Chapter Eighty-Nine: The Desert Temple

Three elite royal agents from the Sunfall Kingdom had arrived: Cannon, Delia, and Iron Pillar.

All three were rank A spirit tamers. It was not that the king of Sunfall was unwilling to send a rank S agent; rather, rank S was far too valuable, even for Sunfall, to squander lightly.

Their mission was simple: find the legendary Desert Temple and bring back whatever lay within.

Before coming, they had heard the locals were fierce and uncivilized, the sort of people who would reach for a gun and exchange fire at the slightest provocation.

Yet after arriving, they discovered that nothing of the sort was true. The people here were exceptionally courteous and strangely gentle. Now and then strangers would greet them, and some even worried they might lose their way and took it upon themselves to guide them.

The three of them were shocked beyond words.

Still, that was not important. What mattered was finding that so-called Desert Temple as quickly as possible.

Following the map, they came to a barren plateau. As far as the eye could see, there was only an endless wasteland of sand, broken stones, and a few patches of withered grass. There was absolutely nothing that looked like a temple, let alone a desert one.

But the three of them did not despair. Calmly, they laid the map on the ground and used the surrounding sand to draw a very strange pattern.

“All right. Now we just wait for the Desert Temple to appear!”

An hour later.

Wind carried yellow sand across their faces, and the three of them stood there like fools, not the slightest idea what they were supposed to do next.

“Do you think there’s a possibility,” one of them began, “I mean, just a possibility, hypothetically speaking, that the royal ancestors of Sunfall were deceived...”

He had not finished before Iron Pillar cut him off. “Foolish Cannon, that is clearly impossible. How could gods possibly lie?”

“Then is it possible that the gods are fake?”

“...”

This map had a long history behind it. In Sunfall there was a legend that several gods had descended to earth thousands of years ago and bestowed a few treasures upon the royal family of that era.

No one knew exactly what those treasures were, but one thing was certain: they greatly consolidated the authority of the Sunfall royal house.

On more than one occasion, they had used those treasures to suppress peasant uprisings. For that reason, the legend was highly likely to be true, though only highly likely. After all, aside from the core members of the royal family, no one had ever actually seen those treasures.

According to the king of Sunfall, however, this map too had been given to them by the gods, with the instruction that it was to be used only after the recovery of the uncanny.

At the time, the royal family had no idea what “the recovery of the uncanny” meant, so they had left the map untouched. Then, over the span of a thousand years, they had simply forgotten about it.

Only now, after the uncanny had returned for so long, had they suddenly remembered it. Since it might well be a divine artifact meant to help them fight supernatural creatures, the king had immediately sent the three of them here to investigate.

“This matter is recorded in the annals of history. How could that god possibly be fake? Unless every single royal member is a fool!”

The moment that was said, the three of them exchanged a glance.

“My heavens! Now that you put it like that, it really might be possible!”

The second page ended here.

“What do we do now?”

The three fell into silence. They looked at the endless desert, then at the pattern beneath their feet, already half buried by sand. Hopelessness washed over them.

They had thought this would be a smooth matter. Never had they imagined that upon arriving, there would be no temple at all—only an endless sea of sand.

“Damn it!”

Iron Pillar had a fiery temper. He snatched the map from Delia’s hands and tore it to shreds. “What use is this map to me now?”

But the instant the torn fragments fell to the ground, the pattern they had drawn suddenly began to glow.

The light instantly flooded the whole land, and before the three of them could react, the ground beneath them started to sink.

“Not good! Retreat!”

They surged their inner power and immediately tried to flee.

But the yellow sand beneath their feet seemed enchanted. It locked them in place, no matter how desperately they struggled.

Like mice glued to a chopping board by some cruel trap, they could only watch in despair as their bodies sank little by little, as though they were to be buried forever in this wasteland.

The process did not last long. Soon, they vanished completely.

At a distance, a blood-red figure suddenly appeared. It was Xiao Zi.

He held up the map. “So that’s how it’s used.”

With that, he tore it to pieces and scattered them on the ground.

Five seconds later.

“Damn it! I forgot to draw the pattern!”

After the three disappeared, they found themselves in a vast underground structure.

It was pitch-dark here. A normal person would have had no visibility at all, and even as spirit tamers, their sight remained extremely poor.

“My God... this must be the legendary Desert Temple?”

Looking at the walls around them, and the images painted upon them, they were suddenly struck by an inexplicable sense of reverence.

The walls on all sides were covered with meaningless designs: strange and varied shapes, some human, some animal, and some... monstrous?

If one merely looked at the murals, nothing at all could be understood.

With no other choice, they pressed onward.

Along the way, besides the murals, one thing in particular drew their attention: statues.

These statues were even more eerie than the paintings, even harder to fathom.

“My God, it looks like someone has been here!” Cannon shouted.

The other two hurried over and saw that the statue depicted a man wearing a hat, seated on horseback, with something in his hand.

But whatever he had been holding was clearly gone. His hand was empty, and there were obvious footprints nearby.

“How is that possible? Could there be more than one map? And did someone get the treasure before us?”

At the thought, cold sweat sprang up on all three of them.

If that was true, then had they made this journey for nothing?

“Look, the thing in this statue’s hand has been taken, but no one has touched the objects in the hands of the other statues. Does that mean we can take them too?”

“That makes sense!”

Those words instantly enlightened them, and they hurried to inspect the other statues.

“Look at this weird thing. What it’s holding is kind of interesting. See the pattern on it—doesn’t it look like the dragon egg from our Sunfall legends?”

“It really does. Let’s see if we can take it down!”

The three went up to the statue and began examining it. Not long after, Iron Pillar placed his hand on the egg and began adjusting his energy.

The next second, black energy flowed down from his palm until it enveloped the entire egg.

“It’s working!”

Slowly, the egg began to change. From a cold stone carving, it took on color and even warmth, while the pattern upon it grew clearer and clearer.

“It really is a dragon egg! Nicely done, Delia. If you hadn’t reminded us, I never would have thought to take the things in the statues’ hands.”

Delia looked blank. “Huh? I didn’t remind you. I thought it was Cannon.”

After saying that, Delia and Iron Pillar both looked at Cannon.

Cannon looked equally confused. “I thought it was Iron Pillar who said it.”

An extremely eerie atmosphere spread between the three of them, and with it came a pair of dark blue eyes.

“It was me who said it, hee hee hee.”

The voice was most bizarre, and hearing it made all three of them feel cold to the bone.