Chapter Ninety-Four: The Mysterious Group

All around, a blaze of crimson light filled the world. Wherever the eye could reach, everything was drowned beneath that blood-red glow.

Waves of heat surged and rolled in, striking his face and bringing with them an unbearable dryness. Even the air itself seemed steeped in scorching temperature, stiflingly hot, enough to make one feel as though he were about to suffocate.

Lu Zhe took off the robe he was wearing, put it back into his storage ring, and then, panting heavily, looked around.

This was a cavern, a vast cavern beyond measure. It rose several dozen zhang high, and its breadth could not even be guessed. At a glance, there was nothing but that crimson light filling the heavens.

Standing here, Lu Zhe felt as though he were inside a steam basket. No, it was even hotter than that. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and flicked it away absentmindedly. The beads struck the searing rock and actually gave off a sharp hiss, instantly vaporized by the stone’s heat. It was clear just how terrifying the temperature here truly was.

The healer elder looked around the cavern, then lowered his head in thought for a long while. Still unable to make sense of it, he muttered to himself, baffled, that a magma cavern should not be this hot.

The place where Lu Zhe stood was not very large, more like the edge of a shore, about five or six zhang wide, and then it broke off. The healer elder walked forward a few steps and came to the edge, looking down.

Seeing the healer elder move ahead, Lu Zhe hurried after him in a few steps, then stood at his left and also looked down.

Below them, about three zhang beneath Lu Zhe, was blood-red magma. It rolled slowly and thickly, from time to time吐ing up a massive bubble of heat. Then, with a muffled pop, it burst, and a wave of searing temperature surged out from the ruptured bubble, making the cavern even hotter still.

Wiping the sweat from his face, Lu Zhe turned to look at the healer elder and saw that his brow was deeply furrowed as he stared at the magma below.

“What is it, Master?” Lu Zhe asked in confusion.

The healer elder did not answer. He continued to gaze intently at the rolling magma below. Then he slowly raised his head and looked all around. After a moment, he said faintly, “Do you feel that the temperature here is very high?”

“Isn’t that obvious? This is a magma cavern. Of course the temperature is high,” Lu Zhe said unhappily.

“No,” the healer elder said, lifting a hand to deny it. He glanced around the cavern, then at the roiling magma beneath the ground, and said, “This place is much hotter than other magma caverns.”

Lu Zhe thought about it and said, “Maybe there’s just more magma here.”

Without paying attention to what Lu Zhe said, the healer elder quietly began walking along the edge, his eyes still fixed on the magma churning below.

Watching the healer elder gradually move away, Lu Zhe shrugged carelessly, glanced around a few times, and then began wandering about as if nothing were wrong.

This cavern was truly enormous. Although the place where Lu Zhe stood was not wide, it was undeniably long, and the whole platform seemed tightly connected to the cavern wall. He walked along the platform under his feet, occasionally looking around aimlessly, not quite sure what he was doing.

The healer elder frowned deeply as he watched the magma churning below. Suddenly, whether from a trick of the eye or not, a black shadow flashed inside the magma. Though it appeared only for an instant, the sharp-eyed healer elder still caught it. The appearance of that shadow made him freeze.

“What was that?” Recalling the black shape he had just seen in the magma, the healer elder muttered in confusion.

However, before he could recover from his thoughts, his keen hearing picked up a faint rustling sound from not far behind him.

His expression darkened at once. He turned sharply to look behind him, but aside from the red-lit cavern wall, there was nothing there. His brows knit, and after a brief hesitation, he made a decisive move: with a light push from his feet against the ground, his body rose into the air with a whoosh and, in the blink of an eye, landed beside Lu Zhe.

At that moment, Lu Zhe was looking at the stones on the cavern wall and had not noticed the healer elder at all. So when the elder clapped a hand onto his shoulder, Lu Zhe nearly jumped out of his skin, terrified to the point of losing his wits.

“You... what are you doing, Master?” Lu Zhe stammered, badly startled.

“Someone is coming,” the healer elder said coldly, looking at Lu Zhe’s frightened face.

Lu Zhe blinked in surprise, then looked around and said blankly, “Where is anyone?”

The healer elder gave him a glance and said nothing more. With a hawk-like sharpness in his eyes, he swept the surroundings once more, then gripped Lu Zhe’s shoulder tightly with his right hand.

“They’re here. Go!”

With that, he dragged Lu Zhe along, pushed off the ground, and shot toward the cave opening they had come through.

He tossed Lu Zhe into the opening, then moved two stones from the side to cover the cavern entrance. Afterward, he made a silence gesture to the bewildered Lu Zhe and peered out quietly through the gap between the stones.

Outside, the crimson light still towered to the sky, and there was no sign of anything unusual.

Time passed by the minute and the second. Lu Zhe also looked out through the crack between the stones, but there was not even a ghostly shadow to be seen outside. At that point, he asked softly, “Could you have heard wrong, Master?”

The healer elder glanced at him and said, “Wait a little longer.”

Lu Zhe raised his brows and continued waiting.

About a quarter of an hour later, Lu Zhe suddenly noticed through the gap in the stones that, in the distance ahead of the cavern where they were hiding, one of the rocks twitched a few times and then fell away.

As that stone dropped, the surrounding stones followed one after another. Before long, a hole appeared, about half a person tall.

From the opening, a person in a white robe crawled out, looked around, and waved into the cave.

After that white-robed figure gestured, more than a dozen similarly dressed men emerged from the cave one by one. Judging by their clothing and bearing, they were likely of the same group.

Once out, the white-robed men gathered together and began talking. They gestured constantly as they spoke, though no one knew exactly what they were saying.

Lu Zhe withdrew his gaze from them and looked at the healer elder, only to find that the elder was staring unblinkingly at the group of white-robed men. Curious, Lu Zhe lowered his voice and asked, “Master, what do you think they are here for?”

The healer elder drew in a slow breath, as if weighing something. After a moment, he said faintly, “They are probably here to seek that miraculous herb as well.”

Lu Zhe was stunned. “You mean they’re here for the miraculous herb too?”

The healer elder nodded. “The reason anyone would come to such a desolate place is likely for that herb.”

Realization dawned on Lu Zhe. He nodded, then frowned slightly and gave a bitter smile.

They had only just learned where the miraculous herb was, and now they had already run into enemies. It seemed this medicine would not be easy to obtain after all.