322 Naica Cave of the Crystals

Your name is Ye Qingxuan. You will lose a portion of your memory every few days. You should trust A’san. He will take you to your treatment.

"Ye Qingxuan?" the young man murmured blankly. "That name sounds so familiar. Ye Qingxuan? I’m Ye Qingxuan? I’m an Easterner?" He looked down and saw his reflection with trademark silvery-white hair in the water. His broken memories instantly reconnected. It dawned on him. "Is it…like this?"

"Yes, Young Master." Tears of joy appeared in the old Indian man’s eyes. "You finally re-re-remember."

Ye Qingxuan was stunned but he embraced A’san. He did not know what to do; there was just the feeling of pain and tension in his heart.

"Young Master, I’m gravely injured. I might not be able to accompany you anymore," A’san said in Ye Qingxuan’s embrace. "Next, you must be careful about others’ attacks…"

"A’san, get yourself together!" Ye Qingxuan could not help but panic. "I—What should I do?"

"Go to Auschwitz," A’san exclaimed with his last ounce of strength while grasping Ye Qingxuan’s hand. "Go to Auschwitz and find your father!"

"Father?" Ye Qingxuan was stunned.

"Yes, your father. His name is," A’san choked out, "is…Old Phil…Old Phil Wang!"

Ye Qingxuan nodded with tears in his eyes. But soon, he felt something was wrong. He asked, "A’san, why is my father’s surname Wang?"

"Because…because…" A’san’s mouth opened and closed with difficulty. Then his expression slacked and his breath cut off. His hand fell from Ye Qingxuan’s; his pulse and heartbeat stopped. He was dead.

"A’san? A’san!" Ye Qingxuan shook his shoulders forcefully but no one replied. He sobbed and screamed but A’san was forever gone. After a long time, the lifeboat floated to a shore. The crying young man stumbled onto the shore and took one last glance at A’san who was on the boat.

"I-I’ll take revenge for you," he sobbed. Wiping away his tears, he turned and left.

After a while, A’san, who was long dead, climbed up on the boat. He massaged his neck and sighed. "Ah, the tears were so tragic. I should’ve just said that I was your father. Ah, would that be too sad?" With that, A’san jumped off from the boat and watched as ‘Ye Qingxuan’ faded into the distance. He waved. "Safe travels, ‘Ye Qingxuan’!" Seeing his determination as he traveled westward to Auschwitz, his journey must be very interesting!

-

According to the original plan, Ye Qingxuan needed to get there within one month. After the ship landed, he needed to take the carriage train for five days and walk for half a month across valleys and mountains. In the end, he would find the grouping area in the barren land. Simply put, he would get there when he had no other place to go. That was what he was supposed to do.

But Ye Qingxuan refused.

Since he knew that everyone was targeting him, he definitely would not keep traveling on that dead end. Why not let Simon forge on under his name? After all, Auschwitz was not going to move. Ye Qingxuan could go in a circle and take it slowly.

-

Six days later, a hunter on horseback pointed deep into the mountains for the youth who was still dressed as an Indian. "Go around this and keep going for two hours and you’ll be there."

The youth nodded. He pulled two pieces of paper money and offered them. The hunter thought for a moment and rejected it. Instead, he pointed at the youth’s ring. "I want this."

"Sorry, I can’t give you that." Ye Qingxuan chuckled. Tucking the money into the saddle, he turned to leave.

Two steps later, the hunter was in front of him, blocking him with the horse. Looking down, he repeated, "I want this." This time, he pointed at him with a dagger. Sometimes, in these faraway mountains, the line between hunters and robbers was very blurred.

Faced with the blade, the emotionless youth smiled after a short pause. "Good, I like this too. I want this one."

One minute later, the youth was on horseback with a dagger, humming a tune from Avalon as he restarted his journey. Two hours later, Ye Qingxuan came to the big conclusion that horseback riding was hard. He had used a Mind score to make the horse cooperate but the lower half of his body was practically numb. If he did not have the Governor to help support his body, he would have probably slid down from the jolting horse.

Thankfully the hunter had provided a good horse. Otherwise, all the brambles and obstacles on the road would probably take his life. Ye Qingxuan had learned his lesson: he should never overestimate his physical strength, especially since he was too weak to even run a marathon.

But he somehow reached the destination. The chestnut horse snorted and stopped in place, refusing to go forward. Before them, the dense forest had disappeared. The vegetation was sparse and the black dirt looked as if it was crystallizing. The signs grew stronger further in. The crystallization of dirt and dust spanned a few hundred miles in radius.

This was a flat plain between the hills. He could practically see crystal crumbles scattered on the ground. In the middle was a giant cave. The black cave seemed bottomless. He could only see huge overlapping crystals. Just as fungi grew in a damp tree hole, translucent and beautiful crystals grew here.

He tossed a lantern into the darkness. The dim light fell onto the humongous crystals and created magnificent reflections. The cave instantly became a multicolored dreamscape. But the light was quickly extinguished and the cave fell into still darkness again.

"It’s been centuries. Has the environment not recovered yet? The aether is still so dense and messy. It’s like a red zone…"

Ye Qingxuan stood before the cave. Looking around the barren territory, he sighed. He peered into the crystal cave, his eyes growing solemn. "It’s our first meeting but I’ve heard much about you, Naica Cave of the Crystals."

This was where the natural catastrophe Diamond Snake was killed by the Silent Authority centuries ago. At that time, this was not the hinterland of the human world yet. Within the chaotic red zone, waves of beasts and natural catastrophes fought. The Diamond Snake built its nest here. After that, grandmasters from the Sacred City came to kill it.

The place turned into this state after that. Nothing grew for hundreds of years. There was not even a worm or caterpillar within the radius of a few dozen miles. This was the legendary battlefield relic between the mountains and forest. There was no life here.

Other than exploratory musicians who studied history and geography, no one else cared about this place. And other than the fact that the Silent Authority would periodically survey this place through the Sacred City Hall, it was practically forgotten by the world.

If Ye Qingxuan did not flip through Abraham’s archive and the school’s library, he would not know that there was such a place near his path. Since it was along the way, he decided to come take a look.

After all, someone was taking the brunt for him, so it wasn’t a problem for him to ‘vacation’ and do some archeological digging, right? Thinking like this, Ye Qingxuan pulled out a pendant to measure depth and tossed it into the dark cave. He did not feel the weight lighten until the rope was almost to the end.

"Three hundred and seventy meters?" Ye Qingxuan eyed the scale and started to pull the pendant back. When he retracted it, he realized that the pendant was actually severed by the sharp crystals halfway down. The cave was actually much deeper.

"How deep is it actually?" Ye Qingxuan sighed. He nailed the rope on and added two protective measures after pulling it tight. He adjusted the aether ball to the illumination mode and hung it at his waist. Then he started going down.

The fluorescent light illuminated the colorful crystals. They looked like mirrors that led into an inhuman world. He stopped to rest many times along the way. Even with the Governor supporting him, he was close to giving up and going back several times. However, he gritted his teeth and forged on.

Unfortunately, the rope was used up before he got to the bottom. He stepped on the wall of the crystal cave and stared blankly into the darkness below him. Under the aether ball’s illumination, the layers of gorgeous light grew like a forest.

They had stood there silently for hundreds of years, growing slowly as they absorbed the chaotic aether. It probably took a few decades to grow one inch.

After short hesitation, Ye Qingxuan let go of the rope. He stood on a crystal a few meters wide and walked into the center of the cave. Below him was bottomless darkness. Above him was a sliver of weak light.

All was silent; there was no sound at all.

It was as if he had left the world. The bottom of this cave probably led to the underworld of legends. Loneliness and fear were magnified here. Explorers would most likely breakdown from their fear before they landed and leave this inhuman place. Especially because…

Ye Qingxuan glanced at the aether ball in his hand. Its light was blinding and he could see countless tiny waves crashing against each other, struggling to break free from the prison. It was its reflection of the outer aetheric environment.

If this was overly still and eerie for regular people, this place was the convergence of radiance and fury for musicians. The chaotic music theory remaining in the crystals would randomly ripple and distort the environment. This was caused when the Diamond Snake was killed.

Just like the Jianlan Underground Palace, the material and aether world overlapped here, creating a strange realm. However, this place was not as stable as the Jianlan Underground Palace; it was filled with chaos. If Ye Qingxuan was not an official musician and did not have a deep understanding of music theory, he would probably suffocate here.

"It’s been so many years but there are still remains of large-scale reverberations?"