荔枝影院

Edited by: Michyrr

“It’s about ready!”

Around an hour later, while the six bellows were still pumping air, Wang Chong swiftly descended into the pit. Gao Xianzhi and Bahram followed behind him.

Just as expected!

After going down a little, Wang Chong stabbed his fingers into the wall and stared. Even though this pit was pitch-black, Great Generals like Wang Chong had a skill akin to night vision. On this wall, Wang Chong could clearly make out a mural.

Unlike other murals, this one had been created by pouring molten metal to embed it into the wall. Strangest of all was that this metal was the same color as blood.

Wang Chong examined it for a few moments before quickly understanding what was going on. While the metal was being poured, large quantities of human blood had been mixed in. As a general who had gone through hundreds of battles, Wang Chong could not be wrong.

The mural thickly exuded the style of the Sassanid Dynasty. At his best, Wang Chong was barely able to recognize the images of demons with horns sprouting from their heads and a field of human corpses behind them.

“Demon god!”

At that moment, an intense odor suffused with the stench of death assailed him.

Unlike what they had told the guard outside, the mural in this pit was the true reason Wang Chong, Bahram, and Gao Xianzhi had appeared here.

The Central Plains did not have many legends about demon gods, but in this place, everyone deeply believed in them and did not doubt that they actually existed.

“This a ruin from an ancient era. The words on the wall should be from the era of the Elam Dynasty.”

Bahram’s voice came from behind Wang Chong. He had stabbed his fingers into the wall and was also examining that bizarre mural.

“Can you tell what it says?”

Gao Xianzhi’s voice came from the other wall and above Wang Chong and Bahram, curious and inquisitive.

“I do not know!”

Bahram shook his head, his expression solemn.

“But I can recognize the meaning the mural wants to communicate. This place is a forbidden ground and entry is not permitted!”

For a moment the pit was deathly still, everyone feeling an indescribable feeling.

Every empire and every region had its own ancient legends and civilizations. These powerful civilizations had disappeared from history long ago, but they had left their remnants and traces in the dust. It was clear that the Elam1 Dynasty was one of these.

“Let’s go!”

Bahram used his powerful Stellar Energy to venture deeper down the pit. Behind him, Wang Chong and Gao Xianzhi exchanged a glance before climbing down the walls. The deeper they went, the darker it became, and turbid air began to assail them, almost suffocating them. Only now did the other two understand why Wang Chong had pumped in air using the bellows.

As they climbed down, nobody spoke. After some time, Wang Chong released his grip and landed on the floor.

“So high!”

Wang Chong glanced upward. From his viewpoint, the entrance was the size of a sesame seed. Wang Chong estimated that the bottom of the pit was several hundred meters from the surface.

Wang Chong quickly turned his eyes to what was in front of him. The bottom of the pit was completely different from what they had imagined. It was not cramped or narrow, but actually an enormous natural cave.

This cave was twenty meters high and extremely spacious. The floor was uneven and speckled, and dark green light could be seen leaking out from a few cracks.

Wang Chong immediately noticed an enormous black silhouette in the cave.

It was an enormous palace.

“This... How?” Gao Xianzhi murmured in shock as he dropped down. The sight of this ancient palace preserved so well deep underground left him speechless. If he had not seen it for himself, he would have never believed that a long-vanished ancient dynasty would have left a palace complex here.

Unlike the city of Khorasan above, the palace complex underground was simple and grandiose. The most striking feature of this palace complex was the twelve enormous pillars. Moreover, unlike the Great Tang, Khorasan, or Arabia, these buildings were made entirely from bronze. The dark green light they could see was probably mostly from the bronze making up these palaces.

“Impossible!”

Wang Chong was also examining the palace. This place exuded a completely different style, and the air was heavy with the scent of history, immediately drawing them through time, bringing them to the Elam Dynasty that was said in the legends of the Sassanid Dynasty to have existed several thousand years ago.

“It really is a ruin of the Elam Dynasty!”

Sighs of praise could be heard as the other rebel leaders climbed down the pit and stared in shock at this perfectly preserved palace complex.

Crack!

As all of them were examining this underground palace, there was a sharp crack, almost deafening in this underground world. Everyone immediately looked over and saw that a rebel general was standing in front of a corpse. From his expression, he had been given a fright from stepping on the corpse.

“It’s those fallen rebel soldiers!”

Wang Chong’s brow rose as he quickly recognized the corpses. There were seven or eight more corpses in the area, and from their armor, Wang Chong could see that these were exactly the people who had fallen down the hole before them. They were very far from where they had fallen. It was as if they had discovered these underground ruins as well and had gone ahead to investigate.

But their severe injuries meant that they were never able to get their wish.

“Go! Let’s take a look!”

A rebel leader was the first to react, striding over a corpse and heading forward. The dead were gone but the living still had to survive. It was impossible to bring back the lives of those soldiers, so the urgent matter at hand was to find out what was going on with these underground ruins.

As this rebel leader strode forward, Wang Chong and Gao Xianzhi followed.

“What a strange place!”

Wang Chong cautiously took stock of his surroundings as he walked. Everything here was new and fresh to him. Not even Wang Chong had ever personally laid eyes on the ruins of an ancient civilization.

As the group cautiously proceeded, they were able to make out in the dim green glow more and more bronze murals, each one depicting a different scene. But they were all similar in that they depicted a demon god and human corpses. The aura of death and gore exuded by these murals was so intense that it was almost stifling.

“Wang Chong, don’t you think these murals are rather strange?”

Wang Chong turned and saw that Gao Xianzhi was examining a large mural, his brow tightly furrowed.

“What’s wrong?”

Wang Chong walked over in surprise.

“These murals appear to be demon gods slaughtering humans, but if you look carefully, don’t you see that these demon gods almost all have their backs to the humans?”

Gao Xianzhi slightly frowned.

“Oh?”

Wang Chong quickly followed Gao Xianzhi’s gaze. The demon god on this mural was much larger than the other demon gods. Behind it was also an endless field of bones and corpses, but unlike the other murals, behind this demon god were clearly a few living humans, all of them looking at the demon god’s back, but it wasn’t possible to see the expressions on their faces. Now that Gao Xianzhi had mentioned it, Wang Chong clearly noticed the peculiarity. If the demon god was slaughtering humans, it should have been facing them.

“Lord Gao, what do you mean? The humans in these murals are perhaps not being killed by the demon gods as we imagine? These demon gods might be facing an even more powerful threat?”

Wang Chong’s brow furrowed as he began to think.

Both of them immediately fell silent. Everyone felt that it was only natural for demon gods to slaughter humans, but the humans in the murals were not being killed by the demon gods. Then... the two of them seemed to think of something, and their brows furrowed even more deeply.

“Look over there!” A cry came from nearby. A rebel leader stared at a certain symbol on the wall in shock.

“A symbol of the Seventy-Two Demon God Pillars is here!”

Buzz!

This observation sent shockwaves through the crowd, and they all began to gather around it. Bahram was the first to reach the mural, and Wang Chong and Gao Xianzhi exchanged glances before rushing over.

Between murals, Wang Chong and Gao Xianzhi clearly saw the symbol of a golden mountain goat, but unlike normal mountain goats, this goat had three horns growing from its head, each one incredibly sharp and piercing into the sky.

And if one looked carefully, one would also see that this mountain goat had a pair of golden vertical pupils that appeared extremely callous and cruel.

Wang Chong stared pensively at this golden symbol. The Seventy-Two Demon God Pillars were renowned throughout the lands to the west of the Cong Mountains. Abu Muslim’s martial art had come from the Seventy-Two Demon God Pillars, as had the technique Osman had used to escape from battle. In this world, the Seventy-Two Demon God Pillars had an extremely long history.

“Impossible! The Elam Dynasty and the Seventy-Two Demon God Pillars didn’t even exist in the same era. Why would they be related to the legend of the Seventy-Two Demon God Pillars?” A rebel leader stared at the demon god symbol on the wall in shock.

The crowd was buzzing with chatter, all of them apparently greatly perturbed by the appearance of the Seventy-Two Demon God Pillars.

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1.Elam was an ancient civilization located in what is now southwestern Iran that existed from 2700 – 539 BCE.↩