Chapter 27 Ancient Desolation Forbidden
In the boundless starry sky of the vast universe, many scientists wondered if Earth was the only place with life.
In the past couple of decades, humanity made countless theories and sent up many space probes trying to find life beyond Earth. But the universe appeared completely empty, deserted, and lifeless. It was an eternal dark and cold, and no life could be found at all.
The universe was simply too vast. It basically had no end. With humanity’s current technology, even if they could send out space probes that could escape the Sun’s gravity, they would take forever. Even if they had millions or billions of years, they would still find it difficult to reach the other side of the cosmos.
But today, that history had been broken. There were some people who had reached a new point in the starry sky. They had travelled many light-years; a journey humanity had never taken before.
However, all of this was something the people on Earth had no way of knowing. In fact, people wouldn’t even believe it, let alone celebrate it.
The nine titanic dragon corpses pulling the ancient bronze coffin had finally reached the other side of the starry sky and were now in the star field of the Big Dipper!
It was also at this moment that Ye Fan awoke. His hand left the green-rusted coffin wall. Hundreds of ancient words were now clearly imprinted in his heart and would forever be remembered, but they were hard to understand and extremely profound. It was only now that the divine music completely faded.
A Grand Dao. Each word was simple, yet cherished like gold. It contained everything to its fullest extent, yet brought it all back to true simplicity.
Ye Fan was lost in a daze. He muttered to himself, “The path to Heaven is broken and cannot be repaired…”
“Ye Fan, are you alright?” asked the deeply concerned Pang Bo.
“I’m fine.”
Throughout thisz time, the huge bronze coffin had been intensely shaking. Each person felt like the ground was moving under their feet; everyone knew that the nine dragons pulling the coffin were about to reach their destination.
At this moment, the Ancient Desolation carvings on the wall began to glow with divine light, and a hazy light curtain appeared that countered that impact force, causing the huge coffin to slowly stabilize.
With a final bang, the inner bronze coffin slid from its original position and slammed into a wall.
“Light!”
“I can see light!”
“It’s the familiar world with light!”
Many people in the huge coffin couldn’t hold back from exclaiming excitedly. They were no longer in the vast blood-colored emptiness of Mars. Fresh new air brushed that recollection away. The air was filled with the natural smell of fresh mud and flowers. The outside world was filled with vitality and light.
Everyone stood up and quickly rushed out of the large coffin. Before them was a magnificent and beautiful scene.
At this moment, they were standing on top a mountain that was not overly tall or short, and they could survey the scenery before them.
In the distance was an unbroken, beautiful mountain peak covered with greenery. Close to their mountain was a bizarrely shaped boulder and old tree. There were also some thick coarse vines that wove about like dragons. There was even a mattress-like field of grass and the perfume of wildflowers. The tableau shone with a healthy vitality and energy.
Compared to the deathly and dusky scene on Mars, this place was an incomparable holy land.
“This is great! We finally escaped from that dark and lonely place to arrive at such a beautiful divine land.”
“We no longer have to be scared all the time!”
Many people were celebrating, and some people were even crying tears of elation. Having gone through a string of life-and-death torments, they finally arrived in such a vivid and natural world.
“With this sunshine, we’ll all be able to live happily…” Even the astute and enchantingly beautiful Lin Jia was moved.
Pang Bo stood on top the mountain and yelled out at the top of his lungs, “I can finally see the sun again! Even if it’s not the same sun, but I’ll still shout out how I’ve gained a new life!”
Clang!
Suddenly, the huge bronze coffin emitted a metallic trembling sound that unhinged people’s minds, and they all turned back to look.
Over half of the nine dragon corpses were hanging off a cliff, so naturally the bronze coffin was also not far from the cliff. At this moment, the nine steel-like dragon corpses began to slowly slide off the cliff, bringing the bronze coffin and the top of the mountain with them.
Rumble!
The nine titanic dragon corpses and the ancient bronze coffin all emitted rumbling noises as they gradually sped up and directly fell off the cliff!
Everyone felt a cold sweat come upon them. The mountain cliff was very steep, and if they hadn’t immediately rushed out when they had, the end result was not something that people had to think about.
After the nine dragons and ancient bronze coffin fell off the sheer cliff, there was no impact noise for an extremely long time, confusing and shocking everyone.
Without the huge bronze coffin blocking their field of view, they could now clearly see the scene of the precipice.
“Are we standing on some super volcanic crater?” Many people were surprised since these sheer cliffs were so deep that the bottom could not be seen.
“It’s not a volcanic crater; there’s no way there could be such a thick volcano.”
Carefully observing, people noticed that there were nine huge mountains linking up with each other, forming an incomparably immense deep valley. According to common sense, such an open valley’s bottom would be easily visible since the nine mountains were not that tall.
However, there was simply no way to see the end just looking into the darkness below. It was an unfathomable depth like it directly penetrated into the Yellow Springs of hell.
The abyss formed from the nine mountains seemed endless. The nine dragon corpses and coffin had been falling for such a long time, yet there still hadn’t been any sound of them landing. Would they never reach the bottom?
“Just how deep is it?! How is this even possible?!”
“Just what kind of place is this that there would be such an immense abyss…?”
Everyone felt completely bewildered. Faint thoughts began to arise that this world wasn’t as beautiful and tranquil as its outer appearance.
Ye Fan observed all around them and said, “Have you guys noticed that there’s no five-colored altar here? It seems like we just fell from the sky to land here instead of appearing from the gate of the starry sky.”
Hearing him point this out, everyone was surprised. Only now did they really realize there was no five-colored altar. On this wide hilltop, the impact that should have been caused by a huge bronze coffin falling from the sky was nowhere to be found. There was no huge crater, only a couple large cracks.
If they had really fallen from the sky and smashed into here, the force of the impact would be hard to imagine. But strangely, this mountain didn’t suffer any severe damage.
“If there’s no five-colored altar, then why would we appear here? Is it possible this is the legendary anchorage point of the universe? This place pulls all things towards it and we had to stop here?” This kind of jest was not in the least pleasant to hear. Nobody smiled, and everyone was sweeping their eyes around them, contemplating.
“There’s half a stone tablet…” Zhang Ziling suddenly called out.
On the hilltop was a pile of stone rubble along with some ancient trees. A stone tablet could be seen, wrapped by a couple of old vines. There were very obvious signs that it had been created by artificial means.
Everyone quickly walked over, ripping off the dried up vines and some withered leaves. Immediately, they felt an ancient meaning overflowing from it. Three ancient characters were vigorously and boldly written on it. Each character seemed to have existed for countless years.
“What does it say?” Most people were not able to understand it.
Ye Fan stared at it for a long time before hesitatingly saying, “It appears to say ‘Ancient Desolation Forbidden.’”
“Ancient Desolation Forbidden…just what does it mean? It doesn’t make much sense.” Everyone had no way to figure out its meaning.
“This is just a broken stone tablet. There should still be more words after. But with the stone tablet broken, there’s no way for us to find the rest.” Pang Bo ripped off some more vines and found that there were many broken stones there that appeared to have broken due to a lightning strike.
“Those three words should be the abyss’ or the mountain’s name.” Zhou Yi had a pondering expression, and continued, “The word ‘Forbidden’ is most commonly followed by ‘Land.’”
“If you make such a connection, then wouldn’t it be ‘Ancient Desolation Forbidden Land?’” When a classmate said these four words out loud, everyone’s expression changed and they furrowed their brows.
This kind of name didn’t promote any good feelings, and many people became slightly worried.
“This abyss isn’t any holy land…,” said some people.
If this wasn’t a pure land or holy land, then if they were to base things on what was written on the stone tablet, this definitely wasn’t a good place.
“Have you guys noticed that there don’t appear to be any birds or beasts around us? It’s too quiet.” Wang Ziwen was quite scrupulous, and he felt that there was something wrong.
“You’re right!” Everyone nodded.
There were flowers, grass, vines, and trees here, making the area appear vital and alive. But a careful examination showed that the surroundings were exceptionally strange. They were absolutely void of any animals. On such a large mountain, there were no sounds of beasts howling. There weren’t even any traces of ants or bugs; it was practically the silence of death!
The ancient trees had no chirping of insects, the grass had no grasshoppers, and the sky had no birds. There was only a windy silence.
Pang Bo was still extremely optimistic. “No matter what, this place is still covered by green vegetation, so we’ll definitely be able to live off this place. And from this stone tablet’s words, we know there are humans on this planet. I refuse to believe that this beautiful world is an empty land of death.”
“Who said there were no animals, who said there weren’t any birds in the sky? Look…” Ye Fan made a new discovery at this moment, and he pointed up towards the sky.
In the distant sky was an eagle soaring. It appeared extremely exotic, as if its whole body was golden. Even though it was far away, it was easy to see its majesty. Its whole body seemed cast from gold as it shone.
At that moment, the golden eagle suddenly dove down towards a particular region of the mountain, and just a short period later it soared back up into the sky with prey in its claws, flying towards a mountain cliff in the distance.
“I…did I see wrongly?!” Seeing this sight, even the carefree Pang Bo was stuttering now.
“Why did I feel like… that golden eagle grabbed… what appeared to be a giant elephant?” Li Changqing was also stammering, feeling as if his whole mouth had gone dry.
“It’s not just you, it really was!” exclaimed Wang Ziwen. “It’s crazy that it could grab onto a huge elephant! Just how large does that eagle have to be for it to do this…?” After saying this, he also became speechless.
Obviously, people had misjudged due to the large distances involved. That eagle definitely had to be some sort of super-bird of prey.
Ye Fan continued to observe the distance, saying, “There’s no way there could be such a huge eagle with its whole body covered in gold. Its body shines like it really is made of gold, and its size is so tremendous; it appears like the Golden-Feathered Peng of legend!”
Hearing this, some people were once again petrified with fear.
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Author notes: “The path to Heaven is broken and cannot be repaired” comes from the Book of Dao by Taozi (道德经), not a book that most readers like to read. It’s not from九阴真经 (Jiu yin zhen jing, nine yin sutra), so there won’t be martial arts appearing from it. Of course, these couple hundreds of words only had one line from the Book of Dao, and the divine music is definitely not some sort of Daoist ethical scripture.
Translator notes:
As I’m sure you’ve read in other novels, the Peng is an eagle-like mythical bird. It transforms from the Kun, a huge fish.