Anomalous Creatures

Kevin took a quick look at the situation in the ground hole, confirmed that it was solid ground and not too deep, and jumped down at once. However, just a few seconds after landing, he burst out with an impressive "Wow!" Startling both Lily and Weilili. Lily peered into the dark hole, "Landlord, landlord, what's wrong with you?"

"Nothing, it's just... really huge down here!"

Kevin stood at the bottom of the hole, squinting to observe his surroundings, and couldn't help but marvel at the sight.

It was pitch black down there, far more challenging to night vision than the night outside. Besides the faint second-hand moonlight faintly penetrating through the hole, there was no light source at all in the tunnel. Kevin felt that even his newly acquired night vision was approaching its limit, so he had to concentrate fully to see the situation below.

It seemed that his night vision was still based on normal optical laws and hadn't reached the legendary level of scanning the surroundings with mental energy. He wondered if it would evolve to that point in the future.

When he first jumped down, he landed on a higher earth platform, which seemed to be specially designed to facilitate people underground to return to the surface through the secret door of the chapel. There was a small slope in front of the platform, and Kevin had just walked down the slope a little when he saw something astonishing: tunnels, tunnels beyond imagination.

Indeed, there was an underground structure beneath the castle, and its scale was even more massive than Kevin had expected, exceeding the underground scale of most normal classical castles. Right in front of Kevin were three wide passages extending in different directions. These passages were reinforced with thick stone materials and some black pillars of unknown material due to their age, and had not collapsed over the years. Even though Kevin was an amateur in architecture, he found it quite incredible. Each passage was wide enough for a medium-sized car to drive through, with a height of over three meters. They converged into a T-junction in front of Kevin, and the junction was as spacious as an underground hall.

It seemed that the secret door of the chapel led to a "node" of the castle's underground passages, where several tunnels intersected.

Behind Kevin, two light rustling sounds came, and Weilili and Lily also jumped down from the hole successively. They walked down the slope of the small earth platform and saw this scene after meeting up with Kevin.

"This... The lord of Yorkfeld at that time must have been no ordinary person. The underground palace he built exceeded the standard," Weilili, the knowledgeable vampire, immediately noticed that the scale of these tunnels didn't match the castle above. "Did there used to be years of war here? As a result, the local lord built such a large underground shelter? Even with a three-way intersection..."

Kevin looked at Weilili strangely, "Haven't you been to England since 1190? How are you so familiar with the scale of English castles from hundreds of years ago? I wanted to ask earlier up there..."

"Just because I'm not in England doesn't mean I can't wander around Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and France," Weilili looked down on Kevin with contempt. "I may be poor, but the reason I haven't been to England for nearly a thousand years isn't because I couldn't afford the travel expenses. At that time, I was traveling around the neighboring countries. A few hundred years ago, the ancient castles in this area were more or less the same. No matter how different the structures were, I still have a good understanding of the scale of their facilities."

At this moment, Lily had already sniffed around the three-way intersection of the tunnel and ran to one of the pathways, carefully distinguishing the lingering scent in the air. She shouted loudly, "This way, there's a human scent here!"

The werewolf girl had now completely turned into a scent radar, and Kevin felt like he was bringing along a police dog...

The three of them, led by Lily, ventured deeper into the underground palace (its scale was enough to be called a palace). At first, Kevin was worried about the risk of suffocation in these old and neglected underground passages, but after walking for a while, he found that the air here was very fresh, and there was always a breeze brushing against his face from somewhere unknown. It seemed that there were still ventilation holes connecting the underground palace to the surface that hadn't been blocked, which further proved how much effort the original owner of this castle had put into building this fortress. It was incredibly sturdy.

Weilili analyzed beside him, "I originally thought that the lord of Yorkfeld at that time was just an ordinary noble who owned a castle, but now it seems that he was quite extraordinary. The underground structure here and the quantity of stone materials used in the castle above indicate that this was once a very sturdy fortress building. But this is a plain area, and its location is not a military stronghold. Even if it were a fortress, it lacks favorable geographical conditions. I don't quite understand why the lord of Yorkfeld built such a sturdy fortress back then."

"Isn't it said that Yorkfeld was later abandoned due to internal rebellion?" Kevin guessed wildly, "Maybe because of constant civil wars, the lord here built the castle like a large fortress."

"You have no common sense," Weilili glanced at Kevin with disdain. "Do you think it would take how long to build such a large underground fortification? And that was hundreds of years ago? It would take the efforts of several generations. I'm afraid the Yorkfeld family had been reinforcing and expanding this underground palace for two hundred years. And don't forget that this is England. Unlike the bug dynasties in ancient China that would easily conscript tens of thousands of laborers to dig mountains and open lakes, the productive forces that a feudal lord could mobilize here were limited. For him to undertake such a large project... It's suspicious."

As Weilili spoke, she quickened her pace and walked ahead. At this moment, it was completely pitch black around them, and even with strong night vision, some light is still needed. So Kevin took out his data terminal, turned on the standby screen, and shone it ahead like a flashlight. Suddenly, everything around him was as bright as day. Lines of subtitles scrolled across the data terminal: "This device believes that your usage is incorrect... This device suggests that you search for the normal measures that should be taken at this moment..."

Kevin ignored it. This data terminal was utterly unreliable.

The trio walked for a few minutes in the tunnel, and Kevin felt that the terrain ahead was slowly descending, as if the tunnel was leading to a deeper place. He had temporarily forgotten about the paranormal enthusiasts and Nangong on the surface: He felt that there was at least one good thing about staying in this dark place—he was farther away from the troubles on the surface. It would be perfect if he could find the "person" he was looking for underground.

"So, the haunting in the castle is actually someone pretending to be a ghost?" Lily felt that walking like this was very boring and, despite their usual grievances, took the initiative to talk to Weilili, "Who could it be? And are there really undead down here in this castle?"

"Hmph, it's definitely a person pretending to be a ghost. People are the most complex creatures. Who knows what they're thinking all day," Weilili snorted, "As for the undead... Hey, landlord, why did you shiver just now?"

Kevin had a long face and said, "Fuck, I just remembered that there are ghosts down here! I just jumped down without thinking about anything... I'm a bit scared now."

Weilili "comforted" him maliciously, "Don't worry, dealing with demons and monsters will be your daily work sooner or later."

Just then, Lily, who was leading the way in front, suddenly sniffed the air, "Someone is ahead, very close! It looks like they stopped moving."

The tunnel finally came to an end not far ahead, and there was a corner. Faint light could be seen coming from the other side of the corner. Kevin was just about to step forward when Weilili pulled his arm, "Wait, it's best to disguise ourselves. Don't forget to hide our identities from ordinary people."

As soon as Weilili finished speaking, layers of black mist spread out from beside her. Because of Kevin's strange "magic immunity" constitution, Weilili couldn't make her spells work directly on Kevin, so she could only use this layer of mist to surround the three of them to conceal their figures. Kevin looked at himself covered in a layer of black mist and suddenly felt that the three of them were the perfect group for pretending to be ghosts...

Weilili whispered to the other two, "Don't leave the range of the black mist, especially you, big dog. Don't wrinkle your nose. My black mist is clearly mint-scented, okay! I specifically removed the bloody smell this time to prevent you from talking nonsense."

The trio quietly moved forward under the cover of the black mist. After rounding the corner of the tunnel, they indeed saw the back of a person.

A short and chubby man, wearing a headlamp and carrying a strange box, was standing in front of a stone wall and anxiously pacing back and forth.

It was Angus, the innkeeper.