1302 Lava Pool

At that time, Lin Qiao was leading her team downward through a series of underground tunnels.

Hundreds of meters above their heads, Xie Longyun and her people had been moving in the same direction as Lin Qiao and her team.

Behind Xie Longyun and her people, a red figure had been quietly gliding above the boiling river. It flew into a large tunnel and made a few turns, leaping up and down. Occasionally, it was stuck in narrow areas that needed struggling to get through. After a long journey like that, it came to a spacious area and saw a huge river.

By that time, Xie Longyun and her people had still been wandering in a cave.

The big cat hovered above the river and spent a moment sensing the scents coming from the lower part of the river and then flew quickly toward Lin Qiao and her people.

While flying, it rose suddenly. Following a loud water clattering sound, an enormous dark figure came out of the water and pounced on the six-footed cat.

That was a huge fish that had four limbs with webs between its fingers. Its body was over twenty meters wide, and about ninety meters long. A few long thorns were seen on its tail, and in its giant mouth were sharp teeth that looked like sawteeth. The fish widely opened its mouth to bite the cat, but the latter had foreseen the attack long ago, which was why it suddenly rose high.

The fish leaped ten meters high from the water surface and brought up huge splashes of water before falling heavily back into the river. Loud noises could be heard as the peaceful river surface was stirred intensely by the fish, and the water splashed on the rock surfaces on both sides.

Watching the big fish fall back into the water, the big cat wagged its tail in the air and then flew away swiftly. Where the big fish fell, a few enormous dark figures were moving in the water. As the cat's vibe faded away, those figures sank back down to the bottom of the river.

…

Lin Qiao and her people had again entered a scorching hot area: that was a lava cave. The lower part of the cave was filled with boiling, glowing red lava. The heat couldn't be dissipated, so the air temperature in the cave was very high. The dim red light shone out of the cracks of the solidified layer of lava, illuminated the cave. Thankfully, there was still a distance between Lin Qiao and her people and the lava, or else they might be burned directly.

"How far away are we from the earth's surface now?" Lin Qiao hadn't been keeping track of the distance, so she turned to ask Duan Juan about it.

Duan Juan did the match basing on her own moving speed and the grade of the slope of the paths leading, downward, got a result with about three-hundred meters of error. "Six-thousand and three-hundred to six-thousand and eight-hundred meters."

"We are moving in a random direction. No one knows which way is the right way. There is no right way or wrong way. That's why we're searching here," Duan Juan said to him while leaving a mark in the lava cage.

"She's right. There are some traces left by underground creatures. We haven't found them yet, meaning that they're hiding somewhere deeper. Also, most of them have gone up to the earth's surface," Lei Cheng looked around to observe the surrounding environment, agreed with Duan Juan.

Lin Qiao squatted near the edge of the cave, carefully observing the bubbling lava which was giving out a strong odor.

Seeing the look on her face, Long Qingying immediately raised a hand to signal for the others to stop talking.

People understood that she was trying to tell the others to stay quiet and not to distract Lin Qiao, because Lin Qiao was observing something.

"Something is coming out of the lava. Watch out!" Lin Qiao suddenly stood up and said to the others. Her eyes were fixed on the lava without blinking.

People immediately packed their tools and took out their weapons, restrained their vibes, looking at the lava pool alertly.

The lava pool suddenly started waving and boiling, causing loud puffing noises, as if something was rising from the bottom of it.

Soon, people saw a few car-sized lumps emerge from the boiling lava pool.

People were curious about what was coming out of the lava. Clearly, there was more than one of them, and they would certainly be some monsters. They had already seen several lumps in the lava, and now they wondered if there would be more.

While people were making guesses, they saw five or six new lumps emerge from the lava.

Puff! The lava was very sticky. The creatures in it seemed to have difficulties coming out, because the lumps had emerged for quite a while but the creatures hadn't shown their faces yet.

The dozen large lumps reached to about two meters tall, then suddenly stopped growing. After pausing for three seconds, they began dropping slowly.

Eh? Why were they dropping? Were they going down to take some rest? Would they try again?

With that thought, people watched all lumps reach two meters tall and then drop one after another.

With curiosity, Lin Qiao and her people waited for those lumps to rise again. They waited for quite a while but nothing happened. At last, the lava pool quieted down again.

Did those mysterious creatures sink back down to the bottom? Did they sink?

Three seconds later…

Ten seconds later…

Three minutes later…

Nothing happened. Lin Qiao and her people all felt confused. So, whatever those creatures were, they just sank back down. Weren't they coming out? Seriously?

Somehow, Lin Qiao and her team felt as if they had been fooled. Was that a joke? They were looking forward to meeting the creatures which were about to come out of the lava! In the end, those creatures sank back down after creating a few lumps in the lava pool. Did they go home?"

A weird atmosphere spread among the team. Finally, Lin Qiao said, "I don't think they'll come up again…"

"I agree," said Duan Juan.

"You are probably right," said Kong Qingming.

"Maybe, yeah…" said Lei Cheng.

Then, people fell into silence again.

About ten seconds later, Lin Qiao abruptly turned around and said to her team, "Alright, we should keep going. Whatever are those things that almost came out of the lava just now, we need to stay careful, because they might suddenly come out to attack us."

After saying that, she leaped across the lava pool, landed on a flat area on the other side of the pool. The others also leaped carefully to that area one by one.

The lava pool was only about twenty meters in diameter. Leaping across it was not a problem for the superpower possessors above level-five.

Standing by the side of the lava pool, Lin Qiao carefully observed the lava and the surrounding area, in case something show up suddenly to attack her people while they were jumping across the pool.

As everyone jumped over, she turned around and walked through the flat area, deeper into the cave.