Dragons begin with courage

Old Tang quickened his pace, his boots splashing in the water, making a "splashing" sound that seemed particularly lonely and out of place in the absolutely silent passage.

Just as the sound of his wading footsteps completely disappeared into the depths of the side path—

Click...creak...

The once deathly silent main passageway was now filled with the subtle, rhythmic hum of machinery. The sound did not come from modern machines, but from the laborious, heavy friction of bronze gears, awakened by some force after a thousand years of silence.

On both sides of the passageway, the hundreds of bronze statues with snake heads and human bodies, which had always maintained a humble and bowed posture, moved.

With a fluidity that defies the laws of physics, they smoothly and uniformly straightened their curved bodies. The bronze joints showed no signs of rust, as if time had never passed over them. Facing forward, their silver-inlaid serpentine pupils lit up one after another with a cold, unnatural silvery-white light, like a star map being illuminated in an instant.

If the Kassel Six were still here, they would feel a chill to the bone—because when they entered, these statues were not bowing in greeting, but standing stiffly like guards!

However, when Jiu Dema and his companions entered the Bronze City, the statues were bowing in respect.

Deep within the Bronze City, the rules of time and space seem to have become viscous and bizarre.

Led by Ye Sheng and Jiu Deya, the "ghost guides," the team traversed the labyrinthine passageways and halls with astonishing efficiency, finally arriving at the place that had changed their fate—the ancient altar where they discovered the Seven Deadly Sins and the bone urn.

"This is it." Ye Sheng stopped, his voice low and deep in the rippling water. The spotlight beams swept across the empty dome and the deep walls. "According to the map drawn by Lu Mingfei's 'Spiritual Vision,' this place was once marked as the geometric center of Bronze City. But…" He paused, a hint of uncertainty in his voice, "The feeling now… is completely different from then. This city is 'alive,' it's breathing, it's changing. That map might be outdated."

Before me lay a vast, unsettling space. The water flowing through the tunnel converged here into a massive underground lake, its waters a near-absolute, dark blue-black that seemed to devour light. Calm and still, yet emanating a chilling aura that seemed to penetrate to the bone, as if some ancient behemoth were slumbering within it.

"Tsk," Pacino scoffed, checking the readings on the alchemy device in his hand, "that coward's Word of Power is the most useful. With his 'Full Map Vision,' we wouldn't be groping in the dark like this."

Nono ignored her companions' complaints; all her attention was focused on the lake. The stream of fluorescent dye that had guided them there, like a living serpent, slowly swam towards the center of the lake. However, just as it approached a certain point in the center, it suddenly stopped, as if it had hit an invisible wall. The dye stopped spreading and only formed a hazy, persistent yellow-green halo there.

"The water... has stopped flowing here?" Caesar walked to the water's edge, his golden eyes fixed on the eerie stillness. "Is this the 'axis' of the Nibelungs?"

"No, the point isn't the water." Nono suddenly raised the spotlight beam and shone it at the bronze wall on the opposite shore of the lake.

At the end of the beam of light, a colossal object suddenly came into view.

It was a statue of a human with a snake's head, seated on a bronze throne, far surpassing any of the statues seen in the passageway in size and majesty. Standing twenty meters tall, it resembled the chief deity enshrined in an ancient Greek temple, exuding an absolute majesty that compelled one to look up and even feel an urge to kneel, even across the wide lake.

"If the previous snake-faced man symbolized the eighty-eight ruled metal elements," Nono's voice was soft, yet clearly reached everyone's ears, "then this one is the monarch of the elements himself—the incarnation of Norton."

Her beam of light slowly descended, finally settling beneath the statue's throne, at the deepest part of the dark lake. "Norton's statue guards this place, meaning this isn't the end, but... the entrance hall. The real Dragon King's palace, I suspect, lies beneath this lake. What we see is merely the tip of an iceberg rising above the water."

Just as Nono's analysis was about to completely draw everyone's attention to the mystery at the bottom of the lake—

Caesar's pupils suddenly contracted! His Word of Power, Kamaitachi, enhances the user's hearing, similar to radar, and its domain is vast.

Like a apex predator, Caesar's muscles tensed instantly. Without even turning his head fully, his right hand flashed into his robes, drawing out the silver Desert Eagle, modified by the equipment department and engraved with alchemical matrices to reduce recoil and enhance initial velocity. The muzzle was steadily pointed at the entrance to the dark tunnel from which they had come.

"Who's there?" His voice wasn't loud, but it was like a block of ice hitting a still pond, sending a chill through the air.

!!!

Swish!

Almost as soon as Caesar finished speaking, the well-trained members meshed like precise gears, instantly entering combat mode. Ye Sheng and Jiu Deya stood back to back, weapons drawn; Zero, like a weightless ghost, silently slipped into the shadow of a bronze pillar; Nono and Pacino quickly lowered their bodies, using the protrusions on the edge of the altar as cover.

Everyone's hearts sank. The elite forces that Kassel College had infiltrated were all here. The pursuers behind them could only be one of two things: the guardians of Bronze City itself (that dragon servant approaching the level of a first-generation species), or... outsiders with different purposes, but equally coveting the secrets of this place.

Either way, it means the peaceful exploration period has come to an end.

The hunt, or being hunted, has officially begun.

Deep within the dark passageway, there was no response, only deathly silence. But that silence was more suffocating than any roar, as if countless eyes were staring from the shadows.

"At one o'clock, in the crevice above, a heat source flashed by!" Zero's cold voice broke the stalemate in the communication channel.

Almost at the same time she issued the warning—

Whoosh! Pfft!

A barely perceptible, silenced sound of a sharp object breaking through water! A blurry black shadow, traveling at an eerie speed far exceeding normal underwater speed, shot from the blind spot above and to the side of the direction Caesar's gun was pointing! The target wasn't anyone, but the crucial regenerated metal communication repeater behind Ye Sheng!

Ye Sheng reacted extremely quickly, dodging to the side, but the shadowy figure was too fast and too cunning.

Clap!

A dazzling burst of electrical sparks erupted from the repeater's casing! The intricate internal metal circuitry instantly overloaded and burned out. At the same time, the background communication noise from the surface-based Moniach, which was coming through everyone's helmets, abruptly stopped, replaced by a piercing, continuous hissing of electricity.

"Communications cut off! They came prepared, their goal is to cut off our connection with the rear!" Shudeya shouted sternly.