Daomu Biji: Restart
Book 1: Chapter 193

Black Glasses turned and whispered in Fatty's ear. Fatty was shocked, "Tianjin custard tart? Who the fuck are you kidding? Even if Tianjin custard tarts are considered a specialty, they should still be called Jinta." (1)

In the dark further ahead, Poker-Face knocked twice on the wooden wall with his hand, which was the knocking code for "be quiet". Fatty immediately shut up and glared at Black Glasses, who grinned.

The stairs appeared one right after another, and many parts had rotted and collapsed, revealing the stone beams below. Well, I say we were walking on stairs, but we were actually walking down these stone beams. There wasn’t a railing, so we could only lean towards the wall.

After going down a few floors, we were in a position where the smell of sulfur was stronger. I was very familiar with this kind of smell, but Fatty had probably never been to a place like this. We all started to slow down, but Poker-Face was very fast and nimbly went down like a cat, leaving a footprint on every step. None of us dared to even go half a step outside of his footprints.

As we moved past the floors, I found that the height of each floor was three or four meters higher than that of the previous floor. After going down about ten floors, not only wasn’t there any light, but we couldn’t even hear the rain above. Moreover, the sulfur smell in the air was so strong that we couldn’t detect any other smells. There were more and more turns on the stairs, so it would definitely take us a long time to reach the bottom floor.

The plaques on each floor were exactly what we had expected. Every floor represented a calamity.

The statues on each floor were also getting bigger and bigger. Since they were further down, they had less contact with the fungal spores outside and appeared less corroded. When Poker-Face stopped again, we were on the stairs in the middle of a thirty-meter-high floor. We pointed our flashlights below, but the bottom was still very deep. When we moved our lights to the side, we saw a tall statue on this floor.

The statue on this level had hardly decayed, and it only took one look before we realized why the ones on the upper levels were so corroded.

They were made using human skin. It was the exact same technology that was used to make the leather figurine woman. The statue on this floor was about half a story high, so I didn’t know how many people’s skins were used to create it. Since the statue’s features were faded, we couldn’t see what kind of god it personified. Now it just looked like a blank piece ceramic before the color had been added.

There was only one statue on this floor, which seemed to indicate that the financial resources were insufficient at the time.

The temperature on this level had increased a lot, and the humidity was also very high. We saw a layer of yellow scabs all over the walls, so I knocked some off and found that it was sulfur.

"We’ll rest here." Poker-Face said.

When he looked down, Fatty said, "Little Brother is ensuring that earthquakes haven’t damaged the structure."

As Poker-Face illuminated the area below with his flashlight, we could see that the bottom of this level was somewhat unusual. "What is it?” I asked him. “Why are we resting in mid-air like this? These stairs are very weak. Although there are stone beams fixed inside them, won’t there be problems since they’re so old?"

Poker-Face pulled out a cold firework and threw it down. As the light fell to the bottom, a strange ripple suddenly appeared and we all heard a splash.

It was water.

The cold firework slowly sank into the water until it was finally submerged.

We looked at each other. Fatty touched the sulfur on the wall with his hand and murmured, "Hot spring?"

He looked at us and then started to slowly take off his clothes. I knew what he wanted to do; he wanted to jump directly into the water. I immediately grabbed him. Although the water was deep, we didn’t know how hot it was. If Fatty is instantly cooked after he jumps down, should we eat him or not?

"Look carefully." Poker-Face drew our attention, and our eyes immediately looked down again. After the cold firework sank deep into the water, it revealed a circular black shadow. There was something at the bottom of the spring.

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TN Notes:

(1) The pinyin for Sky tower (天塔) is Tianta. Tianjin (天津) is a municipality in northeast China. Jinta (津塔) is known as Jin Tower, the Tianjin World Financial Center skyscraper (a.k.a. the Tianjin Tower)

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After a crappy night's sleep, I have rallied to give you 2 chapters and Yvette's Thousand Faces chapter as promised lol. I'm kind of missing the spy storyline right now. I feel like it was more interesting. I'm off to read some Teen Wolf fanfics to recover. I need some fluffy Sterek in my life lol. Until tomorrow~~