The Devil’s Cage - Chapter 318

Chapter 318

The figure that jumped down from the ceiling was very nimble . A quick flip in mid-air allowed her to land on the ground without even the slightest wobble .

It was a slightly bewildered woman wearing a half-torn dress . She looked no older than 25 years old .

Her hair was brown, and so were her eyes . She was holding a worn-out dagger with cut marks and blood stains on it .

Kieran could imagine what kind of harsh battle she had been through by just taking a look at her weapon .

As he was inspecting her, the woman noticed his gaze .

She took two steps back out of vigilance and took a defensive stance as she held the dagger .

"Who are you?" she said loudly .

Kieran didn’t answer . Instead, he lifted his head up .

On the ceiling was a breach wide enough for one person to go through .

"Is this the entrance the assassin used?" Kieran guessed . He wanted to take a closer look .

"It’s a dead end!" the woman said when she noticed what Kieran was looking at . When he jumped up and into the breach, the woman let out a cold grunt and started searching the ground .

When Kieran came back 15 minutes later, he was frowning . Not only had he discovered that the passage was a dead end, but he had also noticed something else worth his attention .

"The passage was sealed off because I accidentally triggered the contraption . If you want to leave, we’ll have to find another way," the woman said without lifting her head .

Kieran glanced over at her before he started to search for the entrance that the ritual hosts used .

They had encountered each other in an unfamiliar place, so neither of them opened their mouths to share their thoughts, let alone introduce themselves .

When Kieran pressed down the base of the devil statue, the wailing heads’ eyes turned . The base let out a noise and the ground in front of the statue slowly moved backwards, revealing a flight of stairs that led down .

"Well done!" the woman said, going down the stairs without hesitation .

Kieran squinted at her back as he followed her slowly .

There were almost 40 steps heading down, each one over 25 centimeters in height . The stairs were build straight, without the slightest spiral . At the end of the stairs was a wide hall .

The torches on the walls lit up as the woman stepped into the hall . The whole hall was instantly bathed in light . Kieran could easily see the end of the corridor . There was a stone gate and two corpses not far from it .

The two corpses had already rotted down to their bones . One of the skeletal hands was holding a crossbow, allowing Kieran to theorize about the skeletons’ identities .

"Are these the ritual host and the assassin?" Kieran thought as he looked at them .

The assassin had fired an arrow at the host’s heart, but his neck had also been crushed .

Considering the distance between the two skeletons, an ordinary man would not think that this was possible . If one took into account the devil statue though, they would realize that the host that had been killed might have had some spell-casting abilities . This was totally within the realm of possibility .

Of course, there could also have been a third person besides those two .

Coveting something makes people look ahead, unaware of the danger behind them .

A third person could have emerged victorious . This had happened a long time ago though, so even though Kieran activated [Tracking] in order to search for clues, he couldn’t find any more information .

"Come help me! What is so special about those piles of bones? We have to leave this place! I don’t want to stay here a second longer!" the woman, who was pushing at the stone gate, yelled at Kieran when she saw him stop and stare at the bones .

"Okay . . . " Kieran nodded before walking over to her .

When he was only two steps away though, he stopped and launched a surprise kick .

There had been no warning before his sudden attack . Hs kick was as fast as lightning and as swift as the wind, landing right on the woman’s neck .

Crack!

The woman’s body collapsed against the side of the wall with a bone-cracking noise . Her eyes were wide, as if she hadn’t died in peace, as if she wanted to ask Kieran why he had killed her .

Kieran remained quiet as he walked up to the woman’s body like a shadow . His barrage of kicks formed layers of mirages and shadows, enveloping her body completely . He only stopped when her body had no shape anymore .

A sudden gray mist started to escape her crushed body and spread around the hall .

Then the woman’s body shriveled like a burned painting and started to disintegrate and turn into sparkling sand .

"Oh my!" Kieran was not that surprised by the scene .

He had kept his guard up from the moment the woman had appeared . As he had explored the secret passageway through the breach though, his vigilance had turned into doubt .

The passage had not been ventilated, and its rotten stench had made Kieran cover his nose and mouth as he’d entered .

And yet the woman, who had come through the passageway, had not been reeking .

She might have isolated the stench by using some kind of Magical item, but what about the sealed-off passageway?

That foul stench couldn't have formed in the passageway within such a short period of time . It could only have been achieved through years of accumulation .

What had the woman said earlier?

"The passage was sealed off because I accidentally triggered the contraption . "

She had triggered the contraption that had sealed off the passageway . She must have stayed inside the passage for at least a couple of months . She had jumped down from the ceiling in a very timely manner when Kieran had appeared though .

This could not be a coincidence . She had been harboring malicious intent when she’d appeared before Kieran .

"She had the looks of an average human and a certain level of intellect… She was not too smart and lacked any basic vigilance…"

Kieran stared at the stone gate as he thought about it . He was still unsure how the woman had appeared .

He had reason to believe that the woman’s goal had been the stone gate before him .

She had wanted Kieran to help her open it after all .

The stone gate was not tall or big . It actually looked like a common garden gate .

It was undoubtedly much more dangerous though .

The moment Kieran had laid his eyes on it, he had felt like he was being softly caressed by a thousand blades and knives .

As he carefully approached the gate, he noticed that there were runes carved on it .

The runes were small and overlapping .

One couldn’t even see them unless they moved closer .

Just as Kieran was about to inspect them, that faint grey mist that was supposed to have dissipated appeared in a dense form and spread throughout the hall .

Kieran was immediately surrounded by it .