The turbid water poured in was like the ebb and flow of the tide, occasionally going deep into the inner cave to chase the feet of the three people, and occasionally receding, making a rumbling sound, washing away the rock and soil. The strange texture of the washed rocks seems to tell the story of the passage of time.

"Your Highness, did Your Majesty say how Sunset City was born?"

Gu Chuan, who held up the statue, looked back and asked the girl behind him.

The clusters of fluorescent filaments fell one by one, and the light light brightened the outline of His Highness. No beauty could withstand the test of the trek, and after a series of underground escapes, wind and rain, her originally clean face was covered with dust and marks.

But her face was full of gloom and gloom, and seeing her appearance from the water was only interesting, and even a little interested. When His Highness heard Gu Chuan's words, he came back to his senses and showed a blank expression.

"Mom didn't mention it......" she recalled, diligently, "I remember it written in the official history that Sunset City was like this a long, long time ago, and it will continue to be like this in the future." ”

"What is from the past, and what is to come?"

Gu Chuan laughed.

"Whatever is there, everything comes from. It's like all the border villages didn't have anything at first, no fields, no houses, they were built slowly and little by little after people migrated...... Isn't that how Sunset City should be? ”

The toeless man didn't understand them at all, and he was bored on the sidelines and began to flutter fireflies.

Pounced for a while, and then nervously looked to see if anyone was chasing after him.

When no one was chasing him, he pounced for a while.

He still hadn't figured out why anyone would forbid them to go out.

"Everything has a place to come from......"

His Highness said in confusion.

The confident expression of the fool in front of him made him turn back into the great inventor in the middle palace.

Gu Chuan continued to walk forward, saying as he walked:

"I've also read the official history of Sunset City, and it only says that Sunset City has always been like this. But there has always been a rumor among the people that Sunset City is also the ancestors of His Majesty and the dozen or so families, and a team of about dozens or hundreds of people migrated to this new land a long, long time ago, cultivating farmland, going into the water to fish, building dikes, laying props, and building houses. So it expanded from the inner city to the thirteen districts of the inner city, and then expanded to the entire outer city, so that now the scale of one million people is so magnificent that the carriage cannot leave the inner city all day long, and Qiji cannot go north and south for three days. ”

The toeless man's feet were submerged in the water, and he hurried to follow.

"You have a point......

His Highness said.

The bleak tunnel seems to retain ancient memories. It is not known whether it is gold or silver, fragments of masks or cutlery, rotten bones, and occasionally carved with materials that resemble teeth. What's more, it was the toeless man who dug up the ground and actually dug something out of the soil that looked like a gem...... He wiped the dust off the surface of the gem, and it sparkled under the filament.

The toeless man happily stuffed the glittering thing into his tattered garment, and His Highness asked:

"Who left all these things behind?"

"These are traces of history."

"Something from the past?"

"I just guessed with you that Sunset City was originally a new land that was cultivated by a group of border people from far away, so the problem is...... Before the people of the frontier came here, this place ...... What does the Huaishui basin of the Rizhao River look like? ”

The young man in distress said calmly.

After the prison disaster, Gu Chuan's inner jacket was as tattered as a toeless man, but he could barely cover his body. As for the water disaster, the cotton clothes are even more clinging to the body due to the adsorption of water. His hair was tied in strands and clung to his forehead. Feeling uncomfortable, he pulled his hair open, exposed his forehead, and knocked his hand on the wall of the cave.

There was a dull sound from the walls of the cave.

Fireflies occasionally float through the body of the escapee, landing leisurely on the ground. His Highness saw that water was seeping into the deep underground, and the gap in the cave wall kept flowing mud and sand.

Originally, the tunnel was supposed to be larger than what they saw now, and many places may have been submerged in dust later.

Gu Chuan stroked the cave wall and continued:

"There are two categories of possibilities. The first type may be that there were no people along the banks of the original tributaries of the Rizhao River, which is now called Huaishui, or that only some small animals came here to drink...... It's like what we see in the upper or lower class. ”

"Then the second possibility is someone......

His Highness felt his heart beating.

Gu Chuan turned his head again, and looked at her with bright eyes:

"Yes...... There are people, there are groups of 'people' or 'savages' who can pose a threat to the people who originally lived here. ”

When Gu Chuan knocked on a wrong sound, he called the toeless man to brush off the dust on the surface together. Dust fell to the ground, and traces that had been hidden were rediscovered.

Her Royal Highness accidentally found some hay roots that had been buried in the ground for an unknown amount of time, and she used the method of flint colliding with fire, and actually succeeded in striking some sparks. When the spark fell into the roots of the hay, the fire burst into flames, illuminating everything in the cave. The insects surrounding the filament were disturbed by the firelight, and some mistook the firelight for their own fluorescence and flew into it, shattering their bones.

"You've done a great job! Who taught you how to make fire? ”

Gu Chuan narrowed his eyes and adapted to the firelight underground.

"Doctors have taught me before...... I practiced it. ”

"Is it Mrs. Ogiri?"

They all felt a little warmer.

"It's not...... It's the ex. ”

His Highness said.

This predecessor did not tell His Highness her name, only asked His Highness to call her a doctor. Now that I think about it, His Highness always feels that the doctor in his impression looks a little similar to his current self.

Gu Chuan didn't continue to communicate, the more they wiped off the dust on the surface, the more they found that this thing had a curved and circular outer edge-

It was a sturdy pillar inserted into the earth, with large scratches on it, which could have been left by metal knives or stones. With the passing of history, it is no longer recognizable.

"From the point of view of material, it may be Yunhua stone, a material of excellent quality that can be mined in Daling Mountain, after the surface is polished, it is textureless, showing a solid color, and it is very hard."

The craft chapter of the encyclopedia has been recorded, and Gu Chuan still remembers it a little.

"What does this mean?"

The flames burned silently, illuminating a dead cavern.

For a hundred or hundreds of years, time and years have disappeared into this endless earth, without a trace. There are only three fugitives left who occasionally pass by, and they follow along in the search for a way out, passing through history.

"It shows that there were actually large buildings in this cave, in other words, there may have been a kind of people living there."

Gu Chuan said.

They rested for a while, dried themselves, and when they had warmed up, they continued to grope their way forward, looking for a way out. Every dozen steps, Gu Chuan could find similar pillars. According to this estimate, the number of Yunhua stone pillars in this cave can reach hundreds or thousands. The walls connecting the pillars to the pillars, where they have not been eroded occasionally, are also scratched, and there is a faint mark that looks like some kind of sap solidification.

"Are these traces all left by the people who originally lived here?"

His Highness asked in amazement.

The sound echoed through the empty corridors, quickly disappearing into the darkness of the distance.

"I can't make an exact guess, maybe it's the ancestors of Sunset City, who dug tunnels and lived here for a while for various reasons."

Gu Chuan said. An unprecedented imagination gradually became clear, and the edge of this imagination, like the outline of a sword, was stained with cruel blood, and he shuddered.

"Later, the reason that forced them to live underground disappeared, and they walked up."

"What about the other possibilities?"

The two eyes met and looked at each other without saying a word.

They continued on their way. The firelight vanished behind it, and the fluorescence was once again the only light in the cavern, slowly illuminating the outlines of everything around it.

"Other...... Others may have been creatures that originally inhabited the land. ”

Until a wall with obvious traces of carving, Gu Chuan was stunned in place.

Then he whispered.

I saw the hanging fluorescence illuminate the paintings on the wall.

The picture shows a man with no fingernails and five fingers being attacked by a man with fingernails and short five fingers. People without nails hide in the ground, while people with nails stand on the ground.

The art of painting stays in the primitive era, the head is square, the body is square, and the hands are square, and it is difficult to carve arcs in rocks. Most of the features are indistinguishable, but the nails are a ...... All the fingers on the mural are divided into two categories. One is one, with a near-square pattern followed by five side-by-side rectangles, and the other is two, the same near-square pattern is connected to five rectangles, but each rectangle is drawn with a horizontal line at a ratio of about 1:3 to distinguish the part of the nail from the subject of the finger.

"It's just speculation."

They walked forward.

There are also murals on the front.

People with nails on the ground are setting fire to the ground, while people with terrified people are dousing the flames underground by bringing in the water of the Rizhao River through complex pipes. The toeless people swam freely in the water, like the most vigorous fish.

The mural came to an abrupt end here.

Maybe it ended there, maybe it was there, but for various reasons it was not visible, obscured by the earth, or went to some other wall.

No one knows what the intentions of these paintings were left behind by the toeless people, and what kind of situation they faced when they painted them. It may not even be a toeless man, but another bystander silently recording all this, so that the history that dates back to the First Twilight War will not be drowned out.

But the people who found them were just escaped prisoners who happened to pass by.

His Highness gently touched the marks on the mural with his hand.

"The First Twilight War is said to be a war against an alien race, it is not well documented, it will be ...... A war between the Toed Man and the Toed Man in the past? ”

The carvings on solid rock have long since surpassed the capabilities of animals, and are the shapes that can only be left by tools that use metal.

"Maybe."

Gu Chuan looked at her seriously.

But His Highness really didn't know anything, so he only opened his eyes and turned his head around, secretly writing down everything around him, thinking that he would come here to explore if he had the ability in the future.

So her eyes fell on the toeless man.

The toeless man who grew up in the dungeon didn't understand any history, past, war, or race, and only cared about fighting fireflies. Streams of light flew between his fingers, leaping towards him with a light trail.

It's a meaningless flutter, but the toeless man is extraordinarily happy. He giggled, and let out another cry of pleasure.

He didn't pay much attention to the words of his two companions, only when they mentioned the word toeless, he turned his head and glanced at him curiously. Because he knew that it was one of the temporary appellations for him.

His Royal Highness turned around, continued to look at Gu Chuan, and asked him seriously:

"In the end, there were some toeless people left behind in that war, and Mom locked them up in the dungeon?"

"If the guess is correct, it probably is."

Gu Chuan threw down the mural without the slightest memory, walked forward by himself, and then said with a slight relaxation:

"And we might be able to get out."

"Is this the underground reservoir?"

His Highness saw a mural painting resembling a reservoir.

"Yes, according to this account, the Toelesss once built an underground reservoir. And this reservoir is directly connected to the Rizhao River outside through a channel...... Diving is required and very dangerous. ”

But this danger is nothing compared to facing the Sunset City Guards.

There were still mountains and rivers ahead, and occasionally there was water that had accumulated for an unknown number of years, forcing the escapees to carefully test the depth before trekking. During the trek, they also picked up some useful straw ropes, made a few fires, and dried themselves.

"This area may have once been inhabited by toeless people."

Beneath Sunset City, there is a dungeon, an underground labyrinth, which seems to be a sure thing.

They took a lot of detours and it took a long time to find the huge reservoir mentioned in the mural.

It is a huge pit, and the rock wall and stalactites at the top of the pit are natural water filters, and clean water drops fall. And the pit was filled with a pool of clear water.

The large filaments of the cave roof fell, and the brilliance of the fireflies fell like stars, falling into the water one by one. The surface of the water is still, immersed in boundless fireflies, like a night sky dotted with stars.

Gu Chuan's unintentional voice was heard by His Highness.

His Highness touched the pamphlet in his arms and hurriedly asked:

"The night sky of the stars...... Are you talking about the scenery of a foreign land in that book? ”

Gu Chuan was surprised at first, remembering that His Royal Highness had read the travelogue he had fabricated, so he looked back and said with a smile:

"yes."

"That's right...... That's no wonder, that's no wonder! Even if there are stars in the night, they will not be so bright that you can't sleep...... It turned out that the stars were not bright, but small, stingy ghosts with only a little light......"

The girl lowered her eyes, wondering why her heart was beating so rapidly. She felt her face redden.

The scene in front of her constituted the first imagination of the deep court maiden to the stars.

But the young man smiled and turned back to her:

"According to this science, the stars are not stingy."

He took off his outer clothes, leaving only his white shirt, which was soaked in water and clinging to his body. Then the young man, barefoot, tied his clothes with the straw rope he had picked up, made a safety rope and put it on his trouser belt, and walked before the pale blue lake.

This strange piece may not have been visited by anyone for hundreds of years. They are guests who have been here for hundreds of years.

"Your Highness, do you know? The stars actually want to light everything up! It's just that I can't do anything about it, and I just forget my original idea. ”

The remarkable posture of the young man is reflected on the surface of the water.

With that, he took a deep breath.

Then take a leap and plunge into the fate of finite water and infinite otherworldly.