That dim "boundary" seemed like some kind of living creature, faintly swelling, contracting, and writhing at the end of the mine's slope.
True Spirit Qianji reached out and knocked on the wall beside him, then flicked a thin needle from his fingertip and drove it into the stone wall within the range of the dim boundary's erosion, as though sampling and analyzing something.
"Loosening and embrittlement, seepage of mineral salts, severed earth veins." He turned around and casually spoke to Yu Sheng and the others. "Did this Otherworld really appear only recently?"
"It was indeed only discovered recently." Xuan Che was the one who answered. He stepped forward half a pace and cupped his hands in salute. "Everything here was still normal half a month ago."
"...This extent of erosion doesn't look like a recent change. I'm afraid the environment down here started becoming abnormal years ago." True Spirit Qianji muttered, then turned back toward the dimly lit area. With a soft click, two beams of intense light shot from his eye sockets, piercing straight into The Depths.
Yet the beams seemed to be obstructed by some invisible "filter." They only illuminated a few steps ahead before strangely fading away completely.
"Interesting..." True Spirit Qianji murmured, then strode forward.
Yu Sheng led the others closely after him.
The darkness gradually closed in before their eyes. The long slope seemed to stretch endlessly beneath their feet, leading all the way toward the center of the earth. The group entered the darkness and continued forward for an unknown length of time before Yu Sheng sensed the surrounding environment gradually beginning to change.
He focused and kept walking, recalling the moment of disorientation when he had entered this Otherworld last time, as well as the illusory, grand voice he had heard amid that