She gazed at the flickering will-o'-the-wisps deep within the tunnel, letting out a sob that sounded like a mix of crying and laughing.
"You think you can come out alive after entering the Thousand Soul Cave? The kiln there refines the spirits of living people; even bones are boiled down into mud for building the kiln!"
Before the words were finished, the sound of tiles shattering came from above.
I suddenly grabbed Xiaolian and tumbled into the tunnel.
A dark shadow brushed past my nose, bringing with it a foul stench mixed with the smell of burnt hair.
By the dim light of the tinderbox, I glimpsed the dense carvings on the cave wall.
They were all distorted human figures, with dried bloodstains embedded in their fingernails.
"These are all..."
I used the tip of my sword to pick up a piece of peeling plaster from the wall, revealing half of a yellowish finger bone underneath.
Xiaolian suddenly covered my mouth.
A faint crawling sound came from the darkness, like countless claws scratching at the stone wall.
Immediately afterwards, two eerie green lights appeared at the end of the tunnel; they were the eyes of some kind of creature.
"The kids are here."
Xiaolian's voice trembled: "They feed solely on the blood of living souls; if you catch one, it will turn into..."
Before he could finish speaking, a sharp shriek suddenly erupted from the depths of the tunnel, causing the moss on the rock walls to fall off in a flurry.
Dozens of eerie green pupils lit up in the darkness, and clumps of white fur, carrying a putrid stench, wafted towards us. Each clump of fur concealed scarlet fangs.
I swung my lightning sword horizontally, but the blade pierced through the furry balls in the front row.
The thing instantly turned into gray mist and dispersed, then reformed into a human shape in mid-air.
They were half-human, half-fox cubs, their festering faces still bearing the childlike innocence of human children.
A wriggling fox tail grew from its neck.
Three of them wrapped around Xiaolian's ankles.
Her thin trouser legs were instantly torn into strips, and the bite wounds on her skin swelled and turned blue and purple at a visible speed.
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