Chapter 56: Nightshade Gold Vault.

Moons POV

Far away from Axe—who was now condemning his miscalculation for taking out the communication stone only to lose it to the statue’s hand, and was currently thinking of how to take it back—Moon Astra, on the contrary, was getting more and more impatient with each passing moment.

The stone was hot and shining red as if blood were seeping out of it. Moon hadn’t used this type of communication stone before, so he didn’t know that this was a completely abnormal situation.

Nox, on the other hand, looked at Moon’s hand, and his brows knitted together.

He held Moon’s hand and took the stone.

The stone gave a slight hum of annoyance the moment he touched it.

"That’s not right," Nox muttered, then pressed the surface hard.

"Axe, you hear me? If you can’t talk, tap three times."

Nox then stared at the stone unblinkingly.

Moon also leaned forward to see if anything happened.

After a little while, the stone gave out a low tap, tap, tap.

Three times.

No mistake.

And the red glint also dimmed three times in sync.

Nox exhaled sharply. "Whoever it is, it’s not Axe," he said in a firm voice. "He would never tap three times if I asked him to do that in a situation where he can’t talk."

Ugo came out of the cave at this time, holding a cage with two separate compartments.

After discussing for the last few days, they had decided to keep Leo and Rio inside a cage during an emergency in case they got lost again.

Though it felt a little inhuman, those two had been acting exactly inhuman for the past few days.

Moon took the stone back and gave Ugo and Nox two jade rings he had infused with his own Qi.

He could not really make an ornament or a weapon, as he was not a refiner.

It was Nox and Ugo who had made the rings, and he had just infused his Qi—a simple tracker for now.

He also put two jade necklaces around Leo and Rio.

These held his tracking marks.

Even if they got lost again, he would find them.

He looked at Nox and lifted his chin. "Should we go now?"

Nox nodded and spread his palm. The stone hummed again, and Ugo and Nox simultaneously felt a violent palpitation in their pack marks.

Now, in this situation, they felt the pack mark wasn’t that bad after all. At least it could track their people.

And so, they started to traverse toward the east side of the Lost World.

Nox turned his head to Ugo’s hands and muttered, "Are you sure you want to take these two? Wouldn’t it be best to leave them home?"

"No, I don’t want to keep searching for you, brothers. I have my own work to do," Moon snapped.

"Why are you getting angry? I was just saying," Nox mumbled.

"Can you shut up, Nox?" Moon didn’t even give him a glance.

"You only show your temper to me. You favor Ugo—"

"Hiss..." Ugo cut Nox’s words off in the middle.

He was also tense from the stone’s humming. He really wanted to beat some sense into Nox’s head sometimes.

After walking out of the mountains, the area they were leaving kept getting sparser and plainer.

Moon was sweating, and so were Ugo and Nox. Leo and Rio were silent the entire path, whining sometimes uncomfortably.

"Why is it so barren here?" Nox muttered.

Soon, the tracking mark moved away from their only landmark, the lakeside.

The group tracked the communication stone’s signal across the terrain.

The further they went, the more the ground of the Lost World began to break apart.

The dirt trails dissolved into jagged obsidian stone and exposed bedrock. The chaotic landscape felt entirely unnatural, like the earth itself had been torn open by a massive sword strike.

Moon sped up.

He used his Qi to move on the wind.

Ugo and Nox used their own wolf speed, which could exceed any human speed by more than ten times.

After a long time, Moon suddenly stopped near a massive boulder.

"The heat is getting higher," Moon said, his fingers nearly blistering from the blood-red light throbbing against his skin.

He paused and looked around the barren land. Far away, a massive chunk of rock stood perfectly still.

He looked at Ugo. "I feel like Axe is nearby. You go find a secure spot and keep them safe." He pointed at the cage. "From this distance, we can still sense each other. If anything happens, send a signal through the jade ring. We will do the same."

Ugo nodded.

He was upset that he couldn’t go with Moon, but he knew better than anyone that it might be more dangerous to bring Leo and Rio along.

The main reason Moon had them to come with him was that he simply couldn’t trust these brothers to stay put anymore.

Suddenly, the stone vibrated, and Axe’s curse came through first before anything else.

"Fuck your ass!"

Moon, Ugo, and Nox became stiff upon hearing this.

Even the pups looked at the stone as it suddenly screamed obscene words.

Nox blinked his eyes and muttered, "What the hell..."

Before he could finish, a rustling sound came through, followed by a heavy thud and a crack, as if a rock were hitting a metal weapon.

Then came another painful moan, "Urrrgh! Ahhh, don’t!" followed heavy thap thap sounds.

Moon’s eyes narrowed into a slit as his pupils turned from bright blue to pitch black.

He clutched his fingers tightly around the stone. Without saying a single word, he left Ugo behind and surged forward with Nox.

Nox tried to say something twice, then stopped. Some things were better left unexplained when he wasn’t even sure himself.

They reached a massive, yawning fissure in the side of a mountain. There was no path forward. But the trace of the tracking mark stopped right here.

Moon stood exactly where the trail vanished.

Without a word, he grabbed Nox by the waist and gathered his spiritual Qi. He shouted out his spell, not like a formal incantation, but more like he was venting pure, raw anger.

"Heavenly Shattering Earth Burst!"

As his words fell, his hand formed a seal with abundant, surging Qi. The earth blasted everywhere in an instant, engulfing both of them in dust and flying pebbles.

And with a sudden, violent suction force, they both fell underneath.

thud

They both landed hard on a plain, cold, and solid surface.

The dust slowly settled.

Moon looked up amidst the hazy air.

The sight that greeted him was so incredibly bizarre that he didn’t even know what his next move should be.