Chapter 275: Knight Island

Green looked away from the liquid in the bottle; this uncondensing blackness held a strange attraction for the eyeballs, as if everyone could glimpse some hidden secret through it that was impossible to refuse.

"Truly a terrible thing."

"Indeed," Kraft agreed; there was hardly anything more dangerous than this. The small amount of black liquid in the bottle, perhaps less than five milliliters, could be diluted to complete nearly a thousand general anesthesia surgeries, or gradually send the residents around a water source into a deep state without their knowledge.

Now flowing from a soulless corpse, it seemed to personally verify the theory that "black liquid represents stillness and end."

"Regarding what caused it to liquefy completely, I have an idea, but I can't immediately think of how to verify it."

"Better not verify it; I don't want to know." The priest reached for the bottle. By all rights, such a dangerous item should not be left lying around unless absolutely necessary; the most suitable place for it would be a box known only to a few.

The fingers gripping the bottle remained motionless. "Really? Generally speaking, only by understanding the principle can one prevent it better."

Rare self-doubt shot from Green's narrowed eyes; he examined his own reflection stretched into a line on the round glass. Damp cold air drilled into his collar, a chill spread across his back, and sweat beads seeped from his temples.

"Truly terrible," he repeated, casting one last look at that patch of black before withdrawing his hand.

"Glad to earn such trust; I promise you will see it again." Kraft nodded, wrapped the bottle in cloth, stuffed it into the pack before his eyes, and placed it next to "Snail." "Now let's see what else we can dig out from the cold leftovers."

Undamaged equipment remained on the table; Kraft found a pair of pliers with an exceptionally long beak and a scalpel with a blade length approaching that of a dagger, both perfectly suitable now.

He thrust the pliers into the mass of new creature transformed from part of the deceased, clamped a fragment of the pale Moon Bone, and pulled it outward.

The chaotic semi-liquid body immediately began to boil; new buds emerged like bubbles on the surface of boiling water, growing rapidly. Through the semi-transparent skin, segmented flexible cartilage supporting them could be seen.

Indeterminate matter differentiated at a terrifying speed, aggregating into muscle-fiber-like force structures attaching to the cartilage surface, like a flower formed by several pairs of hands stacked together, closing in to grasp the stone fragment.

The biomass adhering to the fragment's surface quickly turned white and toughened, its texture approaching that of tendon tissue, pulling to prevent separation.

Within seconds, it completed the differentiation process from embryo to birth, forming a response measure tailored to the current situation, at the cost of a noticeable shrinkage in volume.

The carefully polished blade severed the connection; the "fingers" grasped at nothing, moving blindly.

Kraft put away the sample carrying a bit of tendon tissue, poured oil over the remainder, and lit it.

Like a water stain under sunlight, it shrank rapidly upon sensing the heat; peripheral tissue dried out, concentrating moisture and the still-active parts around the remaining few small stone fragments, but it was useless.

Soon, only fragments, scattered bone, and a pile of thoroughly burned black ash remained in place. The scene was quite reminiscent.

Kraft picked out the needed parts from it to store in a jar; a thrill like a tiny electric current surged through his left arm holding the pliers.

The skin embedded with foreign objects sensed a desirable scent; its expression in the nerve endings was like the natural attraction of heated protein and fat to taste buds—a profound desire to incorporate the same kind into itself.

Kraft disliked this feeling, especially when thinking of the origin of these things.

So he consciously shifted his attention away for the moment, inspecting the empty coffin placed in the center of the area.

The main body was sculpted from a single piece of pure white marble; a lid of the same material had been removed and placed aside. The outer side was carved with a man of resolute face, hands crossed over his chest; the finely carved chain-ring patterns on the cuffs indicated a layer of chainmail beneath the outer garment.

The space inside the coffin could hold about one and a half people; now it was completely empty. The uneven stone walls were fully visible, rippling and undulating like white paint wiped across a canvas, blended with some other colors that looked somewhat dirty.

Ashed fabric, rust, and the dark hues of wooden objects were mixed into the stone, blended with some bright, glaring reflections of precious metals.

The substances mixed like a stew, congealing into a single mass, while the tomb owner who should have lain inside was nowhere to be found, nor was any sieve-like structure seen in the sewers.

Except for the completely deformed Funerary items, it could be said to be overly clean; not a single trace of anyone having ever lain there could be found.

After rummaging around, Kraft found no textual Funerary items, so he gave up on this side and tried to seek information from elsewhere.

As expected, the habit of carving stories onto walls was indifferent to ancient or modern times, regions, or organizations; as the central area, this place naturally had narrative carvings to show the past to future generations.

Compared to the abstract maps in the corridor, the reliefs on these walls were much simpler and easier to understand; they were all relatively realistic scenes, and the sequence was easy to sort out by comparing before and after.

The more one understood what had happened, the more fear and disbelief grew in the heart. The things appearing in the records did not come from familiar public memory, but from another ancient and distant time, a hidden, dried-up tributary of history.

The first relief work depicted some kind of religious scene: under a sky half replaced by starless, moonless darkness, a crowd of people with unidentifiable clothing styles was led by a tall, slender priest, bowing to a celestial body just as ancestors worshipped the sun or moon.

It looked like the moon, yet completely different. It was a flawless white perfect circle, pierced in the center by a crack, with lines arranged around it seemingly depicting that this object possessed considerable illumination.

Those figures whose sizes were obviously different from others always stood between the dark sky and the normal scene, seemingly symbolizing the ability to communicate between different worlds or to travel through them.

A religious society of indeterminate era; the reliefs showed they once possessed buildings of immense scale, no less than today's churches, even surpassing them, yet no window-like structures appeared.

The next few scenes were all without exception related to their faith; occasionally, a few images of war and conflict were lightly brushed over in secondary positions, with the enemy immediately appearing in the religious leader's ceremony—as supplies.

This stable, monotonous social structure seemed destined to endure like the celestial body they worshipped until the end of time.

Without warning, an exceptionally grand meteor shower, never appearing in existing records, fell. Lines occupied the entire sky; scorching things descended from the heavens, causing Shanfeng to crack, rivers to change course, and the earth to melt, turning into a sea of fire.

Everything changed. The survivors looked up and saw a completely different world.

That celestial body had become the form known to Kraft, shattered and cracked, dim and lightless.

On the ground at the impact point, the fallen molten matter cooled and cracked, forming countless hexagonal joint rock columns. Something more destructive to the religious society than the natural disaster occurred—a part of the object they worshipped fell into the present world, along with some black substance perhaps related to the disaster.

Social upheaval came faster than post-disaster famine and disease; priests became strange upon contact with the fallen objects, and internal division soon arose.

Slender, twisted limbs; swollen skulls; more often, images that were not very clear yet extremely realistic, as if people literally broke the boundaries between themselves and merged into one, or new spines grew from heads with blurred facial features, commanding redundant, repetitive bodies.

The religious dissolution began when the recognized original symbol of the bisected ring was no longer unique; new groups adopted the broken ring, or simply the hexagon of the fall site, as new symbols, and some snake-like patterns of unknown origin also began to appear.

It was already impossible to distinguish what exactly they were worshipping; the disaster turned into a carnival feast. Their pursuit of the deity's body led them to invest human labor into large-scale underground construction to approach the great fallen object deeply embedded underground.

The end of this civilization is unknown, but it can be seen that a priest, perhaps still somewhat clear-headed, chose to flee with his people.

When the clothing of the figures in the reliefs gradually approached the styles recorded in the kingdom's history, those traces of past madness were almost completely washed away.

They became a normal family integrated into the normal crowd; like most bloodlines that vanished into the dust of history, members had no idea where they originated from. Even if a small portion retained one or two pieces of information far older and blurrier than myths and legends, they might not care.

Until a group of people wearing double-winged rings set foot on this land suspended overseas.

The specific process was not depicted in the reliefs, but most likely due to the traditional skill of collecting and recording knowledge, a smart person soon discovered something from scattered ruins and suspicious rare ancient texts.

By then, the missionaries were struggling to move on this fragmented and divided land.

Not surprisingly, the emerging church found the remnants of the ancient faith, seeking cooperation, hoping to awaken a power they did not understand from the deeply buried past, snatching chestnuts from the fire.

In the reliefs, a monk who had not yet worn the high mitre of a cardinal stood side by side with a person clad in chainmail, standing before a giant hexagonal well.

The rest of the part required no further viewing; hardly anyone was unfamiliar with this segment.

Only the faint crackling of torches remained in the space; the river of history rippled before their eyes, the already turbulent surface shattered, revealing a surging, dark corner beneath.

"Let's continue; there's nothing more to see here." Green hid his hands under his cloak; his shoulders twitched several times as if to make some movement, but he finally gave up.

The team left through the tomb exit on the other side, climbing along a long, spiraling staircase; the water droplets dripping from above decreased.

After ascending a height equivalent to nearly several floors, a stone slab sealed the path upward.

"Dead end?" Kraft tapped with the counterweight ball; a hollow echo returned from the opposite side. He tried to pry up the stone slab. "Unlikely. Give me a hand."

The priest and the monks stepped forward to push together. Space was limited; only three or four could exert force, and there was no obvious sense of movement.

Until Yvon squeezed in by virtue of his size, joining their ranks.

As the sealed earth cracked and ground, choking dust fell from above. The stone slab slowly lifted, flipping open to one side under an incredible force.

The group crawled out of the tunnel and discovered that what had been pressing on their heads was not a single stone slab, but an entire stone coffin.

The view suddenly opened up. They seemed to have arrived at a place resembling a small chapel. Crimson light filtered through mosaic windows into the room, shining on the faces of the monks, who were on the verge of tears. Outside, a statue of a knight on horseback stood tall; its left hand held the reins, while its raised right hand was empty.