Limitless Cultivation: I Can Master Every Profession!-Chapter 78: Infiltration

Chapter 78: Infiltration

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In front of the mine entrance, two cloaked individuals were standing guard.

The rest of the group had already moved on, leaving these two behind to keep watch and prevent anyone from entering.

Almost half an hour had passed since then, and nothing had happened during that time,

but the two didn’t seem concerned and calmly kept watch, occasionally chatting with each other.

Soon, their attention was drawn by something in the distance, and they instantly tensed up, hands ready to draw their weapons from beneath their brown cloaks.

The bushes of the dense forest in front of them rustled for a while, then fell still.

The two kept their eyes fixed in that direction and waited a few more seconds before relaxing a little.

"Was it just an animal?" one of them whispered, unsure whether to go check or not.

But in that brief moment of distraction, something shot through the air and landed right near them.

It was a small black sphere, made of some unknown material, which bounced slightly before rolling to a stop at their feet.

The two hadn’t seen it coming, and the moment it landed, they both noticed it immediately.

They had no idea what it was, and for a moment, they looked at each other in confusion.

One of them lifted his head to see where the object had come from,

but before either of them could do anything, the black sphere exploded without making any noise, releasing what looked like a black gas.

They immediately reacted, darting into the cave to escape the gas cloud,

but they didn’t even manage a few steps before a sharp pain struck their heads,

causing them to stumble and fall.

"W-what’s happening...?" said the one who had managed to get a little further from the gas.

He struggled to calm the intense pain in his head, trying to regain control of his thoughts,

and failing miserably.

He began to lose consciousness and instinctively tried to look for his companion,

slowly turning his head, only to see him lying on the ground in an unknown state.

But he didn’t have time to worry about that, because another figure began to appear in his blurry vision, walking calmly through the black mist, coming toward him.

"Y-you, who are-"

He struggled, trying to get a better look at the newcomer, but his body couldn’t take it anymore, leaving him in the same state as his companion,

collapsed, unconscious.

Footsteps echoed, and soon the newly arrived figure approached the cloaked man lying unconscious on the ground.

He looked at him for a moment, as if checking something, before nodding.

"Well then, let’s see what they’re up to in here," Zhu Rong muttered,

dragging the two unconscious men into the forest before returning,

this time wearing a brown cloak himself.

He had patiently waited up in a tree while the group below got organized and finally made their way inside.

He had already made a rough estimate of their strength thanks to the subtle fluctuations of spiritual energy their bodies gave off, and he could tell that most of them were at the 2nd or 3rd stage,

while three among them had reached the 4th, with Yǔn Hào sitting at the mid phase of the 5th stage.

It was clear that charging in headfirst against them wasn’t the smartest course of action, so he waited for them to enter before following.

He had already spotted the two guards left outside, so he waited a bit to make sure they were a little distracted before acting.

Now that they were inside, the two guards left behind were only at the 2nd stage, easy prey for him.

If not for his desire to avoid making unnecessary noise, he would’ve just confronted them directly rather than relying on a trick like this.

He didn’t know much about this mine, so he had to move carefully.

He couldn’t risk being discovered, otherwise it’d just be trouble on top of trouble.

So he decided to take care of those two before entering.

He wanted to blend in with the others, but first he had to make sure they didn’t have some identification method to recognize their own, so he searched them thoroughly.

Now that he had confirmed there was nothing like that, he proceeded to step inside,

slowly releasing faint spiritual waves to scan the area ahead of him,

hoping to detect any hidden dangers and avoid unpleasant surprises.

If a regular person had tried something like that,

they would have been immediately noticed by those inside due to the fluctuations of spiritual energy.

But for experts like him, who knew how to control the intensity of their spiritual sense,

it could be done safely, without alerting the other side.

And it didn’t take long before he noticed several other presences further ahead,

likely keeping watch over the entrance tunnel.

And so, as he quietly made his way deeper into the mine,

much further ahead, the group of men led by Yǔn Hào had reached the end of the tunnel connecting the mine entrance to the underground cavern.

The path had been long, nearly half an hour of walking to get there.

The group was much smaller than when they started, apparently cut down by half.

That was because they had left people behind to make communication in case of unexpected events easier.

Using communication talismans wasn’t possible, as the signal down here seemed to be disrupted by something,

though none of them seemed particularly concerned by that.

Judging by the expression on the face of the man leading the group, they clearly knew where they were headed,

and now that they had arrived, he looked around for a while.

The torches in their hands didn’t do much to light up the vast cavern, but Yǔn Hào didn’t seem bothered by that.

With a quick glance, he spotted several tunnels spread out across the cavern.

As soon as he finished scanning, he made a signal with his hand,

and several members of his group immediately broke off in different directions, each entering a tunnel.

There were many tunnels, but there were also many people, so each one picked a tunnel and went in.

It didn’t take long before some of them returned, reporting the situation inside.

It was clear that some of those tunnels weren’t very deep, which led many to come back quickly.

Yǔn Hào waited a bit longer,

until the loud roar of some creature echoed from one of the tunnels.

Hearing it, a smile appeared on Yǔn Hào’s face as he looked toward that tunnel.

"Found it" he said, immediately moving toward it with the rest of the group.

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