After entering the tomb below the chamber, Li Hai immediately realized this was no second burial chamber. It was a dark tunnel plunging straight down, its end nowhere in sight.
The long tunnel's black inner walls were ringed with layers of stone steps spiraling downward, some broken, some intact.
It felt as if they led straight to the underworld.
Most people would struggle to summon the courage to explore a tunnel that seemed like a bottomless abyss. They wouldn't dare descend its steps one by one.
But Li Hai wasn't a normal person. No—he couldn't even be considered human anymore.
So Li Hai didn't bother with the steps at all. He simply went into free fall down the dark tunnel.
It was much faster than taking the stairs.
As he fell, Li Hai could clearly feel the surrounding evil energy growing denser and denser, even surpassing that of the central area of the Evil Spirit Land at Guo Family Fort.
From this, he boldly guessed that a more powerful ghost than a Fierce Soul might lurk at the bottom of this tunnel-shaped Evil Spirit Land.
When Li Hai had fallen nearly a hundred zhang, he suddenly noticed several human corpses lying on a step to his left.
He stopped in midair at once and shot over.
Li Hai then saw that all the corpses were clad in rattan armor.
The armor was now in tatters, and the bodies beneath it were riddled with bloodied holes of all sizes, as if countless snakes or insects had burrowed inside and gnawed them apart.
"They're from the Ox-Horn Town Civilian Militia."
Standing on the steps, Li Hai turned the corpses over and examined them carefully.
He found that the holes pierced deeper than he'd imagined, nearly passing through each entire body. They were scattered everywhere, from head to toe.
"Was this the work of some kind of ghost that can control snakes or insects?"
As he pondered, Li Hai considered changing into his living form to see what the Mortal Realm looked like in this long, narrow Evil Spirit Land.
But after weighing it over, he decided against it.
He thought that if leaving Ghost Eye Vision and returning to reality caused this place to become nothing but solid bedrock, he'd be crushed to death on the spot.
A hundred zhang of earth was more than the Steel Tendons and Iron Bones Realm could withstand.
Li Hai left the corpses alone, leapt from the steps, and plunged down the tunnel again.
He continued falling.
When he reached a depth of thirteen hundred zhang, Li Hai once more stopped in midair.
There was no other reason: he'd found several more corpses.
These bodies, likewise lying on the steps and riddled with holes, all wore black, double-breasted leather uniforms and black boots. Each uniform also bore a small "Slay" character.
"Demon-Slaying Captains?"
Curious, Li Hai flashed onto the steps and began examining the corpses.
What interested him most was the level of martial arts they'd attained in life.
Li Hai was extremely interested in that.
Generally speaking, martial arts were a discipline devoted to developing and enhancing the body's strength.
So even though these people were dead, their martial arts realms could still be determined by examining their remains.
After studying them, Li Hai discovered that every one of them had reached Force-Body Circulation.
In other words, the same level as Guo Huaijin.
"Could Force-Body Circulation..."
Li Hai mused, "...be the baseline of combat strength for Demon-Slaying Captains?"
After thinking it over, he decided that was indeed possible.
Even the weakest Dead Soul, when within an Evil Spirit Land, could kill as easily as someone at Guo Huaijin's level, and it was even faster.
Only after leaving an Evil Spirit Land did a Dead Soul's threat diminish considerably. At that point, martial artists at Guo Huaijin's level could truly defeat them with ease.
Li Hai left the steps and continued falling toward the bottom of the tunnel.
During the rest of his descent, he found more and more Demon-Slaying Captain corpses at depths of fifteen hundred, eighteen hundred, and two thousand zhang.
Every one of them had died the same way, riddled with bloodied holes.
"They all died in exactly the same way."
As he fell, Li Hai thought quietly, "There's probably only one ghost in this tunnel."
Li Hai found no more remains as he continued downward.
Only after falling a full three thousand six hundred zhang did he finally reach the bottom of the tunnel.
Converted to meters, that depth came to nearly twelve thousand—far deeper than the Mariana Trench on Earth. It was no exaggeration to call it an abyssal hell.
And yet, at such a depth, there was a spacious training ground and a number of rooms, now all in a state of utter disrepair.
Around the edges of the equally dilapidated training ground stood large mechanical structures resembling mine-shaft elevators.
These devices and many of the damaged objects on the training ground all bore a small "Slay" character.
Li Hai understood at once.
"I see. This training ground must be an underground facility belonging to Tea Hall, and those elevators were used to travel between the surface and the underground."
Under normal circumstances, no outpost would build an underground facility deeper than the Mariana Trench, not even to protect it from a nuclear strike. That would be absurd.
There was only one possibility: this suddenly appearing Evil Spirit Land had dragged Tea Hall's underground training ground more than ten thousand meters beneath the earth.
"There's a living person's scent here."
Li Hai's gaze swept across the area. "It's faint, but it's definitely here."
Following the scent, he began searching the training ground.
Before long, Li Hai stopped outside a badly damaged room at the edge of the training ground, now severely warped and twisted.
In such a dangerous place, he didn't risk changing into his living form. Instead, his ghostly body passed through layer upon layer of obstacles and entered the room.
Inside the pitch-black room, Li Hai saw an old man leaning against a broken section of wall. He clutched a snapped steel whip and was close to death.
The old man also wore a black, double-breasted uniform and black boots. But there were no bloodied holes on his body. Instead, his abdomen had been torn nearly in half, with blood and entrails spilling out.
Despite all that, the man had stubbornly held on to life. Li Hai could clearly see all of his personal interface information—
Character Name: Unknown Level and Rank: Orthodox Martial Arts → Steel Sinew Iron Bone, Esoteric Arts → Focusing Spirit and Wandering Skills: Warrior Elephant-Throwing TechniqueAngry Flood Dragon WhipGhost and Monster SeekingYin-Yang EyesAdvanced Primordial Breath Yang Refining MethodLife-Cutting Essence-Trimming TechniqueHeavenly Scorching Yang-Drawing Technique<Supreme Origin Spirit-Suppressing Talisman (Fragment)> Trait Attributes: [Soul Strengthening Level 2][Strength Level 2][Fury Level 2][Spiritual Inspiration Level 2][Yang Absorption Level 2][Focusing Spirit Level 2][Dharma Power Level 2] Stronger Fragment: None
In a single thought, Li Hai learned all of the man's techniques.
And as Li Hai looked at the Demon-Slaying Captain, the other man naturally saw him too.
The old captain sighed weakly.
"How tragic. To think that, at the very end, the one to see me off, Old Tea, would be a ghost."
"Hello."
The old man had mistaken him for an evil ghost. Li Hai walked up to him and asked gently, "Are you Master Tea?"
The old man stared coldly at Li Hai without saying a word. Clearly, he didn't want to speak even a single word to this ghost.
But just then, Li Hai pulled a letter from his robes, one the old man recognized at once, and grinned.
"Believe it or not, Zhang Miaoji invited me to join the Demon-Slaying Division. He said he wanted me to... slay ghosts and demons and bring blessings to all under heaven."
The old man froze, staring at the letter and listening to his words.
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