170: Chapter 170 Possession of an Ostrich

The cave on the mountain at the end of the corridor was indeed shaped very deliberately—round on top and square on the bottom, about the height of two people. It was pitch black, revealing nothing of the interior. Up close, it truly looked like a mysterious and dangerous portal that someone had intentionally set up.

However, Chen Mo's perspective was different from Tang Yao and the others. He wasn't looking with his eyes; instead, he projected the image of the cave into his mind, allowing him to rotate it up, down, left, and right, or zoom his perspective in and out.

He had just finished examining the cave from all angles, but when he zoomed his perspective out, he noticed something slightly off.

From a distance, the section of the mountain at the end of the corridor—a mix of rock and soil layers—resembled a thick, mottled wall, while the pitch-black cave looked like a tall, eerie stele.

With these two things combined, an unsettling thought flashed through Chen Mo's mind. Even within the Main God Space, he felt a chill run down his spine...

"Could it be... there really is something inside this cave?"

Chen Mo squeezed a five-hundred-milliliter aluminum can of chilled beer and tilted his head back to take a gulp. He decided he had to investigate and see what exactly lay behind that black hole.

Of course, he had a large enterprise now and carried many responsibilities—for instance, he had to deliver medicine to Old Li first thing tomorrow morning. Therefore, he certainly couldn't risk his own life to investigate personally.

With a thought, Chen Mo acted.

Near the foothills outside the corridor, a Bald Ugly Bird with an arrow stuck in its butt twisted its slender neck, turning its beak backward to peck at the arrow shaft.

But before its beak could reach the arrow, the shaft actually fell out of its butt out of thin air, and the wound on its backside began to heal at a rapid pace! The Bald Ugly Bird widened its eyes and opened its beak in surprise, letting out a "Wu-wu-wu" cry.

Chen Mo was also surprised.

He hadn't expected an Ostrich's cry to sound like that. Not only was it a "Wu-wu-wu," but every sound carried a vibration, making him think his phone was ringing...

The reason he healed this Ostrich's arrow wound was that it happened to be near the corridor. Although it was quite ugly, it was at least easier for people to accept than a violent wild boar. Moreover, this Ostrich's stealth and escape skills were quite good; even if it encountered danger, it could evade for a while and gather more information...

Thinking this, Chen Mo split off a thread of his consciousness and attached it to the Ostrich. He then saw the Ostrich stride its drumstick-like legs, charge out from the foothills, and run openly past five wild boars to leap into the corridor, heading straight for the end.

Controlling the Ostrich, Chen Mo stopped before the black hole at the end of the corridor.

"Is this where Tang Yao and the others disappeared?"

Chen Mo carefully scrutinized the black hole before him.

Although he had already used his consciousness to flip through and examine this place, including the two surrounding mountains, seeing it with his physical eyes was different. When viewed with his mind, the black hole felt like a two-dimensional black shape, but seeing it truly through the Ostrich's eyes, it felt as if it really were a cave one could walk into.

Chen Mo controlled the Ostrich to lift one leg and cautiously extend it into the black hole. Surprisingly, it stepped inside without any resistance.

"Strange."

Chen Mo then controlled the Ostrich to step in with the other leg. Instantly, his vision blurred and the world spun. In the next second, he appeared in a different scene.

This wasn't the endless Void Realm without a single ray of light as he had previously imagined, nor was it a pitch-black cave. Instead, there were many braziers burning with fire, placed on the ground at regular intervals. Although the light wasn't bright, it was enough to see the surroundings clearly.

Chen Mo controlled the Ostrich to observe the ground and the surrounding environment. He saw that this was a strange indoor space. The ground was entirely composed of very dry soil. When the Ostrich's legs stepped on the ground, there was no feeling of softness or looseness; it felt like stepping on flat stone. It was evident that although the soil here was dry, it had an abnormally firm structure.

To the left, right, and behind were high walls made of the same earthy-yellow soil. These high walls were strangely shaped; every so often, two small earthen walls perpendicular to the main wall appeared, forming a small cubicle in a shape like the character ' |='. It looked like the single-stall toilets provided for tourists in a park, except these toilets had no doors or roofs...

The Ostrich tilted its head and looked up along the high earthen walls, but it couldn't see the ceiling either. Its vision gradually lost light at an unknown distance, seeing only a boundless darkness above with no telling what might be there.

In front of the Ostrich stood an earthen wall with two strange symbols arranged vertically. They were so bizarre that let alone the Ostrich's small bird brain, even with Chen Mo's knowledge base, he was completely stumped after staring at them for a long time.

However, these braziers placed like streetlights, the yellow mud floor as flat as if it were tiled, the strangely shaped high and low walls all around, and the completely incomprehensible symbols in front of him... all these things indicated that this place was definitely designed and built by someone.

"What exactly is this place? Could it really be a legendary hidden map? But... I remember I didn't design these when I was making the game..." Chen Mo himself was a bit bewildered. Just then, he heard a sound from ahead. Controlling the Ostrich, he poked its small bird head out from behind an earthen wall and, as expected, saw the figures of Tang Yao, Gualing, and Xiao Niao just ahead!

He heard Hu Gualing say, "This cave is way too big!"

Hu Gualing was walking at the very front, looking around and touching things like a country bumpkin entering the city for the first time.

Mud floors and earthen walls weren't unusual; they were things he had been used to seeing in the countryside since he was a child. But a space this large, where you couldn't see the ceiling when you looked up and which was almost entirely made of earth, was quite rare.

Tang Yao also found it particularly novel and peeked around, but what intrigued her most were the braziers placed on the ground.

The three of them had originally entered the cave holding Fire Starters, fearing there would be no light and they wouldn't be able to see anything. To their surprise, they found it was already lit with fire. The brightness was much greater than the tiny flames from the Fire Starters, so the three of them had put their Fire Starters away to examine the environment.

However, what Tang Yao found strange was: who had placed these braziers here? When she was digging a pond in her small courtyard in the village in the middle of the night, she had tried several lighting methods and knew that a brazier like this wouldn't last long even if filled with fuel. So, what was burning in these brightly lit braziers?

Tang Yao couldn't help but check, and she found that what was burning in each brazier was wood.

"Wood? Then someone should be coming frequently to add fuel," Tang Yao muttered to herself as she crouched before a brazier.

Hu Gualing stopped and turned his head. "What wood?"

Tang Yao: "The wood burning in the braziers. Look, these pieces of wood have only been burned for less than half their length. Someone must have lit them not long ago."

Hu Gualing and Xiao Niao leaned over, bending down to look into the brazier Tang Yao was pointing at. They found it was exactly as she said; aside from the ashes and charcoal residue at the bottom, the brazier was filled with wood.