Chapter 306: Piling Bones, Forging Souls

The boat landed with a shudder, like a chill running through its frame.

The lake water rose and fell incessantly; they stepped into it, secured the boat with ropes and long nails in a safe spot to ensure it wouldn’t be swept away by an unexpected wave, then carefully stepped onto the “island.”

Beneath the towering, oppressive pillars, the ground felt like sediment gathered around aquatic reeds—light, unstable, ready to be washed away and collapse at any moment.

Several incomplete, water-submerged stone ridges suggested this might once have been a small dock, but given the depth—so shallow that even a flat-bottomed skiff had to navigate with difficulty—it was hard to imagine what vessel it was meant to harbor.

The structures, of indeterminate style, clung to the stone foundations like barnacles, half-collapsed.

They belonged to no known architectural style; one might call them “Dunling Ruins Style”—lacking distinctive features or unique details, yet exhibiting extraordinary craftsmanship that preserved them under extreme conditions.

Stones, quarried on-site and smoothed, were tightly fitted together to form walls and arches that were not tall but remarkably sturdy, identical in construction to sewer systems, revealing the builders’ superior grasp of spatial geometry.

It was the kind of thing that appears in certain monotonous, recurring nightmares—when order becomes so extreme, it breeds discomfort.

There was no trace of life or artistic expression, not even a whisper of culture, nothing that could be called “humanity.” These were merely structures—functional, devoid of any added meaning.

If a regional settlement were personified, these buildings would be its face, the source of its first impression.

Yet when visitors tried to meet the gaze of the ancient inhabitants through these ruins, they saw only a blank, featureless face. Human traces had been erased, leaving only something utterly pure as its sole remaining hue.

These structures evoked fear more readily than submerged aquatic life, hinting that those who once dwelled here were a strange race, transformed from their own kind but now utterly incomprehensible to them.

But they could not stop. They had come here with such grand intent—not to tour the outskirts of ancient ruins.

Greene had initially wanted to leave someone to guard the boat, but considering that firelight might attract creatures lingering near the shore and that two people could do nothing in the face of real danger, he ultimately abandoned the useless gesture.

With an indescribable feeling, the team began advancing inward, searching for any possible clues.

The traces observed indicated the site’s transformation had been remarkably complex.

Cracks and corners were packed with sediment, most of which had hardened into a semi-mud, semi-stone consistency, smoothing over some contours, layered with uneven, mottled colors formed by different materials at different times.

On the stone surfaces were gray and white circular or irregular small protrusions, likely from barnacles or oysters capable of adhering to hard surfaces; membrane-like and fluffy coverings were common on shallow-water reefs, mostly associated with algae and aquatic plants.

All signs indicated this place had sunk beneath the water more than once.

And at those times, the lake water was far from lifeless—it was even relatively rich, certainly not as barren as filtered lime water.

They probed torches into several relatively intact structures; the original contents had long since lost their form, crumbling under wind and water erosion, with only portions encased in sediment retaining rough outlines—no human remains were found.

It was hard to say whether the residents had left voluntarily or been destroyed by some disaster. How they survived here was also a mystery—perhaps when the lake water was less pure, they could have sustained themselves by fishing and gathering edible aquatic plants.

But even setting aside the technical feasibility, freshwater biological resources would have been far too scarce to support a town-sized settlement.

The featureless buildings piled up repetitively, appearing chaotic yet possessing a certain order, causing the team to frequently feel the illusion of having been here before as they wound their way forward.

As they penetrated deeper, something of indeterminate purpose began to appear: stone pillars rising straight from the ground. The local terrain made crafting them easy—simply select a natural stone, give it slight shaping, and carve it into a standard hexagonal column, then add various patterns atop.

They were firmly anchored in massive foundations, or else carved directly from solid rock, fused seamlessly with the ground—most still stood upright.

The decorative patterns fell into two starkly different styles: one of flowing, serpentine interwoven curves; the other of straight lines descending vertically from each of the six sides.

Thanks to their superior geometric skill, the patterns were rendered with exquisite precision, perfectly symmetrical and balanced, radiating an irresistible, eerie harmony—strikingly conspicuous amid the monotonous architecture, like a mirage of a temple on the horizon of a spiritual wasteland.

The designers exhibited a peculiar obsession with height. Regardless of thickness, the pillars towered far above their heads, reaching nearly one and a half times the height of most doorways—perhaps driven by the same psychological impulse as cathedral spires, an instinctive expression of “height.”

This meant one had to climb the surrounding ruins to see the tops of the pillars. As expected, they found half-circles, broken circles, and twisted lines with no discernible beginning or end.

The deeper they went, the denser and larger the pillars became, some thick enough to require a full arm to encircle, forming a dizzying forest of columns.

Among them were a few whose material inspired dread—pale white, or an intensely deep, light-absorbing black, causing those who had seen similar things to feel a jolt in their chest.

But after careful observation and touch, Kraft realized these were not the two substances he had imagined.

Though they appeared nearly identical, they lacked something intuitive—reduced to ordinary materials with unusual appearances, their texture a rough, granular blend of chitinous molt, limestone, and bone.

【They are dead.】

This intuition was strange, comparable to the difference between a freshly stored corpse and a sleeping person—their composition is nearly identical, yet their essence is entirely different.

He felt a pang of regret, like seeing a patient die just before a new cure is born—a feeling he had never experienced before. It was as if part of him had come to regard these things as living beings, even as kin, developing a tendency to mourn them as one mourns one’s own kind.

Shaking off the inexplicable emotion, the team passed through the forest of pillars and emerged into an open space.

At the center of the space were several hexagonal pits, each the size of a well, nearly filled with silt, stones, and debris—based on what they had seen, these must have been the foundations of especially massive prismatic pillars.

The religious totems that once stood here were gone, ripped away by an unimaginable force, as if lifted by the combined strength of a thousand hands.

The pillars, like stalks of wheat, had been felled, clearing a broad passage that extended outward, crushing buildings, upturning roads, and pointing straight toward the shore, vanishing into the clear water.

“That makes sense...”

This was the same entity they had encountered in the royal tomb—or rather, that chaotic army had been imitating this behavior.

【Aggregate, proliferate.】

If one army was not enough, what of an entire ethnic group? An entire ethnic group that once lived across the islands of this underground lake, a Babel built from bodies and souls—had it undergone a transformation, drawing closer to the supreme realm on the other side?

Or was this true path of unification, this living temple, still one step short, wandering in the lake, waiting for the final few bricks?