I’m Trapped in a Cube - Chapter 168

After licking the bottle opening, Old Xu sighed with lingering satisfaction, “Truly delicious!”

He looked at Li Luo and Li Xiangyi behind him, held up the bottle, and asked, “Would you like to try some?”

This scared the two into stepping back several paces, waving their hands repeatedly.

Seeing this scene, Old Xu burst into hearty laughter.

“This stuff really does taste quite good. Although that toad looks ugly, its slime is extremely delicious. A bottle like this could be traded for a fairly decent Relic in Oasis City.”

Looking at the bottle filled with thick slime in his hands, Old Xu treasured it like a precious find.

“Is that really not poisonous?” Mo Ling thought of that incredibly ugly toad, and recalling those small dots on its body still made him feel nauseous.

“Really, we’re fine. You keep it for yourself to drink,” Li Xiangyi said with a bitter smile, declining Old Xu’s invitation.

Seeing both of them with expressions of resistance, Old Xu sighed and explained, “That toad we just encountered is generally called a Honey Toad, because the slime on its body is as sweet as honey.”

“Not only that, the skin of those pustules has a gelatinous jelly texture. When you bite through it, sweet juice bursts out, tasting like lychee water, and it has a unique fragrant aroma.”

“When we get back to Dawn City, I’ll add a little to the flower tea for you to try. It’ll definitely be good.”

Old Xu still didn’t seem willing to give up on having them taste it.

After carefully storing the bottle away, he led the two forward again.

Crossing the water pool, Old Xu stood before a downward tributary. Here the water flow had become very small, and the waterway was somewhat dried up.

“This tributary has the lowest danger level, and there aren’t any violent fluctuations either. Let’s keep going.”

After leaving the water pool, Old Xu visibly relaxed a lot. The slime from earlier also seemed to ease his tense emotions considerably.

This was a spiraling downward tributary that didn’t look like a naturally formed waterway, but rather like a specially excavated path, very gentle.

As they walked, Old Xu’s previously relaxed expression became serious again, and he would occasionally raise his hand to signal them to stop, constantly scanning within the waterway.

“Is something wrong?” Li Xiangyi asked quickly, seeing Old Xu’s cautious behavior. “Is there going to be some danger again?”

As she spoke, the shuttle behind her trembled slowly.

Old Xu shook his head without answering, but his expression remained grave. He even crouched down, grabbed some soil from within the waterway, and began observing it.

Had he discovered something?

Mo Ling was also drawn to Old Xu’s unusual behavior and quickly let his vision sink into the waterway floor.

Soft mud and sand could be seen everywhere. The remaining water flowed slowly, and there weren’t any caves filled with unknowns like there had been near the water pool.

Aside from this spiral-shaped path being somewhat peculiar, there was nothing wrong anywhere.

Just as Mo Ling was puzzled, Old Xu began muttering to himself, “The soil is getting harder and harder. No, no, how could it be going down?”

Li Xiangyi moved closer to Old Xu’s side and also heard his self-talk.

“What going down?” she asked in confusion.

Old Xu grabbed a handful of mud and sand, held it in front of her, and explained:

“I’ve clearly been following my intuition the whole time, but we keep going down. The soil here is also getting harder, which means we’ve reached a deeper place. We’re not leaving the waterway, we’re going in the opposite direction!”

However, his explanation only made Li Xiangyi more confused.

“We’ve been going down this whole time?” She raised her finger, pointing at the sky one moment and the ground the next, as if she couldn’t tell which was which.

Then she looked toward the passage they’d come from, walked back and forth a couple of steps, turned around several times, then asked blankly, “Which way did we come from?”

Li Xiangyi looked at Old Xu, wanting to get an answer from him, but Old Xu stared at her with wide, strange eyes. The two looked at each other in confusion…

It wasn’t until Li Xiangyi explained her Relic’s cost that Old Xu nodded in sudden understanding.

“Don’t ask about that anymore. Just follow me. Going toward places with low danger levels is definitely right. I’ve experienced this kind of thing many times,” Old Xu comforted her.

Then the group continued walking down along the spiral waterway.

As they walked, Li Xiangyi also talked about how she felt after losing her sense of direction.

For her, all directions in the world were chaotic. For example, the water pool they had just experienced, even if someone told her it was above, she wouldn’t know where that was.

Li Xiangyi’s mind had no relative space, she only had memories of individual scenes and environments.

These memories were completely connected by time, like movie scenes, cutting from one scene to another. She didn’t even know how she got to the next scene.

Just a moment ago it was the water pool, and in the blink of an eye she was in the spiral waterway. She could remember those constantly changing locations, but these locations couldn’t be connected together in her mind at all.

Those “movie” frames kept switching. She went from one studio to the next, with only Li Luo and Old Xu remaining constant, so she could only follow others.

As Li Xiangyi described this, she also moved closer to Li Luo, afraid of getting separated.

“You must have had a hard time in the Abyss, but somehow this still allowed you to find Oasis City,” Old Xu sighed after listening.

“I was just wandering randomly,” Li Xiangyi said embarrassedly. “Every time I met other people, I would tell them about my Relic’s cost and ask them to take me part of the way. Most were quite willing to help.”

In her view, there were more good Hunters in the Abyss.

As the group chatted, they had been walking for a long time, but this spiral waterway seemed very deep, they still hadn’t reached the bottom.

Old Xu would occasionally crouch down to examine the soil, and his conclusion was that they were getting farther and farther from the surface, continuously descending along the waterway.

“The danger level keeps getting lower. Where exactly are we going?” Old Xu was somewhat puzzled himself.

Not only that, but the group also discovered that the curvature of the spiral was getting larger and larger, like a shell, the closer to the bottom, the more pointed it became.

Finally, after walking down a steep slope, the group arrived at a vast white plain.

This plain was piled full of shattered shells, like an endless ocean of white bones.

Stepping on them produced “crunch crunch” breaking sounds. These shells weren’t particularly hard and cracked when the group stepped on them.

Mo Ling’s vision sank downward, this ocean of shells contained countless fragments piled up, and he couldn’t even see the bottom. Perhaps there were even more beyond his vision.

“Where is this?”

How could there be so many shells?

Mo Ling looked toward Old Xu and found that he too was very astonished, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.

Old Xu picked up several shell fragments to observe, his expression becoming increasingly grave.

He kept scanning the surroundings, walking back and forth, selecting shells to compare with each other. Soon, he spoke of something even more shocking:

“These are Shell People shells.”