Mystical Journey

In that instant, a burst of burning red light abruptly lit up from the ground at the fork.

Boom!!!

The thick smell of smoke spread everywhere. The white-yellow smoke utterly covered the whole tunnel’s branched exits.

The Divine God Palace Master reached out his left hand and fanned it lightly

Phew!

A whirlwind started up, and his left hand seemed to leave behind a trail of after-images in an instant, as though he had sprouted more than ten palms, waving forward at the same time, which then instantly merged back into one.

The wind that was created immediately blew the smoke into the three tunnels, and quickly revealed how the ground at the center looked like now.

On the floor of the left by the branches, a large black irregular hole had appeared, and small black cracks could vaguely be seen in the hole. It was evidently the result of the explosion just now.

Under these circumstances when unnatural power could not be used, it was the easiest to use a lot of special black powder to find the entrance, of course the three of them could find and create an entrance by themselves, but it would not nearly be as fast and direct as using explosives.

The explosion had created a huge tremor, and it would reveal the hidden entrance, so they did not have to find the specific location themselves.

"There’s an entrance here as well." Just then, the Divine God Palace Master frowned slightly, his hand pressed on the right-side wall, there was also a hole with tiny cracks there, a result of the tremor.

"Two holes, which one is it?" The Cthulhu King asked in a deep voice.

"Do you want to split up and check?" Although Garen asked that, he was already walked to the underground hole, when his right foot stopped.

Bam!

A large chunk of the stone on the floor fell after one step, revealing the pitch-black tunnel underneath, it was like a deep pitch-black well, leading to god knows where.

On the other side, the Divine God Palace Master had already quietly opened up the hole on the wall, making an oval-shaped hole that was enough for someone to enter, there was a vague blue mist coming from inside.

The Cthulhu King narrowed his eyes, but he still followed Garen to the well. The two of them exchanged glances, and Garen just jumped, disappearing into the well directly, the Cthulhu King jumped in as well, and soon only the Divine God Palace Master was left at the fork, he looked at the hole in the ground, and then turned to walk towards the hole in the wall.

**************

Bam!!

Garen landed hard on the ground, creating a middle-sized crater. The ground was a burnt-black stone floor.

This was a huge charred-black hole, there were dark red and charred-black stone chunks all .over the walls, and a long black stone cliff in the middle of the cave. It was like a black metal bar embedded into the middle of the large oval-shaped cave.

The cliff extended backwards, all the way connected to a pitch-black metal door on the cave walls.

By now, Garen was half-crouching on top of the cliff, he raised his head and looked up, there was a small hole directly above him, it was the entrance he had fallen down from.

Phew!

Another red figure fell down, turned slightly in mid-air, and crashed towards the cliff stone floor behind Garen, also creating a crater on the ground.

"We’re here, the Hall of Glory's Testament…" The Cthulhu King stood up and straightened out his long robe. His expression was slightly complicated. "This is where the Divine God Palace Master’s Flame Secret Technique is. Not ours."

"This is where the secret technique is?" Garen was slightly surprised, he looked around, but did not find any special places hiding the secret techniques at all.

He walked to the cliffside and looked down, it was an endless pitch-black abyss down there, and he had no idea how deep it was.

He picked up a rock the size of his head and tossed it down, but he waited for several minutes and still heard no echo.

"So deep." Garen frowned.

"Be careful not to fall in, that down there is the Abyss of the Dead, if you fall in, you’ll just keep falling endlessly, without anything to eat or drink, falling all the way until you die." The Cthulhu King reminded him. "It’s still not time for the secret technique to appear yet, we need to go into the sealed room and finish off the last guardian first, and then only can we go into the secret room to obtain the proof needed to get the Demon Mirror and the secret techniques, before we can finally split up and get our respective Secret Technique Seeds."

"Where’s the secret room?" Garen looked at the Cthulhu King, he evidently knew more about the details, so now he could only rely on the Cthulhu King to lead the way.

"Over there." The Cthulhu King pointed a finger towards the black metal door behind the cliff.

The two of them did not hesitate at all, walking straight towards the large metal door.

Clack…

Suddenly the large metal door began to open outwards, gradually emitting a slight clacking sound, in the middle of the large door, a bit of black abruptly appeared, and like a piece of paper being set on fire, the black burned and spread from the center towards the surroundings, the black flames flying everywhere, while the large metal door, several meters tall, was burned away soundlessly. It revealed a large bright hall behind it.

The two of them walked inside, one after the other.

The large hall was like a huge, wide cathedral, with the surrounding walls made of colorful glass windows, while there was a pointed ceiling several dozen meters above their heads.

The floor was covered with old black and white interchanging bricks, the long black pews mostly damaged and old, while right ahead of them, on a dirty silver-black prayer podium, there was a black and clean thin-necked flower vase, with a wilted black rose in it.

Garen looked towards the two sides of the cathedral, there were some round soil-yellow wooden buckets on the floor, and on the walls between the windows, there were carvings of fresh flowers and angels. Faint pillars of light shone in through some of the colorful windows’ cracks.

"Are you sure we haven’t returned to the surface?" Garen narrowed his eyes as he looked at the Cthulhu King in front of him.

"We’re still way down deep underground, do you really think we could have possibly been instantly returned to the surface without any teleportation, and without us knowing?" The Cthulhu King did not even turn around as he replied in a deep voice. "Look carefully, that is not sunlight… it’s golden lava."

Garen was slightly taken aback, and immediately looked at the window cracks carefully, as expected, the golden color coming from the cracks was indeed flowing slightly, it really was golden-colored lava.

These light pillars were actually rays of light reflected from the dazzling lava.

This entire large cathedral was actually surrounded by copious amounts of golden lava.

Everything coming in through the cracks of the windows around them was gold-colored lava, shining down pillars of golden light, illuminating the whole cathedral and making it bright as day.

While the two of them were observing their surroundings, a small door on the left of the cathedral also opened slowly, and a green figure walked out, it was the Divine God Palace Master who had just separated from them. When he saw that the other two were there too, he paused for a moment, and then began to consider his surroundings. When he saw the golden lava, his gaze focused as well, his expression turning serious.

"With that, we’re all here." The Cthulhu King nodded at him.

The moment the Divine God Palace Master walked into the cathedral, the entrances they had taken to come in, be it the large door or the small one, all of them rapidly faded, vanishing. All that was left was bare walls with carved reliefs, as though there was never any entrance or large door to begin with.

All three of them had their hearts skip a little, and they instantly walked to each either.

Just then, in the black vase on the podium, the wilted rose moved slightly.

Ahhh!!!

There was a sudden scream, like the hysterical wail of a woman.

All three of them were taken off-guard, their minds pausing for a moment, then they saw the wilted rose in the vase growing like living vines, rapidly growing many tiny black roots, looking from afar, it was as though some black liquid was flowing out of the vase, flowing down the podium, and to the ground, it was a black ‘liquid’ made of countless vines and roots.

After the many vines and roots flowed down, they gathered and grew rapidly, becoming taller and thicker.

Soon enough, within a dozen or so seconds, a huge black tree man, more than ten meters tall, appeared in front of the three of them.

Roar!!

The black tree man bent down, opening his mouth wide, and roaring in rage.

"I will promiseseyt ma sela!!"(1) The tree man actually roared out in an unknown language.

Countless black vines suddenly shot out of its two black holes for eyes, rapidly weaving into a huge warhammer more than ten meters long and five to six meters thick.

Phew!!

The huge warhammer crashed down towards the three of them.

Barroom!

Amidst the loud crashes, Garen and the other two separated abruptly, nimbly avoiding the hammer blow.

But immediately after that, the tree man suddenly whipped out vines and swung them neatly behind the three, just like a whip. After several cracking sounds, the three of them were hit squarely, and flew into the corners of the cathedral like bombs.

Boom!!

Garen was completely dizzy and disoriented, his vision a complete mess as the world spun around him, he had been shot out straight through the air and crashed harshly into a large pile of round wooden buckets, in the midst of some shattering and crashing sounds, he shook his head, and slowly stood up among the rubble that had been the wooden bucket shards.

He was just in time to see the giant tree man lift the warhammer, swinging it hard towards the Divine God Palace Master, who had just gotten up.

Before the warhammer landed fully, the huge force had already created a clear circular current of air on the ground, pushing the shards of the furniture and the dust on the floor away.

The Divine God Palace Master’s ears abruptly turned black and sharp, and he even raised his arms to meet the tree giant’s warhammer face-on.

Aaaaahh!!!!!

That piercing woman’s scream rang out again, and the Divine God Palace Master’s actions slowed for just a second.

Boom!

He was directly sunk into the ground by the huge hammer, leaving behind only a larger crater in the ground, a cloud of dust and debris flying up so nobody could see the situation inside clearly.

"It sure has… been a long time since I’ve enjoyed such a one-sided disadvantage…" Garen chuckled under his voice, and wiped the blood flowing down his forehead.

On the other end of the cathedral, the Cthulhu King’s whole body was spinning at a high speed, his arms spread open wide, his whole person looking like a red wheel, emitting a piercing whir as he cut through the air.

In an instant, the movement of his entire body stopped abruptly, from extreme speed to extreme stillness.

Psst!1

A red lightning bolt shot out from his body, and almost as soon as it did, it appeared on the brow of the tree man, it was a red throwing knife.

With a bang, the tree man’s head was thrown back slightly, and a large black hole appeared there, but it was soon filled in by black vines.

It raised its warhammer abruptly, and swung it down towards the Cthulhu King’s direction with a whoosh. But the Cthulhu King had long been ready for it, and dodged it by a hair.

With a cacophony of sound, the long pews and several grey-white angel statues on the other end of the cathedral were instantly demolished, after the warhammer swung in one circle, it was spin in a circle and once more flew towards the Cthulhu King, who had just steadied his footing.

However, Garen’s figure had somehow appeared beneath the tree man’s right foot. He drew a circle with his two arms, folding his palms together at his chest, and at the same time his chest sunk deep as he took in a long breath. It was as though his whole figure had shrunk by one size.

"Ten Thousand Mammoth Sky Encirclement!!!"

With a loud roar, and accompanied by the wild soundwaves, Garen’s palms shot forward explosively, and crashed into the tree man’s right leg.

With the full use of his Doublecast technique, the Ten Thousand Mammoth Sky Encirclement was released in two stages. It was equal to twice the power of Garen’s attack, and with his loud roar of rage and the ensuing soundwaves, it crashed into the tree man’s right leg.

Translator’s note:

This was written exactly like this (yes, English-gibberish) in the raws, no translation needed.