Steven's spirits surged, a jolt of adrenaline chasing away some of the bone-deep weariness.
He followed Cecil's guidance, his hands tracing the cold, surprisingly smooth stone.
Just as a sliver of frustration began to creep in, the narrow passage ahead unexpectedly widened.
Following what seemed to be a slightly brighter, more concentrated cluster of the eerie fungi, he finally emerged before an immense, ancient rock wall, utterly different in texture and feel from the rougher stone elsewhere in the vast cavern.
As his eyes laboriously adjusted to the subtle shift in illumination, he drew a sharp, astonished breath that hitched in his throat—this massive, shadowed wall was indeed covered, from near the unseen, vaulted ceiling to the debris-strewn floor, in countless deep, intricate, complex, and savagely beautiful ancient images!
"The Giant Battles the Shadow"—the 'Shadow' depicted was amorphous, terrifyingly so, sometimes coalescing into a horrifying multi-eyed, faceless silhouette of immense proportions, other times dissolving into a miasma of countless tormented, wailing phantoms.
It radiated a palpable, light-devouring malevolence that seemed to leech the very life from the surrounding stone.
The Pangu figure grappling with it, though colossal and powerful, seemed somehow constrained, bound by invisible, shimmering cosmic laws or ancient decrees.
"The Goddess Mends the Sky and Creates Humans"—in the background of this panel, a toppled, shattered colossal mountain (perhaps the legendary Mount Buzhou?) and raging, world-engulfing floods were depicted with terrifying, vivid intensity.
The small clay figures Nvwa molded varied in detail and substance; some appeared vibrant, seemingly crafted from five-colored sacred earth, while others were cruder, rougher, as if hastily formed from common mud, perhaps hinting at different destinies or a hierarchy among the first humans.
"The Great Tree Drills Fire"— His gaze locked onto the colossal, impossibly tall tree that dominated this section of the mural.
Its branches spiraled unnaturally towards the unseen heavens, a living axis mundi, evoking the legendary World Pillar, Jianmu, said to connect Heaven and Earth.
Within its uppermost leaves, phantom shapes like three-legged sun-crows, radiating a faint, ethereal light, seemed to shimmer and shift.
Beneath this cosmic tree stood a lone, determined figure, intensely focused on drilling into a piece of wood with a simple, yet somehow significant, pointed tool… and embedded in the tip of that very tool… was that a dark red stone!
Steven's heart leaped, a wild hope surging.
He recognized it, or rather, his very soul seemed to recognize it!
The mural clearly depicted faint, swirling, incandescent patterns within the stone, like captured, ever-flowing fire.
This had to be the legendary "Fire-Seed"—the Sui Stone Heart! A fragment of Pangu's mighty Axe!
And the eyes of the fire-driller… they blazed with the unyielding pride, the fierce determination, and the indomitable will of one bringing the first true, sacred light to humanity!
"This is it! The Fire-Seed! A fragment of Pangu's Axe!" Steven exulted, his voice a choked, awed whisper that barely disturbed the ancient silence of the grotto.
"This thing… it can definitely make fire! The tribe needs it! We have to find it!"
"Cecil! Quick! Analyze this mural! Every detail! Especially the fire-drilling depiction! And that stone! Focus on that stone!" Steven shouted in his mind, his body trembling with a mixture of excitement, awe, and a dawning trepidation.
"Acknowledged, Sir!" Cecil's voice was now perfectly smooth, resonant, even carrying a faint, almost imperceptible hum of high-efficiency processing, a stark contrast to its earlier, damaged state.
"Recalibrating multi-dimensional scanning array… Comparing visual data with Sui Stone Heart database signature… Warning! Detecting extremely strong energy resonance with target area of mural! Energy nature confirmed: primordial, exceptionally pure… and possessing a high degree of intrinsic, complex order!"
"Sir, this energy… it is actively back-feeding into my damaged and corrupted modules… initiating… spontaneous deep-level repair and systemic optimization routines?!"
"Sir, my core processor… is rapidly restoring to optimal operational performance! No, it's exceeding original factory settings and design parameters! This… this is a miracle of unprecedented an S-Class miracle!"
Before Steven could fully process, let alone rejoice in, Cecil's astonishing and wholly unexpected "upgrade," an irresistible, almost physical suction force slammed out from the mural!
His consciousness was instantly, violently wrenched from his body, and a torrent of chaotic, fragmented images and primordial information flooded his mind like a breaking dam!
He saw a vast, swirling Taiji symbol, black and white in perfect, dynamic balance; a cracked, ancient tortoise shell glowing with intricate, shifting mystic characters; a fleeting, terrifying glimpse of a blurred, one-eyed giant figure, robed in shadow, wielding a cruel, obsidian scythe!
He felt the boundless, majestic, almost overwhelming will of 'Suiren,' the fierce, selfless, unwavering determination to bring light, warmth, and hope to all nascent, struggling beings in a cold, dark universe!
"Warning! Sir! Mural energy overload critical! Forming unstable, highly dangerous spatial fold!" Cecil's voice, though exceptionally clear and powerful now, was filled with an unprecedented, piercing urgency that cut through Steven's disorientation.
"Rock wall structural integrity is collapsing!"
"CRACK… CRACK… RUMBLE—!!!"
The massive rock wall before Steven, the ancient canvas of creation myths, suddenly split open with a deafening, grinding, world-shattering roar, a huge, irregular, dark-crimson fissure tearing through its sacred face!
An icy, stinking, malevolent wind, thick with the taste of sulfur and unimaginable, ancient decay, blasted from the newly formed rift, instantly suppressing the surrounding ethereal bioluminescence to near nothingness, plunging the grotto into an even deeper, more terrifying darkness!
"Warning! Warning! High-risk spatial fissure formed! Energy readings… completely off the scale!"
"Detecting multiple high-threat unknown trans-dimensional entities attempting to transit the fissure! Threat level assessment… [EXTINCTION-LEVEL]!!!"
"Sir, evacuate immediately! Core protection protocol activated, calculating optimal escape route… Probability of success… less than 0.0001%!"
Cecil's voice was terrifyingly calm, the calmness of a machine facing inevitable doom, yet Steven could sense the colossal, almost unimaginable data streams it was frantically processing, a desperate, heroic battle against impossible, universe-ending odds.
"NO—!!!!" Steven let out a piercing shriek, a sound torn from the depths of his soul, not from fear of his own imminent demise, but from the abject, paralyzing horror of helplessly watching as an unholy, nightmarish entity, a writhing, amorphous mass of tentacles wreathed in ghostly, soul-chilling black fire, began to slowly, inexorably squeeze out of the blood-red, pulsating rift!
That indescribable, sanity-shattering thing, in its coiling, sickeningly fluid, ever-shifting mass, vaguely revealed countless fine, serpent-like silhouettes writhing within its core, and as a whole, it radiated a deathly, soul-freezing chill from far beyond the Nine Nethers, along with a Taotie-like, gluttonous, all-consuming, utterly primordial malice!
Nearly half its "body" had already oozed and extruded its impossible form through the opening.
Countless pupil-less eyes, like pustules glinting with a ghastly white, internal light, opened randomly across its shifting surface, then… seemed to "perceive" and "lock onto" Steven's fragile human presence with a focused, predatory hunger that promised unimaginable torments!
Endless darkness and ice-cold, soul-shattering terror engulfed Steven once more.
But this time, even as oblivion mercifully claimed him, Cecil's clear, firm, and unbelievably resolute voice still raced in his mind, a final, defiant act of protection and loyalty: "Targeting entity's primary Keter-class energy nodes! Analyzing multi-phasic structural weaknesses… Attempting to disrupt its trans-dimensional spatial anchor… Sir, please try to maintain consciousness! We need to buy precious seconds!"
However, how could a mere mortal will, even one augmented by 21st-century technology, withstand the terrifying, mind-breaking psychic pressure of a primordial, trans-dimensional demon?
Steven's vision blackened completely, his last coherent thought a bitter, ironic epitaph to his former life, his former certainties: "It's over… my pitiful repository of 21st-century scientific knowledge… is utterly fucking useless against a cosmic horror Class-Omega software BUG like this…"