"It's honey." Only a thin layer remains, which nearly dries up and sticks to the pottery shards, precipitating the sugar with the texture of fine sand particles. It's been here for a long time, but it won't be more than half a year.

"A marker? Who left it? ”

"I think so, probably no one will come here to make honey tea."

An exhilarating discovery. Although it is different from what was said at the beginning, it also confirms the speculation very well, and you can feel the change in the mentality of the people, like a progress bar more than half of the way through the long wait, showing that what they have done before is not in vain, and there is a goal waiting for them behind.

Green's performance was not so obvious, but the short, chaotic breathing revealed his inner change, and finally he breathed a long sigh of relief.

The mystery that has plagued for months has finally made substantial progress, and the shadow of uncertainty has revealed a corner that can be traced. This made him feel much better, and his attitude changed, waiting for Kraft to look through the pottery shard, and approached to ask:

"Is that the professor you were talking about?"

"Not sure, but very likely." On the contrary, Kraft did not feel that things were in order.

The obscure guidance, the broken honey pot, and the crevice in the rock in front of him, a tortuous electric shock-like fissure, with jagged square shadows in the depths of the unlit depths, reminds the viewer of the dentition embedded in the jaw bones in the wall and inserted into the neatly cut quarry cavern.

This makes people perceive that it is a man-made creation, and instinctively feel that it is something as old and dead as a skeleton, buried at a depth that would normally not be seen again.

The expansion of the quarry touched this underground space, and it seems that the discoverers had no intention of entering the exploration and even gave up mining in this direction.

The rock piles piled up next to the door of the semi-finished stone chamber show that they had sealed off the area, but after it was abandoned, it was excavated for the burial of the dead.

The burial man hastily placed the body and burial goods on the ground, as if out of fear of digging a stone niche under the gaze of the rift, afraid that the sound of knocking would enter the dark and empty space on the other side.

"I'll go first, Vaddin, you will come in second, and the others will wait for my instructions." Green hung the lantern back on his waist, drew his sword, estimated the width of the gap, and retracted it into its sheath, choosing the spare dagger.

"Don't you want to prepare again, how long have we been down?" Seeing that the priest had already kicked into the rock gap, inhaling and burrowing in, Kraft thought it would be better to be safe.

"It's a little far from the ground, if something happens and it's hard to deal with it, why don't you think about sorting out the route first and making some preparations before going in?"

Green's hand holding the bulging stone paused for a moment, then continued his movements, not taking the advice, "No, as soon as possible, if the heretics were moving around here, they would probably notice that we were here, and if you miss this time, you may not have a chance to catch them again next time." ”

"Besides, are you really worried that we won't be able to deal with the cockroaches in the corner?" He gestured to the Professor's weapon. Probably no one will be able to deal with the two of them joining forces in the dark.

"Be careful." Kraft poured a small amount of water from the kettle to clean his fingers, put on his gloves, and followed behind Wattin while Green reported back to the situation.

The lantern moves forward through the cracks, illuminating the rugged interior, stabilizing after a shaky jolt, being lifted and illuminated by the masonry at the end, and the smooth part folds back into a dark greasy reflection.

The light source spun around, and after a moment of silence, Green's voice came from the other side, "Come here, no problem." ”

Kraft followed Wattin through the chasm, nearly stepping into the air at a half-man's height drop, slipping under his feet, and holding himself against the wall, realizing that he was also stained with slippery moisture.

Stand still and look around, the lights are bright enough to make a clear view of the environment, a tunnel where two people can walk side by side.

The side walls of the blue and black bricks rise from the tightly knit ground and close to the top of the arch at the top of the head, a thin layer of shallow water flowing slowly underfoot, soaking in the sand and dirt accumulated between the stone crevices.

Kraft had already guessed, but he wanted to make sure: "What is this place?" ”

"Sewers." Green lowered his arm, and the light was close to the current, illuminating the turbidity in the water, "We're in a sewer, but luckily there hasn't been a rainstorm lately. ”

"Is it so deep to make it easier to drain to hell?" The scale and exquisite craftsmanship can be explained, but such a deep sewer is not easy to explain by the accumulation of soil layers and buried remains.

Brother Vardine shrugged, "If I could, I'd be glad to add some fuel to those who deserve hell." ”

"Now the question arises, are we down or up, or . Apart? ”

Instead of speaking, Green looked at Kraft, hoping that he would continue to provide clues to guide the search.

The latter only shook his head helplessly. It was not easy to get to this point according to the instructions left by Kalman, and no matter how capable the professor was, it was impossible for him to provide full navigation in the sewers.

"The decision is yours, Father, I don't know anything about this underground avenue called sewers."

After much consideration, Green decided to send the two back to the ground to report the news, while the rest searched down.

"Is there any reason? I didn't see a coin toss. ”

"I don't think we're going very deep." He glanced back, and the water flowed from the endless tunnel behind him into the depths below, which was also endless, "probably less than four stories above the ground." ”

"In the past, there were not a few people who were interested in these passages, and there were a few in the church, and there were bishops who thought about cleaning them thoroughly, and in the end, the relevant records were piled up on the bookshelves that no one cared about."

"It's not like they've never walked to this depth, and some of them have seen cisterns, loops, and things like that, but they've never written about seeing them. So I thought. It shouldn't be deep enough, unless the symbol is unique to it, or it can only be seen at a deeper level. ”

It sounds reasonable, in order to hunt down the heretics who escaped in the sewers, Green did work hard, and he should listen to the advice of professionals at this time.

Kraft follows the flow of goodness and follows downward. Several Inquisition monks lit torches to brighten the space, making it easier to see the surface of the stone bricks and look for possible signs of carving on the way down.

However, the entire tunnel seems to have been built for full functionality, without any inscriptions.

The water layer swirls downward from the sediment mound, giving off a rancid smell from the ground, but not heavy. Perhaps the water and groundwater of the Tem River also flowed in somewhere, diluting the composition.

Each time you land, there is a faint splashing sound, and the soles of your shoes sink into the soft dirt of the soil carried down by the current, which is very shallow and has a chance to survive when the current is not turbulent.

Even with the lingering foul smell, this part of the road is much easier to walk than in the tombs. To put it mildly, it's better than more than 90% of the road conditions on the ground, at least with hard pavement and natural water cleaning.

Some of the shadows of the holes in the side walls caught Kraft's attention, and at first he thought it would be a headache fork in the road, but when he got closer, he found that it was just a hollow niche with black humus-rich deposits at the corners.

"By the way, will there be animals here? Rats, bugs, and the like. ”

"What do they eat?"

"Something washed down from above, I think it's a lot."

"That's too harsh." Even the larger mushrooms don't want to grow in this environment.

A slight tinnitus-like background sound became clear as it descended, intensifying into a rumbling murmur coming from the front, drowning out the footsteps of the group.

When the constant sound of water increased to the point where they needed to adjust the volume of the conversation, they finally realized what it was—it was water, the sound of falling from a great height and hitting the surface.

The incline is getting bigger, and the water is gradually rushing forward, as if being attracted, rushing forward, faintly pushing the footsteps down the slope.

The masonry tunnel terminates in front of it, and the turbulent flow rushes out of the opening, disintegrating into the suddenly expanding dark space, and the ground under his feet sinks like stone steps, falling in the direction from which the loud noise came.

The flat sides are lined with the same tunnel exits as the one they walked out, and the water flows into a cascade in a wide and sharp groove on the staircase, falling from an unilluminated cliff in the center of the site.

The team paused, breathing.

Kraft lights a torch and walks around the edge of the vast space. Koop hurried to follow, and found that the landing was exceptionally slippery, with moss growing in the dirt, propping open the cracks in the stones, and spreading and crawling in all directions.

The grooves that cut through the rock were irregularly distributed, and the cross-section was triangular wedge-shaped, not as if they had been intentionally cut and constructed, but the edges were too sharp and of different sizes, stretching freely through the field, like a giant axe splitting the ointment.

The width is no less than that of a canal, and it is often blocked on the way, so you need to be careful to cross it while guarding against slipping.

After walking dozens of steps and passing through a row of holes, the wall turned at an obtuse angle that seemed familiar, and continued into the darkness. This led him to a bad guess and speed up the detour.

The light of the torches shrank into a small cluster in view, and faded away, returning from the other side to the waiting line at the entrance of the cave.

Far from dispelling the breathless retreat from the unidentified space, the outlining of the edges makes the atmosphere colder and more silent with each step away from the light source that explores the edge.

Even when they saw the torches returning, they instinctively kept their eyes open to the face, as if they subconsciously thought that the vast darkness would swallow and transform the deeper into something else.

"Did you find anything?" Green stepped forward and broke the stiffness, feeling more and more that Kraft had expected it.

Kraft didn't explain, and threw the torch in his hand towards the center of the field, and the light of the fire illuminated the roaring, engulfing the endless flow of water in a moment of passage, revealing its full picture.

The hexagonal deep well is like a tower upside down, radiating countless ravines that tear through the stone steps.

(End of chapter)