End of the Magic Era
Chapter 69: The End of the Hallway

The entire tomb was like a huge palace. Five Hasted Rock Puppets searched the surroundings for ten minutes. They explored a small area, and just as Lin Yun thought, there was no harvest nor any danger. Apart from several signs of the place being from the 3rd Dynasty, there was nothing noteworthy.

After drinking another bottle of Magic Spring, Lin Yun assessed that he would only be able to maintain the Rock Puppet summoning for a few more minutes. He thought for a bit before deciding to interrupt Mage Vision and personally enter the tomb to take a look. The Rock Puppets had already made sure that there shouldn't be any danger in the passage.

But before he could stop the channeled spell, the vision he got from one of the Rock Puppet had suddenly changed.

'What happened!' The Rock Puppet field of view had changed so suddenly. Just a moment ago it was looking at a spacious and desolate area, but now it was a garden. It was a lush and verdant flower garden.

Lin Yun frowned.

He had never relaxed while looking through the five Rock Puppets' eyes, always remaining focused, yet, in a split second, the sight changed without him noticing.

'Did it touch some spatial trap?'

It seemed unlikely. If it was a spatial trap, some spatial fluctuation would appear when the trap was triggered. Lin Yun was sure that he would have been able to detect these spatial distortions, regardless of how small they were, they would never escape his sight.

But if it wasn't a spatial distortion, what was it? How could a large Rock Puppet suddenly change location on his watch? And in such a particular location?

After all, the whole tomb was covered by the prince's Bloodline Curse, even the passage leading to the tomb leaked some traces of the curse which almost made a Great Mage like Lin Yun hallucinate. The power of the curse where the Rock Puppets were was ten times stronger...

'How could a lush garden appear in a place filled with such a potent death energy?'

'Hold on… Death energy…'

Something suddenly flashed in Lin Yun's mind, 'This place… It couldn't be one of the legendary Death Garden?'

He had seen the words Death Garden in the notes of a Necromancer. That Necromancer was named Sandro, he was one of the three existences during the peak of the magic civilization who managed to conquer the Undead Plane. It even came to the point that very few people would dare to mention his name, everyone would address him as Sovereign of Death.

That Sovereign of Death once wrote about his youth in his notes, how he mistakenly entered a Death Garden and set foot on the Necromancer path. Unfortunately, that Sovereign of Death didn't describe the Death Garden in details. He only mentioned that the Death Garden was a treasury left aside by the deads for the livings. It was a place full of endless opportunities and dangers...

Nothing could be done about it, the notes that the Sovereign of Death left behind were mostly about his understanding of Necromancy, there were only a few sentences about the Death Garden.

But later on, the notes fell in the hands of other mages, and after changing hands quite a few times, it was put in the decaying library, before the era of mana exhaustion. When Lin Yun saw it, it was already filled with a lot of mages' comments and annotations.

Among them were speculations about the Death Garden.

There were several mages of different eras who believed that the Death Garden was born out of a large amount of death energy. It lay between true and false, it could exist, it could also be illusory. Not only were there a lot of dangers within, it also had various ressources.

When he read those notes, Lin Yun felt the content novel and interesting, but he didn't take it seriously.

But now, the Rock Puppet sudden change of environment made Lin Yun recall these notes.

If that place was really a Death Garden...

Thinking about it, Lin Yun had the Rock Puppet look at the surroundings, but his expression turned blank just as the puppet's head turned, he couldn't help smiling bitterly.

He had suddenly lost connection with the Rock Puppet.

Not just with the one that entered the Death Garden, but with all five of them.

He didn't have to think much to understand that the summoning spell had reached its limit.

It seemed that if he wanted to get to the bottom of it and explore the Death Garden, he had to go himself.

Fortunately, the surroundings had already been explored by the puppets and no dangers had been found, the only thing he needed to pay attention to was the Death Garden, but that strange place existing between true and false couldn't be explained with common sense. In any case, he would only be able to understand it once he checked it.

After making his decision, Lin Yun chanted a few spells, Haste and Lighten. Lin Yun didn't rush in this time, he used some mana to cast a Vine spell. Vine was a low level spell with no fighting strength, but it had quite a few applications, like when he had used it to get Fario out of the frozen swamp.

Lin Yun's Vine Spell had a similar purpose, but instead of dragging someone out, he planned to drag himself out.

If he met any danger, Lin Yun would only have to give a command and that vine would come from the entrance to smoothly extract him from the dangerous situation.

Once this was done, Lin Yun lightly jumped, and with the floating momentum brought by Lighten, he flew above the ground of the tomb.

The moment his feet touched the ground, Lin Yun felt the power of the Bloodline Curse. It was far thicker than the trace he had felt earlier. It attacked him the moment he touched the ground, and a strange scene appeared before his eyes. Ten women wearing white dress were standing around Lin Yun, laughing strangely.

The ground under his feet was turning soft, just like a swamp, but when he looked down he only saw blood and limbs. He tried to struggled out of that bloody hell, but the strange laughter of those ten white dressed women filled Lin Yun's ears as they tried to drag him down to the depths of that bloody hell.

"Fuck off!" Lin Yun coldly snorted. His right hand fluctuated as the Mind Defense he had prepared was sent out. In a flash, only a silver ripple came out. Whether it was the women or the bloody hell, they both instantly disappeared.

'Bloodline Curses are truly vicious…' Lin Yun wiped the sweat off his forehead. Even if he knew that it was all an illusion, that frightening scene still made Lin Yun somewhat fearful.

An illusion targeting one's mind, was one of the most dangerous. If he made a mistake, he would sink in a never ending illusion and turn into a mindless corpse, forever unable to break off from the Bloodline Curse control.

Although he had some defenses against mind attacks, Lin Yun still didn't dare to stay in this place for long. With the help of Haste, Lin Yun only spent a few minutes before reaching the place the puppet had been at before the change happened.

'It's here.'

Lin Yun could clearly see the long hallway from his position. Both sides of the hallway were covered in thick stone walls which were adorned by a few light yellow oil lamp. No cold wind came from the hallway, if it wasn't for the flames flickering within the oil lamps, it would feel as if time had been frozen.

Lin Yun's shadow was dragged pretty far by the oil lamps, swaying along the flickers of the lamps. Lin Yun took a deep breath before slowly walking forward. He knew the place the puppet had been at before its surroundings changed, the end of the hallway.

A painting was hung at the end of the corridor. On the painting was a gorgeously dressed lady.

But for some reason, Lin Yun felt that the eyes of the lady were focused on him and that her faint smile was trying to convey something.

This feeling made Lin Yun more vigilant.

Although Lin Yun hadn't stopped walking, his Magic Array was already prepared. Five spells, four metamagics, ready to be used at anytime.

Fifty meters, forty meters, thirty meters, twenty meters...

Lin Yun was getting closer to the end of the hallway...

When Lin Yun stepped in to the last ten meters, those lamps suddenly got extinguished. In a flash, the entire hallway became pitch black as an ear-screeching laughter rose up. Lin Yun didn't think and instantly cast an Ice Wall, intercepting an attack.

At the same time, the Magic Array activated and a huge mana fluctuation filled the hallway.

A tempest of flames came out as Flame Storm was cast, this was the only Great Mage level spell that Lin Yun had merged into the Magic Array. Lin Yun was using his strongest firepower at this moment.

Even the air seemed to combust under the pressure of the extreme heat.

Thanks to the radiance of the flames, Lin Yun was finally able to clearly see. Long red hair had pierced his Ice Wall.

And the lady in the painting was slowly coming out.