Chapter 506: Everything is Strange
Translator: Pika
“Ah!” Pei Mianman cried out in alarm. However, she immediately realized that she shouldn’t be drawing any attention to herself right now, especially in such a strange and unfamiliar environment.
She subconsciously grabbed Zu An’s arm and leaned against him, as though he was her only source of warmth.
Her body was trembling slightly. Zu An sighed. Even though this woman usually appeared bold and unflappable, in the end, she was still a young lady inside. It was completely normal for her to feel fear when confronted by such a situation.
Forget about her for a moment, even a man like him would be scared out of his wits. If he was the only one here, his heart would be pounding like crazy.
However, he had a young woman next to him, and a pretty one at that. For some reason, he suddenly wasn’t so scared anymore.
No wonder the companies of his previous world always made men and women work together on tasks. Women could stimulate the hormones of the men and make them more courageous, thus greatly increasing the efficiency of their work; the men would have similar effects on women.
He cleared his throat and tried to comfort her. “Don’t be scared, they’re just bones. Whoever they belonged to died a long time ago.”
Pei Mianman blushed. She was slightly embarra.s.sed by her current behavior. “Hmph, I won’t be scared even if they were alive. By the way, could this be an ancient battlefield?”
Zu An squatted down by a nearby skeleton. He examined it for a while, then shook his head. “I don’t believe it is. I didn’t see any weapons along the way.”
“Then could it be the field that the victors of the battle used for executions? This would explain why no weapons were left behind!” Pei Mianman said. “There are rumors of an ancient DevilG.o.d who ma.s.sacred four hundred thousand troops, even though they had already surrendered. That really was terrifying.”
Zu An was stunned. Was she talking about Bai Qi? He didn’t expect this world to have a legend like this![1]
He had always suspected that this world was linked to his previous world in countless ways. However, the academy’s books on geography—if they were accurate—showed that this world should be much, much bigger than Earth, which was why this couldn’t be Earth.
He shook his head to dispel these thoughts, then replied, “I don’t think it’s that either. They don’t look as though they meekly allowed themselves to be executed, nor are they kneeling on the ground. They don’t seem like surrendered soldiers who were awaiting execution.”
He had noticed this by carefully examining several skeletons earlier on.
“Then were they buried alive? I noticed that you weren’t able to grab onto the walls earlier.” Pei Mianman walked over to a wall and poked at it with her fingers. The surface was tough and had a slippery surface, as if it were coated in oil. “This seems to be something that prevents people from climbing back up.”
“Buried alive?” Zu An had a strange look on his face. “Isn’t there something you’re forgetting? There’s no dirt here.”
Pei Mianman’s face immediately turned red. Only now did she realize that she said something foolish. If they had been buried alive, these corpses would still be underground. The reason they had fallen into this pit was because it was hollow, with only a thin layer of soil covering it.
“Then what do you think is going on?” She said with a huff of annoyance, to cover up her own embarra.s.sment.
“I don’t know how they died, but I’ve noticed something really strange. All of their heads are pointed in a certain direction.” Zu An said, his face a serious mask.
Stunned by his revelation, Pei Mianman rushed over to examine the skeletons around them. She had felt something amiss as well, but had been unable to put her finger on what exactly it was. Now, with Zu An’s sudden remark, she finally knew the strange feeling in her gut was coming from. Even though the skeletons were all in different postures, they possessed one common trait, which was that all of their heads were lowered, as if they were all looking at something beneath them.
Zu An inspected these skeletons a little more before saying, “They weren’t executed by hanging. The neck bones of those who are hanged would snap backwards, and their heads should not be pointed downwards like this. There are other signs as well. These skeletons don’t bear any significant damage, which proves that they weren’t killed by weapons. Their bones didn’t turn black either, so it doesn’t look like they were poisoned.”
Pei Mianman’s face turned pale. “Stop scaring me! It sounds more and more strange now…”
Zu An sighed. “This place was strange to begin with. It’s not a big deal, we don’t need to know the cause of death. Let’s find a way out of this place first.”
He walked over to the wall of the pit and looked around. His voice, when he next spoke, was tinged with puzzlement. “Hm? I remember us tumbling down a long slope when we first fell. Why do these walls now look perfectly vertical?”
“This place is way too weird.” Pei Mianman also remembered that they had tumbled down a slope with Zu An wrapped around her. Now, the walls all seemed to be perpendicular to the ground, with no sign of a slope at all.
Zu An also had a bad sense of foreboding. He cleared his head, then looked above him. “This pit doesn’t seem to be that deep…” He muttered to himself.
The pit was around twenty meters deep. This might be extremely deep for an ordinary person, but it wasn’t too difficult for a cultivator.
“Wait here. I’m going to see if I can jump out.” Zu An said to Pei Mianman. Scaling such a height wasn’t usually difficult for him, but that was only if he had some footholds along the way. The walls were too slippery for that, so he had to make it in a single leap.
It wasn’t too big of a deal if he tripped and fell, but Pei Mianman was injured. It would be a disaster if he fell while carrying her.
“Okay, but be careful!” Pei Mianman stood obediently aside, like a young married woman.
Zu An nodded. Taking a deep breath, he bent his knees and jumped. His body shot out like a missile.
“I should be able to make it,” Zu An said with a smile. He saw that he was about to reach the top. He still had quite a bit of momentum left over, so it wouldn’t be too difficult to carry Pei Mianman with him.
“Be careful!” Pei Mianman cried out in alarm.
There was a loud crash. His head exploded with pain, and then his ears began to ring. It was as if he had accidentally run straight into a pair of gla.s.s doors.
If it wasn’t for his st.u.r.dy body, his head would’ve been smashed open right there and then.
He screamed in pain as he fell from midair. Pei Mianman quickly rushed forward to catch him, but she was seriously injured and didn’t have the strength to do so. Both of them ended up on the ground in a heap.
Zu An quickly raised his head, and saw a shimmer of blue light.
Sure enough, a transparent seal had appeared across the top of the pit. The runes on its surface were extremely strange, not at all resembling the style of the runes he was used to after arriving in this world. Despite this, they still seemed rather familiar. What were they exactly?
His mind moved quickly, and he suddenly cried out in alarm. “I remember! Those are Taotie Runes!”
In the museums and doc.u.mentaries of his past world, many bronze artifacts dug up from the Shang and Zhou Dynasties had these types of designs. Some called them Taotie Runes, while others called them Beast Runes. They meant more or less the same thing.
“Can you move your hands first?” A voice called out from beneath him, dripping with annoyance.
Zu An lowered his head, and saw that he was currently squashing Pei Mianman. Because he had fallen from above, he had naturally stretched his hands out to support himself, and they just happened to be pressed against her chest.
So soft!
This was his first thought.
So big!
This was Zu An’s second thought. However, he quickly snapped out of his daze and pulled his hands away. “Um, would you believe me if I said that it wasn’t on purpose?”
“I know that already.” Pei Mianman’s face was slightly red. She got back to her feet with his help.
It was Zu An’s turn to be stunned. She didn’t get mad? After all, when someone pretended to accidentally b.u.mp into her back at the academy, she had chased after him with her black flames until a teacher interfered and saved that unfortunate kid.
“Why is there a seal above us?” Pei Mianman completely ignored what had just happened. She stared above her and said, “We definitely fell from up there.”
As they spoke, the flickering blue streaks of light on the seal slowly disappeared, and in a few moments, it was as if the seal did not exist at all. However, they both knew that it was still there, and once activated, it would reappear.
“It looks like we can only look for a way out down here.” Zu An could tell that the seal above them was similar to the barrier around the stele that had brought them here. It wasn’t something they could destroy, given their current strength.
Pei Mianman grunted in agreement. She was just about to reply when a sudden quaver entered her voice. “The eye sockets of those skeletons… they’re shining…”
1. Bai Qi was a general for the Qin state who was responsible for the deaths of over a million people. He was nicknamed the Human Butcher. The battle that Pei Mianman is referring to is the Battle of Changping (260 BCE).
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