Chapter 297: End Point

Under the waist-deep water, the miner's lamp clearly illuminated the bottom. I had originally thought that under my feet were still those fine broken stones, but somehow at some point it had changed. Among the gravel beneath our feet appeared some oddly shaped flaky stone pieces. I reached down and picked one up, only to find that it was actually a fragment of the same kind of pottery jar we had seen on the ancient sunken ship we excavated in Devil's City.

These pottery shards were buried in the gravel, only a small part exposed. One had to look carefully to distinguish them from the fine stones. Clearly, at this point, traces of ancient human activity had appeared. But judging by the quantity, there seemed to be quite a few, all hidden beneath the gravel.

Everyone started nudging the gravel with their feet, and soon more fragments were revealed. Fatty raised his miner's lamp high and shone it all around where we were standing, allowing us to see the underwater situation more clearly.

Under the gravel here, there was a large mixture of pottery jar fragments, not buried very deep, extending from where we stood far into the lake bottom without end. And the closer to the direction indicated by the mark Poker-face had left, the denser these pottery shards became. I could

Fatty dug deeper and found many more beneath the rubble. At this scale, it was impossible to count how many jars had been buried here originally. The fragments of these pottery jars in the water were sharp and angular, like blades, and mixed among them were human skulls, decayed and full of holes, mostly incomplete, some even still clinging to strands of hair—a truly chilling sight.

This scene looked very much like the sea-salvaged porcelain I saw near Xisha, where the entire seabed was covered in porcelain. But that porcelain was buried in white sea sand, looking ancient and mysterious, while these ugly jars were in gravel, and with the human bones and hair inside, they only made one feel disgusted.

Looking at those skulls, we all got goose bumps. "What the hell are these things?" Fatty clicked his tongue and said.

I had told them about what happened after excavating the shipwreck in the Yadan "Devil's City", but they didn't know the details, so I explained that these were the pottery jars we found then. According to Old Wu's account and what the relief showed, these should be offerings to snakes.

"Could there be another shipwreck behind this?" Fatty said while waving his miner's lamp.

I shook my head, guessing it couldn't be a ship. First, it was impossible for a shipwreck to sink so deep underground unless the lake had a passage to the outside. Second, these jars were offerings to those snakes, so they should be placed in places related to sacrificial activities. I thought this must be connected to the religion of the Queen Mother of the West. With so many, it seemed these jars were not rare in those times.

I agreed with Old Wu's idea that these were offerings, but knowing that was meaningless. My mind went back to Old Wu's screams at that time, and I felt a prickling sensation in my soles.

Recalling my experience in Devil's City, I was still a bit scared, but nothing should happen here. Judging by the damage to these jars, the insects inside must be long gone, and the human bones had rotted until they crumbled at a touch. After being soaked in water for a thousand years, it was good they hadn't turned to dust. Besides, pottery absorbs water; if there were sealed jars, water would have seeped in little by little over such a long time, filling them completely, so the insects should have drowned.

"With so many offerings, could the Queen Mother of the West's tomb be behind this?" asked one of Third Uncle's men.

I thought about it. Couldn't say it was impossible, but it was a completely unfounded guess. I thought to myself, better not.

Fatty said, "Whatever it is, we need to be careful. Don't step on those pottery shards. Who knows if these bones are poisonous? Xiao Wu, you'd better clean your wound quickly, or it might get infected. It'd be terrible if you need an amputation. And since these are offerings to snakes, there might be those wild chicken necks around. We have to be careful."

"Thanks for your concern," I said, glaring at him in annoyance. He didn't care at all and said curiously, "Odd, speaking of those snakes, I haven't seen any since we entered here. Where did all those hanging sausages go?"

Whatever cut my foot—whether a fragment of one of these skulls or a piece of pottery I stepped on—neither was a good thing.

Just then, Black Blind dived into the water and dug out half a skull. The back of the head was gone, revealing a gray gelatinous substance inside the cranial cavity that looked like a honeycomb. This must be the work of the corpse beetle king. Why there was a corpse beetle king in this skull was completely unknown, but guessing by the look of it, it seemed these jars sealed with human heads were used to raise this terrifying insect, somewhat like modern beekeeping. If Old Wu's inference was correct, this practice might have originated from some mysterious customs of the Queen Mother of the West period. Who knew where they caught these insects that nested in human brains.

We continued forward through the fragments, being especially careful not to get cut by the pottery underwater. The situation became clearer: the further we went, the more pottery shards there were underfoot. After walking less than a kilometer like this, we found ourselves on a shoal entirely composed of pottery fragments.

The entire area was covered with pottery fragments, large and small, mostly dark red and clay yellow in color. Beneath these fragments, many seemingly intact ghost-head jars were buried, looking as if there were several layers stacked under the water.

We couldn't tell how many layers of these things were buried under the fragments, but the scene was already creepy enough. Afraid of stepping on and breaking the ghost-head jars, we dared not advance recklessly and stopped to find a way.

Fatty wasn't interested in these broken things, and Third Uncle's men didn't dare touch them either, all drinking strong liquor to ward off the cold. But Black Blind was very interested, diving down again and again to examine the ghost-head jars closely. Fatty said impatiently, "Four Eyes, haven't you seen enough dead people? Why are you fishing those things up?" After searching around, it was all the same. This area was very large. To get through, we either had to go back the way we came and try to go around from the side, or steel ourselves and walk over these sharp bones and pottery shards.

Just as we were hesitating, I saw Wenjin looking at her feet, lost in thought. I asked her what she was thinking. She suddenly said, "Could it be that we've already arrived?"

"Arrived? What do you mean?" I asked, puzzled, then understood. "You mean this is our destination?"

She nodded. "It looks like we've reached a place where offerings were piled up. Such a place is usually a sacrificial site. We've already walked quite a distance. Do you think it's possible that this place is our destination?"

I looked at the ground and around me. It didn't seem likely, at least I couldn't accept it in my heart. What kind of place was this? There was nothing here except these ghost-head jars. Why had we gone through all this trouble to come here? If I wanted to see these jars, I'd already seen them in detail at Devil's City.

I looked at Poker-face, but he still didn't speak. Wenjin took out glow sticks, snapped a few to make them glow, and tossed them into the water around us, lighting up the surroundings. The others saw this and started doing the same, throwing glow sticks around. Soon, the water floor around us was lit with a faint green fluorescence.

We began to search for anything suspicious underwater. The water surface under the green light was eerily strange. This time we looked very carefully, but still didn't find anything unusual—just pottery shards everywhere.

We felt somewhat discouraged. I looked at the water bottom and thought to myself: if this place is the destination, then the only possibility is that something is buried under these pottery jars. But that should be impossible—so many people had been here before; if there was something underneath, it would have been dug up already. Clearly, this wasn't the end. We had to continue searching.

The most infuriating thing was that we had no idea what our destination looked like, and Poker-face couldn't remember anything.

I kicked the water a few times to shake off my cold and nervousness. Just then, I suddenly saw my reflection distorted by the ripples into a strange shape. Then I saw my face overlapping with my lower body, and the other areas reflected were pitch black.

My mind snapped to attention. I suddenly realized something and looked up above us. I noticed that sometime, without us realizing, the ceiling had become much higher, and it looked pitch black.

I shone my miner's lamp upward. The beam pierced the darkness but didn't reach the top. The lamp's low beam had a range of nearly forty meters, yet the cavern ceiling here exceeded that distance. I adjusted the lamp's intensity to the high beam, and suddenly the lamp emitted a blazing column of white light.

The people around me were all drawn by my sudden bright lamp, but I ignored them and aimed the lamp at the cavern ceiling, illuminating what was above us.

In that instant, I froze. I saw, embedded in the rock ceiling above us, a massive, indescribable object.

This thing was enormous. The part protruding from the ceiling was spherical, its diameter impossible to estimate, nearly covering our entire field of vision. It seemed to be rock in texture, but its color was completely different from the surrounding stalactites and ceiling. Strangely, the surface of this rock was covered with holes the size of oil drums, thousands upon thousands of them, dense and packed, looking incredibly ugly, like a lotus root riddled with cavities.

The others also followed my light and looked up. For a moment, no one spoke. Everyone was frozen stiff, the atmosphere solidified.

"What the hell is that?" Fatty muttered.

Wenjin murmured, "Heavens, this... this is a sky stone."