Chapter 64: Unknown strange object
Translated by: CHua
Edited by: TN, XRCO and Elkassar
Witnessing this outcome, Sheyan sighed in relief as his gamble paid off. Sheyan wasn’t in a hurry to leave, forcefully find a spot to rest along the precipice. The abyss was really treacherous and enigmatic. Legendary creatures probably resided in divided territories. Thus, staying within Death Breath’s territory meant its natural protection, allowing him to recover fully before proceeding.
Death Breath’s appetite seemed excellent. After consuming most of the vampire bats, it climbed towards the hole made by the knight statue. Munching bit by bit as it ingested the broken web threads before spitting and spinning new threads. After restoring completely, it glanced towards Sheyan. Seeing that Sheyan hadn’t left, it actually leapt towards him with a vampire bat still lodged in its venomous fang. The bat had already been injected with digestive enzyme, as he tossed it in front of Sheyan. It seemed like it even wanted to feed Sheyan.
Sheyan couldn’t help feeling a sense of powerless as he gazed upon this blob of vampire bat. Light yellowish digestive fluids constantly spilled out from its ears, eyes and nose. Looking at this scene, even a famished appetite would fly miles away.
Yet only heaven knows the consequences of disappointing the spider’s generous intention. Therefore, Sheyan could only hopelessly smile and extended his hand to pick the bat up. Unknowingly, the nightmare imprint suddenly transmitted information:
“Pointer: You discovered an unknown strange object.”
“Pointer: You can trade this for rewards upon returning to the nightmare realm.”
“Woah?” Sheyan never expected such a pleasant surprise. He immediately felt this bat wasn’t that disgusting anymore, storing it into his nightmare imprint. Currently, he could feel deeply the inadequacy of his narrow deposit space. But now wasn’t the time to deliberate over this. Instead, Death Breath slanted its head to observe Sheyan. Probably bewildered at his greed, not only sucking dry the nutritious juice and not sparing even the outer shell…. After a brief moment, it no longer pursued this question, as it lazily proceeded to climb down the cliff vanishing into the dark fog.
Sheyan continued resting for nearly 4 hours. After a good nap, he was finally rejuvenated. The rocky wall was producing a faint flow, thus it wasn’t totally dark. After eating a little from the food he stored in his storage space, he started to scale down the cliff using the unorganized cracks. As he gradually scaled down, vegetation like moss started surfacing along the cliff wall. Unknown whether it was due to that severed finger, Sheyan had met with no danger on the way. He similarly noticed that as he climbed lower, the temperature became higher.
Finally, after experiencing an excruciatingly long climbing process, he could see the ground. If not for a contestant’s digitized transformed body, even the number 1 expert climber would be unable to persevere for that long.
Sheyan leapt down from the cliff wall, rolling before he stood up. Although his chest was still slightly aching, it no longer impacted his movements. Countless towering stalactite shoots erected from the ground, ash-grey fungus crowded the dampened cracks in the ground and semi-moist moss covered the ground. This place was just like an enormous maze segregated by the uncountable amounts of frosty white stalactite.
While advancing, Sheyan even noticed several Mandrakes. These dangerous plants were known to be evil, their seeds were formed through the corpses beneath the ground. Their roots appeared in the form of boys or girls, releasing a deadly screech upon leaving the soil. Sheyan personally witnessed these mandrakes pulling themselves out from the soil, utilizing their fatal screeches to hunt. Even though Sheyan fled quickly, he still roughly lost 1/3 of his life.
Fortunately, Sheyan had the severed finger as his guide, it could mysterious lead him into the correct direction. Once in the wrong direction, its heat temperature would swiftly decline. After traversing for roughly 10 km, Sheyan finally encountered his first artificial landmark. He could clearly sense many unknown dangers prying in the darkness, yet they always chose to wait silently. After walking for another 10 minutes and ascending an underground hill, everything became clear to him!
Ahead of him was a plot of wide land. Large amounts of shortly constructed, simple sheds were scattered chaotically around the land. It was impossible to call it a small town or similar terms to describe this region ranging at least tens of square kilometers. It was simply an underground city or even a refugee camp, and of course dirty and disorderly. Even though their building style was simple and sloppy, nevertheless it resembled faintly, the unique askew and disorderly style of Gringotts.
Sheyan slowly prowled into the city. He reckoned he was the first living organism to traverse through this city. It seemed like time had froze in this city. With every trampling footstep, fine dust covered his shoes. On his left was a grocery store named ‘half a copper’, within it was very likely the chaotic mess left behind during the evacuation. On his right was a pawn shop called ‘Huge Diamonds’, the knocked over stools littered its interior as though it had been plundered.
Sheyan gently coughed, suddenly the houses within 20 metres radius crumbled and collapsed loudly, leaving a pile of ash in its wake! Every trace of living activity had returned to its origin source in an instance, turning into ashes! Presently, Sheyan felt an overlord presence from the pleasure of this reckless destruction. Moreover, the crumbling houses triggered a terrifying chain reaction, as other houses around it started to collapse frantically. Just in a few minutes, a tremendous heap of ash spiralled slowly from this planar land!
“Cough cough cough!” Covered in white powder, Sheyan frantically charged out 5 minutes later. Ignoring everything else as he buried his head and rushed forward for close to a hundred metres. He then finally raised his head to observe around before kneeling on the ground pinching his nose, and retching for a long time. Finally his condition lightened up. If it lasted for another few minutes, he would’ve probably become the first contestant to be murdered by coughing due to dust irritation.
He then raised his heads, and was momentarily stunned.
In his vision, an awe-inspiring tremendous path extended straight into the horizon. This path was constructed with crystals, and as broad as a 100 metres. On both sides was a babbling stream with clear water, and over 10 massive towering pyramids. The appearance of these pyramids varied from the square temples of the Maya era and the triangular shaped egyptian pyramids. Enormous idol sculptures guarded each lateral side of the pyramid. The Mayan God was the graceful, yet malevolent snake deity, Kukulkan. The Egyptian idol was the mysterious and imposing sphinx! God knows what secrets was hidden at the end of this path, it actually needed these tombs of glorified buried monarchs to guard the path.
Sheyan glanced back, but only saw a layer of fog enshrouding the boundlessness, nothing was vivid at all. Naturally, there should be an enchantment barrier, obstructing anyone’s vision. If not for such grand and magnificent architecture, he would’ve already discovered them atop the hill previously. He tried walking backwards, but after a long while it was as though he hadn’t advanced a single inch.
Without a choice, Sheyan proceeded to wash himself up at the lateral streams before advancing forward. Not even a hundred metres, that extremely familiar sensation welled up in his heart again. It was exactly similar to that sensation at Gringott entrance. The only difference was, the sensation at Gringotts entrance was like a torrential flood, sweeping in and leaving quickly. But the current sensation was like rain drops, slow but persistent!
“Shit.” Sheyan suddenly felt a chill. “Is this because my perceptive sensing is being misled by others? There’s actually a deadly trap up ahead?”
Coincidentally, his perceptive sensing had been mislead not too long ago by that abyssal tyrant of a spider ‘Death Breath’. After careful considerations, he felt this current sensation was different from the former. Furthermore he had endured countless hardships to arrive here, if he didn’t clarify this now he would certainly regret it. Taking a deep breath, he continued to stride forward.
The path beneath him was extremely dignified, crafted with deep black precious stones. Profound, deep and immersive. Walking on it felt like walking in the nighttime. Something else seemed to have surfaced along the path, observing closely, they were batches of delicate relief sculptures. In order to gather any information on this mysterious place, Sheyan earnestly inspected them. He discovered that on the paintings, it drew out a massive and sinister human shaped monster. It had 3 heads and 8 arms that looked extremely strong and robust. The eight hands carried weapons that seemed exceedingly terrorizing, fanatically massacring the horrified creatures surrounding it.
As he proceeded forward slowly, the engravings of that stout and strong freak unknowingly transformed into a hibernating state, lying on the ground and snoring. On its belly sat an extremely tall yet sturdy, outstanding man. His body from head to toe was enveloped by a cloud of mysterious fog. From all directions, he was surrounded by numerous formidable monsters. But with one wave of this mystery man’s hand, he caused all the monster to evaporate into ash. One could imagine how unfathomable his strength was.
The only puzzling aspect was, this mystery man was actually carrying an extremely tattered and shabby sackcloth bag, it was even loaded full and bulging. It was plain visible that the bag completely destroyed the imposing grandeur of the mystery man.
Sheyan was bewildered by the underlying reason. Going by logic, such an artisan who could craft out this grand project definitely wouldn’t make such an obvious mistake. The only plausible explanation was that the builder requested for this….. His thoughts drifting away, Sheyan started to ponder about the hibernating fellow ahead of him. What kind of exquisite, refined and high quality preferences, was able to inspire this large scale drawings…