operation, even Bill and Wright on the side looked dumbfounded.
Byron didn't care about those two, moved his body with difficulty, and flung his mouth at Saul.
"Uh-huh."
Perhaps it was a tacit understanding, Saul surprisingly understood what Byron meant immediately.
"Senior ... are you asking me to grab your mouth and float down together?"
"Uh-huh!"
"Pfft–" Wright was the first to break his guard, he covered his stomach and laughed so hard he couldn't catch his breath, "Byron, Byron, why didn't I realize you were so funny before. If only I had your ability ..."
Wright's voice came to an abrupt halt as he suddenly rubbed his chin and began to think.
Bill immediately nudged the contemplative Wright, "Since they have a way to get down there, let's get going!"
Wright didn't notice and was pushed down the tunnel by Bill. But by the sound of it, it didn't turn into a free fall.
Bill looked back at Byron, "If you can't take Saul, I do have a way to take him down."
Byron waved his mouth horizontally.
Bill hooked his mouth and, without further persuasion, jumped right in.
(End of chapter)