“Master!” The concerned call of Marcus came from above: “Are you alright!?”
“Come down! It’s here!” Master Liaoran urged - he was still fighting against the corruption of the unclean slime, which was costing him huge amounts of Qi with every breath. There was not much time for him, and therefore there was not much time for anyone else either.
“Just a second!” Marcus grabbed two handfuls of glass shards and broken pieces of the gems and stones from the ground and flung them at the closest group of men in black that did not yet fully lose the ability to fight.
Qi infused debris broke their helmets and caved their body armors, bringing their wearers down on the ground as well as breaking some more glass and the surfaces of other gems behind. Gloria did something similar, also kicking two men who tried to ambush her using knives in their faces. She then launched another two kicks with similar force on their groins. The two men groaned and fell onto the ground, arching their backs like shrimps.
Keryn grabbed Mick and Kevin, tucked them in her arms and jumped down from the giant hole created by the master.
“Catch me detective!” Tae Kuo crawled to the hole and threw himself down.
Gloria looked around, then kicked the two men again on their necks to stun them before jumping through the hole.
“Everyone alright?” Marcus jumped through the hole after making sure that no one was left behind and no one would be able to shoot them from above.
“Some scratches her and there, but fine.” Kevin sighed as he clutched his left forearm with a piece of bloody rag.
“There is another level below, and that’s where the specific core of this entire building would be.” Master Liaoran maintained a short distance from everyone: “Please, stay away from this monk - they sprayed me with something utterly corrupting. So - mind your distance until this monk could fight it off.”
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“So - if those rocks above are the fuel, then this array here would be the - the extraction array?” Mick looked around, wiping off the blood from his shoulder and his forehead, frowning, light of different colors flashed through his face: “Oh no - this can’t be good - ”
“Boom!” Before anyone could say anything else, a muffled but still powerful explosion came from somewhere above. Directly following it came the sounds of walls and floors crumbling. A gigantic sliver of heavy, spiky debris hit the already cracked ceiling at the far end from the group and brought a large chunk of the ceiling down with it. It was a thick boulder of solid stone with pikes on one side, and a living, twitching hairless pale body.
“Stay away from it!” Master Liaoran raised his voice: “Stay away! If you have any artifact or talisman, be ready to use them!”
The floor hit by the solid spiked rock cracked. The cracks spread, crawling toward the position of the group. Before long, the floor around the stone crumbled, and subsequently fell through below. Beams of silvery light blue light shot up from the hole.
A heavy boom came up a few moments after the fall. Marcus scooted over to the side of the hole, trying to take a look down. But more of the floor around the hole fell, so he could only back off.
Gloria tried as well, but the structure of the floor seemed to have become much more brittle after the heavy impact - they could even see the bricks and rebars turning into dust and go away with the airflow.
“The escaped energy is weakening the integrity of the building itself. The floor won’t hold.” Master Liaoran shook his head: “Look around - this monk can’t bring you down. There must be some kind of service ladder or stairs hidden in the wall. Try to find it - it must be a hidden compartment or some kind of latch.”
Marcus and Gloria immediately began searching the walls around them. They could only hope that the master was right, and what they needed to find was indeed hidden in the walls near them and not on the other end.
Kevin tried to knock on a few walls, but kept getting the same solid sound, so he turned to Mick: “Do you hear anything?”
“No - no - I’ll try!” Mick scratched his head as he tried his hardest to find a wall that would make an uncommon sound.
“Boom!” Keryn kicked a wall in front of her. Her leg went right through, revealing an empty compartment behind it. Tae Kuo and Gloria were the closest to her so they rushed over, just in time to see a number pad.
“Fucking hell. We need a code now?” Gloria cursed.
“No - this is a trap.” Master Liaoran shook his head: “That kind of intricate electronics cannot work reliably in this environment. It must be something mechanical, not even analogue electronics can be trusted.”
“Crack!” Keryn’s fingers crushed the edges and the frame of the number pad before she pulled it out entirely. Behind the empty decoy metal box of the number pad, was a red metal latch. She wasted no time, not even taking a moment to breath or roll her eyes, she pulled the latch with all the might she could conjure.
“Clunk clunk clunk….” The sounds of chains being pulled came from two walls on both sides of the latch. Shortly, the two walls themselves fell through giant, rectangular holes on the ground and directly into empty spaces below, revealing two flights of stairs downward. Through the rectangular holes, they saw what was below, a Y-shaped platform with a round center and three bridges hovering over another deep, bottomless hole. Each bridge connecting to the center were at almost perfect 60 degree angles with its neighbors.
And at the very center, was a dark pillar connecting to the floor of array they were standing on before, to what looked like a hexagon crystal chamber at the base.