Chapter 40: Searching...

Moon scrambled on his hands and knees through the mud, dragging his tired yet energetic body to sit properly.

Nox scrambled right behind him, panting heavily as the black sludge dripped down his bare chest.

The absurdity of their landing was still hanging in the air.

"How did you do that?" Moon asked after a moment.

"What?" Nox looked at Moon. His hand was searching for clothes inside his satchel.

Moon wiped a thick glob of slime from his eyes.

"How did we just melt into the mud?" Moon demanded, his voice sharp with disbelief and residual panic.

"That wasn’t my doing. I felt my blue air shield wrap around us, but the ground literally split open and swallowed us whole. What kind of witchcraft did you just pull?"

Nox blinked, looking just as bewildered as Moon.

He rubbed the back of his neck, leaving a fresh streak of black grease across his collarbone,

His breathing was still ragged from the abrupt transition.

"I... I don’t really know, Moony," Nox stammered, his eyes darting down to his hands.

Moon furrowed his brows. ’Is it because of our mating?’ he thought.

"Did you... did you feel something odd earlier? Can your wolf clan transform?"

Nox shook his head. "No."

Then, as if remembering something, he nodded. "Ohh right, I forgot. Some wolves can indeed transform like the phantom wolf—like the shadow phantom Taggy in the north, but they have a high bloodline."

"So you have a high bloodline?" Moon was skeptical.

How come that bastard Alpha Vaelis had a high bloodline to make five extraordinary wolves? He didn’t want to admit it at all.

"So how did you do it again?" Moon turned back to the question.

"It just sort of happened when I panicked. When I saw the Alpha’s hand coming down, my mind went completely blank, and the next thing I knew, the ground just felt... soft."

"You don’t know?" Moon felt worried, stepping out of a puddle of sludge that was beginning to sting his skin. "You almost buried us alive!"

"I mean, I can always just mingle with the earth," Nox explained, his voice softening as his calm mind started to analyze the strange sensation.

"Our Vaelis lineage has a subterranean split in the bloodline from the old mountain elder wolves. Since I was a pup, I could always mask my weight on soil or slip through loose dirt, but it was never this fast or this deep. Also... when we were knotted..."

"Okay, no need to tell me more right now. Later." Moon frowned, his divine sense investigating the residual energy still humming in the black soil. "Later... we need to get out of here and find the gorge that the tunnel was connected to."

"Don’t stand there looking proud of your muddy paws," Moon grumbled.

Nox nodded as he pulled out two sets of clothes.

He threw one to Moon.

The clothes were decent and not the rough tunic anymore. To be honest, Moon felt it was probably one of the best fabrics in this world, though not the flowing Daoist robe. He put on the fitted black tunic, trousers, and boots.

"You brothers really prepared it all. Why didn’t you give me clothes earlier?"

He asked softly while watching Nox get dressed.

Nox shrugged his shoulders, finished dressing up, and took Moon’s hand in his.

"Had no time."

Moon wrapped his hand around Nox’s. "Can you speed up the run?" he asked.

He knew Nox had an air and earth affinity from the energy he received, and he was suspecting Nox may have unlocked some of his hidden tricks.

Nox nodded.

His nod was casual; like he could always have been able to do it.

The air shifted on the dark sea again.

"I just hope Ugo is alive," Nox whispered as he started to walk toward the gorge.

Moon didn’t use his qi this time; he needed to preserve it for a direr situation.

They left the small mud clearing and started tracing the edge of the Black Sea Gorge.

The path was like a nightmare—a jagged maze of sharp, slippery crags, wet black shale, and crumbling ledges that threatened to give way under every single boot step.

The atmosphere here was deathly, suffocating, and dense with a chill that cut straight through their dry clothes.

A thick, eerie fog rolled off the water in waves, carrying the pungent smell.

The sky was getting darker and darker.

When they reached the gorge, it was completely dark. Only the water was silver.

Moon had been talking to the Goddess in his mind,

’Why did this dark sea turn silver at night?’

[Guess.]

’Sigh! Can’t you tell me? Is Ugo alive?’ he changed the topic. Not because he didn’t want to know, but he had no energy to play guessing games. All he wanted was to get Ugo back to the secret realm where Axe was waiting.

He also didn’t know how Leo and Rio were doing.

His entire body and soul were crying in protest to fall down and just sleep.

Nox’s hand tightened around Moon’s waist suddenly.

His demeanor was stiff and tight with tension.

Moon looked up and was shocked. He hurriedly pulled down Nox’s face by grabbing his nape.

"What happened to you?" his voice trembled with fear. He couldn’t afford to lose Nox now.

"I... I... feel suffocated." Nox’s pale face was tinged with black lines, like a demonic being.

"Damn it. You inhaled a lot of poisonous air here." Moon knew he could purify the air to some degree, but Nox couldn’t.

He tensed up even more. ’Can Ugo still be alive?’ he thought.

[Alive,] came a clear voice.

[Search the cranny of the rocks near the fall.] The Goddess gave a certain answer, surprisingly generous this time.

Moon nodded.

He touched Nox’s forehead with his own, and sent his spiritual Qi to Nox. He didn’t know if it would work, but since his essence could invade them, why not spiritual Qi?

As expected, Nox’s body loosened to some degree. And his breathing became smoother.

"Thank you." Nox sighed against Moon’s face.

Placing a soft peck on Moon’s forehead, he started to move again.

The night sky was turning clearer as the moonlight spread its wings.

The soft hum of air blew past them from time to time. Not continuous, but like a sudden invasion.

After some time, Moon sent his divine sense again in search of any body.

His consciousness fluctuated as the sense touched a void.

Moon felt ecstasy.

"Hurry, to the southwest corner!" he urged.

Nox sped up.

But they stopped near the edge where the muddy shore ended and stared at a deep pool of water.

The high wall of rock felt like it was touching the moon. The continuous black waste was dumping from a cave mouth.

Moon recognized the hole.

It was the same one from the fall. From here, there were no paths. Only deep, very deep black water and a high wall of mountain—entirely black rocks, and a fishy, pungent smell.

Moon cast his floating spell and took Nox flying, skimming tightly along the vertical cliff wall.

He could do it momentarily, but if the search went on for more than five minutes, he was afraid he would fall.

As they neared the narrowest part of the gorge, where the cliffs rose like giant black teeth above the churning water, the hair on the back of Moon’s neck suddenly stood up.

A low growl echoed from the swirling mist.

"Moon, watch out!" Nox shouted, his instincts flaring.

Then, three dark shadows pounced on them.

Leaping out of the dark crevices of the cliffside, three massive, hairless creatures bounded into the open air straight toward them.

They looked like horribly deformed hounds, their skin slick with the same black sludge as the river, their jaws wide, dripping with a foul-smelling saliva.

"Gorge scavengers!" Nox muttered as he shielded Moon behind his back.

"Careful, they are vicious beasts that feed on the rotting flesh of the dead thrown into the canyon. Once bitten, you can transform into a distorted being!"

Moon nodded, but he didn’t back off. He felt like the pattern the beasts were standing in was strange. Like they were guarding something.

He furrowed his brows and spread his divine sense. There was a black rock behind the beasts. The black rock was shadowed against the moonlight. But Moon could see a thin, narrow crack that only one or two people could enter.

While he was searching for what the beasts were up to, the creatures were not patient enough to wait for them.

Their paws rose high, and so did Nox.

Nox lunged forward, his high speed turning him into a blur against the dark stones.

He tackled the first beast mid-air, using his full body weight to slam it against the rock wall until its skull cracked with a heavy thud.

Moon tried to channel a wind blade to assist, but his unrefined core spiked with a sudden, violent pain, making his vision flicker for a split second.

The red earth and blue air essence inside his dantian were still too chaotic, refusing to obey his commands under sudden stress. "Damn it..."