Krafft's Anomaly Notes

Chapter 312: Building Bones and Souls
The ship came ashore with a shuddering tremor.

The water of the lake kept rising and falling, and they stepped into it, secured the boat in a safe position with ropes and spikes to ensure it would not be carried away by an unexpected wave, and then carefully stepped onto the "island".

Under the huge pillars with obvious sense of oppression, it feels like the dirt gathered around tall aquatic plants, floating, unstable, and likely to be washed away and collapsed at any time.

Several incomplete stone ridges extending into the water suggest that this may have once been a small dock, but given the depth at which even a flat-bottomed boat would have to stumble and fall, it is hard to imagine what it was originally used for mooring.

Those buildings of unknown style were attached to the stone foundation in a barnacle-like manner and were half-collapsed.

They do not belong to any known style, or can be called the "Dunling Ruins Style", characterized by the lack of characteristic and unique details, but with extraordinary craftsmanship, which has enabled them to be preserved even under extremely harsh conditions.

Locally sourced and polished stones were tightly assembled to form walls and vaults that were not too tall but strong enough, in the same way as sewer construction, demonstrating the builders' superb level of spatial geometry.

It is the kind of thing that appears in some monotonous and repetitive strange dreams. When it becomes regular to a certain extent, it actually brings discomfort.

There is no expression of life or art, not even a little bit of culture, nothing that can be called "human". These things are just pure architecture, with no other meaning besides function.

If a regional community is personified, then architecture is its face and the source of the first impression.

When visitors try to look at the ancestors through the ruins, they only see a blank face without any facial features. The traces of human beings have been wiped out, leaving only something extremely pure as its only remaining background.

These buildings are more likely to arouse fear than the creatures lurking underwater, suggesting that the people who once lived here were some kind of alien race that was transformed from their own kind but could no longer understand each other.

But they couldn't stop. They were putting on such a big show, not to come here to visit the periphery of the ancient monument.

Green originally wanted to leave someone to guard the boat, but considering that the fire would be more likely to attract creatures wandering on the shore, and if an accident really happened, two people would not be able to do anything, he finally gave up the futile move.

With unspeakable feelings, the team began to move towards the inner circle, looking for possible information.

The traces observed show that the changes in this place were quite complex.

A lot of sediments are filled in the gaps and corners, most of which have solidified into a half-mud and half-stone state, smoothing out some of the contours. The colors are layered and complex, and uneven, indicating that different components were formed at different times.

There are some gray or white round or irregular small protrusions on the surface of the stones, which may come from shellfish such as barnacles and oysters that can attach to hard surfaces; while membranous and floc-like coverings are common on reefs in shallow waters, and are mostly related to algae and aquatic plants.

All signs indicate that this place has sunk underwater more than once.

Moreover, there was no lack of living things in the lake water at that time. It could even be considered abundant. At least it was not as barren as filtered lime water.

They thrust torches into several relatively intact buildings, but the original objects inside could no longer be recognized, as they had collapsed and disintegrated under the erosion of weather and water. Only the parts covered by sediments retained their general outlines, and no human remains were found.

It is hard to say whether the residents left on their own initiative or were destroyed by some disaster. How they survived here is also a question. Perhaps when the lake water was not so clean, they could meet their needs by fishing and collecting edible aquatic plants.

But even without mentioning the technical feasibility of doing so, the biological resources in freshwater areas would probably be difficult to meet the food supply of town-level settlements.

The buildings without any characteristics were piled up repeatedly. They seemed chaotic but had a certain order. The team often had the illusion of "have we been here before" as they advanced in twists and turns. When they went deep enough, something began to appear that was difficult to judge its purpose. They were stone pillars rising from the ground. The special topography here greatly facilitated their production. They only needed to randomly select one and slightly modify it, and then they could carve it into a standard hexagonal shape and add various patterns on it.

They are firmly fixed in large foundations, or simply carved out of solid rock and integrated into the ground, and most of them still stand today.

The decorative patterns are in two distinct styles, one is a flowing, serpentine interweaving of curves, and the other is straight lines that fall vertically from the six sides.

Because of their excellent level of geometry, they are well depicted, extremely symmetrical and uniform, with an irresistible beauty of strange harmony. They are so eye-catching among the monotonous buildings, like a mirage of a temple appearing on the horizon of a spiritual wasteland.

The designer has a special obsession with height. Regardless of the thickness of the stone pillars, they are far higher than the head, close to one and a half times the height of most doorways. It seems that this is similar to the design of the church's high spires, and is the most intuitive expression of "height".

This also meant that they had to step on the surrounding ruins to see the top of the stone pillar. As expected, they found bisected rings, broken circles, and twisted lines that were difficult to distinguish between the beginning and the end.

The further inward you go, the denser and larger the pillars become, some even as thick as a person's arms, forming a dazzling forest of pillars.

Some of them are made of intimidating materials, with a very familiar pale color or an extremely deep light-absorbing black color, which makes people who have seen similar things jump in their hearts.

But after careful observation and touch, Kraft discovered that they were not the two substances he thought.

Although it looks basically the same, it lacks some intuitive elements and becomes an ordinary substance that looks rather special, with a texture that is a mixture of chitinous shell, limestone and bone, and a bit rough and granular.

They died.

This intuition is strange, but it can be likened to the new storage in the morgue and the sleeping people, which are basically the same in composition but completely different in nature.

He felt a little sorry, like seeing a patient who died on the eve of the birth of a new treatment, which had never been seen before. It was as if a part of him recognized these things as living beings, even the same kind, and formed a tendency to sympathize with their own kind.

Shaking off the inexplicable emotions, the team passed through the forest of pillars and a wide open space appeared before them.

In the center of the clearing were several hexagonal holes the size of wellheads, which were almost filled with mud, sand and gravel. Judging from what we had seen along the way, this should be the base of several particularly huge prisms.

The religious totem that once stood here has disappeared, pulled up by the incredible force of thousands of people working together.

The pillars were pushed down like straw, clearing an open passage that extended outward, with buildings shattered and the road plowed and rolled up along the way, pointing straight to the shore and sinking into the clear water.

“That makes sense.”

This was the kind of being they had encountered in the Royal Tombs, or perhaps the Chaos Brigade was an imitation of such behavior.

【Aggregation, proliferation】

If one army is still not enough, what about an entire tribe? An entire tribe that once lived on the islands of this underground lake, a tower of Babel built by bodies and souls, has it undergone a qualitative change and is closer to the highest place on the other side?

Or maybe the true path to heaven that would bring them together, the living temple, was still one step away, cruising in the lake waiting for the final few bricks and stones.