Warriors will die if they charge.

Chapter 70 What Hides in the Sky?

Dappled sunlight spills across the winding labyrinth of withered agave, chrysanthemums, and red pines, and this sacred and ancient path of audience in Houqinkou is exuding an aura of danger.

The group moved silently through the corridor. Several times, Trish tried to speak, asking Marcus what had happened in the empty courtyard, but she stopped herself abruptly.

This wasn't a sun-shaded beer garden; she couldn't let her usual carefree and willful attitude interfere with the captain's decisions.

"How much longer, buddy? I feel like the mud under my feet isn't very solid. The people who built this temple should have put the foundation in the mountains to prevent it from becoming a snake pit."

Bardin didn't ask what happened in the empty courtyard. He stepped on the trembling bricks in front of him and cursed the snake-man beast to behave himself, otherwise the dwarves would soon be able to get a set of snake-scale armor.

"My brain tells me that the journey is still long, and this road through the sky is longer than I imagined, but my arms tell me that the road is even longer than I expected."

Marcus felt dizzy and disoriented. He could hear the hissing of countless snakes. The withered vegetation around him transformed into vibrant flowerbeds, swaying lushly in the sunlight, only to revert to its true, decaying state in the blink of an eye.

Several times he tried to dig up the soil covered by vegetation to see what was hidden in the mud, but he heard an ancient tearful curse hissing in his ears, cursing the mortals who interfered with the ritual to be forever condemned to the abyss of swamp.

Marcus shook his head vigorously, an action that seemed to shatter a mirror on the verge of breaking, restoring the world to its original state.

The soft earth was swaying, and the snake-man's realistic hissing replaced Seth's illusory curse.

"Houqin can't stop all the snake people; we have to find a way to get around them!"

He gripped the longsword in his backhand and plunged it into the ground. The cracked soil was squeezed and clanged, accompanied by a wail and the sound of flesh being pierced. The longsword was pulled out, its tip stained with a thick layer of blood.

"Go around it?" Trissy asked in confusion, plunging her scimitar into the ground. Her steel weapon was far less sharp than the magic longsword, and the soil cushioned off most of its force, preventing it from penetrating the snake-man's defenses.

She lowered her voice and said, "Look at the situation now. We're trapped in a maze surrounded by dead plants. There's no way to escape except by confronting the snake people head-on."

The Sky Road is a maze, and Houqin didn't explain how to leave. Marcus had been leading the team through the dense, withered plants in a daze, relying solely on his intuition. He was suddenly pulled back to reality and didn't know where to go next.

[Walk through a long corridor of sky beneath wings, where there are no people, no birds, no fish, and no trees, only the calm sea]

This statement is definitely the key to breaking free from the path of the sky, but what exactly does it mean? There are no people, no fish or birds, does it mean the underground? But in Trissy's dark homeland, there are also eyeless underground fish.

Unable to decipher the strange riddle the acolyte spoke of, the warrior plunged his sword into another patch of swaying earth, knelt down, and felt the sword tip trembling violently inside the snake-man's body. He repeated the riddle: "What does this riddle mean, guys? Hurry up and think about it. We can't become the water druid's snacks."

Bardin was the first to speak: "The ancestral tombs! The resting place of the dwarves has no fish, birds, or trees."

"The Temple of Rose," Trissy said coldly.

"The library, this might be a double puzzle!" Jenny racked her brains to analyze: "This road is called the Sky Road. Everything is contained under the sky. How could there be no people, fish, birds, and trees? Think about it, the library has nothing but books, but books contain everything."

Marcus thought Jenny's speculation was the most reasonable. As expected of an educated sorcerer's apprentice, she was completely different from the three Muggles of Rye Wine. Her clever mind worked better than anyone else's.

"So, where do you think the library is hidden in this maze?"

Jenny was taken aback by this question. She paused, looking around at the winding vegetation: "I don't know, but this is probably the most likely explanation."

No, Marcus, use your superhuman intellect to think carefully about what the Sky Road really means.

Everything is contained beneath the sky —

"The snake-men are here!" Trissy shouted a warning, swinging her twin blades forward to engage in hand-to-hand combat with the snake-men who emerged from the burrow. She nimbly circled behind the snake-men, swung her curved blades, and decapitated the snake-men who was still trying to make sense of their surroundings. Then, she swiftly swung her blade at the second snake-man who emerged from the burrow.

The snake-men raised their knives to parry. These monsters, with their sharp, cold eyes, were far more formidable than the ones they had encountered in May Lixi Creek. With a clang, the curved blade that Trissy had swung was deflected.

The dwarf handed Jenny the crossbow with twelve arrows remaining, then rushed forward to assist the drow in slaying the snake-man. He swung his steel battle axe at the pointed head, sparking and making a sharp sound as it struck the hard scales.

The snake-man's head was chopped off in half by the battle axe, but the speed of his long sword did not slow down. The blades crossed and slashed left and right, and the two had no choice but to dodge to the side in their haste.

Jenny was struggling to pull the crossbow string. The hand-operated crossbows used by the dwarves were completely different from the lever crossbows commonly used in the Griffin Kingdom. With her strength, it was difficult to pull the taut string and load an arrow into the slot.

With her feet planted on the crossbow arm, she laboriously pulled the string onto the crossbow mechanism. Looking up, she saw the second snake-man's head being chopped off by Trish. Then, glancing sideways at Marcus, she noticed that the warrior who should have been standing at the front of the group was now half-squatting on the ground, frowning in thought.

"Stop thinking about it. If you keep thinking like that, you'll only make us all die here."

Beneath the Sky — Marcus continued to ponder these words. If this corridor was called the Sky Road, then it meant that Navatter wanted to cross the sky to find something.

After all, a road is a concept, and it must have an end.

What if their destination isn't the sky, but rather they use the sky as their path to explore—what lies beyond the sky?

There are no people, no seabirds, and no rainforest; when looking down from the sky, all you can see is the azure ocean.

Yes, this long corridor, which looks like a maze, has flower beds and screens haphazardly placed in every corner, as if the air is flowing. It doesn't look like a maze, but rather like an open star map.

This world seems to lack the concept of the starry sky. They always say that the sky is the kingdom of the gods, and the earth is the sinful kingdom of demons and devils.

The starry sky contains nothing, yet one must travel along the paths of the sky to reach the distant shore.

If you want to move around in space where you can't tell up from down or left from right, you must choose the brightest star as your navigational beacon; otherwise, you will inevitably get lost in the embrace of the stars.

As for why Marcus is so sensitive to star charts, it's mainly because a certain construction game where you fire cannons at stars left a deep impression on him in his past life. He realized that if you can't navigate accurately, you really can become space junk.

The brightest star is undoubtedly Alora. The woodcutters and hunters of Linhe Town often use this white dot hanging in the deep sky as a reference to find their way back when they venture deep into the rainforest.

Alora, Alora — where should it be located?

That dead palm tree? No, it's too big; it looks more like the sun.

A heart-shaped tree? Too far, at the very edge of the maze, and the same one appears repeatedly at intervals, probably a path of rebirth symbolizing the waxing and waning of the moon.

A withered agave bulb lay alone on the green lichen. It must have been enormous once; even withered, the part exposed above the ground was still as tall as a person, and its drooping stems and leaves could have been woven into a grass boat that could cross the Nileca River.

I've found you, Cialis —

Marcus swiftly ran toward Citrari, who was hidden among the withered vines and leaves, and swung his sword at the base of the stem. The soft, buttery, fragile fibers were easily sliced ​​open by the magical longsword.

As he tore apart the last strand of agave fiber, like drifting catkins, a golden halo, like that of a god, shimmered in the shadows.

The golden scales, as thick as a fingernail, rested peacefully at the base of the agave plant; that was his most important goal on this trip—the opportunity to reconnect the paths of the past.

He grabbed the scales, and the Water Demon Queen's light, ethereal chanting returned to his ears. The sound was more solemn in the temple than the sorrowful one he heard in the pool cave.

The moment the scales left the crater, the ground shook violently, and trees and grasses tumbled and tangled together. It wasn't the snake people's movements, but the temple itself that was moving!

The ground began to crack, and the star map disintegrated after Marcus took the golden scales, with house-sized rocks falling into the underground cavity.

Beneath the starry sky lies a bottomless abyss!