Xia Yibing couldn't make up her mind for a moment, but unfortunately and fortunately, something helped them make the decision.
"Ah~~~~~~~"
After making a constipation-like noise, a crew member stood up and clapped his hands: "The valve leading to the lower level is blocked. We can only go up."
There are two types of pipes here, one is originally unobstructed, and the other is separated by valves. There are some layered depressions in the vertical pipes, which are probably used by maintenance personnel to climb, and the sealed pipes are covered with heavy steel plates, and the surface is covered with thick rust.
This thing was too thick, and Xia Yibing couldn't do anything with her long Xia knife when she hit it and cut it. Hitzfeld estimated that even if the ice needle could penetrate it, it would be useless. They couldn't spend a lot of time dealing with this thing.
The only option was to go up. This time, considering that Hitzfeld was wearing a skirt, Xia Yibing asked herself and her to hang at the end.
"Trouble..." Hitzfeld said in an annoyed tone, "I didn't expect to have to crawl down the sewer."
The original plan was to just go up the stairs and rush into the palace. The palace was a structure that was getting taller and taller, so it was really no problem for her to climb the stairs in a skirt.
The sewer was another matter. The hem of her long skirt was already stained with a lot of smelly rotten blood. Although Hitzfeld could tolerate it, he wouldn't be very happy at all.
A group of people climbed up the vertical pipe and swept away the skeletons blocking the walls.
"There are many kinds of skeletons..." Madeline kept biting the flashlight while climbing. She found that there were not only human skulls here, but also many skeletons of various animals.
Everyone immediately thought of the transformation curse that plagued Iverria, and although they appeared to be fine, they felt a chill in their hearts.
Rumbling--
Suddenly, the entire pipe began to vibrate.
"There's something in the pipe!" the crew shouted. "It's water! Water is coming up from below!"
"Hold my hand!" Xia Yibing made a prompt decision and turned around to extend her hand to Hitzfeld, who quickly interlocked his fingers with hers and was pulled up by her with brute force, hugging her slender waist tightly.
Now I was being carried and crawled...
Hitzfeld still cared about her, and in order to lighten the woman's burden, she took the initiative to hang on the other's neck so that the woman could free up both hands to climb - and finally climbed up before the things below caught up.
After crawling out of the opening and looking around, Hitzfeld confirmed that this was a closed secret room.
The reason why it is called a secret room is that this damn place has no furniture or ornaments. What they just came out of was a wellhead. From the ground of the wellhead to the floor, walls and ceiling of the secret room, there are dense and strange runes engraved. It looks like breaking into the tomb of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh, with endless mystery in the weirdness.
"Bang!" There was an explosion behind me.
Everyone looked back and saw several flashlights illuminating the wellhead. A column of water gushed out from there, mixed with some broken bones and skulls... After being strong at the beginning, it gradually weakened and continued to gushed out like a spring.
"Is this the monster?"
"It hasn't moved! It doesn't seem like it!"
"Where's the door to this damn place? I can't find the exit!"
"Damn it! We're not going to drown, are we?"
The sound of rushing water invisibly heightened the tension. The crew members were a little panicked and groped around trying to open the secret room and get out.
This is the most critical thing at the moment, because no one wants to jump back into the well against the current. Being swallowed by the water monster is one thing, but the gushing spring water will push people down!
They must find a way out! Otherwise, the water in the secret room will accumulate higher and higher, and they will be drowned!
"Here!" someone shouted, "I found it! There's a secret door here!"
Rumbling--
No one knew what mechanism had been triggered, but one wall opened inward, revealing a dark and deep secret passage.
There was no time to worry about anything at this time. Everyone held up their guns and gathered together to explore inside.
"Madeline, go take care of Ge Lan." Xia Yibing ordered, "She has no one to accompany her... Don't give her a gun!"
"Know!"
Hitzfeld was looking at the mural with the help of a flashlight.
Murals - yes, the tunnel has carvings just like the secret room just now, densely packed all over the top, bottom, left and right.
Is this a language?
These are character paintings I have never seen before, and I can’t figure out the pattern behind them for now.
They were closer to hieroglyphs than Sara's traditional characters, and Hitzfeld could imagine similar objects in many of the arrangements.
For example, insects, birds, monkeys... Obviously, the shapes of some characters represent these animals.
Her left eye felt hot, and for a moment she thought all the characters had come alive... They emitted a golden glow and left the wall, circling and gathering in mid-air, guarding the two patterns in the center.
That is……
Hitzfeld came to his senses and the illusion disappeared instantly.
But what she saw in the end was not fake. She immediately turned on the flashlight and searched around frantically. The unusual movement of the light beam attracted other people to stop and watch.
"Captain, what did you find?"
"Here." Hitzfeld exhaled, and the flashlight stopped on the ceiling. "Look carefully at that rune."
“Looks like a fish?”
"It's a shark." Xia Yibing frowned.
Shark fins are different from those of other fish, so they are easy to recognize.
This shark rune is obviously different from that of ordinary sharks. The most obvious thing is that this fish actually wears a forked crown on its head.
"And here." Hitzfeld moved the light to the side again.
"There's nothing there..."
The crew members stared with eyes wide open and looked carefully, but they did not find any similar runes. They only saw a lot of pits, and the characters inside could no longer be seen clearly.
"It must be the seagull." Xia Yibing suddenly said, "The destroyed rune is the silver-eyed seagull."
This is very obvious - this place must be related to the sea god Colossae. These runes may be the language used in more ancient times. She estimated that the content is either praising the god or explaining the purpose of this damn place.
The latter is more likely, as there is a clear reference to a "crowned shark", which is obviously Angelo's symbol, the diatom shark.
In addition, the destroyed runes, combined with the hints left by Erwin in the secret message, show that the enemy wants to find the Silver-Eyed Seagull by digging into the mind.
Then their purpose of looking for the seagull might be to bring him/her here.
Together with Oman, the sea god's family gathers here.
These bastards, what on earth do they want to do?
Hitzfeld went on.
Xia Yibing was worried that something might happen to her so she hurried to catch up.
In fact, if a real fight breaks out now, she may not be able to suppress the Silent Ice Needles, but she can't get over her stereotypes. She always feels that the weak Aisuen needs care.
There was a long staircase ahead, and after walking up for several minutes, the path was blocked by a stone door.
"Touch it again, touch it again..."
"There must be some mechanism..."
The crew members were talking at once, looking for the mechanism everywhere, while Hitzfeld and Xia Yibing were studying the language of the murals.
No one cares about me...
Grant stood alone on the steps, panting and wondering if he had made the right decision to follow.
In fact, she had a chance to avoid such a miserable fate... When the palace collapsed, a group of people from this commando team went back, and she could have been with them and not have to suffer this here.
But after all - she chose to be loyal to Hitzfeld. She was only willing to trust this girl with gray eyelashes. She suspected that those who returned might be baits. It was safest to follow Hitzfeld.
So just...
It was her own choice anyway.
Why didn't I just leave the city?
Covering his forehead, Ge Lan regretted it.
But she actually knew that no matter what choice she made, she would regret it.
If she chose this path, she would have to take the risk now. But what if she had left the city in the first place? She would just be running around like a headless fly.
A weak and fragile girl walking in an environment lacking order may be swallowed up at any time.
She was really tired. Seeing that the group of people could not find the mechanism for a while, and the spring water below would take some time to flood up, Ge Lan simply found a place on the steps and sat down to rest.
"what!"
Then she uttered a scream and jumped as if she had been electrocuted.
There was something wrong with the step she was sitting on.
As he sat on it, the thing flipped over. The movement quickly attracted everyone's attention. Flashlight beams flashed, illuminating the downward-turning staircase.
Rumbling--
The stone door slid and opened inward.
Not until the noise completely stopped did everyone turn around, widen their eyes, and look at Ge Lan with strange eyes.
"I...I don't know anything!"
Ge Lan was terrified and quickly raised his hands to show that he was harmless.
"I just sat on it... This seems to be the mechanism..."
"Stay here." Xia Yibing saw that Hitzfeld had already stepped in, and quickly ordered: "She and I will go in and check."
Then she found that Madeleine followed her shamelessly, and her eyelids twitched.
"If it involves legends at sea, I might be able to help." Madeline explained quickly.
"Well... uh... after all, I have studied all the information related to Bakinsa. Those sailors can do their job, but they may not know as much as I do in this area..."
"Really?" Xia Yibing looked at her suspiciously.
Madeline nodded vigorously.
"Then let me ask you, in ancient times, they hadn't even discovered electricity yet, so why did they ignore the ground and go researching floating cities?"
In the woman's opinion, the floating city was obviously unreasonable. She had indeed read related legends in some documents, but she had always thought it was nonsense.
"I actually know this!" Madeline's eyes lit up, "And it just happens to match the direction of our current investigation - the floating city means the kingdom of the true God!"
"The kingdom of the true God... the kingdom of God?"
Hitzfeld, who was walking in front, stopped and looked back.
She suddenly remembered the book "One Hundred Fairy Tales".
"Wings of Ikaros"...
[Prince Boca is actually a child of God. His father, Ferenci, once lived in the kingdom of the Sun King and felt God's grace day and night.]
[But Ferenqi felt disrespectful to the goddess and attempted to make wings to touch the sun.]
[The closer Ferenqi gets to the sun, the hotter his body becomes, and he and Yuyi eventually turn into a fireball.]
[In order to punish Ferenqi for his crimes, Prince Boca was expelled from the kingdom of God and became a mortal again.]
Fairy tales often mention the "kingdom of God", which refers to the "kingdom of the sun god"...
After learning about Ivenria's situation, they determined that there were two other kingdoms of God on the continent of Elsa, namely the Kingdom of Corrupted Blood and the Kingdom of Machinery.
Hitzfeld originally found it very strange because this suffix was too outrageous. When discussing it with Xia Yibing, they both suspected that there were evil gods from the gray fog world behind these two great kingdoms.
At present, there seems to be other possibilities. It is possible that the sign of upgrading to the Kingdom of God is not that there is a god to rely on, but that this kingdom must be able to fly...it cannot be rooted in the earth.
The "Kingdom of God" is the kingdom of heaven composed of floating cities - this is definitely a novel conjecture.
She originally thought that the Kingdom of God was in the Secret Realm of the God Lord, and she had never thought about it in this way!
"Madeline, tell me in detail," Hitzfeld began. "Tell me everything you know."
She admitted that she had underestimated Madeline.
At the same time, a sense of absurdity arose in his heart: Madeline's joining the team seemed to be Xia's decision without being manipulated by others, but she was actually the descendant of Marpa Kinsa.
I heard that she had no experience in overseas assignments before, and her first overseas assignment was so important. It was only because her potential as a navigator was noticed by Xia that she was included in the shortlist and finally selected... This matter now does not seem like a coincidence.
There is an invisible hand controlling everything.
But that was in Wayne Port, and in her opinion, there was only one person with this ability.
Alvin, what on earth do you know...
