Chapter 1330: The Direction of the Bones
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
“There are a total of three hundred and forty-seven bones of different sizes and shapes.
“There is no visible pa.s.sage between the fossils, nor is there any order or distribution pattern. It’s not based on the size and completeness of the bones, or according to the type and age of the totem beasts. It’s not even facing the same direction or the same center.
“On the ground, there are a lot of scratches that look like the claw marks of ferocious beasts.
“However, these scratches are also crisscrossed, messy, and of different depths. No effective information can be extracted.
“Could it be that something like the Morse code can extract a series of numbers from the number of bones or the depth of the scratches, and then translate the numbers into words through a special algorithm?
“No, no, no. Don’t think too hard about the answer.
“You must know that this ‘puzzle’is reserved for the simple-minded Tulan Orcs.
“When the ancient Tulan people built the ‘Museum of fossils’, they probably didn’t have high expectations for the intelligence of their descendants.
“Therefore, the answer must be very simple, and the clues must be very intuitive. It must be so intuitive that they can see it at a glance without having to master the four operations and the nine-nine multiplication table!”
Meng Chao focused his mind and calmed down again. He carefully recalled the posture of each skeleton fossil and the similarities between them, trying to find the information that he had overlooked.
Soon, he found something very strange.
According to the spatial model that he had constructed in his mind, there were almost no two adjacent skeleton fossils that were placed face to face.
There were also almost no two adjacent skeleton fossils that were facing the same direction.
If he used the ‘Great Triangle of death’as the starting point, imagine that a dazzling line of sight blossomed from its dark eye sockets and turned into a burning arrow.
Then, this arrow happened to stab into the body of the abyss demon insect.
Then, he walked along the spine of the abyss demon insect and imagined that its head was still growing at the front of its spine.
Then, the abyss demon worm’s gaze should be staring at the third skeleton fossil.
The third skeleton fossil was staring at the fourth skeleton fossil.
And so on. The fifth, sixth, seventh… all the skeleton fossils were connected together by their nonexistent gazes.
“Could it be so?
“The line of sight of the skeleton fossil is the direction that the ancient Tulan people pointed to!”
Meng Chao told this guess to the Wolf King.
The Wolf King also felt that this was indeed the style of the ancestral spirits.
The two immediately set out from the triangle of death, pa.s.sing through the Abyss demonic worm, and found the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh… the ninety-ninth skeleton fossil.
The two faintly felt that they had already walked on the right path.
That was because whether it was expanding the exploration area in circles, moving straight in a direction, or floating in midair, they could not take more than a few hundred steps before returning to their original point.
And this time, they had already taken more than a thousand steps.
“It seems that we are about to succeed!”
Meng Chao and the Wolf King let out a sigh of relief at the same time.
However, after crossing the hundredth skeleton fossil, they once again saw the vague outline of the triangle of death in the rolling black fog in front of them.
“…”
Meng Chao was speechless.
“There’s no reason!”
He was puzzled. “Even with my wisdom, I can’t see through the mysteries of this spatial maze!
“In the past, those Tulan orcs who might not even know how to write their own names when they came here, how could they find the right path among these messy and irregular skeleton fossils?”
This unintentional sentence caused the wolf king to fall into deep thought.
After a moment, the Wolf King’s eyes lit up as he came to a sudden realization.
“I understand now, Reaper. Your train of thought is generally correct. However, you have overlooked some details.”
The wolf king said excitedly, “It’s not a head!”
“Not a head?”
Meng Chao was surprised. “What do you mean?”
“These skeleton fossils are indeed the dao marks left by the ancient Tulan people for the later generations, but we shouldn’t go in the direction that their heads lead us.”
The Wolf King pointed at the spine of the abyss demonic insect and said with certainty, “You see, when we first stepped into this skeleton forest, we saw the fossils of the Great Triangle of death and the Abyss demonic insect.
“Of these two fossils, one only has a humongous head, while the other only has a spine and no head.
“This is a very obvious hint. The ancient Tulan told us that the clues they left had nothing to do with whether or not the ferocious beast had a head.
“Just now, we pa.s.sed by more than a hundred skeleton fossils, and at least seven of them had missing skulls or broken facial bones, which were seriously damaged.
“We couldn’t distinguish the direction of its line of sight at all. We could only make wild guesses and accidentally stumble upon it.
“How is it possible to find the right path?”
Meng Chao was slightly stunned.
He had to admit that the Wolf King was more observant than him.
Just now, he had also found several skeleton fossils with broken skulls or missing parts.
He had thought that the ancient Tulan people were careless and did not care about small details, or that as time pa.s.sed, many skeleton fossils had been eroded by time.
Thinking about it carefully, he was indeed too impatient and self-righteous.
“If it’s not the head or the direction of the line of sight, then where are these bones and fossils going to lead us to?”
Meng Chao humbly asked the Wolf King for advice.
The “Jackal”ka.n.u.s from his previous life should have solved this mystery.
“Go in the direction of the most powerful weapon on its body!”
The Wolf King’s gaze was determined, and victory was in its grasp. “During my exploration just now, I discovered something very interesting — many of the bones and fossils that were displayed here had their skulls broken and even missing.
“However, almost all of the bones and fossils, the hardest, sharpest, most ferocious, and most terrifying weapons, were intact.
“Thinking about it carefully, this is very normal.
“When the ancient warriors fought fiercely with the ferocious beasts, they would often target the heads of the ferocious beasts and unleash the most brutal power with all their might.
“As long as the heads of the ferocious beasts were blasted into a pile of mud, the ferocious beasts would naturally die a horrible death.
“However, the most lethal weapon on the body of the ferocious beasts is the essence of its life, which is as strong as totem armor. It is definitely not so easy to destroy.
“If I were an ancient Tulan, I would choose a deadly weapon instead of a simple head if I wanted to leave some ‘Dao Marks’.
“Look, the deadliest weapon on the great triangle of death is the three horns on its forehead that can tear s.p.a.ce apart.
“Its deadly weapon is in the same direction as its eye sockets, which caused our misjudgment just now.
“However, the most lethal weapon on its body is not the b.l.o.o.d.y mouth in front of its spine, but the huge bone tumor at the end of its spine at the tail.
“It is said that when the abyssal magic bug was still alive, its tail was not only as hard as iron like a meteor hammer that was magnified a hundred times, and when it waved, it had a thunderous momentum. It could also use ultra-high frequency vibrations to crush everything it wanted to devour.
“This tail was mainly used to crush mountain rocks and help the abyssal demonic worm to slowly devour an entire mountain, absorbing the high-energy nutrients hidden in the rocks and soil.
“However, when it encountered the armored Tulan Warrior, the Beast did not mind at all. It used the violent twitching of its muscles to sweep its high-frequency oscillating strange tail like a violent hurricane, sweeping the entire army into its b.l.o.o.d.y mouth.
“It was precisely because the stomach-less king did not want to clash head-on with the Strange Tail of the Abyss demonic worm that he jumped into its mouth on his own initiative at the moment of the battle!
“If this is the correct way of thinking, then we have taken the wrong path just now — we should not go up along the spine of the abyss demonic worm, but down to look for its deformed and swollen tailbone!”
The two regrouped and set off again.
They followed the spine of the abyssal demonic worm all the way to its tailbone.
Soon, they found that its tail, which was full of bone tumors and spurs like a meteor hammer, was pointing at another fossil skeleton of a ferocious beast that looked like a coiled python.
According to Meng Chao’s theory just now, they should have explored the right front of the skull of the giant python.
But the Wolf King stopped him with his bright eyes.
“This isn’t a giant python!”
“Jackal,”ka.n.u.s said resolutely.
“Brain Fluke.”Although its skeleton was very similar to that of a giant python, when it was still alive, it was covered in incomparably hideous flesh and carapace, but it was like a giant centipede that was magnified hundreds of times, it was a combination of reptiles and arthropods.
And the thing that looked like a skull that grew at the front of its spine was not a real head, but a bait that it deliberately exposed.
If someone or another totem beast mistook the brain fluke for a giant python and tried to bite off its head or bite off its seven inches.
Its lethal weapon, which was roughly located between the ninth and tenth vertebrae, could launch the most vicious attack on its prey that was close at hand.
The fatal weapon of the brain trematode was a string of hollow cartilage that was exquisitely structured and interlocked.
Normally, the hollow cartilage would be folded and compressed at the part that looked like its ‘seven inches’.
Once the other totem beasts opened their b.l.o.o.d.y mouths and bit its ‘seven inches’, the ‘seven inches’would be crushed.
The hollow cartilage that was located between the ‘seven inches’could be shot out like a spring that was compressed to the extreme, forming a sharp tube that was dozens of meters long and surrounded by thorns, the ‘straw’that could be rotated flexibly was like the tongue of an ant-eating beast.
The tongue of an ant-eating beast could penetrate into the complicated ant nests and lick all the ants clean.
The straw of a brain trematode could pierce through the enemy’s throat and travel through the enemy’s head, chest, and abdomen along the major arteries, trachea, or digestive tract, instantly sucking the enemy’s brain matter or internal organs, it sucks everything out.