Chapter 449 - 360: Why Must You Rush to Your Death?

Chapter 449: Chapter 360: Why Must You Rush to Your Death?

After Marcus pointed out the path, the party set off.

They wove through a series of ancient corridors, each one varying in width and style.

Upon reaching a junction with seven diverging paths, they entered the third passage.

After traversing the long, narrow, and gloomy passage, the view ahead suddenly opened up.

The party entered a vast stone hall.

The hall was rectangular, over fifty meters long and more than ten meters wide.

Tall wooden statues stood on both sides—three on the left and four on the right, for a total of seven.

Sheer white veils hung from crevices in the ceiling, draping in front of the wooden statues and making them only faintly visible.

The walls on either side were also engraved with numerous enormous murals.

The strong scent of burning incense wafted toward them.

Zelir frowned slightly, immediately covering his mouth and nose.

"Be careful... It might be poisonous. Don’t fall into a trap."

The others also covered their noses with their sleeves, their expressions wary.

To be on the safe side, Zelir focused his mind, ready to channel his Purification Aura at a moment’s notice.

"Does anyone feel unwell?" Zelir asked.

They exchanged glances, then all shook their heads.

It seemed to be nothing more than ordinary incense.

The scent was just a bit strong, but it didn’t cause any adverse reactions like dizziness or paralysis.

Hill quickly found the source of the scent.

About five or six meters up the tall stone pillars supporting the dome, several exquisite bronze censers were affixed to the surface.

Hill nimbly climbed up. Clinging to the pillar’s surface, her nostrils twitched as she took a careful sniff.

The only reason Hill was bold enough to smell it directly was because Zelir was with them.

A moment later, Hill spoke.

"They’re just ordinary incense stones... People usually use them to perfume the air. They’re not poisonous."

"Well, this place seems pretty formal... They even went to the trouble of putting out incense."

Gray relaxed and began to wander around the hall, looking at the murals.

The scenes depicted in the murals were quite magnificent.

A massive royal city, built from giant blocks of pure white stone, stood atop a mountain peak in utter splendor.

Within the royal city’s palace, a King held his scepter high.

At his feet, countless nobles and commoners paid homage, a dense crowd that stretched as far as the eye could see.

Filled with pious devotion, they kowtowed and prostrated themselves.

The mural seemed to depict the Kingdom’s golden age, a time of unparalleled splendor.

There had been similar murals in the Central Courtyard Garden on the first level of the ruins, but their level of detail was nowhere near that of the ones before them now.

Zelir was also examining the murals.

Looking up, he saw a mural directly in front of him depicting a sacrificial ritual.

The sky was dark and oppressive.

Across a vast, boundless black plain, a long procession of innumerable pilgrims struggled onward.

The people depicted in the mural were all emaciated, looking wretched and forlorn.

Some among them held blazing torches high.

Others cradled the stark white skulls of unknown behemoths.

Meanwhile, the most zealous fanatics sliced their own wrists with daggers as they walked, letting their hot blood drip to the ground.

On a distant altar upon the plain lay many people, their eyes closed and their expressions serene.

Judging by the scene, these people were undoubtedly dead.

The artisan who created this mural had spared no effort, using vibrant red pigment to emphasize this fact.

It was a bizarre and tragic sacrificial scene.

The cruelty of the scene was so palpable, even through a mere depiction, that it sent a chill down the spine.

A strong sense of dissonance rose within Zelir.

In the world he knew, such Bloody sacrificial rites existed almost exclusively in textual descriptions. Even illustrations were rare.

After all, the Sel Kingdom would never hold such a ceremony.

The Nobility controlled the government, and the Six Gods Church rarely interfered in politics.

The Mage’s Guild and the ruling class of the Nobility were intertwined and codependent, coexisting harmoniously and sharing power.

As a result, the political situation was very stable.

And the more stable a nation, the less likely it is to tolerate such superstitious practices.

This was true not only for the Sel Kingdom, but for most of its neighboring countries as well.

In a sense, Zelir lived in a fairly secularized Otherworld.

If anyone dared to hold a backward and ignorant ritual like human sacrifice, the Six Gods Church would undoubtedly brand them a Cult and eradicate them completely, leaving no trace behind.

But... the very purpose of murals was to record history as it actually happened.

Moreover, this highly detailed style of depiction was unlikely to be mere artistic exaggeration.

’Since nothing like this has ever happened in the existing Kingdoms, then... what period of history does it record?’

For some reason, Zelir thought of the Eastern Continent that Marcus had once mentioned.

The Eastern Continent, where a human civilization had once existed before being completely annihilated.

’Could this be what happened there?’

Zelir glanced over at the mural near Gray, the one symbolizing the Kingdom’s golden age, then turned his gaze back to the scene of Bloody sacrifice.

The two murals were diametrically opposed, whether in composition, color, or the core emotion they sought to convey.

And yet, they were carved side-by-side on the same wall.

’It’s almost like a history of the Kingdom’s rise and fall...’

’A decline from the Kingdom’s peak in the first mural to the tragic era of sacrifice in the second...?’

Zelir studied the White Stone Royal City closely and realized that it looked remarkably similar to the ruined Ancient Castle on the second level of the ruins.