Chapter 227: Mysterious Ancient City (II)

Chapter 227: Mysterious Ancient City (II)

The three didn’t dare leave the small alley. Just seeing the soldiers when they poked their heads out had been too terrifying. Now that the squad moved away, they dared take another peek.

This time, they were overawed by the sight. An enormous wall towered roughly one hundred meters ahead of them. The entire one hundred meters between the wall and alley was the avenue.

It was an exceedingly spacious throughway!

Was this an ancient passageway? Were all of the ones in this city so spacious?

And that wasn’t the reason behind the awe. The trio’s gazes followed the wall up, their jaws dropping as they did so. It was so very, very tall. Li Hao finally saw its top after a long while—it was almost one hundred meters tall!

A one hundred meters tall wall?! That was almost thirty stories tall! And this was a wall of the ancients?? Are you kidding me, this is more like a city wall! No, not even city walls are this tall!

Li Hao’s gaze sharpened as he took a close look. There seemed to be dark figures on the wall—puppet soldiers! A tower on the wall was also staffed with dark figures. More soldiers?

Liu Long found what Li Hao was looking at and once more swallowed hard. What kind of place was this??

“An inner and outer city...” Li Hao shook as he remembered something. “This looks to be the intersection between the inner and outer city. Teacher mentioned that this was where he heard the footsteps, and here he saw a city door etched with a turtle!”

Was that where they were? The alleyway belonged to the outer city and the wall in front of them was the wall around the inner city?

According to Night Watcher intel, they were placed within the outer city after entering the ruins. Explorers were usually deposited next to the outer city gates. Residential neighborhoods could be found in the outer portion, and they had to travel through various dangers before arriving at the inner city.

Could it be that the trio had been dropped off here? Why weren’t they with the others?

Li Hao sank into deep contemplation and stroked the little sword. Did it have to do with Stellaris? If that was the case, why wasn’t he sent directly into the inner city? Why was he at the intersection of inner and outer? Both advancement and retreating were impossible!

If they went back, that would be the outer city. It’d be fine if they encountered the Night Watchers, but what if they ran into Red Moon or Yama?

And if they advanced... who were they kidding?

No ripples emanated from those dark soldiers, but according to his teacher’s words, footsteps often appeared in the darkness. When they did, they represented danger. A Sunflare could die to a single sword stroke.

The swords were the weapons that the soldiers were equipped with. That meant to say that these soldiers without any superhuman ripples were strong enough to kill a Sunflare with one blow. That was horrifying!

The hair started spinning on the disk and eventually slowed down. Its two ends happened to point at the two ends of the alley. Liu Long could tell that Li Hao was determining their position and identifying the best way forward, but wasn’t it a waste of effort with the hair pointing to both entrances?

Li Hao, however, observed the disk carefully and muttered, “We go from the back, not the front!”

“Why?” Liu Yan whispered.

“This is the method of plotting via force fields,” Li Hao murmured. “The hair root points at the inner city because the force fields are stronger there and more dangerous. Therefore, let’s go to the outer city first. I don’t know why we were separated from the others and sent here. Perhaps that gives us first mover advantage, but we’ll more likely than not turn into cannon fodder since we don’t know anything about the inner city!”

It was a certainty that there were plenty of treasures in the inner city. If Li Hao had his teacher’s abilities, he would head directly inside and save himself a lot of trouble. The key thing was, he didn’t possess that strength. In that case, appearing here was a very futile outcome. They should head to the outer city instead!

He didn’t want to be someone else’s canary in a coal mine, that was far too dangerous. It might also be a good opportunity to ambush someone else from the front. If there was a good chance and the proper timing, it might result in unexpected benefits.

“We can ignore the greatest treasure inside the city. For us, killing some bad guys and stripping them of their mysterious power may not be worse than entering the inner city. We can even hunt down some Red Moon members and extract their blood pearls.”

What could be found inside the inner city? So what if there were piles of origin weapons? Could they lay claim to it? Could they take it outside?

Li Hao’s mind operated clearly again. There was nothing more important than improving his strength. He wasn’t a Dominator yet.

Liu Long and Liu Yan didn’t say anything. The young man suddenly had the lead as he was a student of the Veteris Institute and his teacher a known excavator of ruins. He quietly led them into turning around and walked toward the other end of the alley.

“Try not to create any sound and don’t talk much. These soldiers seem to hone in on location from sound! That shriek drew a lot of them away. They didn’t see us even when we were hiding just next to them. If they’re puppets, they may be equipped with sound recognition systems...”

The two listened without asking questions. All they needed to do at the moment was to just follow Li Hao.

The alley was only five hundred meters long. The trio set a moderate pace and approached the other end after a while. Footsteps could be faintly heard again. Li Hao held his breath; they saw a black shadow pass by the alley after a while. It was one of the Black Armors, but just one.

When it left, Li Hao took a peek outside. This time, he could identify where they were. They were in one of the streets of the outer city, one that ran into an ancient marketplace. He saw some unique flags with characters on them. They were different from modern writing, but being the professional that he was, Li Hao could still call upon his knowledge though he’d withdrawn from school.

He could barely make out one word—tea!

The place in front of them with a banner hanging from the front might be a tea shop. Time seemed to rewind in this moment, painting a scene of people jostling in crowds that throned a busy street. Food vendors hollered for business, passersby shopped various wares and stopped for tea or food...

The young man grew momentarily dazed. This was his first time seeing such a perfectly preserved ancient ruin! He’d perused some similar material before, but they were all recorded after the ruins were destroyed and buried in the ground. None of them were able to mentally transport explorers away like this and place them in how life had been back in the day.