80: A deadly trap in front of the golden goal

The obsidian-paved avenue was broad and level, with statues standing silently on both sides like rows of loyal guards, protecting this divine path leading to the holy land.

The architectural style here was worlds apart from the Sun God Temple and the maya ruins along the way.

It was no longer a crude stacking of giant stones, but precisely cut, polished geometric structures. The lines of the statues were also more abstract and technological, filled with characteristics of a non-human civilization.

"Brother Feng, look at these statues. Why do they look more and more like... aliens?" Wang Dalong muttered in a low voice as he walked. "The big heads, the slender bodies—isn't this exactly like the Greys from the movies?"

Lin Feng didn't speak, but he knew in his heart that Wang Dalong might be right.

This place was infinitely approaching the most primitive form of the maya ancestors' civilization. The further they went in, the more the influence of Earth's civilization was stripped away, revealing its original appearance from the planet Tzolkin.

The avenue wasn't long. After walking about a few hundred meters, a massive plaza appeared before them.

The floor of the plaza was likewise paved with solid obsidian, smooth as a mirror, reflecting the mysterious light sources on the dome that emitted a soft glow.

And at the end of the plaza stood a door.

A golden gate, so magnificent it left them utterly speechless.

The gate was dozens of meters high and over ten meters wide, cast entirely from pure gold. There were no superfluous decorations on the gate, only countless deep golden lines radiating from the center. The entire gate was like a solidified, glowing sun, exuding a sacred, majestic, and inviolable aura.

"This... this... this..." Wang Dalong couldn't find the words to describe his feelings; he felt like he was about to have a heart attack. "Are we at... the Southern Heavenly Gate?"

Lin Feng's gaze, however, was not on that magnificent golden gate.

His eyes were locked tightly on the final hundred-meter stretch of the path leading to the gate.

This path looked unremarkable, no different from any other part of the plaza.

However, the 'Danger Sense' ability within Lin Feng, sourced from the system, was sounding a frantic alarm! Beneath the ground ahead, some kind of deadly killing intent seemed to be hidden!

"Don't move!"

Just as Wang Dalong lifted his foot, preparing to rush excitedly toward the golden gate, Lin Feng grabbed him.

"What's wrong, Brother Feng?" Wang Dalong looked bewildered.

Lin Feng didn't explain. He bent down and picked up a fist-sized piece of rubble that had fallen from somewhere. He weighed it in his hand, then exerted sudden force with his arm, hurlng the stone toward the empty ground ahead.

The stone traced a parabola in the air and landed with a "thwack" on the obsidian floor about ten meters away from them.

The moment the stone hit the ground!

"Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!"

A dense, air-tearing shriek suddenly erupted!

Dozens of perfectly camouflaged hidden compartments on the ground around where the stone landed snapped open. Countless short arrows, coated with a faint blue toxic glow, shot out from all directions like a torrential rain, instantly blasting the stone into dust!

"Holy crap!" Wang Dalong recoiled a step in fright, his back instantly drenched in cold sweat.

If he had rushed over just now, he'd probably be a pincushion by now.

But it wasn't over yet!

Just as the first wave of arrows ended, the ground in front of them suddenly made a "crack" sound. A stone slab several meters square flipped downward, revealing a bottomless pit filled with sharp spikes!

Immediately after, the sound of heavy gears turning came from the walls on both sides. Several massive, cold-glinting scythe-like swinging axes whistled out from hidden slots in the walls, sweeping across that area in a crisscross pattern with thunderous momentum!

Arrow rain, pit traps, swinging axes... a series of interlocking mechanisms turned this hundred-meter distance to the golden gate into a lifeless death zone!

"Is... is this a freaking Tomb Raider movie set?" Wang Dalong's face was pale, and his legs were shaking. "Who designed this? It's too malicious!"

"It was the Maya people," Lin Feng judged after looking at the structure of the mechanisms.

While the craftsmanship of these mechanisms was ingenious, it was full of mechanical and stone-tool styles, completely different from the hyper-technological products like the Golden Ship. This indicated that these defensive works were added later by the maya descendants to prevent outsiders (or insiders) from easily entering or leaving.

They waited for about a minute. The swinging axes slowly retracted into the walls, and the pit trap automatically closed. Everything returned to a state of calm, as if nothing had happened.

"There's a reload time," Lin Feng whispered. "There's an interval between trap triggers. This is our chance."

He gauged the rhythm of the mechanisms, picked up another larger stone, and said to Wang Dalong, "Stay close to me. When I tell you to run, sprint forward as fast as you can and don't look back!"

"O-okay!" Wang Dalong swallowed hard in nervousness.

Lin Feng timed it right and threw the stone out again, triggering the first wave of arrows.

The moment the arrows shot out, he roared, "Run!"

The two of them shot out like arrows from a bow. They bypassed the pits on the ground and, before the massive swinging axes could strike, dove desperately to the floor and rolled across the ground.

In a life-or-death race, the hundred-meter distance took only a dozen seconds.

By the time they scrambled to the front of the golden gate, the mechanisms behind them had just completed a new round of attacks.

"Huff... huff... we survived..." Wang Dalong lay face down in front of the cold golden gate, feeling like his lungs were about to burst.

Just as he was about to stand up and celebrate, the sound of hurried footsteps, accompanied by several angry curses, suddenly came from the direction of the dock they had come from.

Lin Feng and Wang Dalong's expressions changed, and they whipped their heads around.

On the other side of the plaza, several battered black figures were stumbling toward them.

Leading them was the captain of the Scorpion Squad. Beside him were only Juan and one other team member. The three of them were soaked through, and their equipment was heavily damaged. Clearly, they had paid a heavy price to pass through that underground waterfall.

They saw the trap zone in the plaza, and they also saw Lin Feng and Wang Dalong already standing before the golden gate.

"Stop right there!"

The captain roared and raised his hand to fire a shot!

A bullet grazed Lin Feng's scalp and slammed hard into the golden gate!

Boom!

With a loud bang, the entire golden gate vibrated violently, but the bullet only left a shallow, scorched mark on the door.

"Quick! Open the door!" Lin Feng shouted at Wang Dalong.

The two of them pushed against the massive golden gate together, only to find it motionless, as heavy as a mountain.

"It's no use! Find the mechanism!" Lin Feng said urgently.

The three members of the Scorpion Squad had already bypassed the trap zone and were flanking them from both sides of the plaza.

Wang Dalong was as anxious as an ant on a hot pan. "Where's the mechanism? This door is bare; it doesn't even have a handle!"

Lin Feng's gaze swept rapidly across the gate. Those golden lines radiating from the center... they weren't decorations! They were... a star chart!

His brain worked at high speed, comparing these lines with the star maps in his memory.

It was orion! And... the Tzolkin star system! The homeland of the Maya people!

He immediately discovered the key. There were several rotatable, compass-like rings on the door.

"Turn that ring to the position of the third star in Orion's Belt!" Lin Feng pointed at one of the rings and shouted to Wang Dalong.

He himself simultaneously turned another ring, aligning it with the position of the Tzolkin primary star as recorded in the murals.

The moment the two rings were aligned!

Click—Clack—

An incredibly heavy sound of a mechanism unlocking echoed from inside the golden gate.

The door opened.