Phoenix Chaos Nine Palaces Witchcraft Glimmer

Alha put back the thick cloth, covered the bricks as they were, stood up carefully, and slipped back into the room. Outside, the winter wind howled, and she lay still unable to sleep for a long time, and her eyes kept reproducing the glittering crystal light of the underworld, the flames that did not smoke, the rocks of the tunnel walls, and the serene and peaceful faces of the men when they slept.

Chapter 6: The Man's Trap

The next day, as soon as she had finished her duties in the temples and had finished teaching the apprentices the sacred dance, she slipped back to the hut, extinguished the lights in the room, opened the peephole, and peeked down. There is no light underneath. He's gone. She didn't think he would stay in front of the iron door that he couldn't open, but it was the only thing she knew about it. Now, he's lost, how can I find him?

According to Saar's description and Aharha's personal experience, the tunnels of the Great Labyrinth are more than twenty miles long, including loops, branch lines, spirals, cul-de-sacs, and so on. In a straight line, the farthest cul-de-suite may not be more than a mile from the mausoleum, but none of the roads under the ground are straight, and all passages are curved, forked, overlapped, branched, staggered and wide-looped, and traced to form an elaborate network of end-to-end connected roads, which means that there is no beginning and no end. Even if you walk in it for a long time, you may not make any progress at all, because it doesn't lead anywhere at all. This tunnel network has no center, no core, and once that iron door is locked, it loses its end, and none of them is in the right direction.

Although Alha had memorized the pathways and turns to each section of the room, if she wanted to explore longer distances, she would also carry a ball of yarn and loosen it along the way, and when she returned, she would retrace it as she retracted the line. She knew that if she missed a single turn or path that should be calculated, even she would get lost. There are no road signs at all, and if you get lost, even if there are lights, you won't be able to help. All corridors, openings, and entrances are all the same.

He might have walked miles by this point, but he was less than forty feet away from the red rock door he had entered the Great Labyrinth.

She went to the throne hall, the twin temples, and the cellar under the kitchen, and looked down on the cold and gloomy darkness of the ground through the various orifices while no one was around. As the night wore on, she braved the bitter cold, stomped the twinkling starlight to several spots on the hills, turned over the stones, swept away the dirt, and peered down as well, but all she saw was the starless darkness of the earth.

He's in there, he must be in there, just avoiding her. He would die of thirst before she found him. If she was sure he was dead, she would send Manan into the tunnel network to find him. But this kind of result is unbearable just thinking about it. In the starlight, she knelt on the rough slope, her eyes filled with tears of wrath.

She walked to the ramped walkway that led to the Temple of the Divine King. The capitals of the pillars of the temple are carved with frost and shimmer white in the starlight, like phospho-bone columns. She knocked on the back door of the temple, and Ke Xiu answered the door to let her in.

"What wind blows my mistress here?" The stout woman said, her expression cold and wary.

"Priestess, there's a man in the labyrinth."

Rarely encountered an unexpected thing, Ke Xiu was so shocked that he took off his defense. She stared blankly, her eyes bulging a little. Ah Ha suddenly felt that the Ke Xiu imitated by Pan Xi was really wonderful; At this thought, she couldn't help but want to laugh, but after some forbearance, the smile faded.

"A man? Inside the Great Labyrinth?"

"A man, a stranger." Since Ke Xiu was still looking at her in disbelief, she added, "Although I have seen very few men, at least I recognize them."

Ke Xiu ignored Aerha's taunts. "How can there be a man in there?"

"I think I got in through witchcraft. He was dark-skinned, probably from the Inner Ring Island, and had come here to rob tombs. At first I found him in the grave directly below the tombstone. As soon as he noticed me, he ran to the entrance of the Great Labyrinth. After he entered, I locked the iron door. He could cast magic, but couldn't open the door. This morning he went into the tunnel net, and now I can't find him."

"Did he bring a lamp?"

"Yes."

"Where's the water?"

"A small kettle, not full."

"His candle must have burned out." Ke Xiu pondered, "In four or five days, maybe six days, you can send my steward down and drag his body out. His blood should be sprinkled on the throne and then ......."

"No," Aerha said in a sudden and fierce scream, "I'm going to capture him alive."

The hunk priestess looked down on the girl. "Why?"

"Okay...... so that he can die...... Drag it out a little longer. He was guilty of blasphemy against the nameless of the ages, he defiled the tombs with light, and he came to the tombs to steal treasures. These are great sins, and they must be punished more severely, and it is too cheap for him to die alone in a tunnel."

"That's right." Ke Xiu said, his expression as if he was thinking carefully, "But how are you going to capture him alive, mistress? The method of capturing them alive is unreliable, and there is no danger in letting them die. Isn't there a place in the Great Labyrinth dedicated to storing bones? Those are the bones of a man who didn't have to leave after entering the Great Labyrinth...... Let the spirits of the underworld punish him with the shadowy methods of the Great Labyrinth, whether it is one or many. Dying of thirst is a cruel way to die."

"I know." With that, the girl turned and stepped into the night, pulling up her hood to resist the freezing howling winter wind. Doesn't she know?

Running to find Ke Xiu was really naïve and stupid, and she couldn't get help from her at all. Ke Xiu didn't understand anything, he just knew to wait calmly and wait for him to die by himself. She didn't understand that not only did this man have to be found, but he couldn't be dealt with in the same way as everyone else. Aerha couldn't stand that kind of treatment this time. Since he had to die, let him die in broad daylight. This man was the first person in hundreds of years to dare to rob the tomb, and it was definitely more appropriate for him to die under the sword. He didn't even have a mortal soul, and he was not qualified to be reborn at all. If he was left alone to die of thirst in the dark, his ghost would wander through the underground walkways, which was absolutely not feasible.

Alha slept very little that night. The next day she was busy with a series of ceremonies and duties, so she had to take advantage of the darkness alone (without a lantern) to quietly inspect one hole after another, until she had seen all the holes in every building and on the hill where she was located. I was busy for most of the night, and I didn't go back to the hut until two or three hours before dawn to go to bed, but I still couldn't sleep. On the evening of the third day, she walked alone into the desert and towards the creek. The water level of the stream was extremely low due to the winter drought, and the reeds by the river froze. She decided to go to the stream, for she remembered that in the autumn she had gone deep into the labyrinth, passed the Six Forks, and was making her way along a long bend when she heard the sound of running water from behind the rock face. If a thirsty man walks there, won't he stay? There were also peepholes by the stream, but she had to look for them. Last year, Saar showed her every hole, so it didn't take much trouble to find it. Erha recalls places and shapes in the same way that a blind person feels, as if she is groping for each hidden hole with her senses, rather than looking for it with her eyes. Reaching the voyeur's hole, farthest from the mausoleum, she pulled up her hood to shade the light, and then moved her eyes closer to the small hole carved in the rock face; Suddenly, she saw a dim glow of sorcery light underneath.

He was there, but half out of her sight. The hole was overlooking the end of the alley, and all she could see was his back, the nape of his neck with his head down, and his right arm. He was sitting near the corner of the wall, using a knife to pry the stone. His sword was a short sword cast of steel, with a jeweled hilt, and the blade was broken; The severed one lay directly below the hole. He kept stabbing with his short sword, trying to pry open the stone so that he could get water to drink. He heard the murmuring of water on the other side of the impermeable stone wall, and the sound of the water was particularly clear in the dead silence of the earth.

His movements seemed sluggish. After two days and three nights, he had changed a lot, and he was very different from the man who stood by the iron gate softly and calmly and laughed at his failure. Although it seems to be tenacious, the strength in his body is gone. He had no magic to remove the stones, and had to borrow a useless broken knife. Even his sorcery light faded, dimming and hazy. As Aerha watched, the light trembled slightly, and the man turned his head and threw away the short sword in his hand. After a while, he stubbornly picked up the dagger again, and tried to stab the broken blade hard into the crack in the stone.

Er Ha crawled among the frozen reeds on the shore, gradually forgetting where she was and what she was doing. She put her hands close to her mouth and folded them into a cup, leaning into the hole and shouting, "Wizard!" The voice slid down the narrow path of the rock, and whispered coldly through the underground tunnel.

The man was taken aback, and hurriedly stood up, out of Aharha's line of sight. She leaned in again and said, "Follow the stone wall by the river back to the second turn and walk in. Turn right at the first fork, skip a turn and turn right. Turn right when you get to the Six Forks, then left, right, left, right, and then right, and go into the painting room and stay."

She moved for a moment to look in, and for a moment wanted to let daylight peek through the peephole into the tunnel, and she noticed that he was back in the circle as far as she could see, looking up at the opening. She saw that he seemed to have a scar on his face, and his expression was anxious and expectant. His lips were dry, but his eyes were bright. He lifted the wooden staff, slowly moving the light closer to her eyes. She retreated in fright, quickly pulled back the rock cover, pushed back the small stones that had been covered, and got up and quickly returned to the mausoleum. She noticed that her hands were shaking, and she occasionally felt dizzy as she walked. She didn't know what to do.

If he follows her instructions, he will return to the direction that leads to the Iron Gate and reach the Paint Room. There were no treasures in the paint room, and there was no reason for him to go there. But there was a nice peephole in the ceiling of the paint room, which led to the "treasure room" of the Two Temples, which may be why she thought of the paint room. She didn't know, and she didn't know why she was talking to him.

She could use a sniffle hole to send some water down the tunnel and ask him to pick it up, so he could live a little longer. As she pleases, she can live as long as she wants. If she had occasionally put some water and a little food down, he would have wandered through the great labyrinth day after day, month after month; She could see him through the peephole and tell him where to find water, sometimes deliberately giving the wrong instructions so that he could run in vain, but he would go anyway. This would surely have made him understand what would happen to laughing at the nameless and boasting of ridiculous masculinity in the place where the immortal dead were buried!

But as long as he was still inside, she would never be able to enter the Great Labyrinth. Why? She asked herself and replied: I must leave the iron door open when I enter, and he may take the opportunity to escape...... But at best, he could only flee to the Great Tomb. So the truth is: she was afraid to face him, she was afraid of his power, of the tricks by which he had entered the tomb, and of the witchcraft that kept the light shining. However, are those things so scary? It was she who was the one who ruled over this dark zone, not him. The facts show that there is not much he can do in the realm of the nameless. He hadn't opened the iron door, he hadn't summoned magic food, he hadn't walked through the wall to get water, he hadn't summoned the demons to bring down the stone wall, and he hadn't done anything she feared he might do. Even, he had walked here and there for three days, and had not yet found his way to the great treasure chamber that he had been looking for, and Al Ha herself had not yet gone there as Sar had instructed, and out of some awe and resistance, she had postponed the expedition and postponed it again and again, and she vaguely felt that the time had not yet come.

She now thought: Why not just let him go instead of her? He could see all the mausoleum treasures he wanted. They're of great use to him! Then she could make fun of him and tell him to eat gold and drink diamonds.

With the restlessness and nervousness that had occupied her for the past two days, she ran to the Twin Temples, opened the small treasure room in the vaults of the temple, and lifted the peepholes in the floor that were cleverly hidden.

Underneath is the painting room, but it's dark inside. She forgot that the man was walking the tunnel network underground, and the path was winding and winding, perhaps miles longer than the surface distance. And he must be weak and can't walk fast. He may also not remember the instructions she gave and turn the wrong turn. Few people can remember the direction after listening to it like her. Maybe he didn't understand her at all. In that case, let him fall in the darkness and die. This stupid, foreigner, godless creature let his ghost wail along the downhill stone path of the Etuan Mausoleum until darkness consumes it......

Early the next morning, after a lack of sleep and many nightmares, she hurried back to the Twin Temple's Detective Hole. She looked down and saw nothing, only pitch black. She lowered the small tin lantern hanging from the chain: yes, he was in the paint room. Through the glow of the candle, she saw his two legs and a limp hand. This peephole is not small, about the size of a whole floor tile; She leaned against the orifice and cried out, "Wizard!"

There was no movement. Is he dead? Is that all he has to do? She sneered to herself, but her heart was pounding. "Wizard!" Her cry echoed through the empty room below. He moved, slowly stood up, and looked around with a confused face. After a moment, he looked up and caught a glimpse of the small flickering lantern above his head. His face looked horrible and swollen and dark, just like the face of a mummy.

He reached for the wooden staff that lay on the ground beside him, but no light came out. He didn't have any strength left.

"Wizard, do you want to see the treasures of the Etuan Mausoleum?"

He looked up wearily, squinting at the light of her lantern, the only thing he could see. For a moment, he winced, perhaps trying to squeeze out a smile, and then nodded.

"Get out of this room, turn left, come across the first passage on the left, turn and go down......" She went on and on for a long list of instructions, without pause, and then added, "In there you can find the treasure you're looking for, and maybe water." Now, treasure and water, which one do you want, wizard?"

He leaned against his staff and looked up with the eyes that could not see her, and wanted to say something, but his thirsty throat could not make a sound. He shrugged his shoulders slightly and left the paint room.

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