What I saw and heard along the way was so new that it even diluted some of the discomfort that I felt when I first arrived in a foreign place. This is the second time I have walked in the wilderness of this area, the first time I was escorted as a prisoner with my hands tied, and I had no mood or leisure to observe this worldly realm.

From time to time, small animals such as squirrels, rabbits, and foxes pass by, and sometimes a few deer leisurely eat leaves. There are also some ferocious creatures in the depths of the woods, and from a distance they may be a few wolves acting in groups. Although I am now fully armed, I still stay away from them to avoid any possibility of conflict with them. The routine of fighting monsters and leveling only exists in the game, and if you don't die, you won't die is the only criterion in the real world.

In addition, I encountered some novel species. There is a kind of crab living in the mire by the river, so let's call it a mireururk for the time being. The mirelurk crab was big and small, and the one that impressed me the most was very large, standing up and about half a meter tall. From afar, it looked like a large rock, and when I approached, it suddenly stretched out its curled limbs and bared its teeth and claws at me.

Seeing the stone in front of me turn into a half-meter-tall guy waving tongs after a second, I was still shocked after experiencing two lives and deaths in one day. Its huge pair of pincers gave me a sense of danger, easily reminiscent of yesterday being pressed to the guillotine. Fortunately, the mirelurk was just trying to protect its territory, and after running a few steps, I found that it was still clumsily waving its pincers in place, so I stopped and laughed at myself.

In addition, I noticed that dragons were not unusual, and from the time I left the stronghold to the time I reached the stairs at the foot of the mountain, two dragons flew in the distant sky. I could only make out the wings and tail vaguely with the telescope, and I couldn't see more details clearly, and I still defined it as a dragon.

After walking for a while, the sun moved from one side of the sky to the other, and I walked to the foot of the mountain and began to follow the stairs towards the mountain.

Climbing this bare stone staircase is really boring, and there is nothing to see except falling snowflakes, so you can only move your feet repeatedly and keep going up.

As the altitude increases, the wind and snow become heavier and heavier. As I approached the platform area, the entire field was almost covered in snow, and the snowflakes were swept up in the cold wind, spilling around every corner.

On the high platform, as I had seen before, there were many large stone arches, and as I climbed up the stairs, I would pass under the stone arches. I walked around the pillars of the stone arch a few times, but found nothing special from them. At the top of the arch is the head of some kind of creature, and the severe signs of erosion and snow disturbance make it impossible for me to identify its species. As a result of recent encounters, I continue to define it as a dragon.

There are several small tents on the platform. The tent has chuang bunks and some rudimentary wooden furniture. Outside the tent there are shelves with furs or dried meat, suggesting that this may have been a temporary dwelling for hunters. At this time, the hunters were probably hunting or descending the mountain to escape the wind and snow, so I didn't meet them. I had already collected enough food in the stronghold, and I didn't do anything about the things inside and outside the tent to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings and conflicts.

Facing the wind and snow, I came to the backmost stone wall. The stone wall is simple and there is nothing worth excavating other than its height. The metal door embedded directly below the stone wall is more than four meters high and is carved with an ancient pattern, which looks ancient and clumsy. Looking at the rough contact between the door and the ground, I couldn't help but curse the unknown architect: this door can't be opened by human beings.

But the door was now open, and the two doors were turned in opposite directions around the axis of the door, leaving a meter-wide gap in the middle for people to enter, and there were clear friction scratches on the floor.

"Is there anyone in there?"

No one answered, but I slipped through the gap in front of me, and I didn't want to stay outside and freeze.

As I entered, I looked down the hall I was in. The pillars and beams of the hall are mainly made of stone, and because of the moss and vines, the color is greenish, giving people a sense of desertion, but the lit torches fixed to the walls tell me that this place is not uninhabited. I decided to go through the door directly in front of me and go deeper.

After that, the road became very narrow, as if it had been poured into the mouth of a funnel, and there were even dense vines that made the otherwise modest road even narrower. A clay pot filled with oil was lit from the spout and hung on the top of the channel, and some of the oil in the pot was splashed on the ground, reflecting bright colors in the light, which made my heart soothe a lot.

The lighting tools lit along the road puzzled me, but more warmly, as if they welcomed my arrival, and made me continue to the interior of the mountain without hesitation, eagerly looking forward to meeting the owner of the place.

……

I don't know how long I walked, but after passing through a narrow passage at the back of the road, I came to a new style of space. It is a large semi-circular section, about fifty meters long, with many carvings on the walls, presumably a group of brave men beating up small monsters, or a group of brave people surrounding their king.

If the stone wall were recorded with the twelve exploits of Hercules, I would have stopped and watched for a long time. But my knowledge of this civilization is seriously inadequate, and these reliefs have no special meaning for me.

In addition, there are many small doors on both sides of the passage that lead to different rooms, but the stone wall at the end of the passage is more interesting to me than these small rooms. After casually browsing the reliefs for a while, I reached the end of the passage.

In the middle of the stone wall at the end of the passage is a striking disc with rings carved with images of moths, eagles, fishes, snakes, wolves, and other unrecognizable animals, presumably an alien version of the zodiac? There are three finger-sized holes in the middle of the disc. A golden-textured, three-fingered dragon claw – anything I've seen lately that I've associated with a dragon's body – stuck in the hole. It is clear that this claw can be turned, and it is likely that this is the way to open the door.

I twisted the dragon's claws to the end in a direction that could be turned, and concentric stone rings engraved with images of different animals began to rotate at different angular speeds. With a roar in the walls on both sides, the door cracked open from one side of the disc, splitting into two parts, rising and descending, into the ceiling and the surface.

Suddenly, my vision opened up, and a wide space appeared in front of me.