239: legend

Under Shen Mingyuan's precise and steady manipulation, the ancient mechanism behind the mural, so exquisitely crafted as to be almost unbelievable, emitted a few nearly imperceptible soft 'clicks' before falling completely silent.

The anticipated hidden compartment or secret door did not appear. It seemed the sole purpose of this mechanism was to ensure the mural itself would not be violently destroyed or incorrectly triggered.

'Deactivated,' Shen Mingyuan said, withdrawing his tools and taking half a step back. His deep red visor scanned the mural and the structure behind it, confirming there were no further hidden dangers.

'There is no cavity behind it, only pure mechanical linkage. It's now locked. This is more like a... security device to prevent theft or accidental activation.'

Professor Chen sighed with relief, yet also with some disappointment. 'No hidden relics or information? Such an intricate setup, just to protect a mural?'

'Perhaps the mural itself is the information they wanted to protect,' Lu Jianchuan said gravely, his gaze falling on the scenes depicting migration. 'Let's move forward. The answers should be inside.'

The team composed themselves and pressed on deeper into the ruins. The passageway wasn't straight but curved gently downward. The air grew increasingly cool, carrying the scent of earth and stone settled over ages.

After walking for about ten minutes, the path ahead suddenly opened up, revealing a stone hall several times larger than the entrance.

And at the far end of the stone hall stood an even more massive, more imposing stone door.

This door shared the same neat, orderly style as the passageway, but the patterns carved on its surface were several times more complex and dense, covering almost the entire face.

Beside the door, there was also a noticeably raised stone platform. Its surface was smooth, its edges worn, clearly showing signs of long-term use.

'An altar...' Professor Chen recognized its purpose at a glance, his voice heavy. He hurried to the giant door and looked up, examining the murals upon it, the spot of light from his illuminating equipment moving with his gaze.

'The narrative here... has changed,' he murmured, his tone growing increasingly unsettled and doubtful. 'Look, it's still that leader, that hero... but his form...'

At the most prominent position in the center of the door was still that tall figure.

But unlike the purely human form in the previous murals, he was now depicted with dense, flowing lines surrounding his body's outline—that was hair.

Due to the passage of time and fading colors, the original hue could not be discerned, but it was definitely not clothing or ornamentation. This was body hair growing from his physique, bearing wild characteristics.

His posture also seemed more powerful, even faintly exuding a non-human majesty.

'He... he's changing? Turning into a half-man, half... half-beast?' Xiao Wu stammered, holding up his camera, his voice trembling slightly.

The subsequent content of the mural was even more unsettling. The transformed 'hero' was positioned high in the scene, with prostrate, kneeling crowds below.

There were scenes depicting people offering livestock, grains, and other items. But there were also several scenes... where those being pushed to the forefront among the crowd were clearly living people!

Ritual dances, peculiar ceremonial gestures, and that lofty, blurry figure receiving all offerings together formed a picture of a primitive, savage, and oppressive faith.

'Human sacrifice...' Cynthia uttered the words coldly, her deep blue eyes showing little surprise. Such things were common in ancient times.

'It's more than that,' Professor Chen said, his finger trembling as it brushed over an area severely blurred by water stains or peeling. 'The crucial parts later on... are unclear, completely damaged.'

Unwilling to give up, he almost pressed his face against the door. Together with his student Xiao Liu, he used a soft brush and an archaeological flashlight to meticulously clean the finer traces at the mural's edges and the seams of the doorframe.

Time passed bit by bit. The stone hall was filled only with heavy breathing and the soft rustling of brushes.

Shen Mingyuan did not disturb the professor's work. He once again utilized his armor's sensory capabilities.

Ultrasonic waves meticulously scanned the massive door, its pivots, and the surrounding rock mass.

The feedback on the structure was clear: no mechanisms similar to the previous intricate one were found. The door pivots were thick stone, fitting tightly with the frame, but they seemed... merely heavy.

'Professor,' Shen Mingyuan spoke up after a long while, breaking the silence. 'No mechanical structures are detected behind the door. It's likely this door wasn't fitted with an opening mechanism, or the mechanism has completely decayed. Structurally, it appears... it can only be forced open or pulled open by external strength.'

His judgment cast a pall over the group. The weight of such a massive stone door was unimaginable.

'We have to force it?' Wei Ziqing looked at the giant door, then at Shen Mingyuan's armored form.

Shen Mingyuan didn't answer. Instead, he stepped forward, placing both hands against the cold stone door. He took a deep breath—though this action was imperceptible beneath his armor—and the muscles in his legs, abdomen, and back, coordinated with the armor, exerted force.

*Creak... Groan...*

A low, grating friction sound arose. The immensely thick stone door was actually being slowly pushed open by him, creating a crack! Dust fell in cascades. The door pivots emitted a piercing groan, but they turned nonetheless.

Shen Mingyuan continued to exert force. The crack grew wider until it was large enough for two people to pass through side by side. From behind the door, a rush of air colder than that in the passageway, carrying a strange sense of emptiness, flowed out.

The light from their equipment eagerly rushed into the doorway, only to be swallowed by endless darkness as if devoured. It could only illuminate a small patch of rough ground just inside the door. Beyond that lay an abyss of impenetrable blackness. This wasn't ordinary darkness, but a void that seemed to trap even light itself.

Shen Mingyuan stood by the doorway, his deep red visor fixed on that darkness.

He switched perception modes. In thermal vision, ahead lay a cold, lifeless silence devoid of any heat signatures.

Ultrasonic waves spread forward, but the feedback made him pause slightly: a few steps ahead, the ground... disappeared. The echoes indicated a sudden, vertical, bottomless drop.

'Stop!' He immediately raised a hand to stop Wei Ziqing, who wanted to step forward to look. 'There's a cliff behind the door, bottomless. No path.'

'A cliff? Inside the mountain?' Lu Jianchuan frowned, also moving to the doorway and shining a powerful flashlight downward. The beam pierced the darkness but failed to reach the bottom, casting only swaying light spots on the rock walls, revealing the scale of this chasm was far beyond imagination.

At that moment, Professor Chen, who had been hunched over in a corner by the door, almost lying on the ground, suddenly let out a short, excited sound.

'Found it! Here... carved in relief at the base of the doorframe, are characters! Very ancient symbols... Oracle Bone Script! Although severely worn and incomplete, a few glyphs can still be faintly recognized...'

Everyone was drawn over. Professor Chen and Xiao Liu treated the find like a treasure, cleaning the faint marks with the utmost gentleness.

'This... this glyph...' Professor Chen's finger traced one of the relatively clear composite symbols in the air, his brow furrowed in intense concentration as he searched his lifetime of knowledge.

Oracle Bone Script is obscure and difficult, with characters often having multiple meanings. Interpretation relies heavily on context, and they had almost none.

Time passed minute by minute. Finally, Professor Chen abruptly looked up, his eyes filled with unbelievable shock. In a dry, slow voice, he uttered what he believed, after repeated deliberation, to be the most likely interpretation:

'These two characters... if I'm not mistaken... combined, they likely refer to... 'Bai Ze'.'

A deathly silence fell over the stone hall.

'Bai Ze?' Wei Ziqing repeated subconsciously. 'That's... a Divine Beast from mythology, right? Can speak human language, understands the nature of all things, knows the affairs of ghosts and spirits...'

'Correct,' Professor Chen's voice still held a tremor.

'An ancient Auspicious Beast. Legend says when the Yellow Emperor traveled east to the seaside, he once encountered Bai Ze. Bai Ze described to him the forms and names of eleven thousand five hundred and twenty kinds of ghosts, spirits, and strange creatures. The Yellow Emperor ordered it recorded, creating the *Bai Ze Tu*... But why would that name appear here? Carved before this door?'

Everyone stared at the doorframe inscribed with 'Bai Ze' and the bottomless darkness beyond the door, momentarily falling into silent confusion.

'Bai Ze... why is it here?' Wei Ziqing repeated again, as if trying to chew some realistic clue from this mythical name.

Professor Chen shook his head, his brow deeply furrowed. 'Too little information, can't establish a connection. But since it's carved here, this chasm beyond the door must be related to it.'

Shen Mingyuan's deep red visor remained fixed on the depths of the darkness. He tilted his head slightly, as if listening to echoes beyond normal perception.

'My sonar detection shows that from the edge of this cliff downward, the rock walls are sheer and vertical. At least within the detection range, no artificially carved platforms, passages, or hidden mechanical structures were found.'

His voice, transmitted through the armor, stated the facts calmly. 'Either the original builders never intended anyone to go down, or... any path that existed has been completely destroyed, or is undetectable.'

Lu Jianchuan crouched at the cliff's edge, carefully shining his flashlight on the nearby rock wall. As the light swept over one spot, he suddenly made a 'Hmm?' sound and signaled to Shen Mingyuan. 'Look here, marks on the cliff wall.'

Shen Mingyuan approached and looked where the beam pointed. On the rough, uneven natural rock face, one area appeared unusually 'clean.' Unlike the weathered surfaces around it, there remained some relatively flat, but jagged-edged fracture surfaces. One could even faintly discern the directional trend of some artificially carved lines.

Most importantly, the distribution of these fracture surfaces suggested a downward-extending trend.

'Something was broken off here,' Lu Jianchuan said gravely, his finger pointing at the traces.

'Not natural weathering or detachment. Something attached to the cliff wall, meant for climbing or walking—perhaps a plank road, a hanging ladder, even carved stone steps. Judging from the orientation of these remaining stubs, they spiraled or zigzagged downward. But now, most of it is broken, gone.'

Hearing this, Cynthia walked to the edge and looked down into the light-devouring darkness, coolly assessing, 'That complicates things. If there were originally downward structures, now completely destroyed... the only way down for us is ropes.'

'But a vertical chasm of unknown depth and environment...'

She paused, looking at the equipment everyone carried. 'The length of the professional ropes we brought is likely far from sufficient.'

'Moreover, even if the ropes were long enough, rappelling down carries immense risks. It's a severe test of stamina, skill, and psychology, not to mention potential unknown dangers. What should we do?'

The dilemma lay before them: the mythical name, the pathless abyss, the destroyed traces, and the lack of supplies.

At that moment, Professor Chen's male student, Xiao Wu, perhaps driven by youthful curiosity or a desire to try his luck in this desperate situation, took a few steps forward, closer to the cliff edge. Suddenly, he took a deep breath and shouted into the endless darkness below: 'Hey—!!!'

The sound echoed through the vast, empty space, forming layers of gradually fading reverberations.

Xiao Wu seemed to think this wasn't intuitive enough. He pulled a military-grade glow stick from his backpack's side pocket, bent it vigorously, and an orange-yellow glow lit up in his hand. He looked at the professor, then at the others, and said,

'I... I'll throw this down to get a rough estimate of the depth?'

Before Professor Chen could fully voice his objection, he had already tossed the glowing stick into the chasm.

The orange-yellow light spot spun, rapidly shrinking as it was swallowed by the darkness.

Everyone's gaze instinctively followed the falling light point, holding their breath, trying to estimate the depth by its descent time.

However, a sudden change occurred!

Just seconds after the glow stick's light vanished into the darkness, the echoing shout and the slight air disturbance possibly caused by the falling object seemed to trigger some switch that had slept for millennia.

*Hum...*

A low, deep vibration, not coming from sound but directly felt through the rock beneath their feet, was transmitted.

Immediately after, under everyone's astonished gaze, within the dark chasm below, on the cliff wall near their side, a point of soft, milky-white light ignited.

The light rapidly expanded, grew, accompanied by a 'rustling' and 'creaking' sound, as if something massive was scraping against the rock wall.

A gigantic, indescribable plant was 'growing' up from the darkness below at a visible speed! Its trunk was as thick as an ancient tree, its surface showing a texture akin to intertwined jade and wood, emitting a faint, milky-white fluorescence.

Even more astonishing, on both sides of this main trunk, thick, tough vines or aerial roots grew out regularly. These vines weren't chaotic but precisely wound, linked, and covered the remaining fracture marks on the cliff wall!

Within a mere dozen seconds, a spiral, downward aerial staircase, with the luminous giant plant's branches as its main structure and the entwining vines on both sides as railings and steps, 'grew' out from the darkness. It stably connected to the cliff edge at their feet, extending downward, vanishing into the interwoven fluorescence and deeper darkness.

It perfectly 'repaired' those broken traces, forming a path leading down into the abyss, glowing with a mysterious biological light.

A deathly silence filled the stone hall, broken only by the faint 'creaks' the plant seemed to emit as it slightly adjusted and stabilized its structure.

The fluorescent light illuminated the expressions of utter disbelief on every face.