The altar.
Yun Wanlan ran toward the altar. She broke into a run without the slightest hesitation.
The Recording Crystal moved along with Chen Siyao's field of view.
Yun Wanlan took the Jade Talisman from inside her robes and pressed it directly against the side of the altar's stone table. A series of muffled mechanical sounds came from beneath it. Click... like gears turning.
A crack opened in the ground directly beneath the small platform. It widened, and a stone slab roughly a meter square slowly sank, revealing a narrow stone stairway.
A passage.
Yun Wanlan rushed down first.
The stairs were steep, and the walls on either side were set with the same ever-burning stone lamps they had seen in the Moon Tower.
After twenty-odd steps down, the passage suddenly opened up.
A vast underground chamber.
Then... sounds drifted up.
Crying. Very faint. A child crying, muffled, as though buried under a blanket. There were women's voices too, murmuring words of comfort.
Chen Siyao swept her gaze across the chamber. People.
So many people.
Women, children, elderly women. They sat packed into every corner of the underground chamber.
Grain resembling wheat was piled nearby. Some women held children, some leaned against the walls with their eyes closed, dozing, and some spoke in low voices.
Around a thousand people.
Almost all women and children.
When they saw people coming down the passage, the nearest women jerked their heads up, their bodies tensing before their eyes widened.
"Moon Princess!"
A voice rang out from the crowd.
The crowd stirred. A woman in her forties pushed out from the back, her steps hurried.
She wore dark, close-fitting clothes, her hair tied back with a cloth band. Her cheeks were thin, her cheekbones prominent. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying.
She