Chapter 710 — Deep Underground

In that brief instant, Bard was suddenly dazed. He blinked, and his long-yellowed memories began abruptly to turn over. Deep in the recollections buried beneath a muddled, gray life, in the last warm afternoon in his mind, he had worn his uniform and sat astride a horse; his daughter had clung to his clothes, unwilling to let go; his father had stood by the roadside. The last words he had heard from his family — they seemed to have been exactly these few words...

Now he no longer had the right to face any of his old acquaintances.

Bard turned and walked toward the triangular gap that gave off a dim glow, his figure gradually vanishing into the darkness.

Gao Yang withdrew his gaze and looked toward an open patch of ground beside one of the great roots on the left. There, a metal base supported a luminous crystal that hovered in midair, slowly rotating, releasing its abundant mana steadily, lighting the mana crystal lamps nearby and activating the Mana Net terminal set up on the open ground.

It was a high-power arcane obelisk. It sustained the mana supply for the trunk region of the Great Tree Solin, and it was also the signal hub for the communication device Bard carried. Throughout the operation to come, conditions in the root region of the Great Tree Solin would be transmitted back through that crystal.

Not far off, the soldier monitoring the Mana Net terminal reported loudly, "We have an image, Your Majesty."

"Let's go wait over there," Gao Yang said, nodding to Amber and Pi Yun beside him. "Bard will likely be moving down there for a long while."

...

Dim, deep, the path winding as though it led to an endless abyss.

Some kind of luminous moss clung to the surfaces of the nearby vines and roots, producing a limited light. That faint glow was not enough to illuminate the path; instead it made the way ahead loom and flicker, all the more dangerous. So after advancing some distance, Bard switched on the lighting device he carried.

Cecil's arcane technology really was convenient, he could not help thinking.

The way was not easy. In theory there should have been a broad ramp here, but the Great Collapse and the rampage of the artificial god had caused the palace's structures near the surface to cave in completely. The fallen earth had formed steep slopes — fortunately, those roots, come from who knew where, were so densely tangled that they laid a gentler "road" over the slopes, and normal progress was still possible.

Following the "road" formed by the knotted roots, and guided by the shattered stairways and corridors around him, Bard cautiously chose his direction, advancing little by little into the depths of this ancient subterranean palace.

He knew this place well — but like almost every member of the Cult of Myriad Silences, he did not know who had built this ancient palace.

Yes: though this was the lair of the Order of All Things' End, the lair had existed long before those dark druids took it for their own.

The End of All Things had only rebuilt the ramps and corridors of its uppermost level that connected to the surface, so that its members might come and go in secret—but that palace deep below, spanning the underground chasm... with the engineering capabilities of the End of All Things, it could never have been built.

That palace might even be older than the Kingdom of Ansu; perhaps it could be traced back to the era of the Gondor Empire.

Or... older still.

Following the path in his memory, Bade walked cautiously deeper. He passed through the great ramp of the upper region, through the shattered assembly hall and the twisted, broken corridors of the antechamber, and beyond that lay the original structure of this underground palace.

Crooked walls stretched away before his eyes, their surfaces still bearing half-ruined magic-net units; somewhere in the distance a surviving magic-crystal lamp seemed still to be working, casting a glow that flickered bright and dim. These modern creations born of "Cecil technology" appeared here in the dark lair of the End of All Things, and that lair itself was built upon a still more ancient and mysterious ruin—all of it gave Bade a poignant sense of eras colliding. He shook his head, carefully skirted a few slick vines, and pressed on through the corridor now claimed by the roots of giant trees, vines, and moss.

At the same time, he sharpened his vigilance, keeping constant watch over the state of his own mind.

In the depths of this underground palace there existed a strange power the pastors called "divine echoes." It might be the erosion of reality brought on by the dark druids' study of forbidden knowledge, or it might be a power the palace had possessed from the beginning; the deeper one went, the more pronounced its influence became. The mentally weak would begin to hallucinate in the middle levels, their minds flooded with terrible and twisted knowledge, and deeper still, even flesh and limb might mutate—strange and impossible to guard against.

In theory these forces were all suppressed at the very lowest level, and for many years they had shown no sign of actively seeping outward—but heaven only knew whether, after such a cataclysm, the wards of this ancient ruin still held. Bade was not afraid to die, but he had not come all this way merely to throw his life away.

He arrived at the council hall.

This was where the sect's priests deliberated matters, and this hall, along with the whole level it occupied, was also the place he had most often visited as a mid-ranking priest.

He vaguely caught some sounds—it seemed someone was whispering—but when he strained to look, there was only a tangled knot of roots where the sound had come from.

The "communication device" he carried at his chest was running; runes and crystal gave off a faint light. Bade groped for a "button" on its surface and, in the manner the soldiers had taught him before he set out, pressed the switch and lowered his voice: "This position is the council hall. Beyond this I'm not very familiar with the way. Should I keep going down?"

No answer came from the communication device—only a hollow, low rushing sound.

On the surface, Gao Yang, Amber, and the others stood beside the magic-net terminal, above which a holographic image of the underground palace's depths was being projected.

In the glow cast by the lighting devices, the surroundings just ahead of Bade were clearly visible.

The image had not moved for several minutes, but Bade's faint breathing still came through normally, which meant he was still alive.

Amber scratched her hair, her face full of puzzlement: "Why is he just standing there without moving?"