With Ye Li leading them as though he had cheats enabled, the expedition reached the deepest part of the Seafoam Islands' caverns without any real danger.
It was an enormous ice cavern, shaped like the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral.
Countless enormous icicles hung from the ceiling, refracting dreamlike colors in the dim light.
At the very center of the cavern stood an ancient altar carved from a single massive block of ice.
The altar's surface was covered in ancient writing of the same origin as that on the mysterious stone tablet.
At the center of the altar, a stone tablet half a meter square lay quietly, giving off a faint, icy-blue glow.
They had found it.
The altar of the Ancient Ruins, and the other half of the stone tablet that recorded how to control Articuno.
"Quick! Bring that tablet back!"
Barely able to contain the excitement on his face, Apollo immediately moved to send someone forward.
"Wait!"
But Ye Li suddenly reached out and stopped him.
His heart was pounding wildly, and a sense of danger unlike anything he had ever felt enveloped him.
Don't touch it! We absolutely cannot touch that tablet now!
That's Articuno's core, the source of its power, and its forbidden sore spot!
Touching it now would be tantamount to declaring war on a god!
Yet his warning still came a moment too late.
An elite team member closest to the altar, overcome with excitement, had already reached out and touched the cold stone tablet.
The instant his fingertips made contact with the tablet-
A clear, piercing cry, filled with supreme majesty, rang throughout the cavern.
"Screee-!!!"
The sound seemed capable of freezing the soul.
The entire ice cavern trembled violently with that cry.
Overhead, cracks suddenly spread across the enormous waterfall that had