Firelight flickered, casting wavering shadows.
A corridor carved with epic tales stretched endlessly ahead. The torches blurred all sense of distance, making it seem, in a daze, as though the path had no end.
The tiger carried Qi Si and Nian Fu down the long corridor at full speed, never slowing, its strides whipping up a biting wind.
The scene ahead gradually changed, and their view opened up. Greek-style marble buildings sprawled across the end of the corridor, the narrow passage unexpectedly leading the Players into a grand and magnificent underground complex.
The hollowed-out expanse formed a typical European courtyard, as large as the square before a cathedral. At its center stood a white stone statue holding a book, veiled in gray by the dim light.
Covered walkways supported by columns surrounded the courtyard. Behind the alternating light and shadow stood rows of houses with tightly shut doors and windows, cramped and oppressive like graves used to store coffins.
"I've been to a place like this. It's exactly the same..." Nian Fu looked around, her expression dazed.
The damp stench of mold lingered in the air. Dust swept up by the wind fell wetly to the ground after drifting only a few inches, as though restrained by some unseen force.
A hissing, rustling noise rose from underground in wave after wave, as if some aberrant creatures were about to break through the earth.
"The layout was modeled after the orphanage where you grew up?" Qi Si stared at the dark green moss stains on the marble walls and asked in an offhand, speculative tone.
"Yes." Nian Fu nodded and recalled, "The layout and scale are almost identical. For a moment just now, I really thought I had gone back to that orphanage.
"I still remember—the courtyard in the middle was