Chapter 2156 Burrow <TOC> Chapter 2158 Symbols Beyond Recollection
Translator: SumTLMan
At the end, there is an uncovered door. Inside the door is pitch darkness, nothing is visible, only Death Aura continuously surges like a ghostly wind whistling in the ears.
Freud closes his eyes, and the power of his soul vibrates at his brow, ripples invisible to the naked eye undulating outwards.
After a while, Freud opens his eyes and says, “The specific situation inside is unclear, but there are no remnants of souls or the presence of living beings.”
After confirming there are no living beings or ghostly threats, Freud and Angel step inside the door.
The gloomy Death Aura inside is even more intense. Even without any energy driving it, various sounds of ghostly wailing autonomously emerge around the ears, as if a multitude of resentful spirits are whispering and confiding.
Angel is not affected, but Freud’s brow keeps twitching, enduring painfully.
Seeing this, Angel takes a step forward, and as he steps, an invisible mental barrier envelops both him and Freud.
Under the protection of the mental barrier, Freud finally breathes a sigh of relief: “This must be Lady Sheila’s resting place. The residual resentment is extremely intense. Just standing here can stir up the Death Aura accumulated in my soul.”
Without Angel’s protection, Freud wouldn’t last long here. If he inhaled too much resentment, there’s only one outcome for him: corruption.
“So, this place seems more suitable for practicing Soul Trickery than Star Lake Castle,” Angel mutters, extending his hand, a bright orb of light slowly rising from his palm.
The orb rises above their heads, its radiant light immediately dispelling the darkness and illuminating the surroundings.
This is an advanced form of the light trick, first level trick light radiance.
Under the illumination of the light radiance trick, they can now see the surroundings within a dozen meters. Within the illuminated area, there’s nothing special. The ground is unusually smooth, with clear signs of polishing, a man-made creation.
In front of them, at the edge of the light, a staircase is faintly visible.
“It seems this place is even bigger than I imagined,” Angel murmurs, simultaneously conjuring ten orbs of light radiance in his palm and flicking them outwards in all directions.
The pitch-black hole is like a skylight opened to direct sunlight, instantly brightened. Even the deepest dark corners are replaced by light.
As the light completely replaces darkness, they finally see the vastness of the cave.
The cave is incredibly vast, easily accommodating two or three Star Lake Castles. The cave is very flat, with an Altar platform in front, surrounded by many rectangular stone platforms in a regular arrangement. Around the edge of the cave, every few meters, there is a small black cave, but no other man-made traces.
Freud frowns and looks around, finally focusing on the platform.
“This platform…” Freud points at the altar platform: “The Death Aura on it is incredibly intense, almost tangible.”
Without Freud saying, Angel has already sensed it.
Although it appears empty to the naked eye, the aura of death, decay, and silence on the platform is extremely conspicuous. It can even be said that all the Death Aura in the cave emanates from there… that is the source.
“There’s something odd about this place. Let’s explore separately to see if we find anything. Lastly, we’ll go to the platform.” Angel doesn’t immediately investigate the source of the Death Aura on the platform but decides to explore the cave with Freud first.
Freud nods, also feeling puzzled about this cave. Why is there such a place here? Who built it? What is its purpose?
Angel casts a mental barrier on Freud, then heads to the left of the platform, while Freud goes to the right.
Angel first used his mental power to sense the area, finding the only noteworthy objects on the left side were the rectangular stone platforms and small caves dug into the edge of the hole.
He walked over to the rectangular stone platform.
These platforms, protruding directly from the ground, resembled laboratory workbenches in both height and shape.
On the platform, just like a workbench, lay an object.
A skeleton.
To be precise, a dried-up, incomplete human skeleton.
It was a left-hand skeleton, so desiccated that brittle cracks appeared on it due to the intense aura of death. It seemed that it would crumble upon touch.
Angel used both his eyes and mental vision to examine the skeleton, noticing traces of energy saturation from when it was alive. However, he couldn’t be certain, as his knowledge of wizard-applicable skeletal anatomy was not yet complete. He could ask Freud about it later.
Without finding anything else, Angel moved to another rectangular stone platform.
This platform, like the previous one, held a smaller, incomplete skeleton, a right-hand palm bone.
Judging from the palm bone, the joints were distinct, with no missing parts, and it too had traces of energy immersion.
Recalling the previous left hand, Angel noted that it was larger than this right-hand palm bone, suggesting they didn’t belong to the same person.
Angel then visited other rectangular stone platforms, each holding different skeletal parts, some not even human.
After examining the stone platforms, he moved to the small caves dug into the cave wall.
He had previously explored the caves with his mental power and was now reconfirming his findings.
After looking, Angel confirmed that the results matched his mental vision: the caves were not large, just two meters deep, each containing a complete human skeleton in a sitting position.
Angel looked around the cave. The small caves, spaced a few meters apart, totaled three hundred and sixty.
Each cave contained a human skeleton in the same sitting posture.
This was definitely abnormal.
Angel seemed to realize something, his eyes suddenly darkening as he silently walked back to the central platform.
Soon, Freud also arrived.
Freud: “The stone platforms are all filled with broken skeletons, human and humanoid, and even some from other planes. I feel that perhaps some transcendent being conducted secret research here. All these skeletons show traces of energy use in life; none were ordinary people.”
Freud’s assessment matched Angel’s thoughts. After pondering, Angel said, “If it’s a transcendent being’s secret research, it’s normal for humans and humanoids to be here. But the presence of otherworldly beings’ skeletons reminds me of a certain group.”
“Karabians,” Freud softly agreed.
Karabians loved studying biology, especially extraplanar beings.
Angel nodded: “Maybe a Karabite wizard was conducting experiments here.”
Freud: “That’s possible. But based on the scene, this place has been abandoned for a long time, and there are no traces of the experimenter, so we can’t confirm this guess.”
Angel nodded in agreement, acknowledging that there wasn’t more information to be gleaned from the skeletons on the platforms for now.
Angel: “What I’m most concerned about are the skeletons in those small caves.”
After a moment of recollection, Freud shuddered slightly: “All those skeletons were intact, and they all sat in the same cross-legged position, which I found somewhat creepy.”
Pausing, Freud asked curiously, “Why does your lordship care about those skeletons?”
Angel pondered for a moment: “The distance between each small cave is the same, the size inside is the same, and the skeletons are also human, all in the same posture. Everything follows a uniform standard. This reminds me of…”
Angel hesitated for a moment before revealing the word in his mind: “Ritual.”
“Ritual.” Freud whispered the word. Ritual studies were not as aggressively pursued and blocked by the Extreme Sect in the Southern Region as inscription studies were, so he had heard of them, but he had little contact with them.
However, he knew that almost all sacrifices are somehow related to ritual studies. Some schools even believe that ritual studies, like inscription studies, are derived from Demon Gods, but specifically from sacrificial rituals between Demon Gods and their devotees.
“I once participated in a food prayer ritual at Ananda’s and later learned some basics of ritual studies from Gloria,” Angel recalled some of the rituals taught by Gloria. “Before becoming a master of control in rituals, ritual studies had little freedom, and everything had to follow the ritual guide.”
“The ritual guide in ritual studies is a very strict and rigid standard. For example, in a sacrificial ritual, the position of the sacrificers must be dispersed beyond ten times the distance of the offerings, all sacrificers must be three meters apart, and the positions of the two sacrificers separated must be at 90 degrees…”
“It’s because of these standards that rituals can be carried out completely. And the existence of these small caves, in my view, is a line of absolute strict standards.”
After listening to Angel’s explanation, Freud also understood why Angel valued the small caves.
First, rituals themselves are rare; moreover, this ritual guide specifically used human bones.
Whether these human bones were from living or dead sacrifices, it indicated that this was a suspected sacrificial ritual.
A sacrifice naturally has a target, and using humans as a target for the ritual guide usually involves Demon Gods, evil gods, divinities that feed on humans, or otherworldly giants who are hostile to humans.
Otherwise, there is no need to use humans as a condition for the ritual guide.
And these, whether they are Demon Gods, evil gods, or otherworldly existences, are not easy to deal with and are all key focuses of the Wizarding World.
The appearance of such a suspected sacrificial ritual here indeed requires attention.
“Since there are human bones as a ritual guide.” Angel looked back at the nearby platform: “Then this platform, without a doubt, is the center of the ritual, the altar.”
“As for whom this sacrificial ritual is dedicated to, we will know when we go up and see. There must be clues there.”
Angel said, and took the lead in stepping onto the stairs of the altar.
With every step, Angel could feel the increasingly fierce assault of the Death Aura on the mental barrier.
However, although the Death Aura here was intense, it was not controlled and just impacted unconsciously, causing no harm to the mental barrier.
There were a total of thirty-six steps in the staircase, exactly corresponding to the number of small caves, once again confirming the ritual’s standardization.
When they reached the top of the altar, what they saw was an altar of white bones constructed from the dry bones of the deceased.
There was nothing on the white bone altar, but the Death Aura here was the strongest.
Angel speculated that Lady Sheila might have been staying on the altar all this time, hence the particularly strong death and ghostly aura.
Freud circled the altar but saw no other anomalies, suggesting that clues could only be sought from the skeletal altar itself.
At first glance, it was hard to find clues on the skeletal altar. There was nothing on it, and the altar was pure white without any patterns.
Angel reached out and touched the skeletal altar.
When he felt a cold sensation, Angel’s gaze slightly sharpened.
“This skeletal altar no longer contains any residual energy,” Angel said slowly.
The skeletal altar, made from the dry bones of the deceased, was considered a semi-finished magical material in the Wizarding World, inherently possessing extraordinary properties.
However, now the bones had become mundane, devoid of any extraordinary properties, indicating…
“The ritual has already been performed.”
Since the ritual had been conducted, what exactly was it? Was it successful or a failure? And why was Lady Sheila there?
While Freud pondered these questions, Angel forcefully shattered the skeletal altar, breaking it into pieces with a ‘clatter.’
As the altar crumbled, the ground beneath it was revealed.
“Hey, there’s a symbol here!” Freud looked down and saw a strange, human-carved symbol right at the center of the ground beneath where the altar stood.
Angel, too, focused on the symbol. He had shattered the altar precisely because he sensed this symbol beneath it.
Now that the symbol was revealed, Angel frowned.
He had never seen this symbol before.
It was very symmetrical and could be divided into three parts. The outermost part was a concentric circle, inside of which was a standard ritual hexagon, and within the hexagon was a symmetrical, winding symbol.
The symbol looked like two symmetrical, curving earthworms. Upon closer inspection, it seemed almost alive, twisting and turning in one’s mind.
“Although this symbol seems to bear no traces of the extraordinary, it subtly connects with the dense aura of death Around us,” sighed Angel. “Unfortunately, I have never seen this symbol before.”
The symbol inside the hexagon was clearly the key clue, perhaps directly pointing to the sacrificial subject.
Angel looked at Freud, hoping he might know something.
Freud shook his head: “I’ve never seen it either. But it’s okay if we haven’t seen it; we can ask for external help…”
Chapter 2156 Burrow <TOC> Chapter 2158 Symbols Beyond Recollection