The Creatures That We Are

Chapter 536: Obelisk

Each statue was a combination of a human head and the body of different mammals. With their feet pressed together, they crouched low, facing the path and looking down at their feet like two rows of dignified yet insidious guards.

The path was about a hundred meters tall, leading to an ascending stairway. Beside it was a decayed wooden boat.

“This place could be above ground in the past,” Gao Yang guessed. “The path was a small river, and a boat had to be taken to reach the other side.”

They all nodded, picturing it in their heads:

The ancient Ni citizens took the head and the tail of a wooden boat, rowing to make it across the river. On the sides of the river, the stone statue crouching at water level lowered their heads, eyeing each person with authority as they crossed the river.

The six of them walked through the now dried bed, reaching a rampart built with countless large stone bricks. With the underground space enveloped by darkness, the rampart seemed to extend endlessly to the top, left, and right.

At the center of the rampart was a narrow corridor less than two meters wide. The end was beyond their sight.

It looked like a long, narrow valley made by a giant swinging an ax.

Gao Yang made sure his system hadn’t issued a warning before walking into the corridor. The others followed in order. Within the corridor, Gao Yang was hit with a curious feeling. On his sides were thick, sturdy walls, and when he looked up, he could only see an oppressive-looking dark gap.

It was as if he was having a nightmare, lost in a suffocating and bizarre supernatural corridor.

“This place unnerves me.” Gray Bear placed his hand on the rough wall, his fingernails making strange scratchy sounds as he walked.

“Stop. That only makes it worse,” Lithe Snake shot back.

“This space is bigger than I thought,” Nine Frost marveled. “And it seems real.”

War Tiger heard his unspoken words. “Are you thinking that the ancient Ni Nation in history could have existed for real?”

Nine Frost nodded. “This looks like the ruin of the ancient Ni Nation. Based on our speculation, the Mist World only exists for a hundred years, and the past history is fabricated. Why, then, did the Heavenly Way go through the trouble to create a ruin like this?”

“Yeah.” Gray Bear had the same question. “In theory, the triangular towers above ground should make things believable enough. There’s no reason to create such a great ruin underground. Whose benefit is this for? Wanderers don’t need further proof, and awakeners won’t normally have a chance to see this place.”

Gao Yang found it illogical as well. It seemed like wasted effort.

“We’ll play twenty questions later,” War Tiger urged. “Let’s focus on the present.”

They ended the conversation and continued to walk further in on full alert.

A few minutes later, the six of them finally made it out of the long narrow corridor, and their vision opened up.

Gao Yang moved his energy and threw the fireball in his hand into the air. Like a small sun, the fireball slowly rose before scattering with a bang, lighting up the whole place for a moment.

They saw clearly that they had reached a large circular clearing.

It was shaped like a fried egg. The six of them were currently in the egg white area, a large forest of stone pillars. And the egg yolk area was the large, flat circular court. Due to their sights being obstructed, they couldn’t make out more, but it was clear that the egg yolk area was located at the heart of the underground space.

They weaved amid the stone pillars, feeling like a flea walking on the scalp of an animal.

Each stone pillar was carved with ancient writings and abstract symbols. Walking in the center of the line, Qing Ling and Nine Frost made recordings here and there with the light from Gao Yang’s fire.

It didn’t take long for them to make it out of the forest of stone pillars and arrive at the central court. Again, Gao Yang fired a fireball as flare.

The court was about the size of a soccer field. The only architecture they could see was the black obelisk erected at the heart of it, which was about three meters in diameter.

“Be careful,” Gao Yang said in a low voice, leading the way.

When they went up to the obelisk, the flare above them had just about scattered.

Gao Yang felt the tip of his foot drop. He looked down to see a trench about a few centimeters wide, in which was a thick brown substance that seemed like oil.

After some thinking, he conjured a small fire at his fingertip. With a curl of his finger, the fire fell into the trench.

Crackle. The brown oily substance was ignited instantly, the flames spreading quickly in two lines at increasing speed and bifurcating further. In three seconds, the flames drew a delicate pattern on the circular plaza.

It was bright like daytime. They stood amid the burning pattern and quickly recognized it as the pattern of a life monster. The whole court was an altar.

Their faces darkened in response.

“Why don’t we get out of here?” Gray Bear wasn’t a coward, and he always enjoyed a good fight or a good adventure.

However, he considered it foolish to walk into a fight he couldn’t win, where his death wouldn’t even be a glorious one.

“How?” Lithe Snake retorted. “Go back the same way and crawl up the quicksand?”

“All you know is stating the fucking obvious!” Gray Bear snapped, riled up. Looking around, he said in a lowered voice, “Let’s see if you can say the same thing when a life monster shows up.”

“Relax, Old Bear.” War Tiger patted him on the shoulder. “We’ll burn the bridge when we get to it.”

“We’ll cross the bridge,” Qing Ling corrected.

War Tiger was just about to say something when his eyes glinted. He hurried his steps and went up to Gao Yang. “Found something, Leader?”

Gao Yang was standing in front of the obelisk, where a black stone coffin was erected. The coffin was 3 meters tall and 1.5 meters wide.

On the obelisk was a mural, the colors dark and the texture rough.

Gao Yang scowled at it.

War Tiger went up to take a look. The mural portrayed a white bird—it had to be a life monster. And the white bird’s wings were twisted like they had been broken. Its expression was pained, if a head with only an eye could be considered to have an expression.

On its protruding round belly, a slit appeared where its belly button should be, from which emerged countless thin black lines. They looked like congealed strands of blood, or some sort of evil dark magic.

The black strands extended outward to another side of the obelisk. Gao Yang and War Tiger walked to the left to see another side.

Indeed, the second mural was a continuation of the first one.