Chapter 4 Carvings of the Ancient Desolation
Night had long since descended. Neon lights flickered on both sides of the road. As usual, the city continued to exude an endless vitality even during the night. Row upon row of skysc.r.a.pers loftily shot towards the sky.
But from s.p.a.ce, this all appeared to be completely insignificant, nothing more than a small speck of ground.
This was an extremely unusual night that was doomed to be turbulent. On Earth, over ten monitoring rooms were completely focused on the pitch-black dome of the sky.
In the dull and lonely void, nine t.i.tanic dragon corpses flickered with a metallic gleam. Their entire bodies were covered with palm-leaf sized, s.h.i.+mmering black scales.
The dragon was an existence from legends; it was simply impossible for one to exist in the real world. But at this moment, they truly did appear, floating within the heavens.
This overwhelming scene appeared within the darkness of s.p.a.ce, shaking the people who saw it to their very core. Their enormous horns were like ancient trees, filled with strength and mystery. Their bodies were like mountain ridges - bold, strong, and magnificent. Their scales were as sharp as blades, coldly flickering. Everything combined to appear majestic and boundlessly imposing.
The nine bodies did not have any trace of life within their huge corpses, but they still gave a huge shock to humanity’s understanding, overturning what they inherently thought they understood.
------
“Ye Fan, how have you been for the past three years?” Quite a few people cared about Ye Fan, and they asked a couple of concerned questions.
“I’m doing fine, nothing interesting has happened to me over these past three years….”
At this moment, the people at Liu Yunzhi’s table came over to propose toasts. The atmosphere became livelier as they repeated touched cups and expressed their good wishes.
The person who had previously wanted to penalize Ye Fan didn’t come up to toast with him. In the end, first Lin Jia and then w.a.n.g Ziwen approached him and drank a cup with him.
Afterwards, quite a few people had become tipsy and everyone went to K Karaoke.
“Many people once adored your looks when you were young; no one wants to bear the pitiless changes of time; many people were once by your side, but now they have left; in this life, I will always be by your side…”¹
There was a couple from university who had helplessly split up when they graduated and never said anything to one other ever since.
Maybe it was due to the alcohol, but following the singing, the female cla.s.smate unexpectedly lost control. Tears could be vaguely seen in her eyes, and her voice bitterly cracked. Everyone successively came over in order to comfort her.
Due to various reasons, not one couple from university was still together now. Although they had earnestly put in their love during their time on campus; in the end, they all failed to stay together.
Graduating meant breaking up; this perhaps should be considered a kind of inevitable fate. Every year, graduates of universities and colleges would all be forced through identical tragedies.
Even more unfortunate was that some people might have to endure this kind of breakup tragedy for many years in the future, either due to youth’s impulsiveness, career pressure, society’s current situation…and there might even be more reasons.
Almost everyone chose songs from three years ago to sing. Some people sang very well, pulling everyone’s thoughts back to that time, as their memories of school vividly resurfaced.
In the end, a ‘mic-hog’ appeared. This drunken cla.s.smate forcefully occupied the microphone for a long time, but his voice was so terrible that there was no way for anyone to praise him. It could even be said to be so bad that it could split the earth and cause the heavens to crash, ghosts to cry and G.o.ds to bawl. At the same time as it ravaged everyone’s ears, it also brought with it a kind of joyous mood, causing people to laugh together.
Only when it was very late did everyone walk out of the Brightmoon Maritime Supermall. Tomorrow, they still had plans to visit their old school.
These old cla.s.smates had all previously planned to go to the same hotel. The small number of them that had cars were in charge of driving them over.
“Lin Jia, I’ll drive you to the hotel,” Liu Yunzhi stopped his Toyota beside Lin Jia.
Some other cla.s.smates had just been about to go get taxis; the cars near them were already full. They could only embarra.s.singly go over to take a seat in the cars of Liu Yunzhi’s group.
At this exact moment, a Mercedes-Benz stopped beside the road. Ye Fan got out of the car and walked over to that wan female cla.s.smate and said, “How about I drive you?”
Ye Fan had quite a bit of sympathy towards this female cla.s.smate. During high school, she was a happy and pure maiden who liked to go over to the soccer fields and cheer for her cla.s.smates, sometimes even bashfully bringing water bottles for them.
But with her life in such a bad state, her whole person appeared profoundly melancholic. Her face was pale and her complexion was very bad. She had said very little the entire night.
Seeing Ye Fan suddenly pull up in a car and ask her to have a seat immediately earned her grat.i.tude, but at the same time gave her a sense of not knowing what to do. No one had paid her much attention the entire night, but at this moment she was being stared at by all her cla.s.smates around her.
On the other side, when Liu Yunzhi saw Ye Fan driving a car, a stunned expression appeared on his face, which soon after became gloomy.
Everyone around had varying expressions. Some doubted, some didn’t understand, some were amazed, and some were complicated.
Everyone inadvertently turned to look at Liu Yunzhi. The reality in front of them was completely different from what he had said before.
At this moment, Liu Yunzhi felt a scorching heat on his cheeks, as if someone had resolutely given him a slap.
The other few cla.s.smates who had loftily preached to Ye Fan also felt the same embarra.s.sment. They wanted to say something, but they didn’t know what to say.
There were also a small number of people who revealed a thoughtful and peculiar expression, particularly those of them that had sat at the same table as Ye Fan and exchanged toasts. Apparently, they felt that such a scenario dampened the prestige of Liu Yunzhi’s small group.
Just at this moment, two other people walked over, and pulling the car door open they took a seat. These two people were very familiar with Ye Fan, to the point where they couldn’t be closer.
The Mercedes-Benz started very fast, and it went quickly off into the distance while quite a few people had yet to even recover. Liu Yunzhi’s body was rigid. Seeing everyone stare at him with peculiar expressions, he felt as if the tip of a blade was pointed at his back…
------
At this very moment, in the remoteness of s.p.a.ce, the International s.p.a.ce Station was circling the Earth. Several of the astronauts had very grim expressions. Their mental states had been stretched taut since the beginning; it could be said that their nervousness was strained to its peak.
In the cold and dark void, nine t.i.tanic dragon corpses which appeared as if they had existed forever were connected to iron chains as thick as a foot. It connected to a huge bronze coffin which radiated an endless desolation and ancientness.
On Earth, the decision makers had long ago reached an agreement that in case something unexpected occurred, they would immediately move to destroy these nine dragon corpses along with the mysterious, ancient, bronze coffin.
But not one of them wished for such a thing to happen.
Nine dragons pulling a coffin from the depths of the dark and lonely universe. Its value and significance was far too great, practically impossible to estimate!
Suddenly, the International s.p.a.ce Station received a set of mysterious signals, very similar to ordinary background fluctuations. Their source was extremely close - it was precisely the nine dragon corpses which were pulling that huge, bronze coffin. The mysterious fluctuations were coming from those ancient and indistinct carvings.
“The signal is hard to decipher…” The signal was sent back to Earth and put through the most precise super-computers to decode, but no sense could be made of it.
The huge bronze coffin’s ancient carvings had been corroded and covered with green rust, making them hard to see clearly.
“After an initial a.n.a.lysis, those bronze engravings appear to have something to do with China’s ancient legends.” Each country’s monitoring room independently arrived at a similar conclusion. “The b.e.s.t.i.a.l carvings on the bronze coffin seemed to contain ancient, fierce beasts from China’s ‘Cla.s.sic of Mountain and Seas.’ And as for the people in the bronze carvings, they appear to be G.o.ds…”
Although they had identified some of the bronze carvings’ origins, the faint, mysterious signal continued to be as indecipherable as before, and not even a starting point could be found.
-----------------------------------
¹These are song lyrics from 一生有你, A Life With You