Chapter 70 – Effigies (2/2)

After a few deep breaths, Hong Xun’s eyes turned to the path on the left, and he quietly walked towards it seeing that they didn’t really have a chance to get through the rightmost barrier. Lu Chao and Xue Yao both sighed and followed in his footsteps. ‘I guess we will also have to settle for this path…’

‘This guy was not able to get through with that much power behind his punch? I guess Zi Yan will be fine then as it literally took her less than a second to get in. How strong must she be to accomplish that?’ Ye Wei thought as he walked out of his hiding place. He could see everyone were more or less calm now, so he felt safe enough to get closer. He wanted a closer look at the entrances so he could feel the disturbance of Qi from each direction.

The path on the left was a tunnel that was not blocked by anything. There was no barriers or doors, Lu, Hong, and Xue walked in with the rest of the survivors following them. ‘I will just go in and take a look. I might be able to find some Welkin Leaves myself.’ Not willing to go to the rightmost path alone nor wanted to draw any attention onto himself, Ye Wei followed the crowd onto the left path without attempting to break the barrier.

This tunnel looked similar to the ones that led everyone into the hall, but this tunnel was longer, and there were no barriers or anything on the sides; it was just an ordinary tunnel.

After a while, they reached the end of the tunnel. The people in front of the group could see a wide, open area covered with small sharp rocks. They seemed sharp enough to cut a person’s feet if he or she were not careful.

In the middle of the rocks stood one thousand life-like stone effigies. They all had a humanoid shape. Most of them were brown stones and around forty of them were silver-white. Five effigies were larger than the rest, and each of them stood three meters tall and shone with a golden hue.

The effigies were all a bit different, most of them even had weapons in their hands. Some had swords, some had spears, and some of them had shields.

Nobody dared to step into the field, not even Lu, Hong, and Xue. Everyone just stood at the end of the tunnel peeking.

Hong Xun grabbed a five-star Warrior who stood next to him and said: “Why don’t you go in and take a look?” As he threw the Warrior into the field out of the blue.

The Warrior was surprised, but he did not lose balance. He landed steadily on his feet clearly not pleased with how he was treated, so he started swearing at Hong Xun quietly. Pressured by Hong Xun and others, he had no choice but to investigate the field.

He unwillingly walked around the whole field carefully and nothing happened. Now relieved, he waved at the crowd and signaled that it was safe. People then started running into the field and inspecting the statues hoping to find hidden treasures somewhere.

‘I have a bad feeling about this…’ An image of a mountain flashed inside Ye Wei’s mind, and he started to panic while everyone else’s guards were still down. He felt like he was being watched by something, something alive, something bloodthirsty, something that wanted him dead. He became cautious and started restlessly looking around himself, but nothing was wrong. Everyone was just as they were before, some looking for treasures, some of them were just appreciating how lively the effigies looked.

Just as Ye Wei thought he was having an unreasonable panic attack, a barrier appeared at the tunnel’s exit, blocking the way out.

“Careful!” Ye Wei shouted to alert everyone and reached inside his bag. He held one of the Mystic scrolls tight. The crowd then turned to see the tunnel was sealed by a barrier that looked like the one Lin Zi Yan, Mo Ya, and Jin Yan opened earlier back in the hall.

“Who did this?”

“I told you not to touch anything!”

“What? How are we going to get out now?” The crowd started panicking when they heard a rumbling sound.

The brown effigies started moving and opening their stone eyes. Beams of red light shot out of their eyes brightening the dim field. They started lifting their arms and waving them around. The effigies looked massive and clumsy, but they were unexpectedly fast, and their stone fists flew all over the place. The field suddenly filled with wind from the effigies’ ferocious strikes.

“Dodge them!”

“Behind you!”

People with better reflex were doing just fine dodging these attacks, but for the ones who were frozen in place with fear and the ones who were injured in the brawl earlier, the red lights from the effigies’ eyes and the heavy impact of stone fists became their last memory.

The seven-star Warriors had it easy as their primal feather wings helped them effortlessly maneuvering between the fists. But it was a struggle to survive for the rest of the crowd.

Fear spread on the field. The effigies did not feel nor did they care, they were programmed to kill and they would not stop.