Chapter 262: Snail

As usual, the team skillfully skirted the edge of the hall; they had walked this path too many times to forget which alcove's moss was too thick or where a deep ditch ran beside the path.

They reached the identical tunnel entrance; Green gave the small iron vial a gentle shake, confirmed the usual rustling sound was present, then entered.

After only a few minutes of progress, Green stopped before a niche, brushed away newly deposited silt, and showed Kraft the surface of the brick.

It was a short, narrow mark, roughly matching the cross-section of that rusted iron blade, slightly raised above the plane, displaying a deep reddish-brown hue that clung tightly to the stone, as if rust and rock had been stirred together into an unnatural texture.

They blended like oil paints, interlocking seamlessly—easily triggering associations in anyone who had seen similar things before.

This was where the blade fragment had first been discovered. More fragmented traces lingered nearby, as if melted fat churned in a soup pot, yet the surface remained utterly still.

It was hard to describe the feeling—like something had fallen into solid liquid, swallowed and dissolved, leaving only a desperate sliver of blade protruding.

"Do you have a pick?"

"Would a breaker hammer work?" A weapon with a hammerhead on one side and a pointed beak on the other was passed over.

Kraft took it, pressed the point against the stone surface once, then raised it high and brought it down hard.

The beak did not bounce back immediately; instead, it sank deep, fracturing the unevenly brittle rock and exposing a sponge-like network of cavities, filled with unidentifiable semi-fluid and granular mixtures that dispersed into a murky, water-smeared layer.

Far more than just the blade had been inserted—the bricks themselves had been partially replaced; the sight of such pus-like decay on inorganic material was especially grotesque.

Those substances were quickly washed away; water seeped into the fine pores, bubbles rising from deeper layers of decayed organic matter, spreading in filamentous tendrils like the webbed tentacles of some deep-sea burrowing creature.

"Keep moving," Kraft said, rinsing the hammerhead in the water and drying it with the torch before returning it.

The brief incident was quickly forgotten, yet the strange sensation it left behind clung deeply.

Whether psychological or not, the cultivators began to feel the tunnel was no longer clean; every slightly different stain or crack was subjectively magnified, compelling them to speculate about their meaning.

As if in response to this suspicion, the passage began to quietly reveal more.

At first, only minor superficial damage appeared—barely noticeable unless examined closely, carved with tools unsuitable for chiseling.

Lines intersected in pseudo-regular patterns, attempting to form some meaningful image, but all failed without exception; no matter where they began, they collapsed after a few turns, lost and directionless.

Like a painter waking in the night, trying to capture a fleeting dream-image, their speed could never keep pace with what slipped away.

But the thing was too profound, too vast—it dominated all their thoughts, impossible to dispel or abandon.

Yes, "they." Multiple distinct carving styles were visible, varying in force and technique, countless in number, growing more frequent and dense as the path ascended, until a crude form began to emerge.

In a corner near the surface, the first closed, complete shape appeared.

It was a crooked geometric figure with six straight sides, its lines tending outward, yet ultimately stopping there; nearby lay patches of porous, discolored stone.

It seemed something had mixed with the brick, its weaker parts rotted away, leaving behind a structure similar to what they had seen when breaking open the bricks earlier.

As Green held the lantern closer for inspection, the darkness within the fine pores—or something else—shrank back in a hallucinatory flinch, retreating deeper and leaving behind empty, damp, fold-like inner surfaces.

The priest turned to the others, asking with his eyes if they had seen that moment—but it had been too fast; the distant cultivators understood nothing. Even he couldn't be sure whether it was a visual illusion triggered by seeing a familiar symbol, born of tension.

The professor, however, seemed stirred; he blocked a student from approaching, but what drew his attention was the geometric shape.

Each side of the rough hexagon extended into jagged lines, suggesting infinite expansion beyond what was drawn—a single corner of a larger whole.

He had previously thought it merely a symbolic glyph, but now it seemed to carry another meaning, originating from something that left an extremely deep impression.

"What exactly are these?" Green stared at the eroded sections of the brick; he felt they weren't entirely random—he could faintly discern a contour, if only he shifted his perspective slightly.

Some areas concentrated along the outer edges clearly contained unusually high metal content, exceeding any known iron ore.

No one could explain how they formed; this only heightened the team's vigilance.

The chaotic geometric lines continued to grow, until they covered walls and floor, overlapping and intersecting.

Hexagons of varying sizes began appearing in clusters, often accompanied by suspicious porous, sponge-like zones; the feeling became clearer with every new example.

Their position had far surpassed previous exploration limits, yet the tunnel still extended. The carvings and the dense, fear-inducing porous structures now began to thin out, replaced by familiar slender marks—smoothly incised into the bricks, their cross-sections pristine and flawless.

As they passed a niche, a cultivator cried out, drawing his weapon and pointing at the piled objects within.

From its bloated silhouette, it was clearly armor, wedged in place by its position.

Helmet and lower body were missing; the detached arm guards had been scattered, and though the breastplate was heavily rusted, it still stood firm, unmoved.

Kraft, the fastest to react, had already pried open the oil jar's seal—but the armor showed no change from the moment of the cry until the entire team was on guard.

Inside the illuminated armor clung a layer of shell-like calcareous sheen; something had altered it, and now it was gone; the broken edges appeared surprisingly fresh compared to the rest.

Recent human intervention.

The priest tried to lift it with his sword. His failure made him notice the armor's lower half was firmly fused to the ground—stone and rusted iron merged, their junction densely covered in sponge-like porous structures.

The grotesque, painful hypothesis finally formed—it was as if some inexplicable misalignment had occurred; the hard armor, useless as protection, remained intact, while the fragile contents quickly rotted away—or became material for constructing some other soft-bodied creature—leaving behind sponge-like cavities.

The heat and light of the torch triggered a reaction; he noticed small, shelled creatures moving, trying to flee the broken edges and hide in the armor's shadows.

"Professor Kraft?"

Without needing to be told, a long pair of tweezers appeared in Kraft's hand, firmly gripping the creature, applying slight pressure to detach it from the calcified surface, producing a soft, suction-cup-like pop of pressure change.

It was no larger than an adult's thumb joint; from afar, its structure resembled a snail—but no snail shell was this pale white, nor did any snail possess soft tissue wrapping half its hard body in reverse.

The soft parts had no fixed shape, slowly contracting and expanding to form filamentous tentacles that probed the air for purchase; what appeared to be a shell was, in fact, a dull, pale stone.

As one cultivator leaned closer to observe, the tentacles suddenly accelerated, lashing toward his eye, attempting to drill in—but the professor reacted faster, pulling back in time to prevent it.

The soft body resumed its sluggish pretense, and Kraft placed it inside a thick, round glass vial.

"What the hell is this?"

"Unknown. First, eliminate the possibility of a local Dunling snail species."