Chapter 265: The Tomb Maze

"Hey, take a look at this." Kraft brought the lantern close to the water's surface, illuminating the pool bottom.

This carved light-back shell occupied nearly three-quarters of the area, with hexagons of varying sizes and heights interlocking into a single unit, rigid yet possessing an indescribable pattern and harmony.

The straight ridges in the gaps showed those were the bases of numerous prisms, like a sunken, solidified lava island waking up, stretching out its basalt body composed of columnar joints.

And what supported it was not geological movement, but things possessing biological characteristics.

【Hexagonal Prism】

This geometric shape appeared frequently in various contexts, serving as the core of an anomaly or simply as a symbol.

Habitual thinking defaulted to viewing it as a rare thing, mostly scattered across the vast, silent world of the deep, reshaping mysterious biological tissues into shells for its own use.

But what if things weren't like that? They could just as well, like mineral veins, concentrate in a certain area, integrating into something capable of producing a qualitative change.

"I seem... to have seen this thing?" Confusion surfaced on Green.

The carving on the pool bottom brought an indescribable, strange sense of satisfaction, like an ancient, fragmented scripture that had long troubled him suddenly being completed, the logic before and after suddenly connecting, linking scattered realizations together.

Strangely, he could find no corresponding image in his memory, nor could he say exactly where he had seen it.

But deep impressions do not lie, burning hot in the mind like a scar.

He fumbled over his body, searching for paper, pen, or similar objects to aid his memory, trying to use his sword to draw on the ground, carving out grating white marks, "Let me think, exactly where."

A hand reached out, grabbing his right arm and interrupting the action, "The hall?"

"Oh, yes..." Green paused, looking incredulously at the thing formed by lines carved with the sword tip. Six sides, six angles, entirely guided by the subconscious, identical to the large patterns in the corridor, "How is this possible?"

"Nothing is impossible, but stop looking, it brings no benefit." Kraft stood between him and the pool, blocking his line of sight.

The priest pressed his forehead, pulling himself out of a strange revelation; for a moment, the small stone chamber felt expansive, with numerous figures standing on layers of recessed steps, looking down at where the water gathered.

Something was patrolling in the water below.

【He had felt that thing】

Just like those who embedded themselves in the stone walls, depicting it with all their might before death, except they felt more, gained more, and lost more.

This realization was almost like a divine revelation; the priest felt uneasy that he had never received a revelation of comparable degree in the holy scriptures. Almost at the same moment, he realized the distinction between himself and those people—he lacked a deeper connection with that existence.

【For example, a part of it】

He could get closer to that existence, understanding how it split the massive stone in two, just as the ancestors of the Pendra family were "chosen" to draw that invincible sword; the essence of the two might be exactly the same.

"The devil's promise is easier to obtain than a falling apple, more tempting than unguarded gold; you must know it is an invitation to hell."

The priest murmured softly, shifting his gaze from Kraft's personal pack, scanning the expressions of the others, searching for any sign of realization.

Fortunately, he found no similar reactions among the fellow monks. He cast one last look at the relief figures, revealing a somewhat complex expression, and walked toward the exit.

The steps leaving the stone chamber were somewhat narrow, offering almost no space to dodge; turning right three times over a short vertical distance, the design was similar to a castle tower, clearly advantageous for defense from above.

This was not utilized by those occupying the place; they simply never thought of a threat from the sewers bypassing traps and sentries, or perhaps they were numbed by a false sense of security.

The party safely passed this highly threatening section of stairs, entering... another, larger hall?

The place they entered originally should have been blocked by heavy objects, still retaining sliding rails and locking structures for movement.

It was a two-man-high stone statue, toppled to the ground, broken into three segments, head and body separated; the finely carved hands holding the sword were smashed along with the hilt.

Similar ones nearby suffered much the same treatment, pushed over and destroyed to search for hidden things.

A space capable of holding so many stone statues was certainly not small; it could be called a "hall." Judging from the traces on the ground, the debris now piled in the corners should originally have been placed in the center.

These wooden utensils, soaked through by the damp environment, were shelves and the weapons placed upon them; the handles were rotted like boiled bone spongy tissue, and the metal parts were unusable.

Worthless, or rather, anything meaningful was surely taken long ago and would not be left behind.

This place looked like a main hall or an armory, with two side doors leading to side chambers, from which asymmetric doorways opened into other spaces, appearing chaotically planned, or perhaps the endpoint and entrance of a maze.

Apart from the statues serving as decoration or distraction, the walls featured columns, high windows, and decorative reliefs resembling picture frames, simulating above-ground architectural structures, filled with non-utilitarian ritualistic feeling.

The narrative parts of the reliefs all presented old, clichéd content about military life, banquets, and awarding of medals, suitable for appearing in the living rooms of any noble castle conscious of a heroic lineage; they would hold important activities like power transfers and oath-taking ceremonies there, while also commemorating the past.

The site's arrangement once made the party feel they had drilled into someone's ancestral tomb; in Dunling, this was not entirely impossible.

But this was simply too large; even if far inferior to the hexagonal hall deep in the sewers, it did not seem necessary for an ordinary tomb chamber, let alone it was so damp as to be unsuitable for preserving anything requiring embalming, and possessed an overly complex spatial structure.

However, further discoveries reinforced the view that this was a family cemetery.

Inside a side chamber, several exquisitely styled stone coffins were neatly arranged; the pried-open lids fit the coffin bodies tightly, and the front featured life-size carvings of figures holding swords with both hands, possibly modeled after their appearance in life.

A layer of clay-like sealing mud remained at the joint, inferred to be used to enhance the sealing effect when closing the coffin; this was rare in burial customs but common in food preservation techniques.

The space inside the coffin was larger than imagined; if used to estimate the deceased's size, their height would be taller than the North's traditional notion of tall. The pitch-black inner walls indicated this place had undergone thorough burning, with an intensity identical to what was seen in the waterways.

Small pieces of carbonized matter lay at the bottom, seemingly smashed and disturbed, yet the precious metal Funerary items had not been taken.

"Heretics desecrating corpses." Seeing this messy scene, a monk couldn't help but comment.

Then he saw the accompanying professor pull out a new pair of tweezers and start rummaging inside.

"Professor Kraft, this is not the time."

"No, I just want to see this." Amidst a pile of ashes, Kraft accurately picked out an object with a different artistic style; it was clearly not a Funerary item.

It was a tool shaped like pliers, rarely deformed, but the ring for finger grip and the toothed long beak exposed its identity—a surgical hemostat, only a larger version.

"Quite strange. You know, we use this thing to clamp blood vessels or fix tissue." A corpse that could still use a hemostat and needed to be thoroughly burned?

"Once we deal with all the heretics here, we will have time to figure it out." Green felt they should speed up the search; easily eliminating two guards did not make him feel contempt, but rather something was off.

As an environment with seriously questionable security, the opponent's alert forces were excessively sparse.

Fortunately, the dampness here was not entirely bad; the ground's composition of unknown dust and mud mixed with water into a somewhat sticky paste, making it not difficult to distinguish recent footprints.

While following the footprints to search, the guess that the place's design considered defensive functions gradually solidified.

Tombs of various sizes were connected by similar corridors and stairs, going up and down, left and right, even not on the same plane, making one dizzy. After five turns, Kraft began to wonder how heretics could navigate without markers.

The overall logic was highly similar to Westmin Castle, even superior, ensuring outsiders could not get out in a short time through complex routes, with a high probability of getting themselves lost inside.

Sensitivity to patterns quickly allowed him to discover some regularities; the decoration of every doorway they passed differed from the others; the relief of the door-guarding guards stood holding swords, while those on other doorways all had sword tips pointing upward.

This greatly weakened the function of building a maze-like structure; for anyone slightly careful, it was as good as non-existent.

The winding path greatly lengthened the journey, but Kraft could feel the party was always moving within a limited horizontal area, with a general trend spiraling upward.

In a metaphor too obscure for the Northmen to understand, they were walking through an unknown model of a high-level Rubik's Cube, opening blind boxes by stepping into one cube after another, and discovering more coffins.

Their craftsmanship varied, but every one opened met with incineration.

The smooth passage did not last long; a glow soon pierced through the path ahead.

Green covered his mouth with his hand, signaling silence, halted the others, and advanced with the crossbow cultivator at a normal pace.

This tactic worked well—the first half of the approach drew no reaction, as if the other side had mistaken them for two of their own men patrolling the sewers.

Just as Kraft thought the priest would once again effortlessly clear this outpost, a hesitant voice asked: "Larry?"

It was a name.

Green hesitated for a moment, regretting he had not thought to take a captive.

As he pondered how to respond, the unresponsive light source shook violently, then rose, retreating with hurried footsteps.

"Damn it, catch him!"