Techniques and Dao

Chapter 150 The Road to Fall
Dark night. Mist. Primeval forest.

The wooden house that has been demolished.

Jane has disappeared without a trace.

In their search for the missing female sorceress, Hua Sheng and Jian remain in this dense forest.

"I really have no interest in Jane."

Hua Sheng calmed himself down and said seriously, "What I mean is, she could have easily run away while we were asleep. Why bother creating all this drama and making us run around in this forest? Isn't she tired..."

With a thud, he kicked something. He looked down and saw an iron ring nailed to the ground.

Hua Sheng crouched down, summoned a fireball to illuminate the ground, grabbed the iron ring on the ground, and pulled hard. A gust of cold wind immediately blew onto his face, causing him to shiver involuntarily.

A black hole appeared before me, barely large enough for one person to pass through, and it seemed bottomless.

Hua Sheng flicked his finger, and a flame beside him was thrown into the black hole. The flame seemed to fall into a bottomless abyss, growing smaller and smaller until only a faint spark could be seen.

"How come this hole is so deep?" Mie Ying exclaimed as he peeked out from behind.

Hua Sheng raised his head: "It seems we've found the reason."

The two men stared at each other in bewilderment before the bottomless black hole.

Hua Sheng said, "I think Jane might have entered this bottomless pit."

With his hands on his hips, Mieying asked, "Do you think she didn't escape, but was instead dragged into a cave by something?"

Hua Sheng replied, "I have no evidence, just a gut feeling. Jane disappeared at the door of the cabin, and there's a strange hole inside. So it's very likely she was taken down into that hole."

Mie Ying craned her neck to look down, then crossed her arms and said, "It's dark, deep, and cold. I don't want to go down there."

“I don’t want to either. But… Jane might be in danger.”

"Are you going to save her?"

"Don't you think it shouldn't be?"

"Of course, I don't want to see such a young girl lose her life in the prime of her life. But what evidence do we have to prove that she was down there?"

Hua Sheng shrugged and said, "At least this cave doesn't smell like a septic tank."

"Ugh..." Mieying gagged. "How annoying! This situation was already strange enough, but now you've made it sound even more disgusting and bizarre. Shut up!"

Hua Sheng stood up and paced back and forth.

The surrounding wooden house, before being demolished by the Shadow Extinction, was about a hundred square meters in size. Using the light from the floating fireball, he circled it twice, confirming that the cave was the house's only "secret exit passage," and said, "I still intend to go down and take a look..."

Mieying stuck out her tongue and said somewhat reluctantly, "Well... sigh... then this young lady will accompany you to explore the bottomless pit of this foreign Trap Mountain!"

"This is unpredictable, are you sure you want to come with me? Or would it be safer to go with Master Qingmiao, Third Sister, or Fourth Sister instead..."

"What, you don't have confidence in me?" Mie Ying interrupted him.

“I’m worried about your safety. Besides, the sword wound from the Heavenly Pole hasn’t healed yet. I can’t bear to see you take any risks.”

With her arms crossed over her chest and cheeks puffed out, Mie Ying said, "But staying here and waiting isn't in my nature! Do you think that just because you see the Bottomless Pit, you're thinking there might be a beautiful Earth Surge Lady waiting for you down there, and that's why you don't want me to come along?"

"I'm truly impressed by you; you know this mythological story by heart."

"This is history, you know! I had to take exams when I was a child!"

Hua Sheng remained silent, and could only reach out, causing the Ruyi Jingu Bang (the magic staff) to fly out from the iron chain in front of her chest.

"Let me poke around in this hole and see just how deep it is." He pulled out his golden cudgel and shouted at the bottomless pit, "Grow longer and longer and longer!"

The golden cudgel then extended downwards. After waiting for a long time, the two still did not make a move.

Mieying couldn't help but ask, "What? How long is it now?"

"Based on this timeline, I guess it should be tens of kilometers long."

"Really? Don't you have any common sense?" "What common sense?"

"The Earth's crust is only twenty or thirty kilometers deep, and you've gone straight into the mantle. The mantle's temperature is at least over a thousand degrees Celsius, and it's all magma. Basically, if you went down to this depth, you should have turned into charcoal long ago!"

Hua Sheng exclaimed in amazement, "You can actually say something so reasonable! I didn't realize you were so knowledgeable, Xiao Qi."

"You're the one who's too ignorant, aren't you?"

Hua Sheng felt that Mie Ying had hit the nail on the head, since he was still on Earth. He then used a magic spell to put away the Golden Cudgel and reached out to feel the bottom of it.

The golden cudgel was still cold.

"It seems there shouldn't be any lava down there. This is definitely not normal. We have to go down and find out."

Mieying sighed and said, "Alright then! This young lady will accompany you on this journey."

Hua Sheng summoned three balls of fire and threw them down, placing one ball about every hundred meters to provide illumination.

With thorough preparation, Hua Sheng jumped into the cave following the three flames.

Mieying also followed him into this bottomless black hole.

With the whistling wind beside their ears, the two fell rapidly at freefall speed, their speed increasing faster and faster.

But the cave seemed bottomless. The two of them fell one after the other for a long time, and the three flames below were still falling, showing no sign of reaching the bottom.

As time went on, Hua Sheng's nerves became increasingly tense. He not only hoped to find Jian, but he had also promised Liang Shanbo to protect Mieying.

So he slowed his descent slightly, in case there was any danger below.

By the light of the fire, the cave walls revealed different geological formations from various periods. These formations ceased to change after a certain period of time following the descent.

Hua Sheng roughly calculated that the descent distance was at least a hundred miles.

Given this distance, scorching lava should have appeared underground long ago. But it still seems to be bottomless.

At that moment, Mie Ying's voice came from above: "Hey Hua Sheng, are we going to be falling like this forever? I don't want to spend the rest of my life with my feet not touching the ground!"

"Look again..."

Just as Hua Sheng was about to say let's take another look, he suddenly saw the three flames below merge into two, and then instantly merge into one!
He realized what was happening in an instant and blurted out, "It's at the bottom!"

Hua Sheng quickly gathered his inner energy, instantly stopping the downward acceleration. He stepped on the stone walls to the left and right, and at the same time raised his hands, using the technique of airflow to blow a gust of wind upwards, trying to use the wind to support Mie Ying and prevent her from falling.

But the fall was too fast, and Hua Sheng continued to slide down the cave wall, his feet rubbing against it.

"Huh? What…"

Before Mieying could react to Huasheng's voice, he felt a gust of air blowing down from below. He immediately used his own airflow technique to blow downwards as well.

The two air currents collided, giving the Shadow a boost that greatly reduced its deceleration.

With a screeching sound as the cave walls rubbed against each other, Hua Sheng continued his descent, stepping on the stone walls and falling with the loose rocks. Just as the ball of fire beneath his feet was drawing ever closer, about to collide with him, Hua Sheng shouted, "Hurry, hurry, as the law commands!"

He braced himself against the stone wall with both hands and legs to prevent himself from falling, which slowed his speed down considerably.

A cloud of dust and gravel rose up, and Hua Sheng finally stopped an inch above the flames. The hottest point of the flames was right on her backside.

"Hot, hot, hot!"

With both hands and feet braced against the stone wall, Hua Sheng had no time to extinguish the flames. He could only stretch his neck and blow hard downwards, trying to put out the flames.

"Whoosh! Hot! Hot! Whoosh!"

After blowing two puffs, the Shadow Above fell down, landing on Hua Sheng's back with a cry of pain.

After a series of crackling sounds, the two rolled onto the pile of flames together.

(End of this chapter)