The Stone Door

Translator: Cinder Translations

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"Ah—!"

A sound mixed with the wind caught the attention of both of them.

Standing to the right side of the building's entrance was a person, jumping while waving at them.

It was the Fatty.

"It seems they've found something," the Young Master suddenly said.

On their way back, Jiang Cheng glanced at the forest that the others had mentioned earlier. The edge of the forest was about a hundred meters away from the building, and the outer trees were of normal size. But as they went deeper, the trees grew more bizarre.

One could even see the towering tree crowns in the distance.

They were probably dozens of meters high.

The entire forest was enveloped in a strange atmosphere, with very small gaps between the trees. From his position, it appeared that black mist swirled between the trees.

It resembled the mist from the building earlier—black, intangible, with a texture similar to fine sand. When touched lightly, it dispersed.

When the doctor and the Young Master reached him, the Fatty hurried forward a few steps and quickly said, "Come and see, they found something inside."

"What did they find?" Jiang Cheng asked.

The Fatty pursed his lips, glanced at the Young Master who was watching him, and then looked back at Jiang Cheng, speaking, "A secret door."

With the Fatty leading the way, the three of them finally met up with the main group at an inconspicuous corner.

The Biker Girl and the Rock Climber were whispering together, while the Loli stared discontentedly at the two of them. Behind her stood the two-meter-tall man.

Despite his tall stature, the man didn't give off a strong presence. Jiang Cheng had heard his voice before, which wasn't at all intimidating—it was actually somewhat effeminate.

When the man noticed Jiang Cheng looking at him, he froze for a moment and then turned his face away awkwardly.

The Loli seemed to sense the man's discomfort. She patted his hand, then stood on her tiptoes and whispered something into his ear.

The older woman sat silently about three or four meters away from the stone door, her expression unreadable in the dim light.

When the Fatty brought the other two over, the Biker Girl and the Rock Climber automatically stepped aside, revealing the door completely.

It was a stone door.

Located on the left side of the building, it was roughly within the search range of the Loli and the tall man, but from the looks of it, the Biker Girl and the Rock Climber had probably found it first.

Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal, as the mission was just beginning, and the likelihood of finding a crucial clue was minimal.

Furthermore, the stone door was still closed.

The stone door was made from rough stone blocks, with many visible marks left from the grinding process. The overall color was dark, with a faint reddish hue under the dim light.

It gave off the feeling that the door had once been submerged in blood, and even after being salvaged and cleaned, traces of the blood remained.

The Fatty was startled by the sudden thought that popped into his head.

Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward a few steps, trying to stay close to the doctor. Ever since entering the building, bizarre thoughts had been popping into his head uncontrollably.

He pinched his temple, trying to shake off the anxiety he had been feeling. The fear and tension from being here were making him overthink.

It was all the women's scary stories; they sounded like something from a horror novel.

The Young Master turned to look at the Biker Girl and the Rock Climber, asking, "Have you tried it?"

"We pushed together a few times," the Rock Climber answered first, "but the door didn't budge. It's probably not opened that way." The last sentence was her guess.

After all, this was a stone door that had been sealed for who knows how many years. Even if it could be opened, it would likely require a lot of force.

Jiang Cheng stepped forward and slowly touched the door, especially the edges of the doorframe. The Young Master stepped back, looking for any mechanisms near the broken stone pillar or scattered rocks.

Just as the Fatty was about to be distracted by the woman's stories again, Jiang Cheng suddenly made a sound.

"Hmm?"

The sudden noise immediately caught everyone's attention.

Jiang Cheng took a step to the left, then positioned himself close to the wall at a near-parallel angle to the door. After a few seconds, he seemed dissatisfied with his initial findings and changed angles several more times.

In the end, he still had a look of suspicion on his face.

"What did you find?" The Biker Girl swallowed nervously and asked.

She had studied the door before they arrived but hadn't noticed anything unusual. It seemed like just an ordinary stone door.

"There's something on the door," Jiang Cheng said, "It looks like a carved pattern or design, but it can only be felt with your hand, you can't see it."

Before he finished speaking, almost everyone rushed forward to touch the door. Each person's face lit up with a different expression.

Indeed, there were carvings, but they were very shallow—nothing that could be seen with the eyes, only felt by touch.

The Young Master thought for a moment, stepped back, picked up a handful of dirt from the ground, and scattered it over the door. In an instant, the carvings became visible.

It was an image of a creature with horns on its head, a muscular body resembling a fish, its body covered in dense scales. What was even more bizarre was that it had two pairs of bat-like wings on its back.

The top pair of wings was larger, and the bottom pair was smaller.

It had no limbs, only fins where the limbs would be, but they were much thicker than those of a typical fish. If Jiang Cheng had to describe it, he would say it seemed like an aquatic creature in the process of evolving into a land-dwelling creature.

There were no eyes, or if there were, they were erased or never drawn. Instead, near the face was a large mouth that seemed to open wide, almost splitting the body in half.

"What is this thing?" The Rock Climber asked in disbelief, her eyes wide. So far, she had gone on five missions and seen many strange things, but this was the strangest yet.

They had dealt with vengeful spirits before, and some were even perverse during their lives, becoming even more ruthless after death.

But this... she couldn't help but think of the recording the older woman had mentioned, where the person clearly seemed to have been attacked by something.

And the most important thing was, that thing had come from the sea.

(End of the Chapter)

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