Episode 57: The Secret Passage of the Ancestral Temple

The bronze gates of the Patriarch’s Temple gleamed coldly in the moonlight. The scorpion-like totem on the door ring writhed like a living creature in the shadows, its tail stingers expanding and contracting.

Alicia’s silver bird necklace suddenly grew scalding hot. The moment she pressed it against her collar, the scorpion’s tail on the ring dropped slightly, as if bowing to her. Lu Chen relaxed his grip on the bone knife slightly—just as the Sand Speaker had claimed, the bloodline of the S Tribe could temporarily pacify the defensive mechanisms of the Patriarch’s Temple.

"Stay close to me." Alicia pushed the door open, her boots making a dull thud against the obsidian floor. Sand crystal lamps on both sides of the great hall automatically lit up. Under the dim blue light, the chieftain statues on twelve totem pillars stared coldly at them. The eyes of every single statue were inlaid with sand crystals, flickering with an eerie light in the illumination.

"These statues move." Alicia’s voice dropped to a whisper. Her fingers grazed the base of the nearest statue, where there was a silver bird engraving the size of a fingernail. "I sneaked in here once when I was a child. My mother left a mark for me here; following the engravings allows us to avoid triggering the traps."

Su Qing followed closely behind, holding a detector whose on-screen energy waveforms fluctuated wildly, resembling a struggling snake. "This isn't right. The sand crystal energy field here is alive, and it’s adjusting its frequency to match our movement."

Before her voice had even faded, the statue on the far left abruptly twisted its neck, fixing its sand crystal eyes on Lu Chen. The Suppression Ring on Lu Chen's finger blazed with heat. He sidestepped to evade a shooting sand crystal arrow, slashing his bone knife toward the statue's wrist. The instant the golden light collided with the sand crystal, the statue’s arm twisted like that of a living human, revealing intertwined black curses winding within.

"They're puppets!" Lu Chen’s scar gleamed under the ghostly blue light. "Their joints are infused with bone core solution!"

Alicia suddenly let out a short, sharp whistle, its pitch strikingly similar to the cry of a silver bird. All twelve statues froze simultaneously, the eerie blue of their sand crystal eyes rapidly dimming as if someone had pressed pause.

"The pacification spell my mother taught me," she panted, pressing a hand to her necklace. "It will only hold for three minutes, move quickly!"

The trio sprinted along the engravings to the end of the hall, where Alicia crouched behind the seventh totem pillar, her fingernails digging into the seams of the pillar's base. The obsidian floor suddenly split open to reveal a secret door just wide enough for one person. A scent compounded of sandalwood and rust poured out, identical to the fragrance of the Hall of Memories.

"The secret passage entrance." Alicia jumped down first, the sand crystal thorns on her wrist sparking against the cave walls. "My mother said this was an escape route she carved out back then. Only the silver bird bloodline can open it."

Lu Chen leaped in after her, and the moment he fell, he heard the clicking sound of the statues rebooting from above—the three-minute mark had expired. Just as Su Qing slid down using the detection rope, the secret door slammed shut overhead, blocking the pursuing sand crystal arrows on the outside.

The secret passage was steeper than expected, with glowing fluorite embedded in the cave walls to illuminate the stone steps beneath their feet. Lu Chen noticed subtle scratches along the edge of every step, as if countless people had trod there while deliberately avoiding the central groove—where concealed darts were hidden, their tips gleaming with a dark purple light.

"These scratches are the footprints of the Sand Keepers." Lu Chen pried up a broken dart with his bone knife. "The poison on the dart matches the composition of the bone core samples. Your mother definitely had connections with the Sand Keepers back then."

Alicia’s footsteps faltered, the fluorite glow casting light across her trembling eyelashes. "I should have guessed... She always disappeared on nights of the full moon, and her boots were stained with sand from the Black Wind Pass when she returned."

Su Qing’s detector suddenly emitted a sharp alarm, and the red dots on the screen closed in from all directions. "Something is approaching! And it's moving fast!"

Lu Chen shielded the two women behind him, the golden light of his bone knife piercing the dark. A rustling sound echoed from the depths of the tunnel, like countless tiny claws scratching against stone walls. When the creatures surged into the range of the fluorite light, Su Qing instinctively covered her mouth—it was a swarm of palm-sized sand crystal scorpions, the tail stingers of each dragging a silver thread, with a pulsing little red dot at the end of each thread.

"Blood-tracking scorpions!" Alicia’s voice tightened. "My father said these are the tomb-guarding bugs of the Patriarch’s Temple. They can track the scent of blood for three miles!"

Lu Chen’s bone knife lashed out with golden light, but he froze the moment it contacted the scorpions. Swept by the golden light, the sand crystal scorpions did not shatter; instead, like ignited gunpowder, they instantly burst into clusters of silver flames, their threads and red dots lunging toward them.

"Don't hack at them directly!" Alicia yanked him aside to dodge. A red dot grazed Lu Chen's arm, slamming into the cave wall and bursting like a blossom of blood. "Their threads are forged from the chieftain's blood; they detonate upon contact with golden light!"

Su Qing suddenly whipped out a metal bottle, splashing half a bottle of dark green liquid onto the ground—the calming powder given by the Sand Speaker. The moment the blood-tracking scorpion swarm touched the liquid, they froze instantly, dropping to the ground in droves as their sand crystal carapaces rapidly weathered away.

"That can trap them temporarily!" Su Qing’s fingers flew across the detector. "But this stuff is going to attract something much more troublesome. There's a corner fifty meters ahead, we have to sprint past it in three minutes!"

The three of them ran wildly amid the hissing of the scorpions, the fluorite glow flashing away behind them. Lu Chen's bone knife continuously hacked down stone spikes falling from the cave ceiling, while Alicia guided them past hidden pits based on the necklace's directions. Su Qing brought up the rear, blocking pursuers with the calming powder, the crisp clinking of metal bottles echoing jarringly in the secret passage.

An iron grating suddenly appeared at the corner, the sand crystal lock upon its bars glowing with a red light. The instant Alicia’s silver bird necklace pressed against it, the lock cylinder gave a crisp click, and the red light shifted into a warm golden hue—this was the bloodline lock set by her mother, one that only the heir to the silver bird totem could open.

"Hurry!" Lu Chen kicked open the iron gate, and the sight inside made all three of them hold their breath in unison.

This was a circular burial chamber, its dome inlaid with thousands of fluorite stones like an inverted starry sky. The stone sarcophagus in the center was carved from a single piece of white jade, and the silver bird totem on the surface of the lid matched the pattern on Alicia's necklace down to the last detail. A line of small characters was engraved along the edge of the totem: "With my bone, I guard your path."

"It's my mother's handwriting." Alicia’s fingertips grazed the icy jade surface, where a faint residual warmth still lingered, as if the person within were merely taking a short nap. "She really did leave something here."

Su Qing’s detector abruptly pointed toward the base of the stone sarcophagus. "The energy source is right here! The intensity matches the three rings we detected earlier perfectly!"

Lu Chen's bone knife braced against the seam of the coffin lid, golden light spreading along the blade. As the jade lid slowly rose, the three of them were stunned—there were no skeletal remains inside, only a thick layer of golden sand spread like a soft carpet.

"Empty?" Su Qing furrowed her brow into a tight knot, even though the detector clearly indicated an energy response. "Could someone have beaten us to it?"

Recalling something, Alicia grabbed handfuls of golden sand and swept them aside. A secret compartment at the base of the jade coffin gradually revealed itself as the sand diminished. Resting in the center of the compartment was a piece of dark red animal hide, atop which lay a silver ring bearing a rotating anti-entropy totem on its bezel. Pressed down right beside it was half a yellowed animal-hide map.

"The Communication Ring!" Lu Chen’s breath suddenly grew ragged. He recognized it as the final missing piece of the trio of rings—the Sand Speaker had said it allowed the user to converse directly with the bone core consciousness.

The moment he reached out to take it, the ring suddenly leaped into the air, fitting itself onto his ring finger as if endowed with life. The icy metal contracted against his skin, and Lu Chen suddenly let out a cry of pain. The anti-entropy totem on the bezel grew scorching hot like a branding iron, burning a golden mark onto the back of his hand—the complete totem of the Sand-Keeping Priest, identical to the pattern on Old Dao's bone knife down to the very line.

"It has chosen its master!" Su Qing’s detector wailed frantically, the three-ring energy waveforms on the screen finally linking into a complete curve. "The reaction of the three rings united! The frequency of the anti-entropy array is synchronizing!"

Alicia unfolded the half-hide map, which marked three red points in ancient Sand-Keeper script. Two of them were labeled "Black Wind Pass" and "Crescent Moon Spring," while the third red point had been deliberately circled, with "Source of the Bone Core" written next to it. Its location was right three hundred meters beneath the Patriarch's Temple.

"So the physical body of the bone core has been here all along!" Alicia’s silver bird necklace abruptly pointed toward the ground. "All those rituals Williams was performing in the temple were just cover for him to excavate the foundation of the Patriarch's Temple!"

Lu Chen's hand began to tremble violently. The silver radiance of the Communication Ring intertwined with the golden light of the Suppression Ring and Purification Ring, condensing into a rotating pillar of light in the center of the burial chamber. Countless shattered images flashed before his eyes—the final moments of the Sand-Keeping Priest sealing the bone core, the back of Alicia's mother carving the silver bird totem into the back of the stone sarcophagus, and Williams's ferocious grin as he sneaked into the Patriarch's Temple in his youth.

"It's showing me the truth..." Lu Chen's voice carried shock. "Your mother didn't submit to a passive sacrifice; she actively hid the Communication Ring in the Patriarch's Temple and laid down a barrier with her own bloodline precisely to prevent Williams from finding the source of the bone core!"

Before his voice could fade, the entire burial chamber shook violently. The fluorite stones on the dome rained down, shattering crisply against the ground. Su Qing's detector pointed toward the entrance, where the red dots on the screen had piled into a mass, surging forward like a tidal wave.

"The nest of the blood-tracking scorpions has been disturbed!" Su Qing yanked Lu Chen along. "And what's worse—the defense system of the Patriarch's Temple has fully activated, and the exit is sealing shut!"

Alicia shoved the half-map into Lu Chen's arms and grabbed a spare torch from beside the stone sarcophagus. "Take the other exit of the secret passage! My mother said the path leading to the source of the bone core is hidden in the underground river of the burial chamber!"

She kicked open a stone wall in the corner, revealing a turbulent underground river whose waters flickered with a faint silver glow, resonating with the light of the Communication Ring. All three of Lu Chen's rings suddenly lit up simultaneously, casting a luminous path across the water's surface that pointed straight into the dark downstream.

"Hold on tight!" Lu Chen sheltered Alicia and Su Qing in the middle, his bone knife cleaving through the swarm of blood-tracking scorpions rushing to meet them. "If we charge out of this river, we can cut off Williams's excavation team!"

The moment the trio leaped into the underground river, the dome of the burial chamber collapsed with a crash. As Lu Chen looked back, he caught sight of the sand crystal eyes of the twelve chieftain statues all turning toward the underground river at once, their mouths seemingly curling into eerie smiles—those statues were never defense puppets; they were guiding them toward the source of the bone core.

The current of the underground river grew increasingly swift, while the water temperature plummeted drastically. Alicia’s silver bird necklace suddenly coiled around her wrist, pointing toward the riverbed. Amid the silt down there, countless pale hands could be vaguely seen waving, their fingernails oozing dark purple liquid—the skeletal remains of the Sand-Keepers sacrificed to the bone core years ago.

"They are warning us..." Alicia's voice trembled. "There is something ahead."

Lu Chen's three rings suddenly erupted with blinding light, the silver radiance of the Communication Ring carving an opening through the darkness ahead. The moment they discerned what was there, even the coolest-headed Su Qing drew a sharp gasp.

At the end of the underground river stood a massive sand crystal gate. The door ring was not a scorpion totem, but rather the sculpture of two intertwined human figures—one wearing the headwear of a Sand-Keeping Priest, the other dressed in the attire of an S Tribe chieftain. And the characters inscribed upon the lintel were identical to the branding on the back of Lu Chen's hand:

"The Sand-Keepers turn to sand in the end, the rulers turn to bone in the end."

Even more terrifyingly, the sand crystal gate was slowly opening. From behind the door came the familiar whir of machinery, accompanied by Williams's triumphant, maniacal laughter:

"I've been waiting for you... my good niece, and the new successor of the Sand-Keepers."

The current of the underground river suddenly reversed, pushing them relentlessly toward the sand crystal gate. Lu Chen's three rings grew scalding hot all at once, the totem on the back of his hand resonating with the inscription on the lintel and emitting a deafening hum. He suddenly realized that the secret passage left by his mother was never an escape route at all; it was a soul-guiding path leading straight to the ultimate trap.

And they were following that path, step by step, straight into the heart of the bone core.

In the darkness behind the door, countless pairs of eerie blue eyes lit up like a wolf pack waiting for its prey. Lu Chen gripped his bone knife tighter, watching as Alicia and Su Qing were swept closer to the sand crystal gate by the current, finally understanding the words the Sand Speaker had left unsaid.

The Communication Ring could converse with the bone core, but it could also allow the bone core to see through every single one of their weaknesses.

This ritual of the three rings united had been a trap set by Williams from the very beginning.

The surging waves of the underground river suddenly churned, sweeping Lu Chen's bone knife toward the sand crystal gate. The instant the blade touched the door-ring sculpture, the hand of the Sand-Keeping Priest statue suddenly lifted, seizing the blade tightly by its hilt. Within its sand crystal eye sockets, Lu Chen's terrified face was reflected.

The maniacal laughter behind the door grew closer, fraught with the madness of a victory secured.

On the back of Lu Chen's hand, the totem of the Sand-Keeping Priest was seeping blood, blending with the silver waters of the underground river to sketch a massive anti-entropy array across the surface—the omen of activation, and... the beginning of the sacrifice.