It was as dark as pitch black, and the forest was even darker. Ye Congdi slowly walked up the path with memories and footprints in the forest. After walking for about ten minutes, he dared to take out the night-light pearl for lighting. He was too far away from the apprentice camp. Close, for fear of being discovered.
This time, they went down to the cave to collect the Netherworld Cold Spring, and the sun was not visible all day long. Each of the three of them prepared a luminous pearl for emergencies.
The three of them had developed a certain tacit understanding after their cooperation in digging for the elixir last time. As soon as they reached the mountain, they held the elixir tablets in their mouths and climbed to the top of the mountain without saying a word.
The mountain is only seven or eight hundred meters high, and the three of them were strong and strong. They arrived at the cave within an hour.
Ye Congwen asked Yu and Lin to go into the cave to tie the hemp ropes, while he hid in a big tree and quietly observed the back to see if there was anyone following him.
I squatted in the tree for a full hour and never saw anyone. Ye Congwen saw that it was starting to rain in the sky, and then he slowly descended into the cave.
At the end of autumn and the beginning of winter, the temperature in the cave was obviously half lower than last time. Ye Congwen had a sudden thought:
Nether Cold Spring, with the word "han" in its name, does it mean that the cold winter is its active period? The colder the weather, the happier it will run. This kind of strange creature will often transform into various strange shapes. When the time comes, you should pay more attention to those lively creatures.
This made Ye Congwen secretly sigh, he still needs to read more. If he hadn't plunged into the library these days, how would he have known that even water in this world can transform into various animals?
Taking out the luminous pearl and looking at it carefully, I saw Yu and Lin wrapping thumb-thick hemp ropes on the left and right sides of the vine. This time, three bundles of 800-meter-long thick hemp ropes were prepared. No matter where the cave extends underground, it is enough for use. For safety reasons, Ye Congwen asked Yu and Lin to each pull a hemp rope down. spread.
Even if one is broken, there is still one available, which can be regarded as a double insurance.
I carefully checked the binding place of the hemp rope several times, and saw that the two men followed my instructions without compromise. Each bundle of hemp rope was tied with three vines in a row, and the ends of the two bundles of hemp rope were tied together. .
"This can be said to be foolproof. If something goes wrong again, I won't be able to do anything about it."
Ye Congwen walked slowly to the entrance of the cave and found that Yu and Lin both had surprised expressions on their faces. He immediately understood the reason and asked happily:
"It's all the way to the end. How long is it?"
"Half of the hemp rope has not been used up, more than 300 meters at most, and the steel ball has stopped moving."
Yu Yueyue said happily, with smiles in her eyes. This was much better than previously expected. It seemed that it was very possible to obtain the divine spring.
"It's the same with mine. I shook it vigorously a few times, but the iron ball didn't move."
Lin Xiaoyu was eager to try it out and wanted to go down and find out.
"This is a good thing! You two are guarding it from above. I'll go down first to check the situation. If I'm sure it's safe below, I will pull the rope. Then Lin Xiaoyu will stay where he is and watch. Yu Yueyue will come down with tools to help."
Seeing Lin Xiaoyu pouting, Ye Congwen had to explain again:
"Sister Yueyue, you can store many tools in that piece of jade, and you can also take Shenquan out quietly. You have to guard it well. What if someone comes secretly and goes crazy and cuts the hemp rope? Your He has better combat experience than Yu Yueyue, so I feel more at ease staying here."
After finishing speaking, he put on his cotton clothes and trousers, and slowly slid down with an iron pickaxe. A rope was tied around his waist, tied into a knot, and tied tightly to the hemp rope, just in case.
As soon as he entered the cave, the cold air inside suddenly spread out, and the road under his feet began to turn into smooth ice. Ye Congwen walked down carefully, using a pickaxe to dig a small hole on the hard ice every one or two meters, big enough for his feet.
Ye Congwen took the luminous pearl and carefully looked at the situation inside the cave. He saw a thick layer of ice two or three feet thick, which had obviously condensed for a long time.
The further down you go, the colder it gets, and Ye Congwen feels that even his breath can freeze into ice in an instant. As a last resort, he could only activate his skills to speed up the circulation of the energy throughout his body. After about ten minutes, his limbs slowly returned to normal. Unfortunately, he didn't prepare a hat, and his ears were probably red from the cold.
What the hell is this Netherworld Cold Spring? Why is it so cold even though I'm still halfway up the mountain? Could this thing really have escaped from the Netherworld Ghost Mansion?
However, judging from the results of the detection by Yu and Lin, it does not lead to the underground at all, and it is even more nonsense to say that it reaches the underworld! So, how did it come about halfway up the mountain? Or how did it escape?
When Ye Congwen was puzzled, Ye Congwen discovered that the ground was flat.
Ye Congwen picked up the Night Pearl and looked inside, and was immediately shocked and speechless!
It turns out that it is extremely deep inside, just like a natural cave, criss-crossed, winding and deep. The dark and deep corridors seemed to have no end. Everything inside is uneven, filled with ice picks and ice cranes of different shapes, some are as sharp as knives, some are as pointed as arrows, and they come in all kinds of weird shapes.
Ye Congwen made an estimate and felt that this natural ice forest was very vast. If he dived half the distance, he would be at least halfway up the mountain. Judging from his previous observations:
It takes at least several miles to go around the mountainside. Such a long road is crisscrossed with dark passages. Once you lose your way, it will be difficult to get out.
Not to mention looking for the Netherworld Cold Spring in such a vast ice cone forest. Even if it lies under your nose, as long as you don't move, who can find it? Even if you find its traces, as long as it scares the snake, it will turn around and run away. Who can catch up?
Thinking of this, Ye Congwen felt that his fiery heart had been poured into a basin of cold spring, which could no longer be extinguished. Although I don’t know what the Netherworld Cold Spring looks like, the cold air it emits can condense into such a vast ice cone snow forest. I guess the real owner is absolutely ferocious. If you accidentally get it, you may suffer from frostbite in mild cases and severe frostbite in severe cases. Wouldn’t words freeze people into ice sculptures?
This must be guarded against! You have to keep the elixir tablets in your mouth at all times. Once you get into trouble, you have to chew the elixir immediately to resist. Perhaps you can rely on the overbearing effect of the elixir to offset each other with the Netherworld Cold Spring.
Thinking of this, Ye Congwen broke out in a cold sweat, as if there was a pair of ghostly eyes staring at him in the black hole in the distance. As long as he showed the slightest flaw, he would immediately rush in front of him, like a maggot attached to the bone, following him.
"You must return to Yu Yueyue quickly. She has all the elixir. If you want to survive, you must stay with her."
Ye Congwen murmured, pulled the rope and stepped on the small pit dug with a pickaxe, and climbed up quickly.
As soon as Ye Congwen walked away, a snake-like monster as transparent as crystal suddenly appeared behind him. It was only as big as a thumb and about three or four feet long. It had no head or tail. Wherever it passed, water vapor turned into frost and water droplets condensed instantly. into ice.
hiss! The crystal-like monster rushed towards Ye Congwen's back, but was suddenly bounced back by an invisible curtain. It fell to the ground and broke into several pieces, like an earthworm that had been dug up, and kept spinning. Squirming on the ground.
It didn't take long for these broken joints to slowly join together, intertwined with each other, like a hemp rope, twisting its body unwillingly, and suddenly swung its tail towards the curtain, causing a lot of rain to fall out. Dot-like water droplets.
This crystal monster kept beating the curtain like crazy until it turned into water droplets.
The water droplets kept rolling on the ice, and soon they all gathered together, and gradually formed a snake-like creature as thick as a thumb, crawling towards the dark corridor.
About half an hour later, Ye Congwen finally climbed to the top, and Yu and Lin all gathered around and asked what was going on inside.
Ye Congwen sat on the ground and panted for a long time before saying dejectedly:
"The depth is less than three hundred meters, but the width inside is several miles. There are many ice cones crisscrossing the area. There are at least dozens of tunnels leading to nowhere. I even doubt that as long as we get lost in there, we may lose our way for the rest of our lives. Can’t get out!”
Yu Yueyue and Lin Xiaoyu looked at each other and saw deep surprise and fear in each other's eyes.
"Are you saying that there is a flat ice cone forest inside, just like those caves, with many roads interconnecting each other, and the shapes are almost the same, making it easy to get lost?"
Yu Yueyue told Ye Congwen the scenes she imagined one by one, hoping that he would give an accurate judgment.
"Absolutely, but the corridors and scenery in this ice cone forest are more uniform, as if they were built artificially. I took the luminous pearl and looked at it carefully. There are eight identical corridor entrances. If it is also structured like this , Two Eighty Six, Six Eight Forty Eight, Eight Eight Sixty Four!"
Ye Congwen was reciting and suddenly thought of the location map of the Bagua Gate of Life and Death!
"Qian Dui Li shakes Kan Xun Gen Kun, Xiu Sheng hurts Du Jing and opens in shock. The eight trigrams correspond to the eight gates. They change and intersect with each other every twelve hours. They are combined into sixty-four hexagrams. Then the corridors inside must have regularity. , as long as we find the right direction, we can find the Netherworld Cold Spring, and we can escape unscathed!"
Yu and Lin looked at Ye Congwen talking to himself, feeling sad and happy at the same time. No matter how Yu and Lin asked, Ye Congwen had no intention of answering, as if he was possessed by a ghost. Lin Xiaoyu suddenly panicked and moved towards Yu Yueyue complained:
"I just said you can't let Brother Congwen go down alone. What kind of place is this? If it didn't lead to the underworld, how could there be such cold and perpetual frost! Sister Yueyue, if you had listened to my advice just now, Your brother will not be haunted by evil spirits!"
Yu Yueyue heard Ye Congwen talking about the eight trigrams and directions, but he didn't understand the things about life, death, injury, etc. behind it. Ye Congwen never told himself.
Yu Yueyue is also a scholar after all. The Master once said: You don’t speak and your strange power confuses your spirit. Although I am afraid of the female ghost in red, at this time I have to show my sister's style to calm down the chaos. He shouted coldly:
"My brother is fine. Are you going to curse him? It's probably too cold down there. Maybe he's frozen?"
