Chapter 1714 - 867: The Deadly Land of Penglai! (Part 2)

They sprinted with all their might along the strange coastline, rough and riddled with ice shards and gnarled tree roots, their stamina rapidly depleting.

In the time it took to smoke a single pipe, with the suffocating roars of the beast tide behind them almost brushing their backs, and the nauseatingly hot breath nearly touching them, a massive shadow emerged vaguely in the dense gray-white mist ahead.

"We’ve made it! It’s in the mist!" Fatty Lin shouted hoarsely, filled with the wild joy of finding a way out of a dead end.

They plunged headfirst into the thick mist.

The mist was cold and sticky, carrying a strange mix of musty dust and iron rust scent, reducing visibility to less than ten steps.

But the moment they charged into the mist, the deafening, nearly eardrum-shattering roar of the beasts behind them strangely diminished!

It didn’t disappear, but seemed to be isolated and weakened by the dense fog, becoming dull and distant.

They ran forward several more steps, and the view before them suddenly changed.

The fog hadn’t dissipated, but it had thinned enough for them to see the astonishing sight ahead:

A boundless field of stone towers!

The towers were of an extremely bizarre design, entirely beyond their scope of knowledge. Not the style of any dynasty or known civilization in the history of the Divine State.

The tower bodies were made of a dark material that was neither metal nor stone, covered with thick frost and weathered marks, yet the former grandeur and magnificence could still be discerned.

The foundation of each tower was broad and heavy, gradually tapering upward to form a sharp or rounded top.

The tower bodies were adorned with dizzyingly intricate reliefs, although eroded by time and frost to the point of blurriness, they still exuded a sense of desolate and mysterious power.

They stood in various sizes, arranged in an orderly manner, extending into the depths of the mist, with no end in sight.

Most unsettling was that the enormous beast tide, which had been madly chasing them, almost tearing them apart, abruptly halted at the periphery of the stone towers as if crashing into an invisible wall!

Countless icefield beasts, with hideous forms emitting ominous evil qi, prowled and growled restlessly at the outskirts of the stone towers, scratching at the frozen ground with sharp claws, yet none dared to step even half a step into the boundaries of the towers.

Their blood-red eyes were filled with ferocity, yet they did not dare to advance.

"They’ve... they’ve stopped?"

Wu Ba, leaning on the barrel of the Tiger-Squat Cannon, panted heavily, incredulously looking at the dark mass of beasts circling yet making no progress outside.

"These towers... there’s something strange about them." Wang Daoxuan, having caught his breath, immediately focused his observation.

He attempted to perform the Qi Observation Skill once again, finding that while the evil qi here still existed, it seemed to be sorted by some power within the stone towers, no longer as violent and chaotic as outside, instead forming a peculiar field imbued with a sense of suppression.

His compass needle still quivered slightly, but no longer spun wildly, barely able to point in a vague direction.

Having temporarily escaped the imminent threat of being torn apart by the beast horde, everyone relaxed a little, allowing them to take a closer look at the mysterious stone towers that had sheltered them.

Li Yan set down the Night Crying Man and walked over to the nearest tower, wiping away the thick frost and moss from its surface.

The blurred stone reliefs became clear.

He focused intently, his heart jumping abruptly.

The relief depicted a grand and brutal war.

Yet the battling parties were not human!

They possessed robust upper bodies, humanoid torsos and arms, wielding strange weapons, but below the waist, they had sturdy, winding snake tails!

Warriors with human heads and serpentine bodies fought, charged, and fell on the battlefield. The battle’s backdrop was vast, featuring collapsed mountains, burning forests, and fractured rivers.

What made Li Yan’s pupils suddenly constrict was that in the corners of those reliefs, under the command or confrontation of the serpentine warriors, massive and ferocious beast outlines appeared!

Their beasts possessed strong limbs, long tails, sharp teeth, and bony plates... Although the carving style was primitive and abstract, Li Yan was almost certain

----they were dinosaurs!

The terrifying creatures that existed only in ancient legends and fossils!

They were clearly depicted as war beasts, participating in this non-human war.

"Human heads and serpent bodies... Dinosaur war beasts..." Li Yan murmured, a chill rising from his spine.

He suddenly recalled the depths of the Daluo Law Realm, that abyss filled with endless, unheard-of remnants of bizarre deities and demons.

The aura of those remnants subtly resonated with the desolation, barbarism, and non-human feel of the stone tower reliefs!

"This... this might be a civilization older than the Three Emperors and Five Sovereigns, long vanished even before the ancestors had recorded history!"

Kong Shangzhao’s voice carried unprecedented gravity. He was versed in historical texts, yet had never seen a record of anything like this, "An era... belonging to ’gods’ or ’demons’? Why did they fight? And why did they completely vanish, leaving only this strange array of stone towers?"

Wang Daoxuan also looked closer, his fingers tracing the cold relief patterns: "The arrangement of these stone towers... adheres to some kind of array, tightly connected with the earth veins. Like nails, or like tombstones, they suppress this land... No wonder those beasts won’t dare to come near."

"No one should act recklessly, breaking any one of them might release the beast tide outside from their restraint and let them surge in."

This assumption sent a chill through everyone’s hearts.

This place was no spot for an extended stay, but the beasts outside were merely temporarily blocked and hadn’t dispersed. On the contrary, they gathered more and more, densely encircling the stone towers and severing all paths of retreat.