Chapter 506: Everywhere Is Eerie

Pei Mianman shrieked, but immediately realizing that revealing her location in such an eerie environment was unwise, she quickly covered her mouth.

She instinctively grabbed Zu An's arm and pressed tightly against him, as if only by doing so could she feel a semblance of warmth.

Feeling her slightly trembling body, Zu An secretly thought that despite her usual imposing demeanor, she was still a young girl at heart, and it was natural for her to be scared by such a visually impactful scene.

He knew it wasn't just her; even he, a man, felt his blood run cold at the sight. If he had been alone, he probably would have jumped up in fright long ago.

But with a woman beside him, and a beautiful one at that, he suddenly felt less afraid for some unknown reason.

It was no wonder that in his previous life, companies often paired men and women for various tasks; women could inspire men's courage and hormones, significantly boosting work efficiency, and men had a similar stimulating effect on women.

He cleared his throat and comforted her, "Don't be afraid, they're just bones. They've been dead for a long time."

Pei Mianman's face flushed slightly, clearly embarrassed by her loss of composure. "Hmph, I wouldn't be afraid if they were alive," she scoffed. "By the way, is this an ancient battlefield?"

Zu An squatted beside a nearby skeleton, observing it for a while. He then shook his head. "Probably not," he said. "I haven't seen any weapons in the vicinity, so it's unlikely to be a battlefield."

"What if the victorious side slaughtered prisoners of war?" Pei Mianman suggested. "They certainly wouldn't have left weapons beside them. There's a legend that an ancient demon god once massacred 400,000 surrendered soldiers at once; it's truly terrifying."

Zu An was momentarily stunned. Was she referring to Bai Qi? He hadn't expected such a legend to exist in this world.

He always felt that this world had intricate connections to Earth from his previous life. Yet, he had studied books on this world's geography at the academy, and if the descriptions were accurate, this world was vastly larger than Earth, making it impossible for them to be the same.

Shaking his head to dispel the jumbled thoughts in his mind, he replied, "It's also unlikely to be a massacre of prisoners. Their postures don't suggest they were bound with their hands behind their backs, nor are they kneeling. It doesn't look like a slaughter of surrendered soldiers at all."

He had just observed several nearby skeletons and naturally noticed these details.

"Could it be a live burial?" Pei Mianman mused. "I just noticed you seemed unable to grip the wall." She went to the wall and poked it with her finger. It was hard and felt incredibly smooth, as if coated with a greasy substance. "This seems designed to prevent anyone in the pit from climbing out."

"Live burial?" Zu An's expression was odd. "Did you forget something? There's no soil here."

Pei Mianman's face instantly flushed. She then realized her foolishness; if it had been a live burial, these skeletons would still be neatly buried underground. But they had just fallen because the pit was hollow, with only a thin, fragile layer of earth above.

"Then tell me what happened?" she huffed, feeling embarrassed.

"I don't know how they died," Zu An said gravely. "But one thing I find very strange is that all their heads seem to be facing in the same direction."

Pei Mianman was startled and quickly looked at the surrounding skeletons. She had found something odd before but couldn't quite place it. Now, prompted by him, she finally understood: although the skeletons lay in various positions on the ground, one thing was consistent—nearly all their heads were bowed, as if gazing at something beneath their feet.

Zu An checked again. "They weren't hanged either," he stated. "Hanged people's neck bones break backward, and their heads don't usually hang low. Furthermore, I specifically examined other parts of their bodies; these skeletons have no obvious wounds, indicating they weren't killed by weapons. Their bones also aren't blackened, so they don't appear to have been poisoned."

Pei Mianman's face turned pale. "Don't scare me," she pleaded. "You're making it sound more and more eerie."

Zu An sighed. "This place is inherently eerie," he said. "Anyway, we don't need to investigate their cause of death. Let's find a way out first."

As he spoke, he moved to the nearby wall and began examining it. "Huh," he said, a puzzled look on his face. "I remember we rolled down a long slope when we fell just now. How come these walls are all vertical now?"

"This place is too eerie," Pei Mianman echoed, also remembering. Zu An had held her, and they had rolled all the way down from above. Yet now, all the surrounding walls were at a ninety-degree angle to the ground; there was no slope to be found.

Zu An also felt a trace of unease. He pushed away the jumbled thoughts in his mind, then looked up, muttering to himself, "This doesn't seem very high."

The pit was about twenty meters deep, certainly insurmountable for ordinary people, but for cultivators, that distance was worth attempting.

"You wait here," Zu An told Pei Mianman. "I'll try jumping up first." He had jumped such heights before, but usually needed to leverage himself midway. However, with the wall so smooth and hard, he would have to attempt to leap out in a single jump.

If he fell, he'd be fine, but Pei Mianman was injured. If he failed while attempting to jump out with her and she was thrown down, they would be in serious trouble.

"Okay, be careful!" Pei Mianman replied, standing by as docile as a young bride.

Zu An nodded, took a deep breath, and bent his legs slightly. Then, he pushed off the pit floor with a powerful thrust, his entire body shooting upwards like a cannonball.

"I should be able to jump out," Zu An said with a smile as he neared the surface. He could feel he still had plenty of upward momentum, so bringing Pei Mianman out later would definitely be no problem.

"Watch out!" Pei Mianman's startled cry echoed from below.

Suddenly, with a loud thud, he felt a sharp pain in his head, and both his ears buzzed painfully, as if in his previous life, he had accidentally walked straight into a tempered glass door at a shopping mall.

Had his body not been incredibly resilient, he would have surely sustained a bloody head injury in that instant.

He cried out in pain and fell from mid-air. Pei Mianman, who had rushed to catch him, lacked the strength due to her severe injuries, and they both quickly tumbled to the ground.

Zu An quickly looked up. He seemed to have faintly seen a layer of blue light appear above him.

Sure enough, a transparent seal had appeared out of nowhere at the pit's opening. The pale blue runes on it were extremely peculiar, completely unlike any runic style he had encountered in this world, yet they looked vaguely familiar. What could they be?

Thoughts raced through his mind. Suddenly, he exclaimed with surprise, "I remember now! These are Taotie patterns!"

He had seen them before in museums and on television documentaries; many bronze artifacts unearthed from the Shang and Zhou dynasties featured such patterns. Some were called "Taotie patterns," others "beast patterns," but they all referred to something similar.

"Can you please remove your hand?" an annoyed voice interjected.

Zu An looked down, only then realizing he was lying directly on top of Pei Mianman. Due to the fall, one of his hands had instinctively reached out to brace himself and had landed squarely on her chest.

"So soft!" This was Zu An's first thought.

"So large!" was his second thought, but he quickly snapped back to reality and hurriedly released his hand. "Uh, would you believe me if I said I didn't do it on purpose?"

"I know," Pei Mianman replied, her face slightly flushed, as she stood up with his help.

Now it was Zu An's turn to be stunned. She wasn't angry at all? He remembered that in the academy, anyone who even feigned accidentally brushing against her would be relentlessly pursued by her black flames, often requiring a teacher's intervention to save them.

"How can there be a seal up there?" Pei Mianman mused, seemingly unconcerned as she continued to gaze upwards. "We clearly just fell from above."

As they spoke, the seal above, shimmering with blue lines, slowly dissipated, eventually becoming transparent again. But they both knew it was still there, ready to reappear if triggered.

"It seems we'll have to look for another way out in this pit," Zu An concluded. He could sense that the seal above was nearly identical to the previous stone tablet and entirely beyond their power to break.

Pei Mianman hummed, about to reply, when her voice suddenly trembled. "Why are those skeletons over there glowing in their eyes…"