Star Gate

Chapter 227: Mysterious Ancient City (II)

The three didn’t dare leave the small alley. Just seeing the soldiers when they poked their heads out had been too terrifying. Now that the squad moved away, they dared take another peek.

This time, they were overawed by the sight. An enormous wall towered roughly one hundred meters ahead of them. The entire one hundred meters between the wall and alley was the avenue.

It was an exceedingly spacious throughway!

Was this an ancient passageway? Were all of the ones in this city so spacious?

And that wasn’t the reason behind the awe. The trio’s gazes followed the wall up, their jaws dropping as they did so. It was so very, very tall. Li Hao finally saw its top after a long while—it was almost one hundred meters tall!

A one hundred meters tall wall?! That was almost thirty stories tall! And this was a wall of the ancients?? Are you kidding me, this is more like a city wall! No, not even city walls are this tall!

Li Hao’s gaze sharpened as he took a close look. There seemed to be dark figures on the wall—puppet soldiers! A tower on the wall was also staffed with dark figures. More soldiers?

Liu Long found what Li Hao was looking at and once more swallowed hard. What kind of place was this??

“An inner and outer city...” Li Hao shook as he remembered something. “This looks to be the intersection between the inner and outer city. Teacher mentioned that this was where he heard the footsteps, and here he saw a city door etched with a turtle!”

Was that where they were? The alleyway belonged to the outer city and the wall in front of them was the wall around the inner city?

According to Night Watcher intel, they were placed within the outer city after entering the ruins. Explorers were usually deposited next to the outer city gates. Residential neighborhoods could be found in the outer portion, and they had to travel through various dangers before arriving at the inner city.

Could it be that the trio had been dropped off here? Why weren’t they with the others?

Li Hao sank into deep contemplation and stroked the little sword. Did it have to do with Stellaris? If that was the case, why wasn’t he sent directly into the inner city? Why was he at the intersection of inner and outer? Both advancement and retreating were impossible!

If they went back, that would be the outer city. It’d be fine if they encountered the Night Watchers, but what if they ran into Red Moon or Yama?

And if they advanced... who were they kidding?

No ripples emanated from those dark soldiers, but according to his teacher’s words, footsteps often appeared in the darkness. When they did, they represented danger. A Sunflare could die to a single sword stroke.

The swords were the weapons that the soldiers were equipped with. That meant to say that these soldiers without any superhuman ripples were strong enough to kill a Sunflare with one blow. That was horrifying!

This was as far as his teacher had made it to, he hadn’t been able to enter the inner city. Thus, Li Hao knew nothing about it and didn’t dare brashly investigate. As he turned over these thoughts in his mind, a shriek seemed to come from behind them.

The marching soldiers vanished on the spot and sprinted toward the source with extreme speed. Not only that, but the trio’s shocked eyes registered more Black Armors from the darkness. They quickly vanished and ran for the outer city.

Plainly, the shriek had alerted these soldiers.

“It's the people who entered the ruins!” The three quickly determined. Judging from the sound, they weren’t too far away, but that voice had been very soft. Even if they were close by, they wouldn’t be visible without a bit of travel. And yet, they’d alarmed the soldiers that patrolled for countless eons!

“The black-armored soldiers are extremely fast... They seem on par with Sunderers in my view.”

At least forty soldiers had taken off running. Meanwhile, the patrols in this area weren’t affected. Black shadows still roamed the city wall and more soldiers appeared in the premises. They continued to make their rounds like the shriek from the outside city hadn’t occurred.

“Elites!” Liu Long explained next to Li Hao’s ear. “If these soldiers aren’t puppets, they’re elites among elites! Even Hu Dingfang’s Tiger Wings, supposedly the most elite force in Silver Moon, pale far in comparison to these soldiers!”

Their demeanor, efficiency, speed, reaction time, and defensive system were invincible. Men were quickly on the scene if something developed, but the patrols, sentries, and defensive systems that should be in place continued to operate smoothly. Liu Long considered that if these soldiers were all Sunflare level, it would be unimaginable.

An army that was so well coordinated... If that was the case, then even a ten person squad of initial Sunflares could withstand a Solar. Under normal circumstances, ten initial Sunflares were hard to stand against Solars. Mid or late Sunflares wouldn’t have the same problem.

“What should we do?” Li Hao wasn’t thinking of this. He looked at Liu Long with a question. What do we do now? Forward or backward seem like tough calls either way.

They didn’t dare continue forward and didn’t dare start backward. Should they just stand here, wait for others to arrive and follow them? ...who were they kidding with that last option??

Liu Long also looked at Li Hao. What should we do? I don’t know either. I don’t know anything about this place, how do I know what we should do?

If they advanced, they were faced with a large expanse and watchtowers. If they were discovered, how would they fight so many soldiers? Even though the group hadn’t personally seen the soldiers attack, they could tell from speed alone that these Black Armors weren’t useless ornaments.

Liu Long struggled with the decision and threw it back to Li Hao. “What do you say? You’re a student of the Ancient Civilizations department. You should know better than me in these circumstances.”

“......” Li Hao had nothing to offer. The man made sense! But... but... I’ve never encountered ruins with soldiers that still existed in them. The Institute’s never taught us about them either! They taught us how to determine our location, analyze feng shui, identify true or fake ruins, locate sources of water... these kinds of things. If only teacher was here!

How he missed his teacher! If Yuan Shuo was here, he’d just need to follow his teacher’s instructions. He was too young, inexperienced, and wet behind the ears. He was in a panic himself.

But after hearing Liu Long’s response... Li Hao decided to make the call. The team captain’s right, I’m from the Veteris Institute and my teacher is an excavation expert. Am I supposed to dishonor his name? Can I not grow and develop in his absence?

Moments later, Li Hao fished out a small disk from his pockets. Under Liu Yan and Liu Long’s confused looks, he busied himself for a bit. When he finished his preparations, he plucked one of his hairs and blew it onto the disk.

The hair started spinning on the disk and eventually slowed down. Its two ends happened to point at the two ends of the alley. Liu Long could tell that Li Hao was determining their position and identifying the best way forward, but wasn’t it a waste of effort with the hair pointing to both entrances?

Li Hao, however, observed the disk carefully and muttered, “We go from the back, not the front!”

“Why?” Liu Yan whispered.

“This is the method of plotting via force fields,” Li Hao murmured. “The hair root points at the inner city because the force fields are stronger there and more dangerous. Therefore, let’s go to the outer city first. I don’t know why we were separated from the others and sent here. Perhaps that gives us first mover advantage, but we’ll more likely than not turn into cannon fodder since we don’t know anything about the inner city!”

It was a certainty that there were plenty of treasures in the inner city. If Li Hao had his teacher’s abilities, he would head directly inside and save himself a lot of trouble. The key thing was, he didn’t possess that strength. In that case, appearing here was a very futile outcome. They should head to the outer city instead!

He didn’t want to be someone else’s canary in a coal mine, that was far too dangerous. It might also be a good opportunity to ambush someone else from the front. If there was a good chance and the proper timing, it might result in unexpected benefits.

“We can ignore the greatest treasure inside the city. For us, killing some bad guys and stripping them of their mysterious power may not be worse than entering the inner city. We can even hunt down some Red Moon members and extract their blood pearls.”

What could be found inside the inner city? So what if there were piles of origin weapons? Could they lay claim to it? Could they take it outside?

Li Hao’s mind operated clearly again. There was nothing more important than improving his strength. He wasn’t a Dominator yet.

Liu Long and Liu Yan didn’t say anything. The young man suddenly had the lead as he was a student of the Veteris Institute and his teacher a known excavator of ruins. He quietly led them into turning around and walked toward the other end of the alley.

“Try not to create any sound and don’t talk much. These soldiers seem to hone in on location from sound! That shriek drew a lot of them away. They didn’t see us even when we were hiding just next to them. If they’re puppets, they may be equipped with sound recognition systems...”

The two listened without asking questions. All they needed to do at the moment was to just follow Li Hao.

The alley was only five hundred meters long. The trio set a moderate pace and approached the other end after a while. Footsteps could be faintly heard again. Li Hao held his breath; they saw a black shadow pass by the alley after a while. It was one of the Black Armors, but just one.

When it left, Li Hao took a peek outside. This time, he could identify where they were. They were in one of the streets of the outer city, one that ran into an ancient marketplace. He saw some unique flags with characters on them. They were different from modern writing, but being the professional that he was, Li Hao could still call upon his knowledge though he’d withdrawn from school.

He could barely make out one word—tea!

The place in front of them with a banner hanging from the front might be a tea shop. Time seemed to rewind in this moment, painting a scene of people jostling in crowds that throned a busy street. Food vendors hollered for business, passersby shopped various wares and stopped for tea or food...

The young man grew momentarily dazed. This was his first time seeing such a perfectly preserved ancient ruin! He’d perused some similar material before, but they were all recorded after the ruins were destroyed and buried in the ground. None of them were able to mentally transport explorers away like this and place them in how life had been back in the day.