Chapter 181: Carvings?
“Oh, my!” Lin Wu exclaimed as he saw the carvings on the walls.
Unlike the carvings on the door, these ones were very well defined and could be seen clearly. They depicted a great battle between cultivators. There were many different types of them, some were sagely looking, some were demonic looking, some had muscular bodies that were laid bare while others that had beastly looking features.
But the one thing that was the most shocking was that they were all fighting on one side and they had a common enemy. The enemy was strange though; it had no fixed shape or form. It would appear like a cloud and turn into a liquid. It would shift into a solid form and appear as if a rock.
This thing did not seem to attack the cultivators directly, rather it would absorb and take over everything that it covered. It would slowly spread and take over worlds, one by one.
The entire four walls of the hall were needed to depict this and Lin Wu could guess that he would learn more if he went further deep down into the tomb. He thus looked around but couldn’t find any entrance to the next level.
“Huh? Where do I go now…?” Lin Wu wondered as he brought up the map window.
There he saw a small depression in the ground near the southern wall. Lin Wu could tell the directions easily due to the navigation markers which made it easy for him to orient himself. He walked to the place and checked it with his spirit sense.
The ground was made out of stone tiles, and this tile did not have anything below it, which meant that the path was likely to be below it.
~Crack~
But when Lin Wu put his tail on it, the tile cracked instantly and the stairway to the next level was revealed.
“Oh, my weight broke it…” Lin Wu realized it.
‘Meh… doesn’t matter…’ Lin Wu thought, before descending down the stairs.
He was checking the map side by side and ensuring that everything was fine down there. Till now no signers of life had been detected by the system, which meant that this place had been completely isolated and the beasts that tried to enter it back then, never got in.
Lin Wu reached the second level and saw more carvings.
This time the carvings depicted how the enemy spread its influence. After it conquered one world, it would explode it and launch its ‘seeds’ into the void. These seeds would stay dormant till they found something to latch on and then would devour that.
It would often take long periods of time, but the seeds would eventually reach some planet and would then start the same process all over again. Sometimes it was even accelerated by the conscious effort of certain cultivators.
They took advantage of the ‘being’ and used it to cause war and massacres for their profit. This went on for countless years and the repetition continued.
This was all Lin Wu could understand from the carvings on this level and called to system.
“System, you’re recording this, right?” Lin Wu questioned.
“Affirmative” it replied.
Lin Wu nodded his head and tried to find the next staircase. Unlike the last time, though, it wasn’t located on the floor but rather on the wall. This part of the wall was also rather unique, as it depicted the part where the cultivators spread the ‘being’.
‘Seems like there is some meaning here…’ Lin Wu thought.
He tapped on the wall and found it to be firm unlike the tile from the previous floor. He put more strength in his push and broke the wall apart. The staircase revealed itself and Lin Wu continued forward.
The third floor had more carvings just as he had thought, but it showed something distinct. The carvings here seemed to be of a much higher quality than before.
“Hmm, system something seems wrong here, can you check it?” Lin Wu asked.
~Ding~
——
ANSWER: No anomalies detected.
——
“Huh… am I just over thinking, perhaps?” Lin Wu muttered to himself.
He glanced at the carvings and felt as if they were much more realistic than before.
This time the carvings depicted only one planet that the being was spreading on. It had already taken up half of the planet and the other half was staunchly resisting it. The Resistance involved strong cultivators the likes of which it had never encountered before.
It was on this planet that the being met a cultivator that was able to resist it. The cultivator was depicted as a young man, whose left half of hair was black and the right half was white. His left eye was white while the right eye was black.
The depiction on the wall ended at the cultivator rising up and standing against the being.
“Interesting…” Lin Wu muttered upon seeing the carving of the cultivator.
He looked around for the next exit but couldn’t find it. Looking at the map he realized why.
“What the hell! The entire floor is the exit?” Lin Wu exclaimed.
The reason why he didn’t find any difference was that the entire floor was shown in the same shade.
“Feels like I’m in one of those retro games where you had to jump to break the floor…” Lin Wu muttered to himself.
He then coiled his tail on the floor and used it to jump up. The impact of him falling shattered the floor instantly, and the staircase was revealed. The staircase was winding this time, and Lin Wu started descending.
Lin Wu checked the map and the next level was twice as deeper than before.
‘The mountain has been completely hollowed out it seems… but if it is like that then its structural integrity should be poor too. Hmm… how is it still intact, I wonder?” Lin Wu thought.
The sixth level that he arrived on was very small compared to the ones before that were of an equal size.
