44 Silk Road 04
Dungeon
Tao Ran stood in front of the door of the Central Building. Yellow sand poured straight into his collar, forcing him to hide behind the remaining camels.
"Why did they leave first?" Tao Ran complained. He bent down to avoid the wind that was carrying yellow sand.
"This dungeon has a difficult threshold..." Xu Wenjun murmured softly, his hand unconsciously stroking the camel's hair.
Tao Ran was stunned.
"With our level of authority, it's still out of reach." Xu Wenjun was secretly surprised when he said this.
It was normal that she couldn't reach Helan Dao's authority, but what about Zhu Heng?
Tao Ran stretched out a hand and waved it in front of Xu Wenjun: "...Sister?"
Xu Wenjun came to her senses, shook her head, and put the question behind her.
What was she thinking? She laughed self-deprecatingly. Besides Helan Dao actively instructing the system to release it, what other reason could there be?
She put away her thoughts and was about to go back when suddenly a gust of wind blew by her side, blowing her short hair, making it flutter in the air like a piece of silver-red silk.
Through the gaps in her hair, she saw in her peripheral vision a light the size of an egg on Tao Ran's chest. The light pulled him onto one of the camels. Xu Wenjun subconsciously reached out to pull him, but her fingertips brushed past Tao Ran's wrist and she missed.
The light pulled Tao Ran onto the camel's back. Just as the camel was about to transform into a train, Xu Wenjun quickly shouted, "It's that bead!"
She remembered that the light spot on Tao Ran's chest was the thing that sent him onto their aircraft before the Hundred Schools of Thought copy began.
After being reminded by Xu Wenjun, Tao Ran finally reacted and grabbed the beads on his chest to throw them away, but he was still a step too late.
The train carried Tao Ran and Zhuzi away at a rapid speed.
Tao Ran could hardly see the scenery outside the window. The train was like a flash of lightning, and with a whoosh, it carried him to his final destination - a cave carved into the cliff.
The moment he got off the train, the doors behind him closed and started moving, whizzing away. Before Tao Ran could even stand, the wind from the train blew him down. He frantically grabbed hold of the door and cried out in the direction of the departing train, "Don't go! How can I get off alone?"
What answered him was a mouthful of choking yellow sand.
Tao Ran coughed twice and was not sure what to do when the bead on his chest suddenly began to heat up, so hot that he hurriedly took it out.
"You are the culprit! You brought me to this godforsaken place." Tao Ran cursed and raised his hand as if to throw someone out.
Tao Ran stopped halfway through raising his hand. He turned around, took two steps back, and moved closer to the cave.
The closer I got to the cave, the temperature of the beads in my hand dropped, and they became less hot.
"Strange, do you want me to go in?" Tao Ran muttered as he stepped into the cave. The moment he entered, the temperature of the bead dropped completely. He looked up and froze in place.
Sunlight shines into the cave, dust swirls in the air, and this small piece of heaven and earth is engraved with gods and Buddhas.
Tao Ran was almost speechless. He fixed his gaze on the west wall closest to him, where there was a painting of a man. He felt vaguely familiar with him and involuntarily moved closer.
When Tao Ran saw the person in the painting clearly, his head buzzed.
Isn’t this his brother Zhu?
In the painting, Zhu Heng's expression was neither sad nor happy, and his pair of dark eyes were looking at an unknown place, with a depth that was unfathomable.
Tao Ran looked at the painting of Zhu Heng and shuddered inexplicably. It looked as if his brother Zhu was about to come back to life from the cave mural in the next second.
He couldn't help but reach out and touch the lifelike mural. After confirming that it was not a real person, he breathed a sigh of relief and looked inside along the cave wall.
The moment he turned his head, "Zhu Heng" on the mural suddenly blinked.
-
Zhu Heng and Helan Dao ran out of the station one after the other and headed towards the densely packed residential buildings around them.
Zhu Heng paused for no reason, slowed down, and fell half a step behind Helan Dao.
In an instant, a strange feeling arose in his heart and he looked back.
The two men in long robes were still chasing after him, their crimson robes fluttering in the air.
Zhu Heng looked at them, frowned, and was lost in thought when his elbow was suddenly tugged by someone. The light above his head dimmed, and the whistling sound of the wind and the occasional clear bird calls disappeared from his ears. Only the low breathing of a man remained.
Zhu Heng raised his hand to hide.
"It's me." Helan Dao grabbed Zhu Heng with his backhand and pulled him to the gap between two residential buildings.
Zhu Heng tilted his head to the side. Countless clothes and sheets hung out to dry between the residential buildings were hanging down, gently drifting in the wind.
Outside the wall, the sound of two men in long robes chasing each other came closer and closer, and then gradually ran away.
Zhu Heng stared at Helan Dao, who was leaning shoulder to shoulder with him, and was distracted for a moment.
"Have you..." he began slowly, "noticed anything is wrong?"
Helan Dao smiled and let go of his hand, then spread his hands towards Zhu Heng with an innocent look on his face.
Zhu Heng looked at the palm of his hand in front of him, resisted the urge to roll his eyes, and pointed to the clothes hanging above his head to Helan Dao.
"Except for the two people in robes just now, I haven't seen any residents living here. Yet, these residential buildings are hanging clothes out to dry as usual. Who are they hanging clothes for in this deserted place?"
He Landao nodded as he instructed: "They were thoughtful. They knew we were going to escape and even prepared some replacement clothes."
Zhu Heng: “…”
He stood up by supporting himself against the wall, intending to move away from Helan Dao. However, just as he took half a step back, the sound of footsteps that had already gone far away came back into Zhu Heng's mind.
Helan Dao looked at Zhu Heng who turned back and said, "Why don't you leave..."
Zhu Heng immediately covered his mouth to prevent him from making any sound: "They are back." He reminded him in a low voice.
Two footsteps hit the ground, getting closer and closer to them.
Zhu Heng turned his face to the side and leaned towards Helan Dao, not realizing that his ear was gently brushing against Helan Dao's cheek.
Helan Dao lowered his eyes and looked at the face so close to him, his Adam's apple moving up and down.
Zhu Heng seemed to realize something as well. He turned his head and happened to meet He Landao, who had turned his head away, their noses almost bumping. He quickly lowered his head to avoid him, and for the first time, a hint of panic appeared in his eyes.
They passed each other too quickly and therefore didn't notice that Helan Dao gave him a serious look.
A gust of wind blew by, blowing a piece of blue silk hanging outside the window of a residential building to Helan Dao.
The silk wrapped around his fingertips. Helan Dao listened to the mixed sounds of wind and footsteps outside, and withdrew his gaze from Zhu Heng.
The footsteps outside stopped at this moment.
Helan Dao held Zhu Heng in his arms and tore off the blue silk with his hands. His original intention was to use the silk cloth to shield both him and Zhu Heng. However, at the moment he pulled down the silk, the sand under his feet suddenly sank. The two men were caught off guard and fell straight down along the quicksand.
With two "bangs", they fell heavily on the hard ground.
Zhu Heng was choked by the dust that was blown up, and then he heard a noisy voice of people, shouting, hawking, laughing and cursing, and so on.
There are not only human voices, but also stringed instruments, orchestral music, and camel bells, each of which strikes the heartstrings and plays a tune full of oriental style.
Zhu Heng looked up, and a gorgeous and grand underground city scene came into view.
In the darkness, flashing neon lights illuminate the entire "sky". Oriental wooden buildings rise from the ground, occasionally dotted with statues of Buddha, Bodhisattva, heavenly kings and flying figures, interspersed and juxtaposed with those ancient buildings.
The streets were filled with red lanterns, and the lights were filled with shops and stalls. The pedestrians on the roadside were just like what Zhu Heng had seen in the civilized market in the audience rest area. They were all people wearing different costumes and from different dynasties, but there were more merchants and monks. The most common means of transportation on the road was undoubtedly the camel.
Various display screens were suspended in the air like building signs, with news-style report fonts scrolling on the screens, with content such as "Zero casualties today" and "972423rd day of escaping from the ground".
A bearded man who looked like a businessman passed by them. A wandering monk came towards them. The bearded man led his camel and approached him. He patted the monk's shoulder with a cheerful look on his face and said, "Congratulations on another safe day."
The monk whispered "Amitabha" and then continued chanting as he walked forward.
Zhu Heng turned his head and exchanged a knowing glance with Helan Dao. Without saying a word, the two of them followed the bearded man in tacit understanding.
When passing by an empty corner, with just a glance, the two men attacked together, one strangled the man's neck and covered his mouth, the other grabbed his feet, and together they subdued the bearded man and carried him into a building behind them that looked to have been abandoned for a long time.
The bearded man whimpered and struggled. Zhu Heng made a shushing gesture at him, lowered his head and approached him, saying, "Don't worry. We'll ask a few questions and let you go soon."
Zhu Heng looked away, monitoring the movements outside the door, and asked the bearded man, "First question, where is this place?"
The bearded man looked at the yellow sand remaining on Zhu Heng's body, his eyes suddenly widened, and he slowly stopped struggling.
Helan Dao let go of him, freeing both his hands, and concentrated on carefully wrapping the blue silk he had brought down from the ground around his right arm.
The bearded man took a breath and looked at Zhu Heng in front of him with a look of surprise: "This is the 'Silk Road' underground shelter. Did you... come down from above?"
He said, pointing his finger above his head.
refuge?
Zhu Heng frowned: "What disaster are you avoiding?"
"You really did come down from up there!" the bearded man said confidently, "Only outsiders have never heard of the danger we're avoiding. Don't you know yet? There are people on Earth who are hunting us down!"
Zhu Heng raised his eyes to look at Helan Dao. Helan Dao paused for a moment and also looked up at him.
The two of them simultaneously thought of the two robes they had just seen.
"Why are we chasing you?" Zhu Heng asked.
The bearded man snorted and said, "They say we've tampered with their history. They forbid us from continuing to trade westward and opening up the Silk Road. Anyone who tries to resist will be killed. We have no choice but to hide here, beneath the yellow sand."
"Who are they?" Zhu Heng asked again.
"Who knows!" The bearded man changed into a more comfortable posture and answered Zhu Heng's question lazily.
He Landao looked up upon hearing this and glanced at Zhu Heng very quickly.
Somehow, Zhu Heng saw the hint in Helan Dao's eyes at a glance.
Not surprisingly, the "they" mentioned here refer to the humans or life forms in another parallel sub-universe derived from the node of tampered history.
According to the information revealed by the bearded man, it should be that the human beings from a sub-universe where the history of the "Silk Road" did not exist came to the normally developing mother universe and killed all the humans who originally lived on the ground, forcing them to build this shelter underground.
At this point, the bearded man suddenly sighed: "But we have been secluded from the world for 972,423 days. No one died because no one ran to the ground, but our business was gone..." Yan Shanting
The bearded man was still muttering, but Zhu Heng's expression began to become serious.
How come people from the sub-universe are interfering in the history of the mother universe?
Helandao finally finished tying a flashy blue bow on the back of his hand. He bit one end of the bow with his teeth and pulled it tight. Then he leaned back and sat on the platform half a person's height, crossing his fingers and making a folded gesture.
Zhu Heng saw all his actions.
So, this is what Helando said, the sub-universe that leads to another historical ending. Unfortunately, these two universes that were originally supposed to be parallel intersected.
"What should we do to get back to the ground?" Zhu Heng turned and asked the bearded man.
"Go back? You're dreaming." The bearded man sneered, "From the very beginning, the underground shelter was designed to be accessible only. It's easy to get in, but forget about getting out."
Having said this, the bearded man paused, his expression becoming hesitant again: "Unless..."
Zhu Heng: "Unless what?"
"Unless the Silk Road is opened," the bearded man replied. "But to reopen the Silk Road, we must return to the surface; to return to the surface, we must open the Silk Road. Therefore, this is a paradox that is doomed to be impossible. The Silk Road will never be opened."
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