"The distance is very close now. Xue'er, you all prepare yourselves—we might encounter some monsters soon."
Leticia was now standing in the large hole brightly lit by light magic, gazing directly at the earthen wall ahead that was continuously being eroded by magic. She could feel herself getting closer and closer to that place.
"There's a layer of something here blocking my perception of the surface. No wonder we couldn't sense anything unusual from above." Leticia looked up. Normally, she should be able to sense Bai Ling and Bai Ya's presence from this location, but now she couldn't.
Although several meters of soil would affect perception sensitivity, with Leticia's mental strength, this thickness of earth shouldn't be able to completely block her perception. The current situation could only mean one thing—the soil here had additives.
"Does Miss Leticia have this feeling too?" Sasha's expression was also somewhat grave. The divine power within her body was slightly agitated, which generally only occurred when divine power encountered divine power. "I suspect there's an enemy wielding divine power at our destination."
"Divine power?" Leticia's eye twitched. Anything connected to gods meant no good.
"Mm, but it doesn't feel very strong to me. Should be the type that's easily dealt with." Sasha nodded. Not everyone with divine power was formidable—most people who could use divine power actually had mediocre combat abilities.
Take Sasha, for example. She would find it extremely difficult to fight against the Four Heavenly Kings level, yet she was considered someone who could stand on her own within Divine Throne.
But she had just overturned due to carelessness a few days ago, which made Leticia's trust in Sasha's various judgments, especially regarding enemies, somewhat insufficient.
"Anyway, being careful is never wrong... Hmm, hit the end?"
Leticia's hole-digging magic stopped because ahead was no longer ordinary earth and stone, but a silver-gleaming metal wall.
The appearance of such a thing in this place meant something obvious to the girls present.
They had successfully found the underground chamber, just not its entrance.
"Should I open a door directly here, or go around looking for the door?" Leticia turned to ask.
Opening a hole here would be the simplest method, but who knew what the hole would lead to. If she opened it right into some freakish thing's face, that would be quite troublesome for Leticia.
"Let's look for a proper entrance." Xue'er and Sasha reached unanimous agreement.
So Leticia began digging along the wall. The underground chamber here was quite large, about the same size as the house above.
After spending some time digging east and west, Leticia finally found a secret passage. She didn't know where this passage came from, but its destination was definitely this underground chamber.
The passage also didn't use that kind of metal for walls, but rather ordinary stone, looking no different from a normal corridor.
"Looks like no one has been here for a long time." Leticia looked at the extinguished torches on both sides of the passage, muttering quietly.
The light orbs circling around her illuminated the path ahead and saved her from worrying about whether to light the torches. Who knew if these long-extinguished torches were some kind of trap?
Generally, such obviously strange things were definitely problematic. Maybe these torches would release poison gas when lit, or trigger some mechanism to kill intruders. Though for Leticia, these weren't concerns worth worrying about.
This passage was only so big—what kind of powerful hidden weapons could it hold? At most some crossbow bolts or something.
The passage sloped slightly downward. After walking for a short while, Leticia's group arrived at a door full of technological aesthetics.
Such a door appearing among the magic-renowned demon race was quite bizarre.
"This is human technology, right? Do demons have such things?" Leticia looked at the metallic door before her, a big question mark appearing on her forehead.
Her demon race shouldn't be able to create such technologically advanced things. She understood well what technologies her subordinates mastered—a bunch of people who couldn't even use rice cookers, let alone create such things.
Such a technologically advanced door should appear in human secret facilities, not here. Could this place actually be a human outpost previously planted among the demons?
Perhaps this place was abandoned for unknown reasons, giving Leticia a chance to peek at secrets.
"Should be human technology, with a high probability of coming from Central City." As a human, Sasha had more authority in this area. After carefully observing the door, she reached her conclusion.
Central City was the best developed among human cities. This house was built long ago, and this place existed early on. At that time, only Central City would have had such technology.
"Wow, even an iris lock." Leticia had already opened a small box beside the door and saw the tiny camera inside.
With her vast knowledge, she was certain this should be the kind of iris lock from movies—you had to put your eye close to it to unlock it.
"No choice but to force the door open." Leticia flexed her wrists, signaling the girls beside her to step back. "The commotion might be quite loud. I suggest closing your eyes and covering your ears."
The girls immediately stepped back several paces and turned their backs.
Then, an intense light that could blind people's eyes erupted from Leticia's direction, accompanied by rapidly rising temperatures. The seemingly very sturdy door was directly cut with a large hole by Leticia.
"Done." Manipulating invisible hands to push away the cut iron pieces, Leticia looked curiously into the underground chamber.
There were no lights in the underground chamber, but an extremely strong bloody smell wafted out from inside. Leticia couldn't help covering her nose. "Be careful. There should be corpses or something inside."
However, all the girls present had excellent psychological fortitude. Mere corpses couldn't generate any fear in them.
Honestly, the people who died by their hands probably didn't die very prettily either.
But even Leticia felt her scalp tingling upon seeing the scene inside.
"My god, what exactly happened here?" Magic light dispelled the darkness surrounding the underground chamber, revealing a scene like hell on earth.
The white walls had numerous spray-pattern bloodstains, and scratch marks seemed to indicate how desperate the lives once trapped in this underground chamber had been.
This place previously seemed to be a laboratory, but judging by the current situation, no living people should have been left here.
"These bones..." Some bones were scattered on the floor. Leticia looked at them, frowning slightly.
Weren't these bones a bit too clean? This house was bought by her people about five or six years ago. Was that enough time for a corpse to decompose to just bones?
Moreover, she hadn't smelled any corpse odor when she entered. Normally, such a sealed space with such a corpse would definitely smell like hell.
It was as if something had stripped all the flesh from these bones.
Such creatures that only ate meat and not bones weren't uncommon among demons. For example, the familiar slimes—these magical creatures were experts at stripping flesh.
Though weak slimes basically couldn't threaten demons, they commonly scavenged corpses. These magical creatures weren't picky eaters.
But were there slimes or similar magical creatures here?
"Ahead! The divine power reaction is coming from that direction!" Sasha suddenly warned.
She pointed at a tightly closed door not far away, her expression more serious than before. "There's a very chaotic life aura. I can't even tell how many creatures are in there."
"You're saying there are still living things here?" Leticia's eyes widened.
"Yes, so be very careful." Sasha nodded. "If it's some kind of monster, fighting here might affect the area above."
"You there, go up and notify Bai Ling and the others to immediately leave the house. We'll open the door in ten minutes." Leticia immediately called out Tōri and had her go back to inform Bai Ling and the others, to prevent the house from collapsing and crushing the people inside when they started fighting.
That would truly be friendly fire.
Tōri received Leticia's command and disappeared into the shadows.
Ten minutes was enough time for this swift-moving girl to deliver the message.
Taking advantage of this time, Leticia also planned to search this temporarily non-threatening underground chamber for any remaining information.
"This is..." Under a well-preserved skeleton, Leticia found a small booklet stained red with blood.
The writing on the booklet was already blurred. Leticia could only barely make out a few words.
"Resurrection?!" Leticia muttered in surprise. The most valuable two words on this booklet were "resurrection."
Who did the creator of this underground chamber want to resurrect?
"Resurrection from the dead? That's impossible." Hearing Leticia's muttering, the Divine Envoy immediately spoke without even thinking. "Even gods cannot accomplish resurrection."
Dead was dead. No resurrection magic existed in this world.
"Maybe someone wanted to resurrect someone important to them. Such people are quite common." Leticia shrugged, indicating that people who liked wild fantasies were numerous.
Time passed minute by minute. After Leticia silently counted to 600 in her mind, she slowly raised her hand, aiming at the metal door.
Scorching light gathered in her hand. With a light shout, the light beam bombarded the door.
The door was ultimately just a mortal object. Facing Demon King Leticia's magic, its hardness was insufficient. In just a few breaths, it melted into a puddle of molten iron.
This was with Leticia deliberately restraining her power. If she used full strength, this door probably couldn't last even an instant. Not only would the door not hold up, but whatever was behind it might also be destroyed by the light stream.
Seeing the door melt, Leticia immediately stopped her magic output to avoid destroying whatever was behind the door.
Using magic to freeze the scorching molten iron into chunks, Leticia manipulated the light orbs providing illumination to fly into that room, while she herself remained outside for safety.
"Whoa." By the magic light, Leticia saw a blood-colored large cocoon.
The room contained several shattered large glass containers, and a very unpleasant smell filled the room. Leticia couldn't help using wind magic to block air circulation between the two rooms, making the air in her location fresher.
Her series of magic spells drew applause from the watching girls—after all, among this group of girls, only Leticia seemed to be a proper demon.
"There's something alive in there." Sasha stared at the large cocoon suspended in mid-air, saying seriously. "And it seems to have noticed us."
"What?" Leticia was stunned, then she also noticed something wrong.
Heartbeat sounds seemed to come from inside that cocoon—thump thump, very slow but very powerful.
In corners where light couldn't reach, some black tentacles that made one's stomach turn just by looking appeared silently.
Whatever was in that cocoon was probably not something good.
"Divine power. The thing inside that cocoon has divine power." Sasha said very seriously. It was precisely because of the divine power that thing possessed that she could sense the movement within the cocoon before Leticia.
Lives with divine power were mutually attracted!
"Whether it has divine power or not doesn't matter. This thing obviously isn't anything good anyway." Leticia flexed her wrists as magic patterns appeared around her.
Doing some preparation work was never wrong. If whatever came out of that cocoon had ill intentions, Leticia could immediately react and throw it to hell.
"Finally, finally, the wait is over!" A bizarre multi-layered voice rang out, making several girls involuntarily frown.
This voice in such an enclosed space was truly somewhat torturous to listen to.
A pair of deformed hands emerged from the blood-colored cocoon. The moment she saw those hands, Leticia unhesitatingly cast the magic she had prepared.
Even if the thing in the cocoon could communicate, she didn't plan to listen to what it had to say.
This was for the sake of her eyes—just from seeing those hands, she could guess how disgusting the thing inside the cocoon was.
Sometimes, appearance really was quite important. If the hands emerging from the cocoon looked better, Leticia probably wouldn't have given up communication and attacked directly.