Chapter 237 — The Doomsday Sanctuary

The space on the opposite side of the magic gate—or rather, this hidden section of the facility—was far more vast than Gao Yang had imagined.

There was not merely the one great hall they had first seen; after the soldiers widened their search, they soon discovered that beyond the hall lay an encircling corridor structure, and along the outer side of that corridor, room after room stood in rows.

The furnishings in these rooms were complete—tables, chairs, equipment, and every manner of living or research implement remained in place, unlike the outer rooms, which had been stripped bare.

"Nothing here has been carted off either," Heddy said, looking into a room they had just opened—it appeared to have been a place for many people to gather and dine, with long tables and chairs, and neat rows of water basins visible in the corner, though no water could possibly still flow through them now. "And the condition of these things... it's far better than outside."

"The entire facility seems to have been subjected to a large-scale magical effect; everything decays at an exceedingly slow rate," Gao Yang said, looking down at a long table near at hand. The table bore mottled patches of rust, yet the table itself remained sturdy and intact. "...Though there is still a considerable degree of corrosion."

Tyr wandered in her wriggling fashion among the long tables, her fingers brushing across the dust-laden surfaces, and said thoughtfully, "This place feels as though it is ready to be put back into service at any moment—as if, the instant someone returned, life could begin again."

Gao Yang made no reply, but walked in silence among those long tables already beginning to rust. Just then, a squad of soldiers who had gone ahead to scout suddenly returned to the room, and their leader came before Gao Yang: "My lord! We've found a warehouse up ahead!"

"Take me to see it."

Gao Yang soon arrived at the warehouse the soldiers had discovered, and the sight within made him frown.

This was a place for storing goods; neat stacking platforms and various signs whose lettering was no longer clearly legible could still be seen in the warehouse. But what made Gao Yang frown was that the goods originally packed on those platforms had been broken open.

A great many wooden crates had been pried open, and emptied boxes and jars were piled in every corner. Some piles were fairly neat, but others had simply been left scattered across the entire room. Apart from this disordered "packaging," not a single useful item of material remained in sight.

"This..." Heddy gripped her staff the instant she saw the scene in the warehouse, and she instinctively turned to Gao Yang. "Ancestor, this..."

"Someone has been taking supplies from here!" Gao Yang voiced the only possibility. "There has been activity here—at least for a time after this facility was sealed, there were still people active here!"

"How is that possible!?" Heddy was astonished. "Wasn't this place abandoned and sealed a thousand years ago? Weren't all the people evacuated?"

"That was my assumption as well, but look at these supplies, consumed down to nothing—if they had been consumed before the facility was sealed, no logistics manager would have allowed a warehouse to end up like this," Gao Yang said, pointing at the haphazard piles of empty crates and jars. "This is plainly the result of continued consumption after the facility was sealed—and I fear it went on for a very long time."

Heddy could not help swallowing. "This... is truly unsettling..."

Tyr, meanwhile, asked a question: "If there were still people here after the facility was sealed, then where are they now?"

Gao Yang shook his head. "I don't know. But if those who worked here were human... then no human could live a thousand years."

Soon the soldiers discovered more supply warehouses, and the contents of most of them had already been consumed to the last by someone; only a small portion remained, and judging by the thick dust on those sealed crates, they had gone untouched for many years.

Even with the protection of magical power, such supplies could not last a thousand years—even if the packaging remained intact, the contents within had long since rotted and spoiled. So Gao Yang only gave these things a rough inspection before losing interest in them.

After making a round of the corridor outside the great hall, the party reached the corridor's end, where the paths converged, and a staircase slanting upward extended from the junction of the corridors to the upper level of this secret facility.

"It seems there's more structure above," Heddy said, raising her head to gaze at the dim space at the top of the stairs. This ancient facility possessed an astonishing energy system, but no energy system, however advanced, could wholly withstand the erosion of time; the lights in the upper region were clearly dimmer than those below, as though something had gone wrong with the power supply—the glow was not only faint but highly unstable. Heddy summoned a wizard's eye and sent it up; a moment later she nodded. "There's no danger above."

The exploration party advanced along the staircase and soon reached the upper level of this hidden facility, and at the top of the stairs, a heavy metal door blocked their way.

"The magical lock on the door has failed," Heddy said, quickly locating the magical mechanism that controlled the door's locked state. Several dim runes were inscribed at the center of the door, but these runes no longer responded in the slightest to external magical stimulus. "Now it's just an ordinary iron door—it can be broken down directly."

Two soldiers stepped forward at once and aimed their thermal ray guns at the lock at the center of the door; after several successive blasts of searing rays, the magical mechanism at the door's center was burned and melted open: without magical protection, even an advanced ancient magical mechanism was nothing more than a chunk of metal with a not-so-high melting point.

Gao Yang placed his hand upon the door, and by the mighty strength of a legendary knight, he slowly pushed open this door that had originally required a magical device to move.

Creak—

Accompanied by a shrill screech of metal friction, the ancient door, with a history of thousands of years, slowly swung open to both sides, and a stale, musty breath leaked out from the space within. But a fine, faintly cool mist suddenly appeared out of thin air and encircled the company, sealing off all those potentially harmful vapors.

Gao Yang glanced back and saw Tyr giving a casual wave of her hand, the power of the water element quietly flowing between her fingers.

He did not tell the siren lady that every soldier's armor in fact carried a long-lasting "breeze shield" effect; instead, he smiled and thanked Tyr for her kindness, then strode through the door.

The next second, the scene before his eyes left him stunned where he stood.

Within the door was a large semicircular chamber, with rows upon rows of seats arranged neatly along the curve, and upon those rows of seats were arrayed, one after another, corpses!

These people had clearly been dead for many years, but because the entire facility was shrouded in a magical field that slowed decay, they had not crumbled into bare bones with the passage of time; instead, they had become something akin to desiccated remains. They wore the mage robes or short robes of the ancient Gondor Empire, and this attire was enough to make clear who they were:

They were the personnel who had remained stranded inside this ancient facility after it was sealed!

Heddy's eyes went wide, and the shocking scene before her left her speechless for a long while, until at last, more than ten seconds later, she began to murmur in a low voice: "They... they're all here... all dead here..."