Chapter 262: Snail

As usual, the team skillfully skirted the edge of the hall; they had walked this path so many times they could recall which doorframe had too much moss and which had a deep ditch beside it.

They arrived at that indistinguishable tunnel entrance; Green gently shook the small iron bottle, confirmed the rustling sound was as normal, and entered.

Having advanced only a few minutes, Green stopped before a niche, brushed away newly deposited silt, and showed Kraft the surface of the stone bricks.

It was a short, narrow trace, roughly resembling the cross-section of that rusted iron bar, slightly raised above the plane, presenting a reddish-brown hue that fit it perfectly, like a strange texture resulting from stirring rust chunks with rock.

They blended like oil paints, interlocking with one another, easily evoking associations in anyone who had seen similar things.

This was where that blade segment was first discovered. More fragmented traces existed around it, like melting fat churning in a soup pot, yet the surface remained utterly calm.

It is hard to describe that feeling, as if something had fallen into a hard liquid, been swallowed and dissolved, leaving only a desperate tip of the blade sticking out.

"Do you have a pickaxe?"

"Will a armor-breaking hammer work?" A weapon with a hammerhead on one side and a pointed beak on the other was handed over.

Kraft took it, gestured once against the stone surface with the tip, raised it high, and smashed it down.

The pointed beak did not immediately bounce off; instead, it sank deep into the interior, chiseling open uneven, brittle rock, exposing a sponge-like, Kong Dong-shaped cavity containing unidentifiable semi-fluid and granular mixtures that scattered into layers of murky color with the water.

What was inserted went far beyond the blade itself; parts of the brick and stone had been replaced, and the sight of an abscess bursting open on an inorganic object was particularly grotesque.

Those things were quickly washed away; water filled the fine Kong Dong, bubbles brought up deeper humus, spreading in thread-like strands like the webbed tentacles of some marine cave-dwelling creature extending outward.

"Let's continue forward." Kraft rinsed the residue off the hammerhead in the water, dried it with a torch, and returned it.

The brief incident was soon left behind, yet the strange sensation of that moment remained deeply etched.

Whether due to psychological effects or not, the cultivators began to feel the tunnel was less clean; every slightly different stain and crack was magnified subjectively, making them involuntarily guess at their meanings.

As if responding to this suspicion, the passage began to spew forth more things in small fragments.

At first, they were trivial superficial damages, visible as man-made only upon close inspection, carved with sharp tools unsuitable for drilling.

The lines crossed in a seemingly regular pattern, attempting to combine into some concrete meaningful figure, but failed without exception. No matter where the stroke began, it collapsed after a few turns, wandering aimlessly.

It was like a painter waking in the night, trying to retain things passing through a dream, yet the speed of painting could never catch up with what was lost.

But that thing was too profound, too vast, occupying all their thoughts, impossible to dispel or abandon.

Yes, it was "they." One could see more than one type of carving; the techniques and forces varied, countless in number, extending upward along the path, becoming increasingly frequent and dense until they began to take shape.

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

It was a crooked geometric figure with six straight edges; the lines had a tendency to expand outward, yet ultimately stopped there, with several patches of Kong Dong-shaped, loose stone stained with foreign colors distributed nearby.

It seemed something had mixed with the bricks and stones, leaving a structure after the weaker parts rotted and washed away, similar to the structure seen when smashing open the bricks earlier.

When Green held the lantern close to observe, the darkness within the fine Kong Dong—or something else—shrank like a hallucination, retreating deeper, leaving behind an empty, folded, damp inner surface.

The priest turned to look at the others, asking with his eyes if they had seen the previous scene, but it was truly too fast; the cultivators further away completely failed to grasp the meaning. Even he could not be certain if it was a visual error caused by tension from seeing a familiar symbol.

The professor seemed somewhat moved, blocking a student who tried to approach, but what attracted his attention was that geometric figure.

Folded lines extended from the rough hexagon's perimeter; the parts capable of infinite expansion were not drawn, representing only a corner of the whole.

Previously, he had thought this was simply some symbolic mark, but it seemed there was another meaning within, originating from something that itself leaves an extremely deep impression on people.

"What exactly are these?" Looking at the eroded parts within the stone bricks, Green felt this was not entirely ruleless; one could vaguely discern some outline, needing only a slight change in viewing angle.

Some parts concentrated mainly on the outer edges clearly contained a very high metal content, exceeding any known iron ore.

No one could explain the cause of formation; this merely raised the team's level of vigilance.

The chaotic geometric lines continued to grow until they covered the walls and the ground, overlapping and intersecting with one another.

Hexagons of varying sizes began to appear in patches, often accompanied by suspicious loose Kong Dong-shaped areas; that feeling became clearer as more examples were seen.

Their position had far exceeded previous exploration distances, yet the passage continued to extend. The carvings and the loose structures capable of inducing trypophobia actually began to decrease, replaced by some familiar, slender traces that smoothly sliced through the bricks and stones, embedding deeply with flawless, smooth cross-sections.

Passing a niche, a cultivator let out a cry of alarm, drew a weapon, and pointed it at the piled objects within.

Judging by the bloated outline, it was a suit of armor, perfectly wedged there due to its position.

The helmet and lower body were missing; the disconnected arm guards had been scattered apart, and the chest plate, obviously damaged and severely rusted, still stood motionless in place.

Kraft, reacting fastest, had already used one hand to pry open the seal of an oil can, yet that thing underwent no change from the moment the cry of alarm rang out until the whole team went on alert.

Inside the illuminated armor, a layer of calcium-rich, shell-like glossy surface was adhered; something had modified it, and now it was missing. The fracture at the damaged area looked relatively fresh compared to the rest.

It was recent human-made traces.

The priest tried to lift it with his sword. The failure of this action made him notice the lower part of the armor was firmly stuck to the ground; stone and rusted iron had fused together, with the bonding surface densely packed with Kong Dong-shaped loose structures.

A strange and painful hypothesis finally took shape—this seemed like some inexplicable displacement had occurred, overlapping with the brick walls; the hard armor, which provided no protection, remained, while the fragile contents quickly rotted and washed away, or became material for constructing some other soft creature, leaving behind Kong Dong-shaped voids.

The heat and light of the torch triggered some reaction; he noticed small, shell-covered creatures moving, trying to escape near the fracture and hide in the shadows inside the armor.

"Professor Kraft?"

Without him needing to say more, a pair of long tweezers appeared in Kraft's hand, firmly clamping the creature, using some force to separate it from the calcified inner surface, producing a clear sound of air pressure change like a small suction cup peeling off.

It was no larger than an adult's thumb knuckle; its structure, seen from a distance, resembled a snail, but no snail shell would be of such a pale white color, nor would it have soft tissue wrapping around half of a hard body in reverse.

Those soft things were not bound to a fixed form, slowly expanding and contracting to fabricate thread-like tentacles, probing for points of contact in the air. And what looked like a shell was actually a dull, Bai Shi-colored stone.

When a cultivator approached to observe, the tentacles suddenly accelerated and elongated, stabbing toward his eyeball, attempting to drill inside. But the professor reacted faster, pulling away in time, preventing it from succeeding.

The soft creature nonchalantly resumed that slow disguise, and was placed by Kraft into a thick, round glass bottle.

"What the hell is that thing?"

"I'm not sure; first, rule out it being a special local variety of snail from Dunling."