Petru rushed into the altar and saw Mrs. Larry lying on the ground, looking at something.
He carefully avoided the floating rocks, ran to Mrs. Larry's side, tore his coat from his waist, wrapped it around her, and shouted, "Madam, we can go now!"
Mrs. Larry remained unmoved, seemingly forgetting her own predicament, and said without turning her head:
" Petru, I think I've discovered some secrets about this place. This altar isn't as simple as we thought; it might be the product of a civilization we've never known before. I need some time to decipher the writing and patterns here. Can you help me?"
Petru cried out urgently, "Madam, we're about to crash into the moon! A great flood is coming! You must come with me!"
"If that's the case, where can we go?" Mrs. Larry remained lying there, like a child engrossed in a game, completely oblivious to the adults' anxiety as they called her for dinner.
Petru was stunned. Yes, where could they go? If Qingmu and the others couldn't stop this disaster, where could they hide on this small island?
He looked up at the enormous moon and the floating rocks beneath it, thinking that if he were to die, this altar would be a decent burial place. He remembered when he first came down from the altar carrying Mrs. Larry, they had prepared for the worst—the possibility of dying here. He had spent most of his life on the run, battling death, except for the brief, beautiful time with Lawiye. If he could die alongside this respectable woman, such an ending wouldn't be too bad.
The rumbling sound from afar grew louder and louder, the earth began to tremble, and the huge rocks overhead shook violently, as if they might fall at any moment.
A surge of intense mental disturbance struck, making Petru feel as if he were plummeting from a great height. He shook his head, regained his senses, and roared:
"Madam, my companions are still up there. We must go and rendezvous with them. There must be a way! We can't just wait to die here!"
Mrs. Larry stood up, swaying slightly. Petru knew that the mental shock had also affected her, so he quickly helped her up.
Mrs. Larry rubbed her forehead and said, "Oh my God! What's wrong with me?"
"It's alright, madam, you'll be fine!" Petru said as he helped her get dressed.
After getting dressed, he used the same trick again, hoisting Mrs. Larry onto his shoulder and preparing to run towards the altar.
Caught off guard, Mrs. Larry was embraced by him, her waist draped over Petru's shoulder, her head drooping down, just in time to see the hourglass-shaped symbol on the ground. When she looked at it earlier, she was lying down, so the light above was blocked by her, shining on her back. Now that she moved aside, the light shone on the ground.
She patted Petru's back forcefully. " Petru! Put me down! Petru! I think I've found something!"
Sensing genuine anxiety in Mrs. Larry's voice, Petru stopped, set her down, and said, "Madam, we don't have much time left!"
Mrs. Larry jogged a few steps to the symbol and looked up. Moonlight streamed in through the pumice stones, casting sparse, symbolic patterns of light on the ground. A straight beam of light shone down from the center of the pumice stone array. She must have blocked the beam of light with her own body, which was why she hadn't seen the circular spot of light on the ground.
At the center of the circular spot of light was a dark shadow, and within that shadow was the hourglass symbol composed of two triangles.
Mrs. Larry would look down at the patches of light and shadows, then look up at the sky.
Petru was anxiously waiting for Wan and the Tushu to be separated. He didn't know what was happening outside, but he could feel the terrifying pressure that seemed capable of destroying the heavens and earth intensifying. He knew that Qingmu was currently helping that old man maintain the stability of this space, hoping for a miracle. Although he didn't understand why a real space would need to be maintained by Mental Power like a dream, and he didn't understand anything about Klein Bottle, Roche limits, or higher dimensions, he did understand one thing: if he didn't come up with a good solution, or if a miracle didn't happen, this place would be torn apart by the gravity of that strange thing in the sky.
Yes, he preferred to call that thing in the sky a strange object rather than the moon. He and Lawiye had once looked up at the moon on the Tiber River; how beautiful the moon was!
Who says something covered in craters is necessarily the moon? If they were perfectly fine on Earth and suddenly crashed into the moon, why wouldn't they crash into some other planet?
" Petru!" Mrs. Larry suddenly pointed to the sky and said, "Could you help me get rid of that thing?"
Petru was startled; he thought the lady wanted him to knock the "moon" away.
"Madam, I haven't been exposed to gamma rays, and my skin doesn't glow green," he said, looking at the moon. "Besides, even if Dr. Banner came, he might not be able to destroy this thing."
Mrs. Larry realized he had misunderstood and explained, "I don't want you to knock down the moon; I want you to knock down the rock that's blocking the moonlight."
Petru then noticed that Mrs. Larry was pointing to a stone in the center of the stone circle above. This stone was unusual; it should be called a pillar, long and thin, like a person standing in mid-air. Its position was exactly in the beam of light shining down from the sky, forming a dark shadow in the center of the light spot on the ground.
"That's it!"
Petru raised his submachine gun and fired a few shots, but the bullets bounced off the rocks, not affecting the stone pillars but instead scattering wildly and nearly injuring themselves.
He somewhat regretted throwing away his sniper rifle for convenience; otherwise, he could have definitely broken the stone pillar in half.
He put down his gun, took out a grenade, gestured with it, pulled Mrs. Larry far away, then pulled the pin on the grenade, silently counted a few numbers, timed it perfectly, and threw it.
The grenade flew through the cracks in the rocks, struck a stone pillar, and exploded with a bang. Instead of shattering as expected, the pillar drifted to the side and crashed into other stones.
With the beam of light no longer obstructed, the dark shadows on the ground vanished.
Ignoring the debris still falling from the grenade, Mrs. Larry rushed over. She saw that the symbol was much clearer in the light than before, and it even seemed to reflect light.
She crouched down and gently touched the hard lines of the symbol. Suddenly, her vision blurred, and the two triangles of the symbol appeared upside down, in a different position. She wasn't sure if she was seeing things, because the symbol was symmetrical, and even upside down, it was still the same symbol.
"Madam! Watch out!" Petru suddenly shouted and rushed over, picking her up from the ground.
A huge rock fell from the sky and crashed with a thud onto the spot where the lady had just been squatting.
Whether it was a chain reaction caused by the stone pillars being pushed aside by the grenade explosion colliding with other stones, or something else, the stone formation in the air suddenly became chaotic, constantly colliding with each other. Then, one after another, they fell down.
Petru, carrying Mrs. Larry, was covered in sweat as he leaped among the fallen boulders.
Mrs. Larry's gaze remained fixed on the symbols on the ground. She seemed to see two triangles and the halo of light in the book flowing from one triangle to the other.
Then, a layer of white mist rose from the ground, like artificial fog on a stage, and quickly covered the totem patterns and symbols on the ground.
The stones overhead continued to fall, like a black meteor shower, crashing to the ground with a deafening roar. Petru felt as if he were on a battlefield amidst the chaos of battle, but his vision was obscured by the ever-rising fog.