Translator: Lonelytree Editor: Lonelytree
There appeared to be a dark tunnel inside the tree hole. Gu Jun moved ahead and felt himself being swallowed up, surrounded, and buried by darkness…
He did not feel anything off about his physical body, and he had a good handle of his consciousness. It was why he could notice the enveloping silence; even the sound of his steps had disappeared. Slowly, a barely noticeable white light appeared in his eyes. He moved toward in that direction as if hypnotized by it. The low sound of conversation shattered the silence. Gu Jun suddenly found himself out of the tunnel. He saw Captain Xue and the other Demon Hunters standing before him, and their conversation became much clearer.
Gu Jun took a deep breath. His first reaction was to look around. The path inside the rotten tree was behind him. It was the trunk of a dead large tree. It had a decayed tree hole at the bottom. It was hard to tell what kind of tree it was. Underneath his feet was blackened dirt. It was not muddy, and according to Captain Xue, it did not give off any stench either. But for some reason, it reminded Gu Jun of death. This place had been dead for a long time; that was the only explanation for why all signs of living had been wiped clean. The Demon Hunters had taken a sample of this place on their previous excursion for examination. The density was categorized, but the age could not be dated.
Currently, the oldest patch of dirt found on Earth was from thirty-seven hundred million years ago. It was a soil residue found inside a rock in Greenland. The Earth’s age was estimated at forty-six hundred million years old, but the soil here was much older than that. It was so old that all type of human dating methods like radio isotopes were futile. This abnormal space did not belong on Earth.
“Phew.” Gu Jun looked into the distance, and all he could see within his line of sight was this barren land. It was like the shadow of a giant demon. The sky was grayish white, and it was curiously still. Therefore, it did not look like a layer of clouds, but it felt more like they were covered under a ceiling. Was this an empty tower suspended in the sky, or was it a cage?
The horizon around them were intercepted by the stone wall. Even if they tipped their heads backward, they could not see the top of the wall. The wall rose in the distance, and it also rose inside their hearts.
“Ah Jun, are you okay?” Xue Ba’s voice travelled out from Gu Jun’s communicator. Wireless communication could be used normally in this space.
“I’m fine,” Gu Jun answered.
Xue Ba nodded at him and then reported back to the other world. “Command, the Demon Hunters have arrived at the space with the high walls. Everyone is in perfect condition. We are planning to split into teams. Team A will head toward the wall with the foreign characters while Team B will stay behind to guard the tunnel. Over.”
Their message could be sent out, but they could not receive the reply from outside, so this was a one-way communication.
The delineation of the team composition had already been decided when they were outside. There were sixteen of them in total. Team A would have ten people, mostly consisting of investigative and scientific research members; Team B had six people, mostly consisting of members responsible for miscellaneous duties. Both teams had members to provide offensive support, and everyone had a gun strapped before their chest. Even though the videos taken back would be distorted, both teams had members capturing everything with cameras, and the videos would be sent out in radio ground wave form. Actually, Gu Jun was not that confident about splitting up; in most horror movies, bad things only started when the group was split up…
However, he looked at everyone’s equipment, and some of them even carried C-4. Even Uncle Dan, a medic, was equipped with a CQ assault rifle, so he felt slightly comforted. Actually, every member of Special Mobile Force had military training. They had to keep up their training before they joined the forces and when they were in active duty. Of the entire team, he was the only rookie.
“Team A, come with us.” Xue Ba led the way. The other nine moved to follow and trekked across this broken wasteland. Compasses were useless in this place. They used the path of the rotten tree as a point of direction. The wall with the foreign character was to its north.
Gu Jun followed in between Uncle Dan and Zhang Huohuo. Other than the soft footsteps of the team, there was only silence. There was not even the sound of the wind. However, the soldiers that came from the Action Department—Lou Xiaoning, Zhou Yi, and Gao Mingpeng—maintained their alert up as they scanned the area around them. Lou Xiaoning was a rare female member. She was about thirty and could not be considered tall, but currently, she was lugging a ninety-five auto and carrying a QN-202 mini rocket on her back—it was a backpack that contained six missiles and a rocket launcher. She was the main damage dealer of the team, and she was more manly than any man at times.
Along the way, Gu Jun was reminded of something. He turned to ask Xue Ba, “Captain Xue, is there a night and day cycle here?”
“There’s not!” Uncle Dan jumped to answer. “Isn’t that the strangest thing? The place always has the same brightness, and the sky is consistently that color.”
Everyone could hear that. Lou Xiaoning grumbled with dissatisfaction, “Uncle Dan, you are our doctor! So, how come you are so insistent on creating a horrifying atmosphere for us? Are you that afraid of retirement? You sure are one cunning old coot.”
The group laughed.
“Fine, fine. How about I tell a joke to ease the tension then?” Uncle Dan chuckled before he launched into a joke, a sleazy one at that. This made everyone laugh even harder. Even Gu Jun was tickled. This was one interesting middle-aged man. Xue Ba laughed the loudest. Uncle Dan making lewd jokes was a fixture among the Demon Hunters, and reality had proven that it was effective at lowering their tension.
The journey of 1,037 meters was not that long. After ten minutes of walking, they reached the front of the wall. They were about twenty steps away now. Before that, Gu Jun had already seen the majesty of this wall. It was constructed from blocks of large gray stone slabs, and there was barely a gap between the slabs. The construction work was truly impressive. It was so tall that the top could not be seen as it curved down both sides. After standing there for who knew how long, there was still no sign of disrepair on the wall. The scale and size of this circular wall was far beyond any ancient building human beings had created. Like the dirt underneath their feet, the geologists could not tell what kind of stone this was, and they had no idea why every stone slab had some kind of special pattern on it.
1
When the group reached under the wall, Xue Ba pointed and said, “Ah Jun, the row of foreign characters is over there.”
“I will go take a look.” Gu Jun continued to move. Xue Ba and Lou Xiaoning guarded beside him. When he was ten steps away, Gu Jun could already see the foreign characters on the wall. The dark color and messy handwriting… they appeared to be carved on the large stone at the most bottom layer of the wall. He took a few more steps forward. He focused his eyes, and he could sense the language wiggling, coming to life before him.
‘That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die,’ Gu Jun mumbled this in his heart. He raised his head to try to look up the wall, and a sense of existential anxiety rose in his heart.
1
“Ah Jun, can you understand this?” Xue Ba asked, the anticipation and urgency clear in his voice. Lou Xiaoning and Uncle Dan were listening in as well.
“Yes, I can…” Gu Jun nodded slightly. He was about to recite the statement when there was a suddenly shuffling. The giant stone with the foreign characters crumbled and sank into the dirt. The place where the giant stone once stood became an underground entrance. It had stone stairs that led to a seemingly endless abyss.
The group was taken by surprise by this change when the urgent calls came from members of Team B. “Captain, the tree has suddenly collapsed. The tunnel appears to have caved in… The light has disappeared; the tunnel has disappeared!”