Chapter 56 End Point

The water here was only waist deep, so the miner’s lamp could clearly illuminate the bottom. I originally thought I was stepping on the same rock fragments as before, but at some point, it apparently changed—there were some strangely-shaped shards scattered among the rocks beneath our feet. I reached down and touched one, only to find that it was a fragment of a clay jar, just like the ones we saw aboard the ancient sunken ship in the devil city.

There were more shards buried among the rocks, but they were barely visible—you had to look very carefully in order to distinguish them from the surrounding rocks. These were clear signs that the ancients had been active down here, and not just a little bit based on the sheer number of shards hidden among the gravel.

Everyone began to push away the rock fragments with their feet, and soon more pottery shards were exposed. Fatty raised his miner’s lamp high to illuminate the area around us, enabling us to see the bottom of the lake more clearly.

Under the top layer of gravel were a large number of pottery shards mixed in. They weren’t buried very deep, so we could see that they seemed to extend from the place we were standing all the way to the far reaches of the lake. Moreover, the closer we got to the direction Poker-Face’s mark was leading us, the more pottery shards we came across. It was evident by the sheer number of them that they had been pushed in this direction by something.

Fatty dug deeper and found that there were still many shards buried under the gravel, but given the scale, it was impossible to count how many jars must have been buried here originally. The edges of these shards were very sharp, like blades, and we could even see human skulls mixed in among them. The skulls had decayed to the point that they were basically riddled with holes, but some still had hair attached to them. The sight was enough to make me shudder.

This scene reminded me of something similar I saw near Xisha, where the whole seabed was covered in porcelain. But that porcelain had been buried in white sea sand, which made it look ancient and mysterious, whereas these ugly jars were buried in gravel and mixed in with human skulls and hair. The only thing I felt looking at them was pure disgust.

As everyone stared at the skulls, we all felt a chill run down our spines. “What the hell are these things?” Fatty asked.

I had previously told them about what happened after excavating the sunken ship in the devil city, but I hadn’t gone into detail at that time. So, I quickly explained that these pottery shards looked similar to the jars we had discovered at the time. According to Wu Laosi—and the carvings Poker-Face and I saw in the temple—these were sacrificial offerings to the snakes.

“Could there be another sunken ship up ahead?” Fatty wondered as he swept the miner’s lamp around.

I shook my head—it likely wasn’t a ship. First, it was impossible for a ship to sink so deep underground, unless the lake had a waterway leading to the outside world. Second, these jars were sacrificial offerings to the snakes, so they would have been placed in areas related to such activities. This was probably a religious place that held some significance to the Queen of the West’s people, and based on the number of shards lying around, such jars weren’t uncommon at that time.

I had to agree with Wu Laosi’s conclusion that these were sacrifices, but knowing this didn’t actually help with anything. Thinking of Wu Laosi suddenly had me recalling the sound of his screams at that time, and I suddenly felt as if the shards in the water were pricking the soles of my feet through my shoes.

I still felt a little scared when I thought of my experience in the devil city, but nothing like that should happen here—based on the degree of damage to these jars, the insects inside should be long gone, and the bones were so brittle that they would break at the slightest touch. Considering how these things had been soaking in water for thousands of years, it was amazing they hadn’t turned to dust. And besides, clay jars absorbed water, so even if they were sealed tightly, water would still gradually seep in. After being buried in this lake for so long, any intact jars would have filled up with water, and the insects inside would have drowned.

“With so many sacrificial offerings here, do you think the Queen of the West’s tomb is up ahead?” One of Uncle Three’s men asked.

I thought about it, but while it wasn’t necessarily impossible, it was a completely unfounded guess. Still, it would probably be better if he was wrong.

“Whatever it is, be careful not to step on these pottery shards,” Fatty said. “For all we know, these bones might be poisonous. Young Wu, you’d better clean the wound quickly. Otherwise, it might get infected and you’ll have to amputate your foot later. Now that would be a tragedy. Everyone should also keep an eye out—since these were offerings for the snakes, it means those snakes may be around here somewhere.”

“Thank you for your concern,” I replied sarcastically, giving him an angry glare. He didn’t seem to notice at all, and just continued, “Speaking of which, it’s strange… it seems like we haven’t seen any of those snakes since we entered this place. Where did those hanging sausages go?”

I didn’t bother responding, too busy wondering whether the thing that had cut me was a skull fragment or a pottery shard. Either way, none of them was good.

At this time, Black Glasses suddenly dove into the water and dug out half of a skull. The back of the head was completely gone, revealing a gray gel-like substance in the brain cavity that looked similar to a honeycomb—most likely, it was the work of a corpse-eater king. Why there was a corpse-eater king inside this skull was a complete mystery, but judging by what we’d seen so far, it seemed that the human heads sealed inside these jars were used to raise these horrible insects. It was somewhat similar to modern beekeeping. If Wu Laosi’s theory was correct, then this practice may have originated from some mysterious customs during the Queen of the West’s time. I just didn’t know where they even found these insects that nested inside people’s brains.

We continued moving forward, paying special attention to where we placed our feet so as to avoid being scratched by the pottery shards. The further we went, the more shards appeared under our feet, and the clearer the situation became. After walking for less than a kilometer, we found ourselves on a shoal made up entirely of pottery shards.

The whole area was filled with broken shards of various sizes, most of which were a dark red and yellowish-brown color. Buried under these fragments appeared to be several layers of seemingly intact jars.

We had no way of knowing how many layers of jars were buried beneath these fragments, but what we could see was horrifying enough. We dared not venture forward recklessly, afraid of stepping on one of these intact jars, so we decided to stop and see if we could find another way.

Fatty wasn’t interested in this junk, and Uncle Three’s guys were too afraid to touch them, so they distracted themselves by drinking alcohol to drive away the cold. Black Glasses, on the other hand, was very interested in these jars and dove down again and again to take a closer look at them. Fatty eventually became annoyed and said to him, “Four-Eyes, haven’t you seen enough dead people? Why do you keep looking at those things?”

After searching the surroundings, we found that it was all the same. These jars covered a fairly large area, so if we wanted to pass through it, we would either have to go back the way we came and try to go around it, or bite the bullet and step on these sharp bones and pottery shards.

Just as I was hesitating on what to do, I noticed that Chen Wen-Jin was looking down at her feet with a thoughtful expression on her face. When I asked what she was thinking about, she suddenly said, “Maybe we’ve already arrived?”

“Arrived? What do you mean?” I was surprised at first, but then I immediately caught on, “Are you saying this is our destination?”

She nodded, “It seems that we’ve reached an area where the sacrifices have accumulated. Such a place is usually the place of worship. We’ve walked quite a long distance, so maybe this is our final destination.”

I looked down at my feet and then all around me, feeling that it was unlikely. At least, I couldn’t bring myself to accept it. What kind of place was this? What was the point of working so hard to get here when there was nothing except for these jars full of skulls? I had already carefully examined these jars back in the devil city.

I glanced at Poker-Face, but he remained as silent as ever. Chen Wen-Jin took out a few glow sticks, activated them, and then threw them into the water around us. The others, seeing this, began to follow suit and threw more glow sticks into the water. Soon, the lake water around us was lit up with a faint green glow that looked almost ghostly.

We began to look for anything suspicious beneath the water’s surface, but no matter how carefully we searched, we still didn’t find anything unusual besides the broken pottery fragments.

We were all feeling a little depressed. I looked at the bottom of the lake, silently thinking that if this was our final destination, then the only possibility was that something was buried under all these jars. But that seemed unlikely—so many people had already been here, so if there really was something below, then it must have been dug out by now. This obviously couldn’t be the end; we’d just have to keep searching.

But the most frustrating thing was that we had no idea what our final destination was supposed to look like, and Poker-Face couldn’t remember anything.

I kicked the water a few times, dispelling the cold and tension that seemed to fill my whole body. As I watched the waves distort my reflection into a strange shape where my face and lower body overlapped, I suddenly noticed something. Tilting my head back to look at the ceiling above us, I found that at some point, it had become so high that it was swallowed up by the surrounding darkness.

I grabbed one of the miner’s lamps and lifted it up, but the light still didn’t reveal the ceiling. The lamp’s lowest setting could illuminate a distance up to about forty meters, which meant that the ceiling here actually exceeded that. I immediately switched to the brightest setting, and a beam of white light shot out from the miner’s lamp.

The bright light immediately attracted the others’ attention, but I ignored them and focused on directing the light towards the cave ceiling.

What I saw left me completely stunned.

Embedded in the ceiling above our heads was a huge, indescribable object. It was incredibly huge, but I could see that the part protruding from the top of the cave had a spherical shape. I couldn’t estimate its diameter at all, but it nearly filled my entire field of vision. It seemed to be made of rock, but the color was completely different from that of the surrounding walls and ceiling. But the strangest thing of all was that the surface of this sphere was covered in holes the size of tar barrels. There must have been thousands of them, all densely packed together in an ugly cluster that reminded me of a hollowed-out lotus root.

The others followed the direction of my light and also looked up, immediately freezing in place. For a while, no one said a word, and even the atmosphere felt like it was frozen.

“What the hell?” Fatty eventually muttered.

“Oh my God,” Chen Wen-Jin murmured. “This… this is a heavenly stone.”

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