Todd was in front and Rachel behind, the former holding the latter's hand as he pushed away the jumble of branches and shrubs in front of him.

A dark gray mist, like smoke with life, enveloped every pore of the two visitors.

There was a strange chirping sound in the sky, a little like a bird, a little like a beast.

Todd glanced back behind him, and the only thing he could see was Rachel's hand.

If it weren't for the uneven ground beneath his feet, reminding him that the journey was still continuing, he would have had the illusion of falling into nothingness.

Just when Todd wondered if there was an end to the road, his right hand suddenly touched something hard.

After fumbling through the mist, the two found a huge stone statue of a goddess wearing a crown of thorns.

Underneath the stone statue, there is also a stone tablet engraved with intricate text.

"Where do I think I've seen these words?" said Todd, crouching down and examining the stele carefully, pondering as he pondered.

Richer rubbed the relief with her hand and replied, "These are rune scripts. ”

"Rune, the rumored creation of Odin, the king of the Norse gods?" Todd asked, recalling the tablets in the ruins of the North Island, turning to Rachel, "Can you decipher the words on the tablets?"

"There are different versions of the Rune script in the North Island and the Barbarians, and the grammar and wording of the glyphs seem much older, so I can only understand part of it. Rachel touched it word by word, and said some words intermittently: "Road...... Creator...... Will...... Trial ...... Eternal Sleep ......"

Todd frowned and listened to Rachel's introduction, and asked with some uncertainty, "Doesn't sound like a good thing." ”

"It is rumored that the Land of Shadows is the home of the dead, and this is an ominous place. Rachel turned his head to look at the path behind the statue, and asked, "What should I do?"

Todd shrugged his shoulders with a smile: "It's already here, so naturally there's no reason to turn back." ”

Bypassing the stone statue, the two walked onto a path paved with bluestone, and the fog around them gradually dissipated.

Looking at the scenery that slowly cleared up around him, Todd said, "Here...... It seems to be a garden. ”

Rachel looked at the plants around him and said strangely, "I've never seen a plant here......"

Todd was about to say something when the ground suddenly began to shake, and the plants around him writhed their branches and began to grow wildly.

The road was blocked by thorns, and green vines wrapped around their ankles like tentacles.

"Run!"

Todd grabbed Richell's hand and ran for his life desperately.

One after another, spears and thorns strung through the skeletons, breaking through the earth and pointing obliquely towards the sky, blocking the light from the top of their heads, forming a "canopy" of dead corpses.

Using his mutated right claw to break through the "bone wall" that stood in the way, Todd ran a few more steps forward, and suddenly found that the resistance from his arm was getting bigger and bigger.

Turning her head to look back, Richer was already wrapped in vines, spikes pierced into her body, blood was sucked into the stems, and the color of the flowers gradually changed from white to bright red.

The woman's mouth was silent, only the panicked eyes were facing Todd's face.

The latter turned around and roared angrily, unleashing his abilities with all his might, desperately tearing at the roots of the plants, but the vines grew more and more and tighter. Some even crawled down Richel's arms towards Todd.

Looking at the painful and anxious appearance of the man in front of him, Richel, who was already completely entangled in plants, smiled slightly. She gently drew a circle on Todd's palm with her index finger, then let go of the other's hand, still dragging it into the earth by the vines.

Todd sat down on the ground, staring blankly at his empty left hand, his face pale and his lips trembling.

"No !!"

Todd was in complete frenzy, and he stretched out his hands and desperately dug into the ground where the woman had sunk, oblivious to the vines and roots covering his body.

The ground cracked, Todd's consciousness drifted away, and his body was buried in dirt.

Walking in the endless darkness, Todd watched the images and sounds flicker before his eyes.

In the coffee shop on the commercial street, a woman in a white dress said to the man in front of her: "I will get married next month, don't worry, the groom is not you." My father gave you a chance, but you stuck to that ridiculous academic ethic. ”

At the class reunion in a five-star hotel, a wealthy businessman dressed in gold and silver looked at his classmate in plain clothes in front of him, shook his head and said: "I have all mixed up with the associate professors of the university, why are I still so shabby?

At night, under the neon lights, at a table at a roadside barbecue stall, an elderly professor, drinking a glass of liquor, said to his students, "How long can a person live? A hundred years at most." I don't believe in Christ, I don't believe in Buddha, I believe in my own heart!"

If you live to pursue meaningless things, why not turn away and abandon the journey at the beginning?

The meaning of life is much more than that......

Todd slowly calmed down, a gentle breeze on his cheeks, and the familiar murmur came to his ears. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself lying flat on the garden floor, the corpses, strange vines, and blood vines all gone, and Richer sleeping peacefully in front of him.

Shaking his drowsy head, Todd was a little confused about what was going on.

...... was everything just a hallucination?

Crawling from the ground to Richel's side, Todd checked the woman and breathed a sigh of relief after making sure that the other party was intact.

"Wake up, wake up!" Todd shook Rachel slightly, who opened his eyes in a daze.

"Where am I?" Lying in Todd's arms, Rachel looked at the scene around him and whispered, "I was obviously dragged into the ground by a tree vine just now. ”

Todd looked at the flowers on the branches that were swaying slightly in the wind, and realized: "Everything we see may have something to do with these flowers, maybe pollen...... Anyway, we must get out of here now!"

The two of them helped each other and quickly left this strange place.

Walking on the bluestone path, the fog in the air is getting lighter and lighter, and in the distance, hidden in the forests and mountains, a majestic temple slowly emerges into view.

Glancing back at the garden, Todd said to Rachel, "I kind of understand the words on the stele...... The hallucination just now seems to trigger deep memories in the heart, and if the person is not strong-willed, it is likely that he will sleep forever among the flowers. ”

Richel's face was still a little gloomy, she grabbed Todd's arm, shook her head, and said, "There, I saw the nightmare I least wanted to see, and if we could, we should probably talk about something else." ”

Todd nodded slightly, and using the ability of Eagle Eye, he looked into the temple mountain and saw the second statue of the goddess.

The two of them quickened their pace, and it took ten minutes to walk to the stone statue.

This stone statue depicts a goddess armed with a spear and a round shield, trampling a beast with the head and tail of a lion and a scorpion.

Rachel tries to decipher the text again.

"Roads...... Guidelines...... Strength...... Trial ...... Dark Door"

Todd touched the bridge of his nose and speculated, "The text of the stone tablet just now reads 'will', and this time 'strength' appears, does it mean that there needs to be a battle this time?"

Circumambulating the stone statues and through a long underground corridor, the two entered a building that resembled an ancient Roman arena, the size of a football field, and stood at the entrance and looked at the other side, with no edge in sight.

A little further on, the ground was littered with broken blades and shattered shields, as well as human bones and animal remains.

"First of all, Trialists from afar, congratulations on passing the test of 'will'. ”

A cold female voice echoed in the wide arena.

Todd followed the sound and saw a masked woman with a face and a robe made of crow feathers standing on a high viewing platform, looking down.

"Originally, the next test of 'strength' was supposed to be, but it seems that your test object has just been killed by another person. The Raven Feather Woman looked at the sky in the distance: "I'm afraid you'll have to wait a while......"

"There's no need for that. ”

An old voice came from the other side of the arena.

The old man with a rickety figure, with a young girl, stepped on the bones under his feet, and slowly walked towards Todd.

Sabrina smiled and threw the object in her hand at Todd and Rachel.

A bloody lion's head, half a meter long, rolled to the feet of the two.

Watching the old man lift the hood of his cloak, Todd's eyes widened, and he shouted in surprise, "Lawrence?!"