Chapter 1977 Third Party

Go up the stairs, and the first room you encounter is…

It looks like a church.

The benches in the cathedral were already covered with a thick layer of dust. The colors you saw just now were actually projected onto the ground by a stained glass window at the innermost part of the cathedral.

The sound of people’s footsteps echoed in the empty church, and the huge vaulted ceiling above was decorated with lifelike plaster carvings of vines, branches and leaves.

Four towering windows were located outside the auditorium, and the window glass had long since shattered into thousands of pieces and scattered on the ground.

Everyone looked around with flashlights, but didn’t see any threats or anything worth noting.

If this church was built by the Glowing Ion Yin Order, then it is very likely that it houses space priests, but this one was built by outsiders brought in by the portal, so it is hard to say.

Everyone walked forward and soon heard the crisp sound of the boots attached to the protective suits stepping on the glass.

“Wait, don’t go forward yet.”

Hearing Li Chengxi’s voice, Alyssa immediately raised her hand to signal everyone to stop.

Li Chengxi then said:
“Someone has moved the broken glass on the ground recently.”

Alyssa shone the light on the ground. The colorful glass reflected different colors. There was very little dust on the glass, almost no dust, as if it had been wiped by someone.

The thick dust on the ground also showed signs of being manipulated, indicating that the fragments had been moved by someone.

Li Chengxi was looking down from a bird’s-eye view and could see more clearly that the fragments were arranged into a shape similar to a dragon.

“Boss, we found footprints here.”

Sophia reported:

“Judging from the size, he should be quite young. There are no other footprints.”

Alyssa walked over to take a look. Just as Sophia said, the footprints left in the dust were very small, about the size of an adult’s palm.

Just then, Sanafia was next to her, and Alyssa turned around to compare her footprints. If Sanafia was wearing a pair of small leather shoes, they would probably be similar to the footprints on the ground.

But it is a bit weird to think that there are children’s footprints in such a ghost place.

“Go around the broken glass. It must be placed like this for a reason. It’s best not to touch it to avoid causing unnecessary trouble.”

The original appearance of the stained glass should be a tree-shaped pattern, which is the only world tree believed in by the ancient elves.

Although the elves today no longer have the devout faith of the ancient elves, they still have a unique feeling for the World Tree. The churches built by the elves either worship the elven gods or the World Tree.

But the ancient elves and dragons are actually enemies. Someone used the fragments to create a dragon shape here…

It always feels like a provocation.

No matter who did it, let’s not touch it and just go around it.

Alyssa also felt that they should be cautious. After all, it was too outrageous to have children’s footprints in such a ghost place, so everyone walked around the dusty bench.

Walking to the other side of the church, you can see a door on each side that leads to other places, and you can also see some skeletons near the door.

Alyssa could tell that most of the skeletons were human, a few were elves, and they had been dead for a long time.

However, these bones, like the fragments on the ground, had been cleaned up by someone. They were neatly stacked against the wall, and someone had piled up a stone pestle in front of the bones, making it look like a tombstone.

These operations must have taken place recently, because there was not much dust left on the bones, and the stones were particularly new, as if someone had just carved them out from outside.

Is it that group of cultists?
Alyssa felt that those guys were unlikely to do such a thing to respect the dead, considering the footprints on the ground…

There might be a third party in the castle. They left the hall through the door on the left without touching anything.

As soon as I went out, I immediately saw a cloud of smoke and dust blown over by the wind. The end of this corridor seemed to be directly connected to the outside.

Following this dilapidated corridor, they soon arrived outside.

Maybe because the outer walls of the castle had collapsed, the corridor now actually looked more like an overpass. Alyssa and the others moved carefully with their guns raised. Looking to the lower left, they could see the terrace where they had encountered the swarm of insects before.

At the end of this “corridor”, you can see a relatively well-preserved building.

It is a monolithic black rock structure, and even through a telescope you can’t see any seams connecting it, as if it is a completely integrated whole.

Alyssa felt that the shape was somewhat similar to the Capitol Building of the Red Maple Republic, but it was not as big.

The front and back halves of the castle were still well preserved, but the middle part seemed to have collapsed. Now the place where Alyssa and the others were walking on was not very stable, especially when Benben and Xista were following them, it felt like it would collapse at any time.

But fortunately, such a terrible thing did not happen, and everyone quickly approached the strange black building.

“Boss, there’s a noise in the building.”

After hearing Dui’s report, Alyssa lifted her mask and listened. She could indeed hear voices similar to talking coming from the building. It could be those cultists or a third party.

In short, keep a steady hand.

Everyone acted quickly, avoiding the front and keeping their bodies as close to the wall as possible to avoid being discovered.

Lieutenant Dui walked in front as usual. He leaned over to the doorway to take a look, then gestured for the others to follow.

The voices became clearer, but it was still impossible to make out exactly what was being said.

Everyone reached out to turn off the lights on their chests, because there was a hazy blue light inside the building.

The darkened auditorium was silent, the supernatural gloom obliterating all traces.

The floor was thick and shiny black marble, without a trace of dust, and the walls were plaster inlaid with gold edges, as if everything was still the same as when it was first built.

But it seems that apart from the main body of the building, everything else is not within the scope of “preservation”.

The door leading in was covered in thick dust, cobwebs hung from the ceiling, and rotting tapestries covered the walls.

Two staircases led up to a small attic decorated with majestic stone carvings of monsters and leering dragons. The hazy blue light I had just seen came from up there.

Moreover, the voice of speaking seemed to be there as well.

The already silent detector sounded a red alarm on Alyssa’s personal terminal. But even without the instrument’s reminder, everyone felt an indescribable feeling.

It was not the coldness of negative energy, nor was it a gaze of pure malice; rather, the feeling was extremely subtle, as if they had touched a ball of sticky liquid in the deepest night.

The air was filled with magic, as if a terrible storm was about to break out.

Alyssa calmed herself down and directed everyone to go up the stairs through gestures.

The stairs here are X-shaped and lead to the second floor. They are very wide, enough for even a clumsy person to roll around on them.

Alyssa divided the people into two teams and asked them to go up to the second floor by different stairs, so that everyone could squat on the stairs and aim their guns at the things on the second floor.

As soon as she stepped onto the first step, Alyssa heard a burst of angry shouting:

“Give me the thing! Hurry up! Go up and break it!”

(End of this chapter)