Chapter 333 Dead Water and Living Water <TOC> Chapter 335 The Golden Vertical Pupil
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Translator: SumTLMan
The underwater world was pitch-black, with visibility completely obstructed. Angel quickly constructed a hexagonal model in his mind space, and with a gentle push of his magic, a white light sphere appeared within the purification barrier, illuminating the surroundings like a bright lamp.
This was a 0-level trick, Light.
In the past two months, he had learned most of the commonly used tricks, including the Light spell, which he had previously deemed unworthy of his time.
The Light spell only had a lighting effect, and the light it produced was not very bright, similar to that of a torch, barely illuminating two or three meters around. However, unlike torches, the Light spell had no restrictions underwater.
In fact, there was an advanced version of the Light spell called: Shine. It could illuminate a range of tens of meters. However, Shine was a first-level spell and required a certain accumulation of knowledge to learn. It would take a long time to master, and Angel had no plans to learn it for the time being.
With the help of the Light spell, the dark and cold lake finally had some brightness.
Using the dim light to survey his surroundings, Angel saw unknown debris floating in the water, and some strange black threads resembling human hair, quietly drifting around.
Looking at the bundle of black hair wrapped together, even with the barrier of the Purification Field, Angel could still imagine how nauseating the smell must be.
The lake was not deep, only about four or five meters. Angel quickly reached the bottom. The lakebed was covered in an unidentified black, paint-like substance. At trick, he thought it was a petroleum-like raw material, but when he wrapped some of the black paint in a magic sphere and brought it into the Purification Field, an instantaneously revolting, putrid smell filled the air.
It wasn’t petroleum. Angel pondered for a long time, and with his experience, he couldn’t determine what the substance was, so he gave up.
The shallow lakebed proved one thing: the villagers could not have survived on this water alone in the past. Perhaps this lake used to be a source of fresh water, but now it was blocked for some unknown reason.
With this thought in mind, Angel began searching for the possible blocked channels in the dark lakebed.
Every few steps, a “Wind Tornado” erupted from Angel’s palm, stirring up debris from the bottom of the lake. The lakebed began to churn violently, and many hidden items were exposed.
Angel maintained the Purification Field, temporarily separating the polluted water and debris. With the help of the Light spell, he could clearly see many strange objects.
For example, a dilapidated small iron box flashed before Angel’s eyes.
He quickly captured the iron box and dragged it into the Purification Field’s barrier. Angel estimated that the iron box had not been opened for a long time. He was afraid that opening it might cause the contents inside to change, so he did not attempt to open the box. Instead, he extended his mental tendrils to observe the interior.
The images fed back by his mental tendrils surprised Angel; considering the intricate design and sealed nature of the small iron box, he had thought it contained precious treasures. However, the box held well-preserved medical instruments, such as syringes, medicine bottles, and injection devices.
Angel thought for a moment and used a cleansing spell to remove the debris on the outside of the box, then a purification spell to eliminate any odor, before finally storing it in his bracelet.
The reason he did not discard the box was that the medical instruments inside all bore a strange symbol—a snake coiled around a circular cone.
This symbol might reveal some information about the village.
With each “Wind Tornado” he cast, long-hidden dark objects buried for nearly a thousand years surfaced one after another. Among them were several skeletons with heads still attached.
Angel had not seen any human bones in the village and thought the inhabitants had all escaped. However, it now appeared that was not the case. He had only cleared a small corner of the lake’s bottom and already found eight corpses. Considering the entire lake’s area, how many bodies were submerged at the bottom?
Could it be that the entire village’s population was buried in the lake?
Thinking of this possibility, Angel felt a chill run down his spine. No wonder the smell of the lake was so unbearable. A stagnant lake with countless corpses submerged for a millennium would hardly smell pleasant.
Angel leaped out of the lake with the skeletons, placed them by the shore, and began to examine them one by one.
After inspecting all eight skeletons, a smile appeared on Angel’s face. Upon careful examination, he confirmed that these skeletons were human and not humanoid. Based on their height and skeletal distribution, Angel deduced that they were likely ordinary people, belonging to the mainstream human race in the southern region.
This answer made Angel more confident that he had not left the Wizarding World.
Other planes might have humans, but most of them were mortal beings rather than ordinary humans. Angel was confident that these bones once belonged to ordinary people. Furthermore, although the underground village was strange, after searching for some time, Angel could roughly determine that there should be no mortal beings in the village.
A village filled with ordinary humans could not exist outside the Wizarding World!
Since he was still in the Wizarding World, what was there for Angel to worry about? As long as he had not strayed too far, there would always be a way to return.
Angel used his magic hand to dig a massive pit and placed the eight skeletons inside, showing basic respect for the deceased.
He did not immediately bury them but continued to stir up waves at the lake’s bottom.
As he had anticipated, the entire lakebed was a chaotic burial pit. One by one, he pulled up corpses of men, women, old, and young, including a baby’s skeleton held in its mother’s arms. Gazing at this seemingly loving yet cold and indifferent mother-child pair of skeletons, Angel’s emotions were a mix of various feelings.
Babies cannot actively seek death, so this corpse seemed to prove one thing: the people here might have been killed or committed suicide.
Setting aside being killed, if it was suicide, Angel couldn’t understand what kind of emotions the mother had to choose death while taking her baby with her.
“Sigh…” With a soft sigh, the past was already buried in time, and no one could tell the reasons. Mortal emotions are more passionate and turbulent because of their short lives, a kind of intensity that long-lived wizards lack.
Perhaps a bloody disaster occurred here a thousand years ago. Or maybe—
Angel turned to look at a particular spot in the village, where there was an ancient nest. Colorful Dragonflies made their home there. Angel didn’t know if their presence had caused any problems here.
However, who could clarify what happened a thousand years ago?
One after another, skeletons, piled like small hills, were dragged by Angel from the bottom of the lake and thrown into a massive pit. What he didn’t know was that, while he was doing these things, a pair of golden vertical pupils were quietly watching him from a hidden place at the bottom of the lake.
In the end, Angel had cleared nearly a hundred corpses from the bottom of the lake. This number seemed large, but according to the size of the village, there should have been more than a hundred people living there.
“Perhaps the remaining people managed to escape the village?” Angel speculated.
Angel spent half a day cleaning the bottom of the lake, and almost all the corpses were retrieved. However, he could not find the “underground passage” he wanted to prove that this lake was once a living water lake.
“Could it be that my guess was wrong? Is there another water source in this barren village at the heart of the earth? Was this lake simply built for aesthetic purposes?”
But who would deliberately construct a dead lake for people to see?
Or was this lake actually the villagers’ graveyard? Did they end their lives through water burial?
Angel continued to speculate but could not find an answer or an exit. He had no choice but to leave the bottom of the lake and bury the group of skeletons trick.
There were too many skeletons, and the initial pit was somewhat small. Angel instructed Toby to violently create a larger pit nearby and then placed the corpses in it one by one.
After covering the pit with soil, Angel found a large stone, melted it into a monument using a heat-melting technique, and inscribed a neat row of universal text with his magic hand:
“Unnamed barren village, more than a hundred skeletons sunk in the lake, a monument erected today for worship.”
“Erected by: Angel Pat.”
With the inscription in place, Angel began to consider if there were any other paths. There was another clumsy method of digging a new path, but he didn’t know the infrastructure location of this land’s heart. If he accidentally caused a collapse, it would not be good.
At that moment, Angel suddenly heard a gurgling sound coming from the lake behind him.
He turned his head and saw a whirlpool forming on the lake’s surface.
Angel knew exactly what the whirlpool on the lake meant, and his face lit up with joy. He called Toby back and then dove into the lake.
Angel went straight to the whirlpool and was surprised to find a dark, mysterious tunnel at the bottom of the lake.
It was this abrupt tunnel that caused the whirlpool to form.
“Did I not see a tunnel here before?” Angel looked puzzled and began to recall the previous situation.
However, after thinking for a while, he couldn’t remember any useful information. The bottom of the lake was so dark that even with the Light spell, it could only illuminate an area of two or three meters around him. Furthermore, the uneven lakebed, covered in black, paint-like substances, made it difficult for him to remember the details.
“Maybe when I used the Wind Tornado earlier, it almost uncovered this tunnel, and when I went to bury the villagers, the water pressure broke through the last layer of the membrane?” Angel didn’t have any other guesses, and there were no other people here to provide any input.
As for the possibility of it being the work of the undead… Angel could discern that he hadn’t felt any undead fluctuations in the area. Moreover, the chances of ordinary people surviving as spirits were incredibly low, and after a thousand years, it was improbable that any undead remained.
Once the lake’s bottom had settled, Angel cautiously entered the dark, mysterious tunnel.
An unknown tunnel, an unknown destination—no one knew what lay ahead. All Angel could do now was to stay on high alert.
“Toby, keep an eye out too!” Angel didn’t forget to remind Toby, but when he turned to look at Toby, he found that Toby’s eyes were filled with concern.
“Toby?” Angel asked, puzzled.
Toby gestured to Angel: “Chirp chirp.”
“You’re saying you want to go out?” Angel was somewhat surprised. Wasn’t Toby always a fan of cleanliness? Why would he want to leave the Purification Field and expose himself to the filthy, foul-smelling water?
Chapter 333 Dead Water and Living Water <TOC> Chapter 335 The Golden Vertical Pupil