Absurd as it was, Meng Chao truly believed that if the "Ancient Ruins" were regarded as a crystal giant that had slumbered underground for hundreds of millions of years, then this malformed, twisted, unfathomably bizarre appearance before him absolutely could not be its normal form.
Under normal circumstances, it should have been a gigantic version of the "ancients," magnified tens of millions of times—just as crystalline and translucent as they were, solemn and majestic.
It could be cold and merciless, destroying every existence that failed to meet its expectations, but it should not have been so utterly lawless, like an inscrutable chaos.
Its present appearance was the result of the crystal giant being infected and stricken with disease.
Or rather, it was the result of the ancient civilization and the Primordial Ferocious Beast that had once sprawled across the entire planet's surface becoming entangled, wrestling, and acting upon one another.
"If that's really the case, where exactly does the power summoning Teacher Lei from the depths underground come from?"
Meng Chao thought, "Does it come from the 'ancient civilization,' or from that Chaos Beast which literally 'blotted out the sky and covered the earth'—covering the entire planet's surface and even capable of building a 'Tower to the Heavens' from piled monster flesh and blood, advancing beyond the atmosphere?"
As he pondered, a rumbling roar suddenly rose from the darkness below.
Meng Chao looked down and saw the Black Mist beneath his feet surging and receding at an astonishing frequency, like a viscous black tide.
When the black tide rose, it came within inches of Meng Chao's toes, as though thousands of tentacles were about to stretch from it and coil around his flesh-and-blood body.
When the black tide receded, what lay below became a bottomless abyss that devoured all sound