Chapter 18 : The Gate of Power

The tunnel leads diagonally underground, and along the way we see many scattered human remains. The Sarks paid silent tribute to these nameless spirits, which we realized would have been their fallen clansmen.

Not knowing what dangers lay ahead, we traveled slowly. Suddenly, the hissing of monsters came from behind us, and some small demonic beasts chased after us. We could only meet the battle while advancing. Fortunately, those high-level monsters were generally huge in size and couldn't enter the narrow tunnel. The narrowness of the tunnel prevented the monsters from besieging us, so these pursuing demonic beasts did not pose much of a threat to us. At this moment, several Sark warriors picked up some leftover armor and weapons from the ground, which were basically iron-grade equipment, and after replacing them, their combat power was significantly increased.

The patriarch walked and told us about the battle back then. At that time, the tunnel was full of organs and a large number of Demon God's guards. At least a thousand people from the Sark clan died on this path. We are lucky now, if the Demon God awakens, these organs and guards will automatically recover. At that time, even if we had ten times the manpower, it would be difficult to pass through this tunnel.

At the end of the tunnel was a hall. The murals on the walls depicted various figures, the lines were simple but ancient, and the people and beasts on the figures exuded an incomparably powerful aura, giving rise to a sense of awe at first glance.

There were three doors around the hall. We didn't have time to take a closer look as the demonic beasts behind us approached, we could only deal with them first. The warriors blocked the entrance to the tunnel, and the archers didn't need to aim, they just shot at the tunnel. I also sent out fireballs into the tunnel, utilizing my Beginner's Third Class Fireball Technique, which was remarkably effective against these small monsters.

The patriarch recovered some of his energy and stood up without greeting us, and cast his advanced spell "Earth Wall" at the tunnel. "Earthen Wall" is a defense spell, but the patriarch unleashed countless Earthen Walls in succession, almost filling up the entire passageway. We listened to the muffled roars coming from behind the walls. Although the monsters suffocated and died, we were faced with a problem: how to get out?

The patriarch said slowly, "There is a teleportation array in the great hall where the Great God of the Bull's Head is located, which can directly teleport us to the abode of another demonic god, the Great God of Pestilence, and through that we can leave safely."

Leon and I looked at each other, it seemed that the old patriarch was now optimistic and was already thinking about fighting the next Demon God. His confidence probably came from the "Nomadic God Set". However, we still had no idea what to expect, as the existence of a person who could gather so many high level magical beasts was unimaginable in terms of its own combat power.

We looked at the three stone gates around us, which were engraved with ancient characters that even the patriarch didn't recognize. Back then, the route was decided by a few elders, and all of them chose the middle door.

Remembering the "archeology" I had learned from the bookstore owner, I recognized the words after repeated readings. The door on the left said "wealth", the door on the right said "power", and the door in the center said "death".

Gosh, this Ox-Headed God is really powerful, he even used this kind of psychological tactic. Humans are greedy by nature, who wouldn't want to have power and wealth? Once they entered those two doors, what greeted them was true death. Even if they understood it in their hearts, how many could resist the temptation to give up those two doors? I didn't tell Leon and the others the results, but only said, "This door in the middle should be right."

The patriarch said excitedly, "That's for sure, it was behind this door that we discovered the Ox-Headed Great God back then. Then, it took sacrificing the lives of two thousand clansmen to seal the Demon God."

I comforted the enraged Sark clansmen. Now we desperately need the clan leader to recover his spiritual power. I suggested that we all take a break and take some recovery potions and food.

When I proudly took out an iron "folding wire bed", everyone froze. The Sarks didn't know what it was, and Leon was dumbfounded.

"Tom and Jimmy asked curiously, "What is this?" I said helplessly, "A wire bed, how come you guys can't recognize it even though I made it look so much like it?"

Leon coughed, "Chris, I can't blame them, they're only 18, and wire beds weren't sold when they were kids. It's a good thing I'm a few years older than them or I wouldn't have recognized them either. By the way, Chris you look younger than me, how do you know about this too?"

My mouth was open, I can't imagine that when I just graduated and looked for a job to rent an apartment, this most basic equipment wire bed, only after twenty years, has already been eliminated. No way, such a good thing ...

I stammered a couple of times and let everyone take turns recovering from fatigue on the bed, and everyone who tried it raved about it. After Leon and the others recovered first, they grabbed offline to eat. By the time they came back, everyone else's fatigue was back to its optimal state, and the Matriarch's mental strength was basically restored. We decided to take action.

Pushing open the central "death" door, we were greeted by a sickening stench. Jimmy's whole body trembled, "It's the stench of corpses!" At the same time, all of our life force dropped a few points, the odor was poisonous!

I hurriedly cast my Gale spell, and Jimmy also released his "Holy Light" spell, which removes abnormal status, so we all felt better.

Behind the gate, there was a passage about ten meters long. After walking through this passage, a huge hall appeared in front of us.

The hall was somewhat similar to the Temple of Light, with a dozen tall pillars standing around it. On the divine platform, a bull-headed figure clad in armor sat on a throne. On the ground, there were shockingly white bones, and because the temple was well insulated, many of the corpses still had rotting flesh on them, from which the stench of corpses came.

In the myths of various ethnic groups, there are many monsters with bull heads and human bodies, but this one in front of me is obviously not based on those gods and goddesses, because the two horns on the head of this bull-headed god were actually designed as two tentacles, like two antennae, which gave me the first impression of aliens.

The bull-headed god and the throne were wrapped in a huge crystal, and a kind of energy could be vaguely seen flowing in the crystal. Upon closer inspection, the crystal seemed to have been opened to a small opening, and a faint mist slowly overflowed from the small opening.

The patriarch's entire body trembled, ''Who, who destroyed the seal? This seal was condensed with the life force of our great old patriarch and hundreds of clan mages!"

At that very moment, I felt a danger signal from the corner of the temple. I absolutely trusted my intuition, and with no time to think, I violently knocked the old clan chief beside me to the ground. In a flash of cold light, an arrow with a pale blue shadow swept past where the patriarch had just stood and nailed itself to the wall with a buzzing sound.

The crowd shouted in unison, only to see a figure slowly emerge from the darkness, a human!

This human carrying a bow and arrow, his disheveled beard and hair dragged down to his chest, his whole body was as thin as a skeleton, but his eyes were unusually stern, and his eyeballs were surprisingly red in his deep-set sockets!

We were just about to attack, but the patriarch exclaimed excitedly, "Ahan, is that you? How did you become like this!"

Only then did we notice that what this man was wearing was, after all, Sark clothes, and the bow in his hand was the same kind of iron grade bow commonly used by the Sarks. Could it be that he was a survivor of the last great battle? How did he survive, and how did he survive for ten years in this isolated place?

What sounded like the friction between hard objects came from the man's mouth, and it was actually a strange laugh: "I am not Ahan. Ahan died a long time ago, that weak and lowly man, he died a long time ago!"

The patriarch shouted at the top of his voice, "No! You are Ahan! You are my friend, I recognize you even after becoming like this! I still remember to this day, that great battle, you said you were too tired to walk, so you stayed at the end of the group, but when we finished fighting the great bull-headed god, we never found you again. Where were you then? Had I known that you weren't dead, I would have gone looking for you and wouldn't have left you behind!"

Ahan laughed up to the sky, his horrible laughter causing goosebumps to rise on each of us. He said slowly, "I only blame you guys for being too stupid! Not recognizing the words written on the door, you walked straight into the door of 'death', whereas I recognized those words, so I chose the right direction!"

I said in surprise, "You chose the door of 'power'!"