Before the third stone door.
After reading the words on the stele once more, Bai Xiaowen said:
"I get it. Solving these riddles along the way has also been teaching us the Ancient Guardian Order's secret language. Each stele gives us part of the key. After three steles, I have a basic grasp of how the language works."
"So does that mean we're almost at the end?" Li Shuyi asked, quick to catch on.
Bai Xiaowen nodded. "Exactly. Each stele is a piece of the puzzle. By my reckoning, we only need one or two more to complete it. In other words, we have one or two more stone doors to get through..."
Bai Xiaowen solved the riddle and pressed the correct mechanism. The stone door opened again. As they entered the next corridor, the door behind them rumbled upward and closed.
Li Shuyi looked back and tried to push it open. Magic patterns flickered across its surface, but it did not budge.
"We can't open these doors again."
"Looks that way. We probably won't be able to open them from inside until we solve the temple's final riddle—the last inscription," Bai Xiaowen said.
"Then we can't go back and review the secret language on the earlier steles!" Li Shuyi's eyes widened. "We'll need it for the final inscription, won't we? What if we forget?"
Bai Xiaowen smiled. "Then we can't decipher the final inscription, and we fail the mission."
"Right. Not very friendly to bad students," Li Shuyi muttered. "Only someone with a brain like yours could remember every stele we passed without missing a thing."
Bai Xiaowen shook his head. "No. Other Awakeners who noticed the secret language and realized its importance could write down the inscriptions. It would just take a little more effort. What this design