Inside were traces of habitation.
A sleeping platform had been ground out of stone. Its peculiar shape was not suited to a human sleeper: it was longer and wider, with a depression in the middle resembling the outline of some large, four-legged creature lying down.
Broken utensils lay in a corner. There was an enormous stone bowl, more than half a meter across.
Several bones lay scattered beside it. They were not prey bones, but tools, sharpened into something like crude carving knives.
"It lived here for a long time," Chen Siyao said.
Yang Wanqing crouched beside the stone bowl and reached out to touch its rim.
The sides of the bowl were worn, marked by years upon years of use.
"How many years?" Yang Wanqing said, her voice much quieter than usual. "All alone, staying here for over ten thousand years."
She stood up and brushed the dust off her knees.
She said nothing more.
The two of them explored all the branching caves. Chen Siyao recorded the entire journey with the Recording Crystal, leaving no corner undocumented.
There were claw marks on the cave walls, not from fighting, but more like idle scratches made out of boredom. Beside some of them were words carved in Primordial Script, simple phrases.
On a wall in the deepest part of the cave, Chen Siyao found a line of writing.
She stopped.
She spent a moment deciphering it.
"'When can I return?'"
The three characters were carved very shallowly, low on the wall, perhaps only twenty centimeters above the ground.
It looked as though they had been scratched there casually while lying on the ground.
Chen Siyao stared at those three characters for a long time.
Yang Wanqing leaned over for a glance and said nothing. She turned and headed for the