Chapter 93: Son of the Dragon
After the conversation with the moonlight elves, Jonah wrapped himself in his robes and lay down, and had another restless sleep. Although he gradually became accustomed to galloping at a high speed of fifty knots in the endless sea of sand, the little parasite human in the ghost Bahamas woke up from his dreams again and again, and he tried to hide his body in the corner of the cramped room, trying to find some safety in the dark night.
When the day finally dawned, Jonah didn't delay a minute longer, and he removed the wooden frame that blocked the door, allowing the sunlight to illuminate the small room, as well as the strange symbols on the floor. "Violence blasted away, didn't it...... Come on, then!" He raised his staff, Silafina, and after a moment of meditation, "Boom!" The Mushroom Farm Trident pierced the floor like a red-hot iron spear, and a large hole with neat edges appeared in the center of the room, and the "Woo ......" air was sucked in by the hole, and the astrologer apprentice took a vigilant step back and watched from afar.
After a few minutes, the whistling of the air movement subsided, indicating that the pressure in the cave and outside had reached an equilibrium. Jonah slowly approached the entrance, lit up the illuminated star array and approached the entrance of the cave, looking down to see a dark room below, from this angle it was impossible to tell how big the room was, Jonah tried to shout, the echo seemed empty, indicating that it was a very empty open space.
The room wasn't too high, and Jonah estimated that jumping off shouldn't hurt him, but climbing up was a problem. He thought about it, took off the robe on his body and twisted it into a strand and tied it to the wooden storage shelf, and tried hard, but the wooden frame did not move at all, and it was completely able to bear the weight of a person.
"Whew......" Jonah took two deep breaths with his hand on his chest, suppressing the fear in his heart, "Come on!" he closed his eyes, strained his legs, and jumped into the second room.
The wind whistled behind his ears, and the fall seemed very long, but finally he landed safely on the ground with a plop, and the astrologer apprentice immediately stood up straight and raised his staff to the maximum output of the illuminated star array. The empty room was illuminated, and the light extended to the four walls of the room, and not a single obstacle cast shadows on all sides—the room was empty.
Jonah breathed a sigh of relief, then felt a little disappointed. The room is 2,000 square feet in size, irregular in shape, with no doors or windows, and a concave floor, showing signs of artificial excavation, but it has not been properly repaired.
"Such a room...... What does it do?" Jonah muttered to himself, his voice echoing through the empty room, startling himself. He strode towards a wall, his expression changing to surprise as the details on the wall became clearer, "This is ...... Mural!"
He stood in front of a wall and stared in amazement at the brilliant frescoes. It turned out that the shape of the room was not oval, but a polygon of twenty-four walls, each of which was different in width but very flat, and twenty-four beautiful frescoes covered every corner of the room. The one in front of Jonah is a yellow tone with a charcoal brush to outline undulating curves, and a few brushstrokes present the vast endless sea of sand in front of him, and the painter's brushstrokes are very expressive. In the earthy yellow sand dunes, there was a black shadow walking through it, and Jonah recognized the black shadow in the painting as the ghost Bahamas, and on the mural, the giant beast had a huge body, a spur-covered head, four eyes, three pairs of strong feet, and a long tail, and its appearance was not among any other creatures he knew, but for some reason, it looked somewhat familiar.
"Is this what the ghost Bahamas looks like......" muttered the astrologer's apprentice. There are several lines of handwritten small characters in the upper right corner of the mural, in the same font as the symbol on the floor of the room overhead, and it seems that the creator of the mural is the owner of the ashram above. One detail caught Jonah's attention, and the two pairs of eyes of the ghost Bahamas were flowing tears at the same time, red tears. The red droplets representing tears are intermittent and sprinkled in the long trail of the giant beast, and I don't know what the author wants to express.
Jonah turned to something else.
Half an hour later, after seeing all the frescoes, he returned to the center of the room thoughtfully, sat on the floor and clutched his staff, lost in thought. The murals on each wall represent a frozen moment, and twenty-four moments tell a complete story, the tale of the ghost Bahamas. Although he could not read the words left by the painter, the life of the giant beast had carved a mark on the heart of the astrologer's apprentice, and the vivid images directly shook his soul. In chronological order, the twenty-four murals tell in turn:
One, a long time ago, there was such a magical era, where traces of dragons could be seen in every corner of the continent, and different kinds of dragons ruled the world's skies;
Second, the dragon fights, frolicks, and collects treasures, leaving endless legends;
Third, adult male dragons occasionally mate with aliens and give birth to various half-dragon monsters, which are species abandoned by dragons and souls abandoned by dragon gods;
Fourth, the black dragon from the east is the overlord of the sky, with a distinctive slender body and lightning-fast flight speed, with flames spewing out of his mouth and thunder and lightning shining on the tips of his claws;
Fifth, the black dragon came to the southern continent, attracted by the many treasures of the Golden City, and stayed here for a long time;
Sixth, the black dragon of the King's Landing Continent flies over the endless sandy sea, and the first and only mother of the desert looks up from the earth;
Seventh, the black dragon landed in front of the hinder, and the powerful creatures felt each other's power;
Eighth, the postworms became the companions of the black dragons, and the whole desert trembled with their pleasure;
Nine, the war began, the golden dragon, silver dragon, red copper dragon, brass dragon, bronze dragon, red dragon, green dragon from the west and the east dragon, Jiaolong, Kui Long, Ying Long, Yellow Dragon, black dragon divided into two factions, the war of the dragon clan swept the world, elves, gnomes, cyclops and red demons, war ghosts, and tree spirits participated in the battle as the help of both sides, the sky was full of flames and thunder, the life of magical creatures disappeared like fireworks, a huge explosion occurred, the endless sea of sand overturned to the southwest, and the great sand waterfall appeared;
Ten, the war was not won or lost, the sky lost the shadow of the dragon, the black dragon left, never returned;
Eleven, the postworm gave birth to new life, and the offspring of the dragon clan remained silent in her body for eight hundred years;
Twelve, finally, the Mother of the Desert gave birth to the first and only half-dragon sandeater, and on the day of production, the first rainstorm in eight hundred years fell from the endless sea of sand;
Thirteen, the half-dragon inherited his father's strength and wisdom, but lost the ability to fly, and the powerful black dragon bloodline made it consider itself a dragon, but it could only run with its head down on the desert, and eat into the dirty yellow sand, instead of the flowing clouds of the high sky;
Fourteen, the half-dragon lost his mind, and ran aimlessly in the endless sea of sand, shedding blood and tears, chasing the sun;
Fifteen, the half-dragon stormed the tower where the astrologer lived, and the astrologer was very angry, and summoned the power of the stars to give the half-dragon sanction;
Sixteenth, the astrologer communicates with the half-dragon through the legendary artifact and decides to help the heirs of the black dragon regain the glory of the dragon clan;
Seventeen, the astrologer changed the appearance of the half-dragon's body, and used its flesh and blood to carve a mysterious array that could store the power of the stars;
Eighteen, the astrologer designed a complex star array that no one had ever seen before, and told the heirs of the black dragon that as long as they ran on the desert according to the outline of the star array, one day they might accumulate enough energy to change the appearance of time and space, awaken the power of the black dragon, and fly to the place where their ancestors had soared for generations;
Nineteen, failing to finish the final work, the astrologer disappeared with his tower, and the half-dragon remembered the immense array of stars, but did not know what the last part of the array looked like;
Twenty, the half-dragon can't stop, only by moving forward quickly, can he swallow more yellow sand, absorb more nutrients, improve his strong body, and make himself move faster, closer to his father's footprints, he pierces the sand dunes, crushes the mountains, and crushes all the obstacles on the strong road into pieces, nothing can stop the powerful bloodline of the dragon clan from moving forward bravely;
Twenty-one, year after year, the half-dragon used the endless sea of sand as a canvas, and his own footprints as a paintbrush, drawing over and over again the great star arrays of the astrologers, and it kept experimenting with the shape of the last part, but never succeeded;
Twenty-two, the lonely half-dragon runs alone, and the legend of horror is born because of it, and it has been so long that no one remembers its origin, and its name is written with the deep hatred of the desert people;
Twenty-three, the ascetic monk came to the endless sand sea, and was briefly accompanied by the lonely beast, and the monk resonated with the half-dragon, so he realized the supreme truth between heaven and earth, and penetrated the entrance between existence and destruction;
Twenty-four, the monk said goodbye to the half-dragon, returned to his own country to spread the truth, and before leaving, he painted and recorded the story of the half-dragon, hoping that the next human who is fortunate to be with it will understand its centuries-old sorrow and persistence, and provide it with help that the monk cannot provide, and help the descendants of the dragon clan return to the sky.
In the last fresco, the monk depicts himself as four faces, and Jonah wonders what that means, does it mean a change after "penetrating the entrance"?
The true face of the ghost Bahamas was completely different from the imagination of the astrologer's apprentice, he did not expect that the nightmarish destroyer of the endless sea of sand would have such a life, for a hundred years, the lonely half-dragon day and night, persistently drawing the trajectory of the mutilated star array over and over again, Jonah stroked the rough skin of the giant beast beneath him, and his heart was full of empathetic desolation.
There were two things that he didn't expect either: first, that magical age that had never been recorded in any history really existed, and second, that the first mentor Gilberto Gilbernet actually played a very important role in it, and it can even be said that it was the first mentor who single-handedly created the legendary ghost Bahamas, which was also not included in any astrological books, and the unfinished star array disappeared into the turbulence of time and space along with the astrological tower Anrisia. If you had known about this past, you should have asked the first mentor to complete this star array in the illusion of the Well of Light......