I don’t know how long has passed.

In the dim cave, Yuan Ming struggled to open his eyes. His eyes felt sore and painful, and he subconsciously wanted to rub them, but suddenly felt a cold sensation on his neck.

“If you don’t want to die, don’t move.” At this moment, a cold yet crisp female voice sounded.

“Chen Wan… Senior Sister?” Yuan Ming hesitated and called out.

“I’ll give you a chance to explain. What exactly happened?” Chen Wan asked.

She remembered talking and eating roasted meat with Kun Tu and others in the temple. She remembered feeling tired and falling asleep.

In her drowsiness, she seemed to have a dream of fighting a fierce beast.

When she woke up, she found herself lying in the arms of this beast slave, sleeping in this dark and deep cave.

Yuan Ming blinked hard, but his vision remained blurry and his mind was foggy.

“They conspired against you, drugged the meat they gave you, and tried to take advantage of you while you were asleep. I saved you,” Yuan Ming organized his words and said.

“We have no relation, why would you save me?” Chen Wan clearly didn’t believe it and extended the coldness in her hand forward.

“They wanted to kill me to silence me. I had no choice,” Yuan Ming said.

Upon hearing this, Chen Wan frowned slightly.

She had always known that Kun Tu coveted her, and she was already reluctant to be in the same team as him this time. But she never thought that he would use such despicable means against her.

“You’re lying. If Kun Tu wanted to silence you, could he also silence Ba Da and Yang Chan?” Chen Wan’s face remained cold, but her tone softened slightly.

“Even an outsider like me can see that Yang Chan is jealous of you, and Ba Da desires you. They conspired together to deal with you. Otherwise, where do you think the drug that made you unconscious came from?” Yuan Ming sneered and said.

Upon hearing this, Chen Wan’s heart sank.

“And the fire python that chased us in the cave later, do you think it came to save you? It came to silence us,” Yuan Ming added.

Upon hearing this, Chen Wan quickly touched her sleeve and realized that she was indeed missing a red fire thunder. She suddenly realized that it wasn’t a dream, but a real experience.

She still had some doubts about what Yuan Ming said, but she still retracted the dagger held against Yuan Ming’s neck.

Rubbing her slightly sore forehead, Chen Wan waved her hand, and a ball of fire appeared in front of her.

The condensed fireball floated in mid-air, illuminating the darkness around them. Yuan Ming finally saw clearly that they were currently in a huge underground cave.

The surroundings were cold and damp, with stalactites hanging upside down from the ceiling, dripping water “tick-tock.”

In front of him, Chen Wan, dressed in a red dress, had messy hair and dirt on her face. Her clothes were also disheveled, making her look somewhat disheveled and pitiful, evoking a sense of pity.

He only glanced at her and quickly averted his gaze.

Chen Wan instinctively tightened her clothes, but the torn outer garment that Kun Tu had damaged couldn’t be restored no matter what.

Her gaze fell on Yuan Ming, who was opposite her. Her eyebrows slightly furrowed.

She saw that his body was covered in scratches and bruises, although they had stopped bleeding and scabbed over, they still looked quite shocking.

“You’re injured,” Chen Wan said.

Upon hearing this, Yuan Ming looked at himself and saw that his sleeves and pants were torn, and then turned his head to look at his shoulders.

As soon as he moved, the intense pain made him grimace.

A burning pain came from his back, seemingly more severe than the other injuries on his body.

“Turn around, let me see,” Chen Wan said when she saw the situation.

Yuan Ming hesitated for a moment but still turned around, enduring the pain.

At the sight of Yuan Ming’s back, Chen Wan’s eyes widened instantly, and she couldn’t help but cover her mouth.

His back was completely charred, almost the entire skin on his back was burnt black, and his shoulder blades were exposed, indicating that the injury was severe.

“How could he endure such a serious injury?” Chen Wan couldn’t help but wonder.

When she looked at herself, besides the slightly messy clothes and insignificant scratches on her hands and feet, she had no other wounds. She couldn’t help but think, “Did he get injured so severely to protect me?”

Yuan Ming didn’t know what she was thinking, and asked with doubt in his heart, “Is it alright?”

“Your back is severely burned, it will take some time for it to heal with your own blood. Don’t move, let me… let me apply some medicine for you…” Chen Wan suddenly came to her senses, paused slightly, and said.

“No need, I…” Yuan Ming instinctively wanted to refuse.

He just wanted to turn around, but the person behind him sternly said, “Don’t move.”

Yuan Ming couldn’t help but pause and stopped moving.

Then, he heard the sound of a bottle being opened behind him, followed by a burning pain on his back, causing him to let out a low growl.

“Uh…”

Yuan Ming forcibly suppressed the low growl, and the burning pain on his back lasted for only three or four breaths before quickly turning into a cool and peculiar sensation, followed by a slight itchiness.

He could feel that the woman behind him was being very careful, applying medicine powder to every wound on his back.

At this moment, the fireball floating in mid-air suddenly extinguished, and Chen Wan’s movements also stopped.

“The medicine effect of the Jade Screen Powder is quick. In half a day, your wounds will scab over completely, but it will take three days to fully recover.” Chen Wan’s voice came from the darkness.

“Thank you,” Yuan Ming thanked her.

He moved his body slightly and found that the pain on his back had eased a lot. He immediately pulled up the white ape beast skin tied around his waist and draped it over himself.

In the darkness, the two of them didn’t speak anymore and fell into silence.

After a while, Yuan Ming broke the silence and said, “We can’t stay here for long. We need to find a way out.”

As soon as he finished speaking, a fireball lit up again, flew up into the air with a “whoosh,” and crashed into the dome of the underground cave, splashing sparks.

“Before you woke up, I checked. We fell from the vertical hole above, but the bend in the vertical hole has collapsed. It’s impossible to return the same way,” Chen Wan said.

Yuan Ming looked up and struggled to stand up, staggering for a moment, and said, “Then let’s find another way.”

Saying that, he looked around left and right.

“This is a cavern eroded by an underground river. It should be completely submerged during the flood season. I’ve checked, and there are no exits on either side,” Chen Wan sighed and said.

Upon hearing this, Yuan Ming walked a dozen steps forward and indeed saw an underground river stretching ahead. The water flow was gentle, and he couldn’t tell how deep it was.

He reached out and touched it, feeling the bone-chilling coldness.

At this moment, Chen Wan also walked over, but after just one glance, she suddenly frowned and said, “The water level has risen. When I checked earlier, the waterline hadn’t reached this side. How did it rise so much in such a short time?”

“Although it’s not the flood season now, it rained heavily yesterday, so it’s not surprising that the water level of the underground river rose. I just don’t know how much it will rise,” Yuan Ming pondered.

As he spoke, he walked back to the other side of the rock wall and looked up and down. His brows furrowed.

“What’s wrong?” Chen Wan noticed something and asked.

“Look, there’s an obvious waterline mark on the rock wall. It’s slightly dry and covered in moss above, but it’s more damp and smooth below. It seems that this place has been frequently flooded recently,” Yuan Ming said.

Chen Wan looked at the waterline that was more than a zhang high and her face couldn’t help but change slightly.

“If the water continues to rise, it will eventually flood this place. We can’t just sit and wait for death. We need to find a way to escape,” Yuan Ming continued.

“How do we escape? There’s no way out here,” Chen Wan said.

“There’s no way out on land, but we can go underwater. There must be an exit in the underground river,” Yuan Ming looked at Chen Wan and said.

Chen Wan looked hesitant and said, “I… I can’t swim.”

“Then… I’ll go underwater first to explore the way. You wait here for a moment,” Yuan Ming hesitated for a moment after hearing her words and said.

After saying that, he took off the bronze longsword hanging from his waist, took off the white ape beast skin on his body, and took out a black-skinned beast skin from his tattered clothes. He draped it over himself.

He walked to the riverbank, activated his mana, and used the Beast Skin Transformation technique.

Immediately, the black beast skin wrapped around his body like a living creature, quickly covering every part of his body, completing the transformation.

His whole body was covered in black beast skin, with black bumps growing all over his back, looking very sturdy. Membranes grew between his fingers and toes, and his eyes bulged out a lot.

In that appearance, he looked like a humanoid toad.

Chen Wan was startled by his sudden transformation and couldn’t help but take a step back, creating some distance between them.

Yuan Ming moved his body, opened his mouth, and suddenly sucked in. He felt a faint airflow surging in his chest, and his abdominal cavity seemed to have become much larger. He kicked the ground with his legs, leaped up, and plunged into the water in a frog-like swimming posture, swimming along the direction of the river, shuttling through it.

A bone-chilling coldness came as soon as he entered the water, making Yuan Ming shiver uncontrollably. He kicked his legs, and with a frog-like swimming motion, he dived into the water, disappearing from sight.

Chen Wan stood on the bank, waiting silently.

However, a long time passed, and there was still no movement underwater. Yuan Ming had not returned.

Just then, the cave suddenly resounded with muffled thunder-like sounds, “boom, boom,” causing Chen Wan’s heart to race.

After the Fireball spell was extinguished, she immediately cast it again to illuminate the surroundings.

At this moment, she suddenly felt a chill at her feet. She looked down and found that the water level of the underground river had risen again, and it seemed to be rising faster than before.

Chen Wan quickly retreated, feeling anxious and worried.

But the more anxious she became, the more urgent the rumbling sound in the cave became, and the underground river became turbulent.

Looking at the surging waves and the visibly faster flow of the underground river, Chen Wan realized that something was wrong. She knew that this was a sign of a flash flood, and the entire cave would soon be submerged.

But Yuan Ming was still nowhere to be seen.