The underground world—if this place could indeed be called as such—was turning into a bizzare spectacle as the party forged on. Hao Ren was 100 % sure that he had not gone bonkers. But if he had been unsure, he would have doubted the fact that he had arrived at his current location through an underground passage. They were trudging through the snowfield in darkness. The place was unnervingly spacious, and snow buffeted them in the face. The sensation was undeniably real.
They were now deep within the twisted dimension created by the vengeful spirit. This was a dimension that lay between the illusion and reality.
Before them now was a cluster of twisted stone towers. Lily dashed forward towards those gargantuan pillars and held her claws up high to light up the area around one of the tower's surface. "There's writing on it!"
Hao Ren joined Lily near the tower and noticed that there were indeed neat rows of cuneiform carvings on it. They were clearly some form of words, but they were not Letta runes.
"Doesn't look like any kind of writing on Earth, and they're also not Letta runes, or any other known form of writing in the Plane of Dreams." The MDT ran through its database. "What is this sh*t?"
"It's pretty common to see marks of something from another world whenever the spirits show up," Vivian explained. "They're all similar to this stone tower here. I've even seen pyramid-shaped houses and monuments left behind in places where the spirits have appeared. This weird-looking writing was on all of them. Can you translate it?"
"All logical writings can be translated." The MDT floated towards a few of the towers. "I'll need more samples."
Before the MDT went forward to collect more samples of the "spirit's writing", something Vivian said piqued Hao Ren's curiosity. "Why does a spiritual being need this sort of thing? You said they even built houses? Did they need them?"
Vivian curled her lips. "Who knows. The spirits are not something you can communicate with. They'll appear in a whim and wreck things, leaving a whole load of inexplicable mess. Then, they either get vanquished, or disappear on their own. No one has been able to deal with them. Even the Lord of the Dead tried to conduct some sort of diplomacy with the spirits. He felt that he could bring them to his side. Three times he brought them to the table, three times they wrecked his castle."
It did not take long for the MDT to collect enough samples. Humming a weird tune as it made its way back to Hao Ren, it went, "The structure of words is much simpler than expected. It's a very common and logical structure too."
Hao Ren pointed at the pillar closest to him. "What does it say there?"
The MDT scanned the writing on the pillar before taking a sudden dive. Its voice was rather incredulous. "...I think there's something wrong..."
"Spit it out."
"...Popol's Legendary Brew. Year 1911. Made from 12 fine grains. A bottle of fine brew for all times. Looking for distributors in the Nacrossa Region. For more information—"
Hao Ren was stunned the moment he heard the first few words and he grabbed the MDT closer to him. "What the hell?"
"It's an advertisement," the MDT's voice was sincere. "I swear on my cognitive cores that I'm not lying. So, you can't just toss me away, or put me together with your devil of a daughter."
Hao Ren looked at the stone pillar in bewilderment. He simply could not believe that the writings they found in this god forsaken place would consist of advertisements! Even Nangong Wuyue could not help but mumble, "Why don't we ever encounter anything that actually follows a normal script?"
Hao Ren felt that this one was just a fluke. He pointed to another stone pillar. "Translate that one!"
"...Circle Hill Road , Circle Hill Market, Starlight Street Southeast Plaza, Clearwater Lake... Circular line... First train XX:XX, Last train XX:XX.... I know this is hard to swallow... but this is a signage for a public bus."
Hao Ren was even more bewildered as he stared at the stone pillars. These pillars stood tall within a dimension that had been distorted by the vengeful spirit, sealed beneath a cursed castle for 300 years. The place reeked of sorcery and forbidden knowledge. Simply pull a few cookie-cutter scripts from Hollywood and you'll have a setting fit for a 20-part, fantasy-horror film. But now, the MDT was telling them that the mysterious runic writings were advertisements and signages for public transport!
Don't normal scripts have something like, "Interlopers will be cursed" or "Demon Lord XYZ is sealed here"?!
Vivian patted Hao Ren on the shoulder. "Actually, there's nothing surprising here. Everything mystique comes from the unknown. Most things lose that lustre once you understand it. Imagine this scenario, the current Earth is destroyed, and a group of new humans pull out some relics from their ancestors. As they gaze in awe at the ancient writings, none of them would guess the relic to be maybe, a leg massager, or an excavation manual, right?
Hao Ren blinked at Vivian. "Looks like your imagination's almost at my level."
Vivian gave him a mighty slap on the back. "You and your nonsense!"
Lily did not join in on the banter. The dumb husky had a rather serious look as she demurred. She stretched her hands out to touch some of the pillars and found their material rather suspect. It was a "soft' feeling, rather than that of cold hard stone. "What does this actually tell us?"
"The vengeful spirits are spiritual beings, and they don't have any traces of civilization. They don't produce, they don't require a roof above their beneath and they don't require food or nutrients to survive." Vivian looked at the writings. "But, any time they appear in a place, the space there will distort. And most of the time, you can see some rather weird stuff inside the alternate universe... Frankly, I don't want to understand it."
The group then left the weird stone pillars behind. They did not know how big the snowfield was, but Nangong Sanba cautioned that they do not stop moving. The spirit was always monitoring interlopers within its domains and if they wanted to catch the source of it all, they would need to go deeper.
More bizarre scenes started appearing across the snowfield, broken staircases that floated midair, a wall that appears out of no where. A door that is stuck to the ground. Everything looked like Andrea Family's castle design, and clearly they were part of the castle (including the ground that they tread) but it was also obvious that they were now part of the distorted dimension the spirits had created.
The area beneath the Andrea Family's Castle had already been distorted into something beyond description. A silhouette from the real world had been shattered and rebuilt here, leaving a mind-blowing scene before all of them.
Hao Ren walked passed a wooden door and he recognised it as the door of his guest room. The door had now appeared in this twisted realm. Beside it was some shattered black-coloured material, and it was conjoint with the snowfield.
Out of curiosity, Hao Ren pushed the door open and was shocked to find 'Lily' standing behind the door. Her expression was absent, and her form awkward. Behind here was the endless darkness which you could see shades of the corridor.
The real Lily was standing behind Hao Ren, and after seeing herself behind the door she screamed. "WAAAAHHHH!!"
Hao Ren pulled out a pork rib and threw it into the door and found that the Lily inside the door did not move. Dismayed, he shrugged. "Well, just only looks I guess."
Lily too was dismayed at the wasted pork rib. Her ears bristled. "Could've given me that if you didn't want it!"
Everyone present let out a smile. Even Vivian was laughing. "Yep, that's the real one."
Nangong Sanba was shocked at how relaxed the group was, "You lot still have time to joke? We've already entered the heart of the distorted dimension you know!"
"I've been to a real other dimension, mind you." Hao Ren grinned as he pulled out his spear and sidearm. The weapon combo looked strong, at least from appearance. "Where next?"
The MDT and Hao Ren's coordination was impeccable. Without the need to bark an order, it let out a ray of light and using holographic projection to point to a location a few hundred meters away. A ball of bright mist was forming in that direction.
Hao Ren had smartened up this time around, and before the ball of light had time to react, he blasted a shot at it. The psionic beam did not care whether the target had a physical body or not, as long as it makes contact the target is in for a world of hurt. The ball of light immediately disintegrated into a shower of crystal dust!
As he thought that he had managed to take the spirit out. A spine-chilling shriek came from all sides!
A sea of mist descended upon them and the screech was ringing in their heads, threatening to liquefy their brains. Becky's defensive enchantments came to live as a colourful magical light radiated around her. Hao Ren felt that his skin was bristling as well, an energy field was forming in the air!
Yet, the enemy was still without shape or form.