Chapter 35

When the day was getting late, and the lights on the road started turning on, Jianmen emerged from one of the dark corners on the streets of Los Angeles - close to the area he came here to check out, yet not too close so that he wouldn’t risk spooking anybody or anything in the area.

The streets around the area were not crowded but there were still a lot of people, as the area was adjacent to some of the key business areas. And the place was also a bit filthy and under-managed - the cracks on the road made all cars driving through slow down significantly, and Jianmen could see homeless people in almost every corner that could serve as a temporary shelter.

Having quickly found a hidden and unoccupied corner, Jianmen placed several pieces of folded paper sigils in a small crack under a litter bin by the side of the road. Then he headed towards another place that was suitable - these were Demon Suppression Sigils, the most basic of offensive sigils against almost all kinds of evil, corruptive and dark powers that exist in the world. Their powers scaled pretty well with the power of the user, and were not too explosive or shiny so not too disruptive of the lives of civilians. On top of that, he also placed some incense on the floor and lit them up, in hopes that the effect from them would help cleanse some of the effects of whatever laid down below.

By the time Jianmen placed the Demon Suppression Sigils all around the area, the sun had already set for a while and the sky had gone dark. People’s night lives just started and more of them are showing up in the streets.

Jianmen wanted to place a charm on each spot he buried the Demon Suppression Sigils so that most of the people now crowding the area will be driven away. But a spell this scale could be quite noticeable for whatever is lying underneath this place and can be quite tricky to conceal - he already underestimated the thing once, he was not about to do it again.

Having sent a couple of messages reminding Jason and Caroline to not forget practising meditation in front of a deserted entrance to underground, Jianmen then disappeared inside the tunnel. There were at least ten sets of surveillance equipment and motion sensors near the entrance, yet none was triggered by him.

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As Jianmen ventured deeper into the tunnels, he also left tons of ashes and stone like debris. These were all once the monsters that inhabited this place, Jianmen was not happy and even frustrated with what he found from all of these monsters’ memories - they were chaotic, grey, crazy and scattered.

They were not hard to read, but their memories were like some barely coherent videos cut and patched together with tons of short and almost meaningless and heavily distorted clips. Not just that, these memories were also full of raw and extreme emotions, though they won’t directly impact Jianmen, they still render the memories even more useless.

After neutralizing fifty some monsters, some humanoid and scaley like the first one, some like giant rodents with six legs, some like snakes with no skin and scale but shape shifting tissues all over the body, some like hybrids of bats and flies with dark green goo oozing from all parts of their bodies, and some completely without physical bodies and existed only in shadowy ghostly forms, Jianmen finally got a rough sense of what was going on.

Apparently something occurred in the depths of the tunnels. The unknown thing started whispering to the animals and insects living in this tunnel, and even to some weak willed and mentally unstable people on the ground. These insects, animals and humans then mutated and even became bound to other organisms and became other kinds of new and disgusting creatures.

Not all these creatures made it through the process, a lot of them either dissolved into chunks of rotten flesh, goo and pus or dried up and became wood and rock like inanimate objects, which then would be devoured by the creatures that made it. Some of the creatures that lived through the process shed their corporeal form and became apparitions.

These creatures, when not acting on the direction of the whispers, would roam the tunnels and attack any outsiders.

Jianmen had not been this frustrated and upset with himself for years. He could already tell the sole reason behind what happened here. Yet he, the one with the best understanding of the Laws of Karma from his old clan, failed to recognize the signs.

These are clear signs of Karmic Corruption, also known as Karmic Pollution.

Karmic Flow, or the Flow of Karma is one of the fundamental aspects of a world. And Karmic Flow has its internal laws and patterns. Even a truly transcended mind can barely understand a small portion of the laws and patterns. The flow represents both motion and stasis, both causes and effects, both order and chaos.

Yet, there are times when things and beings turn out so unclean and so distortive, corrosive and destructive, they poison the Karmic Flow flowing through and around them. Through this kind of corruption, they wound and even ruin the world in which they reside. Thus these things and beings were so named.

“Fuck your mom, and fuck your ancestors.” Jianmen swore in mandarin as he abandoned a lot of caution and accelerated forward.

Not long before his realization, he had the feeling that he crossed over into a place with horrible smoke and foul smell in the air, even though there was not much change in scenery before him.

It was an indication that he officially stepped into the “hot zone” of Karmic Corruption.

Luckily, Jianmen told himself, judging from the look of the walls, the smell of air, the flow of time and the continuance of the space, the corruption was not too serious.

But the next second, he felt like he celebrated too early.

There were three people in front of him, who also seemed to be exploring the tunnels. From what he could tell, these were individuals with superpower - and whose power levels were actually pretty high. But they appeared to be grossly inexperienced in this environment, only one of the three knew to protect themselves with an energy shield.