Flying over the densely packed spaceships and gigantic monsters’ corpses, and moving along the pyramids made of countless crystal heads, a towering altar rising from the ground appeared in front of Chu Yunsheng. It was so tall that he had no choice but to order the green-shelled insect to ascend along the wall of the altar, heading toward the top.
Chu Yunsheng remembered that the last time he entered here, he was still in his insect’s body. And it was in the midst of his desperate escape that he entered this place by accident. However, because of panic and shock at that time, he didn’t examine this place in detail. Especially after hearing The Lament for The Falling Sky, all he thought was to leave this place as far as he could. So he didn’t notice that the towering altar was actually made of huge black bricks of unknown materials.
Each brick was almost of the same shape and size, and its perfect workmanship was revealed by how flawlessly they stacked on top of each other. The only difference between each brick was the meticulous faint golden pattern on the outward side of each brick. Those faint golden lines seemed to have been embedded in a natural way on those bricks, forming an abstruse structure that would make people feel dizzy at a glance. But when connecting all the bricks together, they seemed to form a grand and profound chart.
Chu Yunsheng could not understand the profound meaning of the huge pattern, but he saw the crystal human skeletons kneeling on the steps of the giant bricks. Amongst them, the one at the foremost position suddenly moved; as if resurrected from the dead, it shook off the dust and stood up slowly before the square cauldron at the top of the altar. Then it looked at him and said with a deep voice slowly,
“You came back again…”
Chu Yunshegn stopped the green-shelled insect above the altar. The word “again” made him frown, and a standard Chinese sentence made him ask in a stern voice: “Who are you?”
The crystal skeleton raised its head, there was dim crystal light flowing between its bones, and there seemed to be two balls of glowing flames in its hollow eye sockets. As if it was trying to think, it murmured slowly and confusedly: “Who am I?? I’m a human, but I am also not a human… So long that I have nearly forgotten the past…”
Chu Yunsheng couldn’t find a piece of organic flesh and blood in it, and when he heard its muttering, he thought of a possibility and guessed, “Are you a robot?”
The ancient crystal skeleton’s thought was interrupted. He took a look at Chu Yunsheng, and said, “Robot? If a person’s finger is cut off, he can continue to live and his life will not be affected; if he loses his legs, he can still continue to live… The heart can be replaced, the organ can be transplanted, and whatever goes wrong, it can be replaced with a new substitute. Toes, arms, bones, internal organs, eyes all the way to nerves, cells…
Our civilization had been developed in countless years under this concept. In the end, we could analyze and replace even the most sophisticated brain step by step, completely abandoning the natural body that was originally conceived from our mothers’ bodies and the natural reproduction rules. We were no longer bound by the natural rules and were able to change every part of our body gradually or even change from one body to another. We could steal life from the rules of nature so that we could remain forever young. So in this respect, we may indeed be robots in a sense.”
Its words reminded Chu Yunsheng that No.1 once told him that Pre-Cambrian beings had discovered the secret of immortality. He couldn’t help asking: “So, you can live forever and gain immortality?”
The ancient skeleton seemed to be still muttering to itself, “How can the laws of the universe be so simple? We thought we had reached the pinnacle of technology and mastered the law of life, but we didn’t know that our idea was flawed. We were not stealing life from heaven or nature. We were actually unwittingly exploiting the rule that law that we had never discovered, and stealing the lives of others.
Every finger, every hair, is alive when they grow on a living body. Life is always a whole and not parts, so when we remove the replacement organs from the slave host, we are merely extending our own lives with the lives of others. When we finally discovered this, great destruction of divine wrath also came. In the midst of danger, we hurriedly replaced our bodies with inanimate machines, trying to save as many people as we could during the destruction.”
Chu Yunsheng’s eyelids twitched. Holding back the shock in his heart, he asked, “So you wrote down The Lament for The Falling Sky, lamenting the great mistakes you made, and those heretics are the people whose lives had been stolen by you.. you are the people who mourn the falling sky!?”
The flames in the eye sockets of the ancient skeleton seemed to look at Chu Yunsheng in confusion. It shook its head and sighed, “When the great destruction came, and when our race was about to be exterminated, another god appeared and had a terrifying fight with the god who wanted to punish us. Then we made a covenant with that god. I don’t know exactly what is included in the covenant, it gave us new technology, let us know the existence of life force. But there is one thing that I know for sure. The first requirement of the covenant is that we must suppress all creatures that cultivate life force without permission within our sphere of influence forever, and eliminate them all if they resist.
We stumbled upon this graveyard by accident when we were suppressing those creatures. Their profound sadness for the falling sky after making huge mistakes resonated with us, so we took it as a warning. However, what they mourned was the falling sky, and we were not qualified to do it.”
A sharp light flashed in Chu Yunsheng’s eyes, “So you are a Tzolk’in being.”
He remembered that Huan and Huang Bei Ying had mentioned some kind of covenant that Tzolk’in beings made with some god. Plus many creatures that were imprisoned inside the crystal-dressed beings’ cubic ships, Chu Yunsheng immediately realized what this skeleton was.
The ancient skeleton nodded without concealment, the ghostly fire in its eyes began to brighten as time passed. As its jawbones moved up and down, it said: “I am a Tzolk’in being, but not the Tzolk’in beings you imagined. I don’t have much time. Earlier on, I was just trying to reverse my memory, so I can wake up my original consciousness and find out my purpose here. Come down, I have important things to tell you.”
Chu Yunsheng smiled coldly and said, “all Tzolk’in beings are lackeys of realm messengers. If I really came down, I would be falling into your trap.”
The ancient skeleton said bitterly, “You have been here countless times, I have a record of that, but I have never spoken to you once. I was the only Tzolk’in being who managed to keep the original consciousness alive in the inanimate machine in that urgent doomsday experiment. But the magical energy that has enabled me to succeed is now left with only a tiny fraction of it. It was only enough to wake me up once, and then I will die forever, so you and I should cherish this opportunity.”
Chu Yunsheng frowned and said, “I want to know the truth of this world. If you can’t tell me, then I will continue to look for it myself until I find evidence.”
The ancient skeleton said in a deep voice, “What you have encountered is nothing but the thirteenth Baktun. She doesn’t represent all the Tzolk’in beings. We’re not what you think we are. I know that you want to find the truth. Otherwise, you won’t come here, but if you don’t come down, you will never see the truth. Even if I tell you, you won’t believe it.”
Chu Yunsheng shook his head and said, “But I still can’t believe you. There are too many liars in this world, and I need to protect myself.”
The ancient skeleton looked at him, the dim flame flickered in its eyes, and it said helplessly: “Since you refuse to come down, then I will go up.”
After speaking, and before Chu Yunsheng had any time to react, he saw the altar suddenly rise higher and higher, and in the blink of an eye, it reached Chu Yunsheng’s feet. The force that once isolated him outside the graveyard suddenly disappeared without a trace.
In shock, Chu Yunsheng immediately took out one level-four offensive talisman and lifted the sword.
“Don’t be nervous.” The ancient skeleton pointed to the altar below and said, “This is not my power, this is its power.”
Chu Yunsheng said in a deep voice, “What is this place?”
The ancient skeleton still pointed to the altar below and said, “Focus, then you will hear it.”
Chu Yunsheng frowned and was about to ask what kind of nonsense it was talking about, but suddenly a strange wave came from below. It instantly went into his mind and then the scene before his eyes began to change. It was a magnificent universe with countless galaxies changing their forms rapidly, and numberless stars flickering at an accelerated pace; they moved and evolved rapidly as new stars being born, old stars dying, many stars colliding into each other, destructions, explosions… But all of them had one thing in common. They expanded in all directions at a great speed.
Then even more ancient voice sounded from that universe,
“We want to know what happened at the beginning of the universe, and we want to know what will happen at the end of the universe, so we built it.”
This was the first voice, it then followed by continuous silence. Only those stars and galaxies were constantly evolving, and there might be some noises, but those noises didn’t have any meanings. Just when Chu Yunsheng thought it was about to end, another voice suddenly sounded. Compared with the first voice, the tone of the second voice was extremely urgent. It even shouted wildly with a trace of extreme panic,
“Faster! Shut down the node, they are here! They appeared! Quick! …”
Then, there was a long period of white noise. This time Chu Yunsheng could tell what it was. Someone seemed to have forcibly removed the audio in the background.
After the two voices, the wave from the altar receded like a tide, and then everything around was restored to its original state.
“What was that?” Chu Yunsheng was confused and asked the skeleton, “Who are ‘we’? And who are ‘they’? ”
“I don’t know.” The ancient skeleton said, “I heard exactly the same words as you did, but I have been instructed to stay here by the fourth Baktun for many years. So I can tell you my thoughts. The following words are very important. It is related to your life, so you must listen carefully.”
