Chapter 146 — The Ones Still Living

Catching Gao Song's gaze, Hedy too looked over out of curiosity, then began laboriously trying to make out the ancient script on the wall—but before she had finished deciphering it, Gao Yang took the initiative and explained what that one line meant.

Everyone present was instantly stunned.

"What... what does that mean?" Amber stared blankly at the line of text, which seemed almost like a declaration, and said with evident disbelief, "Under normal circumstances no one would come out with something like that... and written in a place like this, no less!"

Hedy, for her part, made a connection: "Only by defying the gods can humanity endure... does that mean the gods want humanity to perish?"

"Matters concerning the gods are very often steeped in symbolism and metaphor—you can't judge them by the surface meaning of a single sentence," Gao Yang said somewhat absently, though what surfaced in his mind were those appalling truths he had heard when he established a connection with the Eternal Slate fragment.

Then he turned to Byron: "You mentioned finding surviving manuscript materials here?"

Byron nodded. "Yes, over here. But they're quite fragile—after we found them, we didn't dare touch them."

The surviving manuscripts had not been sealed away; they lay scattered in disarray on a table not far off. It seemed that for some reason, the personnel here had not taken this batch of materials with them when they evacuated. The manuscripts were made of the enchanted parchment that mages of the Gondo Empire era commonly used for keeping records, and it was precisely because of this special material that they had weathered over a thousand years of erosion while exposed to the air.

Yet although the manuscripts themselves had not rotted away, much of the writing on them had faded and weathered beyond recognition. Gao Yang gave them a rough scan and concluded that at least half of them were no longer legible.

Fortunately, the other half remained.

Hedy had long been prepared. She had brought freshly enchanted scrolls and a ceremonial quill. The moment she saw those precious ancient manuscripts, she unrolled a scroll and let it float in midair beside her; then, quill in one hand and the other hand hovering above the fragile ancient parchment, she began an obscure and arduous incantation. Magical power surged around her, and the quill suddenly leapt from her fingers, flew to the scroll of its own accord, and began writing at furious speed.

The characters on the parchment were faithfully reproduced and transcribed by the magical force—both the clearly legible parts and the damaged, hard-to-read ones. And each time she finished "scanning" a sheet, Hedy caught her breath for a moment, carefully lifted the original ancient manuscript, and placed it into a small box she had prepared in advance.

Though the contents of the manuscripts had been preserved, the original antiques were still quite valuable, and it was naturally better if they could be saved as well.

Gao Yang stood beside Hedy, quietly marveling at the convenience of magical power while watching the contents appearing on the scroll with rapt attention.

Because he had to extract readable, meaningful information from a great mass of damaged and distorted characters, he read slowly—but even so, certain unsettling phrases gradually pieced themselves together. This did not seem to be research notes, nor even a diary; after stringing the words into sentences, Gao Yang felt they were like the ravings of a madman, filled with dreadful fantasies and metaphors:

"...I watched it, and it watched me from out of that festering flesh... it is within me, and I must go into it as well...

"No one will survive. The day of the end is near... acts of desecration cannot let us linger on...

"...feast, feast, I have eaten of the god's flesh once more, and lived here through a new century. They did not come, they still have not come, but I no longer need them to come. The world outside has already collapsed, already collapsed..."

After that came a long stretch of chaotic scribbling; the writing degenerated into illegible lines and symbols—not because the handwriting on the original had blurred and twisted, but because the person who wrote them seemed to have already gone mad. Yet after several sheets, these mad scrawls became readable once more:

"He sleeps deep in the earth, He sleeps deep in the sea, He sleeps deep in the sky, He is calling my name, that whispering voice...

"I see Him, the countenance of the god, smiling at me in the light... I must take up my steps, I must go to His kingdom. Ah, that is the greatest gift of all—the god gave down his flesh for us to share, and it was for this day all along..."

After this came yet more long stretches of frantic lines. Even when the occasional word leapt out from those scrawls, it seemed devoid of logic and grammar; rather than writing, it was more apt to call it the occasional sentence-fragment of delirium leaking from a chaotic brain: these manuscripts could no longer be read.

Hedy noticed this as well. She transcribed several pages of such "gibberish" in succession, then finally stopped, used a mage hand to flip through the manuscripts, and, confirming there was nothing of value beneath, ended her spell.

"What does it say on there?" Amber sidled over and asked curiously, looking at the transcription scroll floating in midair. "Looks like the scribbles of a ghost..."

"The ravings of a madman," Gao Yang said, frowning. The scroll filled him with deep unease, but he still gave a rough explanation of what was on it: "...it sounds like the leavings of someone abandoned here, written as he gradually went mad."

After hearing the meaning of those words, everyone present couldn't help but feel an eerie chill run through them. Though it was only mad ravings, somehow those words seemed to carry a special power, giving off an aura of dread.

"I... I'm starting to dislike these things..." Goosebumps rose all over Amber, and she couldn't help but shrink back behind Gao Yang. "This place gives me a very, very bad feeling..."

Gao Yang was just about to voice a similar opinion, but before he could open his mouth, a very faint gurgling sound suddenly came from behind them.

Then came another string of gurgling noises.

Everyone instantly drew their weapons and spun toward the source of the sound—and before all their eyes, one of the cylindrical containers in the center of the hall suddenly began to change!

The transparent tubular incubation tank, empty but a moment ago, was now filled with liquid out of thin air. Great strings of bubbles rushed up through the surging fluid, and a twisted, grotesque shadow emerged from those bubbles—one second it was an illusory shadow, and the next it had condensed into something solid.

It was blood-red in color, gigantic in stature, like an exceptionally powerful mutant—yet it had a face that was almost human. That face had its eyes tightly shut, and across it were spread pain and madness!

This monster, as though a hybrid of mutant and human, condensed out of thin air, and then began struggling to break through the sealed transparent vessel. Then an incredible sight appeared: the container, which should have been completely sealed, suddenly became insubstantial, and the monster's body became insubstantial as well. The two swiftly merged and interpenetrated, and the monster's body was forcibly squeezed out of the container just like that!

Gao Yang drew his longsword. "Kill it!"

The monster had by now regained its solid form, and the instant it broke free of its bonds it lunged at the soldier nearest to it, letting out a chaotic roar as it pounced: "Hungry... hungry!!"