Chapter 72 Snake Marsh Ghost City (Part 2)

We all looked at each other, feeling as if everything that had happened last night was fated—as it turned out, we were only ten minutes away from the canyon’s so-called exit when we chose to stop and rest last night. If we had kept on walking at that time, the end result might have been completely different…

After taking a few more steps, we reached the edge of the swamp. The view from here was limited, so the swamp didn’t appear as vast as what we saw at the top of the slope. If we hadn’t been following the cliffs, we never would have realized that we had actually made it out of the canyon since the dense forest up ahead made it seem like we were still inside. Of course, there were still some differences—there was a feeling of strangeness the further we walked, the water got deeper and deeper, and the sludge under our feet was making it more and more difficult to walk.

Fortunately, there was a large flat stone sticking out of the shallow part of the swamp that seemed relatively dry. Curious as to why there was such a large stone here, we waded through the water carefully and climbed up it. Once we got a better look, we found that ornate lines had been carved on it, and there was a huge shadow under the water—it seemed to be part of a large statue.

This was one of the entrances to the Queen of the West’s city. Not only was she the ruler of the Western Regions, but she was also their absolute spiritual leader, so it was only natural that the entrance to her city wouldn’t be too shabby. Maybe this large stone was an ordinary statue that had been placed here at that time, or maybe it was a statue that had been placed on the city’s fortifications to intimidate any envoys coming and going. Of course, it would be impossible to preserve such a statue after so many years of being eroded by rain.

At first glance, I found that the ancient carvings on the stone looked very similar to those at Angkor Wat.⁽¹⁾ But when I took a closer look, I found that they weren’t Khmer patterns, but marks left by the wind and rain. These gray and black marks made the stone look particularly ancient and mysterious.

Just as I was wondering if this statue meant that there were other relics under the swamp, I heard Fatty call us over to take a look at something.

We turned to where he was pointing and saw that in the sunlight, a bunch of huge black shadows were sticking out of the swamp up ahead. They looked like rocks, and some were completely submerged. Poker-Face and I took a look with our binoculars and were surprised to find that the shadows under the swamp seemed to be building ruins that stretched all the way to the center of the swamp.

As it turned out, the ruins of the ancient city of the Queen of the West were actually buried under this swamp.

“There must have been a very prosperous city in this valley back then, but after the Queen of the West’s country fell, it was abandoned. The drainage system likely collapsed, the groundwater surged up, and the rainwater carrying all that sediment and sludge became trapped for thousands of years, flooding the whole city. It seems that the Queen of the West’s city is very large. We’ve made a rare discovery,” Poker-Face said indifferently.

I was a little shocked. After all, flooded ancient cities weren’t all that common. The swamp here actually wasn’t very large, but it was clear to see that the ancient city had developed all the way to the edge of the basin, indicating that the civilization at that time had reached its peak. But this meant that the Queen of the West’s palace was also somewhere under all this sludge. How were we supposed to enter it?

I suddenly thought of Chen Wen-Jin’s notes. It wasn’t like this swamp had formed in the last year or two, and I knew for a fact that in the ‘90s, Huo Ling and her team had entered the Queen of the West’s palace after a heavy rain. This meant that there should be a way in, but we just hadn’t reached that point yet.

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TN Notes:

(1) Angkor Wat is a temple complex in Cambodia that’s famous for its extensive decorations. It was originally constructed as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu for the Khmer Empire during the 12th century, but was gradually transformed into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the century.