As Jiraiya slowly moved the stone altar farther away, the foul-smelling air flow no longer rushed to everyone's nostrils at a relatively rapid speed, but in a relatively gentle way, which made everyone's noses and brains feel better.

And when the altar is completely removed, everyone is greeted by a gruesome scene.

It was a stone staircase that led to a bottomless abyss, and the stone staircase was littered with animal bones.

These skeletons can clearly be identified as human skeletons, but it seems less accurate to characterize them as human skeletons.

Their spines are short, rickety, and their skulls are horribly wrinkled, reminiscent of less than perfect human beings.

The skeletons, which were still intact, remained in a state of utter panic, their slightly loose skeletons crouching on the edge of the stone staircase near the altar lid, as if in a gesture of begging for the altar at the top of the staircase to move away and give them light.

And it's not just the darkness that scares them in this space, but also the animals that cause the rodent bite marks on their bodies.

"It's... What? ”

Seeing everything in front of him, the most unacceptable thing was the abbot of the Fire Temple.

Jilu couldn't imagine that such a terrible place was hidden under the Fire Temple, and these terrible bones seemed to show that the Fire Temple once had a dark history.

"Looks like we have to go down and have a look..."

Jiraiya was the first to bear the brunt with a lantern, followed by Jiriku and Naruto.

The black stone steps were relatively narrow, and it was almost impossible for a tall and burly body like Jiraiya to turn around here, as if the designers and builders of the annoying stone steps had not taken into account the needs of tall people for the use of the steps.

Moreover, the edges and corners of the entire staircase are also very badly worn, especially the middle part, which is even worn into an almost inclined downward plane, and even if the ninjas go down, they have to slowly move down sideways.

Because no one knows what kind of dark abyss they will fall into if they slip a little on their feet.

But fortunately, the stone steps here are all carved out of solid limestone, and even if the edges and corners are almost smoothed, they can still firmly support the weight of four people, and will not make people's hearts beat faster by breaking the floor at every turn, like those vulgar adventure stories.

After a little distance, the pungent and unpleasant smell calmed down a lot, but everyone didn't know if their nose had adapted to the unpleasant smell here, or if the opening of the altar had restored the air flow of this unknown abyss, and eliminated some of the turbid gas that had accumulated here for thousands of years.

In short, the comfort on the nose reassures everyone's heart, and they get a rare trace of calm in the environment wrapped in darkness.

But this calm was soon shattered again.

Walking down the terrible staircase piled up with skeletons, everyone's vision was suddenly opened, and everyone's breathing stopped for a moment.

In front of Jiraiya and the others was a cave with a very high dome, and when you looked at the sides horizontally, it was almost a cliff.

And the direction of its straight line extension is also far beyond the field of vision of Jiraiya, which is not out of sight due to the limited range of light, but simply out of reach.

In fact, I don't know for what reason and reason, in such a huge environment, where no visible light is illuminated by the outside world, the vision of the four people is not blocked in any way.

If you look into the reason for this, it is that the dome of this cave and the surrounding buildings scattered around it, as well as the depths of the cave, are glowing with a light green phosphorescence everywhere, and it is the presence of these mysterious phosphorescences that illuminates the entire cave for everyone.

This level of vision made everyone only gasp for a long time, and even people like Naruto, who usually had exaggerated movements, were paralyzed by shock and horror at this time, and could only stand still, staring at everything in front of them.

At this moment, everyone was so shocked by the scene in front of them that they almost forgot that they were only here to track down the traces of those man-eating rats.

[Get 1800 shiver points from Jiraiya!] 】

[Get 2100 Trembling Points from the Earth!] 】

[Get 1500 Shiver Points from Sora!] 】

Naruto's vision didn't shift to the surrounding scenes where he was more likely to get specific information, but instead stared straight into the distance directly across from the entrance.

It was covered in a large green phosphorescent light, like a giant lighter illuminating the entire cavern.

But the rich dark green of the light green is more like a sign that there is something more amazing there.

[Get 1200 Shiver Points from Naruto!] 】

[Get 3700 trembling points from the Nine Tails and Nine Horns!] 】

Even though it was only through Naruto's vision, the Nine-Tails in Naruto's body could still feel the strong sense of uneasiness that penetrated his soul.

The oppression and fear of this environment can be felt even by a chakra aggregate.

In other words, no rational existence can refuse this oldest and strongest emotion.

And Jiraiya thought more carefully, and Jiraiya also thought of his nightmare.

The abominable-looking, man-eating swineherd dwells in a glimmering cavern.

And the place I saw in front of me happened to be an underground cavern shrouded in phosphorescent light.

Jiraiya's brain inevitably connects the two ominous things he has been exposed to recently, and Jiraiya's intuition tells him that behind all this there is definitely a terrible deed that has not been revealed for thousands of years.

...

Standing in front of the cave did not allow people to understand the whole picture of it and the truth behind it, so the four of them calmed down and continued on their way.

The underground cavern is not empty, on either side of a wide central avenue, there are clearly visible clusters of buildings arranged in a staggered manner on both sides of the gentle slope on both sides of the road.

These buildings are located in close proximity to each other, ranging from primitive wooden houses to relatively modern earth-and-stone structures.

In addition to these structures, there are also a number of obvious mounds and primitive stone rings made of boulders for unknown purposes.

However, these are not enough to frighten and shock the four members of the "investigation team", and the skeletons that can be seen everywhere at the bottom of these complexes are the most eye-catching.

They begin to spread out like a carpet from a few meters away from the stone steps at the entrance.

These bones, which were numerous enough to give a numbing scalp, had similar characteristics to those found on the stairs, so they were almost certainly suspected to be human.