“What’s this?” Suuankou was suffocated by the brutal scene before him.
What appeared in front of them was a bizarre and dire strait reminiscent of frozen storage or a snow park.
Nine humanoid ice sculptures gathered at the round table in an airtight basement completely covered in ice.
Some stood up angrily, some calmly stretched their bodies and spread their hands, some whispered with the people around them, some leaned back and seemed to want to stay away from others.
Their frozen state was like a piece of art. The ice sculptures included nine elves, four male and five female. The nine elves with different movements and expressions were so real as if they were alive.
They were significantly different from ordinary sculptures.
The sculptures had exaggerated movement, seemingly to give off an artistic air. If these living statues were put alone, they would be mistaken as those street performers enacting a statute. However, having them gathered added a significant incongruity that could not be found in real people.
In the eyes of photography, it was the difference between a snapshot [1] and a photoshoot [2].
What appeared in front of Suuankou and the group was a spontaneous “snapshot”.
He could vividly see a sculpture with his eye squinted, looking like a fool. Also, this particular sculpture had a twisted expression out of anger.
It was as if time suddenly stood still.
“What’s happening here?” He murmured.
“They’re all Frostwhisper.” Citalopram, as the only translator — or rather psychic, translated Miss Boffis’ words to the rest of the players, “Stay calm. They maintain such actions not because they triggered any trap. On the contrary, they had all come to the underground secret room and sacrificed their life voluntarily.
“To be more precise, they originally planned to hide in a public nightmare. They were making the last use of their bodies before they escaped.”
“So, is this a ritual?” Suuankou responded quickly.
Citalopram responded immediately, “Yup, you’re right.”
The team was at the lowest available location in the “sewers”.
They followed the sewer into the city. After many twists and turns spanned more than 20 minutes, they found a building that looked like an enormous well.
The wellhead extended three meters above the ground, but it wasn’t difficult to climb on top of it. There was a stair leading up to the well, and each step was spacious. The team didn’t need to tread sideways to climb the stairs.
This showed that the designer had considered the possibility of someone coming to this place via the sewers from the very beginning.
After the team climbed to the wellhead, they noticed U-shaped steel pipes like staples being punched on the interior wall. These pipes were arranged on opposite sides of the interior wall, forming a ladder-like structure from the wellhead.
Soon, the team started climbing down the ladder. After five minutes, they came to this freezing place. The further down they climbed down, the colder it got. Halfway through their journey, they saw the steel pipes were frozen with a layer of ice on top of them. After progressing down the ladder for three-quarters, their surroundings turned into a world of ice and snow.
Indeed, there were no windows and doors in this place.
After going down the ladders facing each other, the team saw the wood table at the center of the well.
They stepped on the table and then jumped off it.
The ground and the walls were all covered with solid and thick ice. Even after hundreds of thousands of years, the ice here had not melted.
The frigid cold air was filled with tiny pieces of ice visible to the naked air flying in the air. Dove had shrunk into a ball and stayed in Chocolate’s clothes. Suuankou couldn’t help but shiver and march on the ground to keep warm. He could barely keep his voice from shaking.
Citalopram could feel the chill clearly, but her body showed no sign of trembling.
“They donated their bodies before they died to hold a ritual. The name of the ritual was [Nine Faces of the Unburned]. Nine Transcended with the same profession had ingested the poison wrapped in honey pills, performed a mystical drama called [Nine Sacrifice], and died during the play to interrupt the ritual.
“It’s not that they need to rely on this ritual to achieve any purpose. It’s to acquire the by-product of this ritual. In the self-sacrificing type of ritual, the dead Transcendeds’ corpses will not turn into nightmares. Instead, the corpses will become ‘incomplete cursed material’. All curses remain sealed in the soul.
“After the ritual absorbs their souls, all that’s left is the body overflowing with curses. Since this ritual comprises nine Frostwhispers, the overflowed and accumulated curses around them will be converted into pure frigid air.”
Citalopram translated everything thoroughly.
Hearing this, Suuankou was a little confused, “They’ve spent a lot of effort on this. What’s their goal? Just to make a refrigerator?”
“Seems like it.” Citalopram paused and replied in a low volume.
These two sentences were not translations, but her views, “The technology of the elves seems to be concentrated on the curse energy, at least the elves of the Third Age are like this.
“They wanted to eliminate their curse by consuming this energy in making a refrigerator. In fact, we all know the refrigerator runs on something, and we can’t keep the cooling process running without any energy consumption.”
“Kelvin closed the coffin board with relief and lay back in there.” Dove complained in the forum, “The world is always unexpectedly scientific in such a strange place.”
“Let’s collect the material first.” Citalopram instructed, “The light blue liquid under the ice layer is ‘Frostwhisper’s Eternal Frozen Blood’. I don’t know how much Annan wants them. Let’s get half a catty first of them first.”
“That is too much!” Suuankou complained.
“What can I do?” Citalopram said helplessly, “We didn’t bring a container. Who knew that the ‘Eternal Frozen Blood’ was actually still in the liquid state.
“It’s better to cut off an arm and take it away after sealing the opening with ice. I saw that Annan had already arrived. We should quickly go out and hand it over to him. Then, we don’t have to worry about sending it back.”
“If we’re going to contain it with ice, we might as well cut the head off. At least the opening will be smaller.” Dove complained in the forum.
“It’s still not right?” Suuankou suddenly realized something, “If the elves are trying to create an eternal refrigerated area, what are they trying to preserve?
“When we first came down, nothing was on this table.”
“Boffis had mentioned it.” Citalopram shook her head and explained, “It wasn’t that there was nothing there, but it was taken.
“It’s indeed a well in a sense. It’s spacious enough to allow something to be craned out of it, even when there’s a ladder on both sides of the inner wall. Boffis said already that the place where the sacred bone was once stored was along the way to collect the ‘Frostwhisper’s Eternal Frozen Blood’.
“I speculate that this should be where the elves originally planned to store the sacred bone. This shows that the elves should have given up the idea of ??signing a covenant with the sacred bone at that time, or maybe they could not sign it.
“From the perspective of the timeline, this place should have been built sometime before the elves held the great ritual. We can even deduce that the sacred bone is dug out using magic energy or something cheat-like akin to the creative mode [3].
“At that time, the elves thought that the sacred bone would be kept here. So they made this ritual to suppress the activity of the sacred bone as much as possible and prevent the curse from leaking out.
“Since the wine can anesthetize the sacred bone, there is no reason why low temperature cannot reduce its activity. Moreover, the reagent will always deteriorate at room temperature. But if it is stored in a low-temperature environment, the storage time will increase somewhat.”
Citalopram had a clear idea about this. In this instance, they did not find the bottle storing the sacred bone here.
In other words, Boffis’ mother took away the sacred bone stored here sometime after the ritual was completed.
Annan’s discovery could further confirm this speculation.
The bottle he picked up over the other side was the bottle left after the [Heart of Justice] was taken away.
Judging from the fact that it “had lost its efficacy”, the bottle appeared in that location because the sacred bone was out-of-control after leaving the cold storage.
But these were the little details.
Annan and the Child did not go down the well but waited for them to come back at the only entrance and exit.
When the item was delivered to Annan, Annan did have a way to keep the ice on the surface from melting, no matter if it was a hand or a head.
If Annan could not even do this, he had to re-evaluate his path of transcendence.
The remaining parts that he did not use up could be sold to the players as pieces of equipment.
I’m finally advancing in my rank… Annan carried the “sacred bone extract” wrapped in his coat and took a deep breath with a bit of nervousness.
Is it time to settle my score with that painter?