Heaven Official's Blessing: Tian Guan Ci Fu (Novel) Vol. 2(37)

Xie Lian nodded. “That appears to be the case, but I didn’t come in here with that Waning Moon Officer, so I don’t know what the correct roll is.”

“We’ve come this far,” Shi Qingxuan said. “It’s not realistic to turn back just to find that out. Let’s roll a random number and see.”

Xie Lian agreed. “Lord Wind Master, why don’t you give it a go? I…don’t know how long my borrowed luck will last.”

Shi Qingxuan didn’t refuse. He picked up the dice and tossed them to the floor.

“How about that?”

He rolled a two and a five. They waited briefly, but the stone wall didn’t move. Xie Lian picked up the dice.

“That didn’t work as expected.”

Shi Qingxuan suddenly cried, “Your Highness, look under our feet! The image has changed!”

Hearing this, Xie Lian immediately looked down. Sure enough, the image on the square brick beneath their feet had been a little person rolling dice, but as they watched, the colors slowly faded and filled in once more, transforming into a different scene. It looked like a long, fat, thick, black creepy crawler.

“What in the world is that?” Shi Qingxuan wondered.

“An earthworm? A leech?” Xie Lian guessed. “That’s what it looks like. There are plenty of them in the paddy fields, so I’ve seen a lot.”

Shi Qingxuan wondered some more. “What on earth were you doing that you saw a lot of these things…”

Before his words were finished, he vanished.

It wasn’t just him—Xie Lian himself disappeared as well. Just as the words “were you doing” were uttered, they both felt the ground give way beneath their feet. The next moment, they were free-falling into another tunnel.

Turned out, that stone wall wasn’t a door after all, it was literally a stone wall. The square brick beneath their feet was the real door. After tossing the dice, the door opened abruptly and closed instantly. Xie Lian and Shi Qingxuan fell for only a moment before crashing heavily to the ground.

Thankfully, the ground was soft, otherwise the two would’ve cratered in deep. They didn’t suffer any pain from such a tumble and were just pulling themselves up when their heads knocked into each other, and they both gave a cry of “Aah!” at the collision. Xie Lian, with one hand covering his head, felt around above with his other hand but only made contact with the same soft, wet, muddy earth as the ground they were on.

There were no stone tiles. That stone door was long gone.

When they fell, the palm torch Shi Qingxuan ignited had been extinguished. Now that he had relit it and brightened their surroundings, the two discovered that they were in a mud tunnel.

The tunnel was round with muddy walls and didn’t appear to be man-made. Shi Qingxuan rubbed his forehead.

“What is this place? Did we get thrown here because we rolled the wrong number?”

Xie Lian pondered briefly and replied, “It’s very possible. That stone door is already gone, meaning we have no way to turn back. Let’s think of a way to escape first.”

The two talked it over and decided to keep following the tunnel path. The tunnel had numerous twists and turns, and if a full-grown adult wanted to stand up straight in it, they’d have a bit of a hard time. They could only walk by bending at the waist, or crawl, making their movements both slow and tiresome. The air in this tunnel was warm and moist, the mud clingy and annoying; each of their steps sank and dragged, watery and gross. Sometimes, they would even step in the rotten remains of plants or animals. Xie Lian’s face never changed, but Shi Qingxuan had goosebumps popping up all over. But the longer they traveled, the more Xie Lian felt something was off.

“Lord Wind Master, we’d better move faster. This place…”

Just then, a loud, bizarre rumbling sound reverberated around them.

The noise crashed in, the entire tunnel shook, and small blots of mud pitter-pattered down from the tremors. The two exchanged a look, and without a word, they sped off in the opposite direction of the noise.

Yet that enormous sound and the massive tremors were thundering their way, going faster than them, pushing closer by the second. The two of them moved arduously, one step shallow and the next step deep, scrambling through the twisting tunnel without an end in sight, not even a ray of light. And not just that, but the direction they were running toward also reverberated with those same thunderous tremors!

They were blocked both front and behind, and the two had to stop. Along with the rumbling, the sound of a massive, heavy body hurtling through the mud whammed past.

Two humongous earthworms wiggled in and appeared before Xie Lian and Shi Qingxuan.

The two worms were swollen and large, their bodies a bruised purple, their skins slightly translucent. The bodies of these worms were segmented with no heads or tails—the two heads were nothing more than meat stumps. What else could they be if not incredibly large worms?

That stone door had opened and dropped them into these earthworm monsters’ nest!

Xie Lian raised an arm to guard himself, Ruoye at the ready, while Shi Qingxuan drew out his Wind Master fan from out of nowhere. Unfortunately, in this narrow tunnel, it was impossible to start any gusts, and any crazed winds would only recoil back at them, making that spiritual device difficult to use. In that moment, Xie Lian remembered that worms were afraid of light and heat, and he shouted a command.