383: Chapter 383 The Temple Opens, An Unexpected Attack Occurs!

Liu Bi's voice came from afar.

He walked with a slightly hurried pace, crossing the dense grassland as he rushed toward the direction of the temple.

Behind him followed Sergei and an elite squad of about thirty people.

The team members still had black slime splattered on them from blocking the Insect Swarm, but their formation was orderly and they were in good condition.

Chen Pingan had already completed the construction of temporary fortifications and was leading his men to block the Insect Swarm pouring in from the cracks in the Wind Wall.

Only then was Liu Bi able to free himself up to lead a team to support the exploration of the temple.

Lin Xiao walked toward them, and the two groups met on the grassland on the outskirts of the temple.

Liu Bi looked up at the twelve-story pavilion enduring the repeated assaults of the Insect Swarm, then looked down at the grassland covered in mycelium and the skeletal remains scattered across it, his brow furrowing into a knot.

Lin Xiao did not waste any words and concisely repeated Jing Hua's analysis of the runes.

The essence of the statues was an energy-absorbing device constructed using rune-sealing technology, using the life force of living beings as fuel to maintain the three-layered defense mechanism of the temple, as well as the special barrier covering the entire desert.

As for the skeletal remains on the ground.

These were not believers guarding the temple, but Heze civilians who had been completely abandoned after their life force was drained.

Finally, regarding the truth of the public event.

So-called protection was merely guarding a cruel mechanism that had operated for over a hundred years at the cost of tens of thousands of lives.

Liu Bi remained silent for a good while after hearing these words.

It wasn't as if he hadn't seen dead people since entering the Astral Express survival game.

But a death toll on the scale of tens of thousands, and in a place like a "Temple" that sounded like it should represent sanctuary and redemption.

This contrast made him feel quite uncomfortable.

"So now, severing the mycelium can weaken the defense mechanism."

Liu Bi suppressed all his emotions and pulled his attention back to the task at hand.

"Correct." Lin Xiao pointed to the mycelium veins that were withering after being severed. "At the very least, clear away everything on the surface that we can reach."

Liu Bi nodded. "Understood!"

The thirty people brought by Liu Bi, plus the Merfolk Guards brought by Princess Xiyao, totaled over forty people.

Consequently, Lin Xiao counted the personnel and divided everyone into four groups, each responsible for clearing the mycelium around one statue.

Sergei pulled a military dagger captured from the Silver-White Train out of his backpack; the blade was coated with a layer of pale blue enchantment aura.

The burly man crouched beside the pedestal, using the dagger to cut the mycelium spreading from the cracks in the stone one by one, his movements clean and efficient.

Every slash precisely cut into the most vulnerable middle section of the mycelium.

"Suka, this thing is even more disgusting than the bugs!"

He muttered, tossing a piece of still-wriggling mycelium onto the grass and crushing it fiercely with the sole of his boot.

As the mycelium was severed over a large area, the temple's defense mechanism was intuitively displayed on that layer of golden light film, which was gradually dimming.

The coverage area of the light film shrank by nearly half, from dozens of meters outside the temple toward the interior.

However, a layer of extremely faint light still shrouded the temple itself.

Like a dying candle, flickering on the verge of extinguishing.

While Lin Xiao and his people were working hard to destroy the mechanism, the Insect Swarm did not give the temple any chance to catch its breath.

After the light film weakened, those black Scarab Beetles that had been circling and probing the perimeter reacted almost simultaneously.

The dark, dense Insect Swarm converged into a black torrent, launching increasingly fierce offensives against the temple.

In just about ten minutes, the faint light wrapping around the temple dissipated completely.

Following the Wind Wall, the second layer of the defense mechanism also completely failed.

Although the light film had failed, the light sphere at the top of the temple was still operating, occasionally erupting with a light curtain of extremely strong destructive effect, clearing away all the Insect Swarm that rushed to the front of the temple building.

Lin Xiao seized the opportunity, taking advantage of the gap while the light sphere released its area-of-effect attack, and led his team along the moss-covered stone steps to reach the main entrance of the temple.

The moss on those steps felt slippery to step on, and several stone bricks had already shattered.

The main entrance was a wooden double door over three meters high; the red paint on its surface had completely decayed, cracking into countless tiny fragments that fell off with a rustle at the slightest touch.

A stone plaque was embedded above the lintel, carved with several characters that had long been weathered to the point of being unrecognizable.

Lin Xiao stood in front of the door.

Liu Bi and Sergei led thirty elite soldiers to guard his sides, all weapons unsheathed.

The Merfolk Guards had already deployed a defensive formation on the plaza below the steps, the tips of their double-bladed tridents pointed uniformly toward the temple gate, ready to respond to any sudden situation at any moment.

He looked back at the people behind him and nodded slightly.

Then, he pushed the wooden door open with force.

Accompanied by a dull creaking sound of friction, the heavy door panels slowly swung inward.

A gust of cold wind surged out from the crack in the door; the temperature was significantly several degrees lower than outside, carrying a sour, rotten smell.

It was like the foul odor produced after some kind of organic matter had accumulated and fermented for a long time.

Everyone covered their mouths and noses; Xiao Tian and Princess Xiyao subconsciously took a step back, both wearing expressions of repulsion.

When the door was fully opened, the scene inside the temple was finally presented to their view.

It was completely different from what Lin Xiao had expected.

He had originally thought the temple would be filled with offering tables, shrines, and various sacrificial utensils, or that it would be similar in structure to the interior of the Qitian Temple.

But in reality, the first floor of this temple could almost be described as "completely empty."

There were no statues, no offering tables, and no identifiable sacrificial items.

Embedded in the surrounding walls were several rows of bronze candlesticks; the lamp oil had long since dried up, and the wicks had weathered into grayish-white powder.

The entire main hall had only the daylight filtering in from the open temple gate; further inside, it was a dense gloom.

Liu Bi took out the military flashlights captured from the Silver-White Train from his backpack and distributed them to the people around him.

The beams of the flashlights cut several pale white trajectories through the darkness, sweeping across the floor.

Looking out, the ground was covered with unusual, strange floor tiles.

Each one was covered with complex characters and symbols, varying in size and shape.

The floor tiles were pieced together, covering the entire floor of the main hall.

Lin Xiao entered first, shining his flashlight, and lowered his head to carefully observe the text and patterns on the stone tiles.

Although he couldn't understand the meaning of these scribbles, the direction of the lines and the structure of the symbols seemed familiar, as if he had seen them somewhere before.

They were inexplicably similar to the Rune Array he had seen.

Just as this thought emerged in his mind, Jing Hua walked in from behind.

"Master, don't you think these floor tiles are very similar to the rune stone slabs on the fourth floor of the territory?"

Jing Hua held a flashlight, shining the beam onto the nearest floor tile.

Her expression appeared exceptionally solemn under the backlight of the flashlight.

Hearing Jing Hua say this, Lin Xiao nodded subconsciously.

He recalled the large rune facility on the fourth floor of the territory used to convert stardust and source essence.

When Jing Hua built the Rune Array back then, she used stone slabs of different shapes, carved them with rune imprints, and spliced them together according to a specific arrangement to form a complete energy conversion circuit.

Although the text and symbols on the temple floor tiles were not exactly the same as the rune imprints on those stone slabs.

They were very similar in style, as if they had the same function.