# 1126
Chapter 1127: Shipwreck
"This is hell, it's normal to have lingering souls here."
Lin Qiye and the other two didn't hesitate much before entering one of the narrow mountain crevices.
Behind them, beneath the wasteland's sky, countless demons flew low, circling. Some of them flew toward the direction Lin Qiye and the others had departed, spreading out over the endless valley to search.
Witnessing two demons flying directly over the crevice they were hiding in, Lin Qiye moved forward along the mountain's side while frowning slightly.
He hadn't expected these demons to be so persistent. Even though they had clearly lost track of their targets, they were still conducting a carpet search in the area. Fortunately, the mountain crevices here were extremely narrow, and the rocky walls on both sides were jagged and uneven, making it difficult to spot Lin Qiye's party from high above.
The deep red sky scattered dim light, blocked repeatedly by the rocky walls, until it became almost completely dark at the bottom of the fissure. Besides using their hands to touch the rock walls on both sides to perceive direction, the naked eye could barely make out the path ahead.
Relying on his spiritual perception, Lin Qiye took the lead, opening the path ahead. The ghost-like Jiang Er floated in mid-air, while An Qingyu brought up the rear.
"Do you feel like the terrain here has been going downward the whole time?"
After moving silently through the darkness for quite a while, An Qingyu suddenly spoke.
"That's right." Lin Qiye nodded in agreement. "I noticed it when we were flying on the cloud earlier—hell's terrain isn't flat. It's like a gradual downward slope... From when we entered this fissure until now, we've been going downhill. Compared to where we started, the altitude has dropped by at least a few thousand meters."
An Qingyu seemed to have thought of something. "Descending..."
"What's wrong?"
"Haven't you heard the legends about hell?" An Qingyu adjusted her glasses. "According to legend, there are nine layers of hell. People who committed different sins in life would fall into different layers of hell to suffer torment."
"But the terrain here isn't layered like that, is it?" Jiang Er said with confusion.
"Mythological legends and reality do have some discrepancies, since no human has ever seen what hell truly looks like." Lin Qiye said. "But based on our current situation, this legend isn't entirely baseless. At the very least, the deeper we go, the lower the temperature gets. If I had to guess, we're gradually approaching the core of hell."
"The exit to leave... is at the deepest part of hell?"
"If a 'miracle' truly appears, then yes."
Jiang Er sighed. Just as she was about to say more, her expression suddenly froze, and she looked up疑惑ly toward the depths of hell.
"That's impossible..." she murmured to herself.
Lin Qiye and An Qingyu both looked at her. "What did you find?"
"I... I seem to be able to faintly sense my physical body now, in the direction we're heading." Jiang Er's floating form in the air flickered like an old television screen, and the voice coming from the Bluetooth speaker at An Qingyu's waist became intermittent as well.
"What?"
Lin Qiye was stunned. "Isn't your physical body stored on the ship? How could it possibly appear in hell?"
"I also... don't... know." Jiang Er lowered her head, watching her constantly distorting and jumping form, her expression showing anxiety. "My magnetic field... is being forcibly... dragged over there..."
"Your 【Spirit Communication Field】 can't leave your本体 more than one kilometer away. The Heavenly Realm is essentially a person's mental sanctuary, so there's no concept of distance there, which is why you can move freely within it. But now that we're in hell, it's different." An Qingyu quickly sorted out the situation, her tone filled with calm.
"I don't know why your physical body is here, but you must follow the instinct of your magnetic field. Otherwise, after it separates from your brain, this remnant consciousness field will dissipate quickly.
Once you return near your physical body, first figure out your surroundings, see if Brother Zhai followed the ship in, and then, if conditions permit, try to send us information."
"...Alright."
Jiang Er's form in the air grew fainter and fainter. After the last voice came from the Bluetooth speaker, her form leapt violently, like an old television screen being switched off—a flash of white light, and she vanished on the spot.
"Sssshhh——"
The disconnected Bluetooth speaker emitted low static. In the narrow mountain fissure, the air fell into dead silence.
An Qingyu held the Bluetooth speaker in her hand, her eyes fixed intently on it. Her usually composed and calm expression rarely showed a hint of anxiety.
Lin Qiye stood nearby, also frowning as he waited for a voice to come through the speaker.
After more than ten seconds of static, the speaker's sound slightly wavered. Faintly, a female voice could be heard from within, but it was so faint and intermittent that it was almost completely drowned out by the noisy static.
"No good." An Qingyu's brow furrowed tightly as she looked around. "There's something in this area constantly interfering with the magnetic field signal. Jiang Er connected to this channel, but her voice can barely come through."
An Qingyu's gaze swept across the barren rock walls on both sides before finally locking onto the gray ash falling like snow from the sky. Her expression grew increasingly grim: "It's this stuff..."
Lin Qiye stared at the Bluetooth speaker in An Qingyu's hand. After a moment of silence, he reached out and gently brushed his hand across its surface.
A faint golden light flickered past.
With the boost of "miracle," Jiang Er's anxious voice from the speaker briefly became clear:
"Can you hear me? Hello? Can you hear me—"
An Qingyu's eyes lit up. "We can hear you!"
"The exploration ship! The exploration ship is in hell!" Jiang Er, seeing that her voice was getting through, immediately spoke at an extremely rapid, anxious pace.
"I don't know how it got in, but... but it's covered in attack marks everywhere. The deck, the cabins, the engine—almost everything's been torn apart! Now my coffin is sinking with the ship's wreckage in the bloody seawater, and we're about to hit the very bottom. I've searched every area I could move through, but there's nothing but water and flowing lava—I can't figure out our position at all...
And, Brother Zhai is missing."
Hearing this, Lin Qiye and An Qingyu's hearts simultaneously sank, their faces turning deathly pale.
"I found fragments of his cloak in the wreckage, along with bloodstains. He should be injured, but—THUD!!"
Before Jiang Er could finish, a muffled boom rang out from the Bluetooth speaker, followed by endless static that echoed through the abyss-like mountain fissure.
An Qingyu furrowed her brow as she looked at Lin Qiye, about to say something, when the latter immediately made a shushing gesture toward her, lowering his voice:
"Something's coming..."