"What is it?" Ke Xun asked.
"I can't say—" Wu You even squatted down, placing her hands on the blood-soaked altar floor, straining to look down, "It can only be seen where it's covered by ghostly script, so it's incomplete, only a part is visible... It's very chaotic, I, I really can't say what it is—"
Wu You was so anxious that tears streamed down her face, but Ke Xun remained calm and said in a deep voice, "Don't worry, tell me first, is it alive or not?"
Wu You shook her head: "I don't know... It keeps moving, I can't see its whole appearance, I don't know if it has a head or a tail, I really don't know if it's a living thing..."
"Then what color is it?" Ke Xun asked.
"It…it has no color, but I don't know why I can see it, yet I'm certain it has no color, or perhaps it is invisible or transparent—I don't know if I'm saying this correctly, but it was originally embedded in the rock, but when it moved, the rock where it was was as if it had been erased or hollowed out, and what you saw was the rock around the part of the rock that had disappeared—this is so strange, something as hard as rock, it hollowed it out—but when it was moved away, the part of the rock that had disappeared reappeared out of thin air in its original place…I don't know if I've explained it clearly…" Wu You hurriedly and somewhat incoherently described what he had seen.
"I think I understand," Ke Xun said. "Then can you tell what shape it is?"
Wu You stared intently at the ground for a while, then frowned and shook his head. "I can't tell. It's very irregular, ever-changing…"
Ke Xun didn't ask any more questions, but looked at the others. "Perhaps only after our blood has covered the entire altar can we see this thing completely. We can't be sure if this thing is a demon. Since we say that demons are ancient, high-level creatures, we can't rule out the possibility that such high-level creatures have the ability to become invisible or invisible to the naked eye. And these visible or vaguely visible monsters in the tornado column are either reflections of underground demons or different species of demons."
As Ke Xun spoke, everyone looked up at the sky and saw that the monsters in the wind had begun to attack the wind membrane again after this period of time had passed.
"Even if we stain the altar with our own blood, what's the use?" Shao Ling gritted his teeth. "By then, we'll all be dead. Who will be able to see what's beneath the altar? And even if they did, what good would it do?"
Ke Xun didn't answer. He bent down and reached out his hand. Before touching the blood of his companions on the ground, he hesitated for a moment, then finally pressed his hand down. With his hands covered in blood, he turned and walked to a blank spot that hadn't yet been stained with blood, pressing his palm onto it.
He removed his hand, leaving a bloody handprint in place, but it was quickly submerged by the overflowing blood and, like the other blood-soaked areas, quickly became part of the ghostly script. The gaps between the strokes of the ghostly script became blank again.
Ke Xun pressed his blood-stained palm onto the ghostly script again. After removing it, it didn't smudge the script in the slightest. He tried to forcefully draw his fingers across the script, but the blood-red ghostly script was like the original color of rock, completely unblemished.
Wu You, who had been watching his movements, suddenly exclaimed, "Strange—that invisible thing inside the altar—it seems to be following Ke'er!"
Everyone was both surprised and suspicious, and they all looked at Ke Xun. Ke Xun, however, showed no emotion, only turning her head to look at her: "Are you sure?"
"Stand up and walk a few steps," Wu You pointed to a spot not far away, "Go over there, but don't go to the areas not covered by the ghost script."
Ke Xun stood up, did as she was told, and walked away, then circled back to her original spot, looking at the shocked Wu You. The answer was written in her red and swollen eyes: "It's really following me?"
"Yes, but, but not that closely," Wu You gripped her hair tightly with both hands, forcing herself to organize her thoughts calmly and clearly, "It just seems to be moving randomly, but it tends to move in the direction you walk. I'm not sure if it's just a coincidence or something—maybe—maybe it can sense you?"
"Don't move," Ke Xun said. "Haowen, Shao Zong, Qingqing, the four of us will walk in different directions now. Wu You, you keep an eye on things."
The four of them walked in four different directions, circling around in several complicated ways, before returning to their starting point.
This time, Wu You answered with more certainty: "It's following Ke'er! Although it still seems to be following but not quite, it clearly doesn't seem to notice the other three of you. It's leaning towards the direction Ke'er is going!"
"Why is that?" Zhu Haowen stared at Ke Xun. "Do you have something on you that we don't have?"
Ke Xun threw his backpack on the ground and walked around again.
"It's not following!" Wu You exclaimed. "—It's Ke'er's backpack?!"
Ke Xun strode back, unpacked his backpack, and took things out.
Rope, flashlight, multi-tool, magazine, lighter, photo album, chocolate box…
Ke Xun distributed these items to everyone, each taking a few, and then put his backpack back on: "Spread out and walk around again. Wu You, keep an eye on things."
This time, Wu You still pointed at him: "Ke'er, it's you again!"
"What's left in your backpack?" Shao Ling asked urgently.
Ke Xun opened his backpack, showing it to everyone: "Phone."
The backpack was almost entirely filled with phones.
Packing multiple phones into the paintings had long been a habit of Ke Xun's, even after arriving in the real world of Kunlun Shu and climbing this altar.
"Why phones?" Everyone looked hesitant.
"When we were in the painting, they couldn't recognize phones; at most, they could only disable a few functions based on the painting's content," Zhu Haowen pondered, frowning. "But we're not in the painting now, and even if we were, phones wouldn't be recognized, making them almost irrelevant. Why would the things inside the altar focus so intently on phones?"
Ke Xun, however, was thinking about another question.
An unidentified object inside a sealed, solid rock.
It moved, had no color, no shape, and was invisible.
But it definitely had volume, because wherever it went, the rock was hollowed out, and that hollowed-out space was where its form resided.
It hollows out solid rock, and that part of the rock reappears after it leaves, indicating that the rock wasn't actually swallowed or moved; it was always there, only appearing to have vanished because it was obscured.
Something unseen… can appear inside solid rock… vanish into thin air… and reappear…
Ke Xun suddenly looked up.
"Director Hua… is gone." Qin Ci's voice suddenly came in a low tone.
Everyone awoke with a start and looked in the direction of the voice, only to see Hua Jiqiu already in Qin Ci's arms, quietly closing his eyes.
Blood gushing from his abdominal wound was spreading towards the empty space of the altar, and in the wind-borne structure above their heads, ugly and disgusting monsters emitted venomous and shrill howls, being forcibly pressed back by an invisible force.
While everyone was eagerly and single-mindedly trying to find out the true form of the unidentified object inside the altar, the demon in the wind once again launched an attack to break through to the human world. Hua Jiqiu, like the previous companions who sacrificed themselves, quietly and silently gave up his life at this moment, buying a brief buffer for his companions who were still trying to find the answer.
Sadly, he couldn't leave a single word for the remaining people. Everyone's constitution was different. In his final moments, like Li Xiaochun, he looked towards Mu Yiran.
Mu Yiran was everyone's last hope. Perhaps even if he couldn't save his companions, he might, perhaps at least, find a way to end this completely. Even if he couldn't help now, he could help in the future.
Mu Yiran lowered his eyes, his gaze fixed on the blood-red ghostly runes on the altar floor, motionless. He was still desperately trying to mobilize all his logical thinking and knowledge reserves, struggling to find a needle-like glimmer of inspiration in his vast and turbulent sea of consciousness.
Just then, Ke Xun's voice suddenly rang out like a deep-sea whale's cry, high and far, clear and long: "I think I know what that thing Wu You saw in the altar was."
Formless and colorless, it could appear in inconceivable places, such as inside solid rock, it could make matter disappear and reappear out of thin air, it had volume, and it possessed a power strong enough to absorb any matter.
What was it?
"It's 'spacetime'," Ke Xun said.
"That invisible thing is spacetime, or rather, a spacetime tunnel, a spacetime rift. But the only thing I don't understand is why it follows the phone like it has a life of its own." Ke Xun's gaze shifted from everyone's shocked faces to Mu Yiran, who had suddenly looked up at him.
"Why is it…spacetime?" Wu You asked, bewildered and anxious.
"After Yiran and I first climbed the altar, we disappeared for a whole night and then reappeared, which is very similar to the disappearance and reappearance of the rocks inside the altar that you saw," Ke Xun said. "And didn't we say before that the spacetime here is very chaotic?"
"But the rocks disappeared and then reappeared very quickly…" Wu You said.
"Are you sure that the rocks you saw that appeared are the rocks of the present moment?" Ke Xun asked calmly. "Perhaps the rocks that appeared are rocks from a certain point in the past, or rocks from a certain point in the future, while the rocks of this moment may be in another spacetime."
Wu You's red and swollen eyes widened in realization.
"Ke Xun is right—" Zhu Haowen still couldn't hide the astonishment on his face. "It is indeed very likely a time-space tunnel. Time-space tunnels are invisible but objectively exist, but their opening time and location are uncertain, just like the chaotic time-space flashbacks in the valley that Yi Ran mentioned before we climbed the altar. But this time-space tunnel inside the rock platform is relatively stable, even though, as Wu You said, it keeps moving around randomly—I think there must be a reason for this!"
"Time and space are chaotic in Death Valley, but the time-space tunnel inside this altar is more distinct and stable. Could this be because it has greater energy?" Shao Ling tried to compose himself and said as calmly as possible, "Because both Yin and Yang ghost scripts are at work here, and the altar is surrounded by tornado pillars, perhaps this is also the place with the strongest underground magnetic field. Several material fields are concentrated at one point—this is the altar, thus creating a time-space tunnel with great energy?"
"I think this time tunnel can exist not only inside the altar." The speaker, Mu Yiran, walked towards them with unprecedented certainty. The remaining figures in the painting immediately looked at him, filled with boundless trust and expectation.
"It will peek out from inside the altar at some point. This moment might be disordered, random, or even if it has a pattern, we currently have no way of knowing. The last time it peeked out, Ke Xun and I happened to be there, and it instantly went from night to dawn," Mu Yiran said.
"So?" Zhu Haowen looked at him, seeing the glimmer in his eyes.
"So, as you previously hypothesized—we need to find a way to capture or induce it to peek out again," Mu Yiran said, each word crystal clear, "and then, we go back to the past."
Everyone was stunned.
"Let's not even talk about how to capture or provoke it to poke its head out," Zhu Haowen looked at him incredulously, "Even if we could enter the time tunnel and go back to the past, what effect would that have on sealing off the demons? Our goal isn't to save our own lives, but to seal off the demons, and if possible, to completely end this whole thing. If we go back to the past, are Wei Dong and the others going to die here for nothing? And don't forget the time paradox; going back to the past doesn't change the present outcome."
"Before answering that question, I need Lao Qin to confirm something," Mu Yiran looked at Qin Ci, "to see how much blood Wei Dong and the others have lost."
Qin Ci didn't question or say anything more. From the moment Wei Dong died, he had been silent, quietly watching them go, or constantly pulling his companions back from the brink of death, and then watching them leave.
He went to examine the bodies of his fallen comrades, then reported to Mu Yiran, "30% to 50%."
Before Mu Yiran could speak, Ke Xun raised an eyebrow: "But the blood of these five men has now covered almost half the surface of the altar."
Ke Xun's words made the others suddenly realize—they had been so focused on finding a solution and grieving for their comrades' deaths that they hadn't noticed the abnormality of the blood.
How could the blood loss of five men, each losing about 30% to 50% of their blood, possibly cover half of such a large area of the altar?!
"To be precise, the blood loss of four men covers nearly half the area," Mu Yiran pointed to Li Xiaochun, "Xiaochun's blood is all concentrated at the edge of the altar. See? His blood is in a rope-like pattern, adhering to this edge of the altar."
Everyone suddenly realized, staring at the bloody edge of the altar, then turning back to look at Mu Yiran, waiting for his answer.