Nightmare's Call

500 The Nightmare Plain: Part 3

Lin Sheng walked around the black sculpture. Soon, he found a broken piece of white stone disc on the pedestal. Picking up the disc, he summoned his holy power to extinguish the fire and heat on it. There was a text imprint on the disc. It seemed to be some kind of recording medium. He tried to identify it, but he could not recognize the language.

Tucking the disc in his body, he descended toward his house, which was not far from the island. Lin Sheng put the disc in the house, then took a backpack and headed out again. He was going to explore each of those islands while letting the researchers in the Fairy Empire study the text.

With his strength and speed, it did not take long for Lin Sheng to explore those islands. He had investigated fifteen floating islands in an hour. There were courtyards and sculptures on most of the islands. Just that they differed in size. He also found signs of struggle on the islands, some broken daggers and swords on the ground beside five of what might look like white stone discs.

He collected all the discs, returned to the house and left them there.

Now, Lin Sheng decided to go straight to the pillar that connected the earth with heaven. Probably he might be able to find some intelligent beings there, he thought.

His body faded into a streak of white light like a meteor swept across the dark-red sky as he flew toward the giant writhing pillar. After flying for three hours non-stop, Lin Sheng arrived at a spot close to the pillar.

He could see now that the pillar was actually a vine, extremely large and red. On the surface of the vine were a large amount of air nozzles. Every time this gigantic thing writhed, it would spurt red mist through the nozzles.

Floating in the air, Lin Sheng made a rough estimate of the size of the vine.

“At least three kilometers in diameter. But the length is unknown,” he said to himself, almost in awe. This was the first time he was seeing such a massive living thing. Those footages in his memories notwithstanding, of course.

It was only when he got closer he felt and heard the violent tremor and loud buzz the vine made. It continuously bombarded everything—whether alive or dead—in the surroundings with the noise. Besides, he could nearly not find a patch of soil around here. Red sand was everywhere.

Lin Sheng summoned the holy power to shield his body, just in case. He examined the gigantic vine from afar for a while before going closer. On the surface of the vine, he found what might look like a human-shaped relief inlaid. The relief grew together with the vine skin. The human face on the relief looked old with wrinkles all around. So Lin Sheng decided to take a closer look, floating near to the human relief to see if he could find anything meaningful.

The human image on the relief opened its eyes all of a sudden, staring quietly at Lin Sheng with his dark-gray eyes while slowly opening its mouth and sticking out his tongue that looked like a piece of black wooden plank. On its tongue was a pale-silver stone disc.

Lin Sheng waited for a while. After knowing that this thing had no soul, he got closer. Using his dark energy as a tentacle, he took the disc in his hand.

“It’s still the same gadget.” Lin Sheng frowned, not making head or tail of it. This place was dead silent, mysterious and strange. Not only that, it was only visible through his spiritual vision. He was curious what the disc contained.

“Maybe it would be quicker if I could find a monster, kill it and absorb its memory.”

He looked at the human relief from which he had taken the disc. With the flick of his hand, a blinding light shot out from his hand. The light turned into a longsword and cut the human relief in half. The human relief screamed in pain, his shriveled body wriggling and howling on the vine before it dropped off in the form of black ashes.

In just a few moments, the human relief had completely turned into ashes, dropping to the ground before wind carried it away. From the ashes rose a black thread the size of a finger. The black thread rose into the air before disappearing into Lin Sheng’s chest. He closed his eyes as a large amount of memories flashing across his mind. This information, language and text belonging to this place rushed into his head.

After a while, Lin Sheng opened his eyes, looking up at the giant vine.

“The Divine Pillar?”

He floated in the air, muttering something to himself. Instead of doing more exploration, he turned around and flew back in the direction from where he came. He needed to go back and check out those stone discs. The memories of the human relief were too little, too chaotic. Only a fraction of them were useful. But at least he had achieved something. He had learned from the memories some basic knowledge of the local language.

He flew at full speed towards home.

Once back, he took all the stone discs out and carefully read them, starting to extract information out of them.

“Failed? Succeeded? The Divine Pillar will bring us away—away from this world. That is for sure!”

“We can only record information on the stone discs? If we speak, we will give ourselves away. We have to create a large enough sound interference instrument. Otherwise, all of us will die!”

“The Black Tide is coming... the goddamn Muffler! It robs us of our right to speak!”

“The Divine Pillar could accommodate everything we need so long as we follow the formula, coalescing into one body with it!”

“The Black Tide is invincible, ha haha!”

“The woman who calls herself the Light of Hope wants us to abandon the Divine Pillar? Give up the most powerful sacred vessel? She must be harboring some unforgivable scheme!”

“The Divine Pillar is uncontaminable! Ancellia is mad! The power of our race is supreme. She knows nothing! She is just too old! She even needs someone to help her walk, her mind a muddle now!”

Paragraphs of information as if a diary showed up on the stone discs before Lin Sheng’s eyes. He browsed through the text and soon found the trail of Ancellia.

“The Great Demigod Cassius, the Dreamweaver, has summoned the mad woman? I have a bad feeling.”

“We the Tomb of the Discs must meet. Exchanges of information like this is not going to be enough to deal with the coming changes.”

“Agree!”

“Agree!”

“It’s a big mistake to meet with Ancellia. We can’t sit by and watch while she deceives His Majesty! Banish her back to the Infinite City!”

“The Infinite City...”

Lin Sheng gently stroked the disc with his finger. He found that the information recorded in the discs sounded weird. They sounded like conversations, messages and an impromptu meeting at the same time. He continued to read.

“Something seems wrong with His Majesty. I have a bad feeling since getting rid of Ancellia.”

“His Majesty is a demigod, the supreme and most powerful one! Perhaps he is tired of governing the Divine Pillar. But we need to trust His Majesty. Do not doubt him!”

“Yeah, with the power of His Majesty, the Black Tide is not worth mentioning!”

That was all the information in the discs. Having browsed through them once, Lin Sheng had gotten two key points.

One, Cassius, the Dreamweaver, was the leader around here. Perhaps the Black Tide had successfully overrun the place. Two, Ancellia, the Light of Hope, had been here. She had most likely returned to the Infinite City through here.

These were two very crucial leads. Lin Sheng got a huge morale boost, knowing that he did not return empty-handed.