ghost market

From me is the way into the city of misery;

From me is the way into eternal pain;

From me is the way to enter the crowd of eternal doom.

Righteousness touches my "supreme Creator";

"Divine Power", "Supreme Wisdom", and "Primary Love" created me.

Before me there was nothing created but eternal;

and I live forever;

You who walk in here, give up all hope!

- "Divine Comedy Gates of Hell" [

At the moment when I saw the river of lava, Dante's verses echoed involuntarily in my heart.A cold sense of despair rushed from the bright red outside the ship's wall, penetrating to the marrow of the bone.

Maybe, this is really hell.

Look at the constantly surging lava, the crazily churning figure is like boiled blood, viscous and scorching hot.The bursting of every bubble on the river surface seems to be releasing a scream from the soul; the red-black rock walls around are hideous, like distorted bodies, miserable and painful.Every protrusion on the rock face seems to be entangled with a crime being judged.

The lava that was supposed to be scorching hot didn't make me feel a trace of heat, but instead felt more and more cold.In fact, the temperature in the cabin has not changed much. Although we are driving in the lava at this moment, there is almost no difference from the beginning, neither cold nor hot.I know that the bone-piercing coldness comes from my heart, from the hellish scene in front of me.But even so, I still can't get rid of this feeling.Can only helplessly let it climb on the body, like a cold and sticky poisonous snake.

The river of crimson lava surged endlessly.The eerie red color seemed to provide some inexplicable power to the silver boat under his feet, causing the boat to suddenly speed up a lot.

double?or three times?

I do not know.

I only know that since the boat touched the lava, our speed has been increasing, and the light spot on the screen representing us is moving forward along the entangled red lines, heading straight for the red circle ring.The scene outside the ship is constantly changing.Sometimes, we gallop through the waves on the surface of the lava river, looking out from the transparent roof and ship walls, we can see that the red-black rock walls are receding rapidly.It forms a dark light and shadow; sometimes, the scorching magma will fill the entire cave, leaving no gaps.When encountering this kind of situation, the boat under the feet will plunge into the lava, and then sneak quickly under the scorching red magma, just like a whitebait swimming in the water, which makes people unable to resist Shock.

The speed of the boat is getting faster and faster.Later, the scene outside the ship's wall completely turned into blurred lines.Can no longer see what it is.We are rapidly approaching our goal, and everyone knows that.As a result, the oppressive atmosphere quickly spread in the cabin, everyone kept silent and did their own thing, and the fear of the place that was about to arrive raged in the small space like poisonous gas.It made everyone's faces a little livid.

"Big wood," Xiaoqian turned her head and called me shortly afterwards, then swallowed her saliva, pointed to the screen and said, "We... have entered that circle."

I hurried to her side to look at the screen.I saw that the small light spot representing us had already started to move on the red circle, quickly chasing the green light spot that was moving slowly.Seeing this, I quickly turned my head and looked towards the front of the bow.Everyone in the cabin also gathered around me at this moment, staring at the transparent bow in unison, waiting for the thing represented by the green light spot to appear in sight.

A few seconds later, there was a sudden sound of breathing in the cabin, and the hissing sound like a snake spitting out a letter instantly made the surrounding air as cold as winter.The heartbeat was like a drum, and the heavy muffled sound kept vibrating the eardrums, and the brain was suddenly in chaos. It was impossible to tell whether the sound came from his own body or from someone else.

"...The towers of the city are very clear. They are as red as red iron, as if they have just been baked from a raging fire."

Can't help it, Dante's verses echoed again in my heart.The city of Diss full of soul wailing in the verse gradually became clear in my mind, and slowly merged with what I saw in front of me.

Yes, there is a city there. [

A city floating on a river of lava.

The lava river we are in at the moment is very magnificent, and the river is much wider than any one we have experienced before.Roughly speaking, the narrowest part of the river is about four kilometers. It is not so much a lava river, but rather a large river composed of red magma.The cave here is also unusually wide, with a high ceiling, like a dark red sky.Huge and sharp rocks hang down from the top one after another, with their tips pointing directly at the river, showing ferociousness in the flickering red light.

The sharp rocks are like blood-stained teeth, and the heavy lava is like a long scarlet tongue.These two things fermented in the dark red light into a strange and horrifying picture, just like the bloody mouth waiting to be opened by a demon that devours life.And the city is floating in the center of this "big mouth" at this moment, slowly moving forward along the magma, as if it is going to the throat of the devil.

I reached out and wiped the cold sweat that had flowed into my eyes, and then hastily locked my eyes on the front again, carefully observing the city in front of me.The city is oval in shape as a whole, with slightly pointed ends, and looks about the same size as the small town I saw in Shennongjia last time.The bottom of the small city is an arched base, red in color, like a plate burned through by lava.Closely connected to the upper edge of the "plate" is a transparent arched dome, which is tightly buckled on the "plate" like a cover.There are some red lines climbing on the surface of the arched dome, thick and thin, coiled and interlaced, like twisted blood vessels.

Through the gaps of those "vessels", some high and low buildings are looming.However, the edge of the base of the small city is very high, roughly dozens of times the overall height of the boat.As the distance continued to approach and the terrain became lower, those buildings only flashed in sight before being blocked by the edge of the base. Only a tall tower-like building in the middle of the town stayed in sight for a while, but soon disappeared. disappeared.

"Beep beep, beep beep."

The console in front of Xiaoqian suddenly beeped.I turned my head to look, and saw that the light spot on the screen representing us had been attached to the green light spot, and was closely next to the white light spot representing "Batihar".I glanced at the bow again, but still couldn't find the silver sailboat.It seems that Jiu'er and his boat have already entered the small town in front of them, but how should we enter?

I frowned subconsciously, but to my surprise, this question did not confuse me.After a few seconds, our boat has already traveled to a position less than a kilometer away from the base of the small town.At this moment, the small city floating on the lava suddenly reversed an angle and quickly turned one of the two points towards us.Immediately afterwards, the lower part of the tip was suddenly divided into three parts, which moved to the left, right and downward respectively, and soon formed a wide entrance.Before I could react, the boat under my feet suddenly burst into a ball of silver light, and the body of the boat also left the surface of the magma suddenly under a slight vibration, and jumped straight into the entrance of the small town while maintaining a suspended posture .

The light around him suddenly dimmed, and the originally transparent walls and ceiling of the ship instantly returned to silver, and the screen displaying the pattern also shut off with a "snap".Afterwards, the surrounding light quickly increased again, and the silver ceiling split into two pieces in an instant, and after sliding to the left and right for a certain distance, they quickly erected, returning to the original shape when we boarded the boat. look.Six tall silver vertical sails appeared in sight, getting bigger and clearer, and our boat stopped moving after getting close to the vertical sails, slowly sticking to the on the edge of a platform.

"This...is 'Batihar'?" Lan Wu, who was beside him, swallowed and asked.

I nodded without speaking, and then looked out with my hand on the side of the boat.

The space we are in at the moment is a huge fan-shaped room, like an empty stadium.The top of the room is in the shape of an arch, supported by several thick tendons of the same shape, winding downwards, directly to the ground, like an upside-down shell.Some light sources emitting light yellow light are evenly distributed on the ribs, illuminating the whole room extremely brightly.However, the position of those light sources is too high, and it is really hard to see what it is.

Looking down along the vaulted roof, the apex of the arc of the fan-shaped room is the entrance we just entered.The three separate doors were closing rapidly at this moment, and they were tightly fastened together in the blink of an eye, forming a complete curved wall.On the opposite side of the wall was a large clearing, on which branched platforms rose like branches.The height of these platforms is about two floors, connected to each other, and finally attributed to a wide rectangular platform.Our small boat is now docked at the edge of a branch platform, and the branch platform next to it is docked with Jiu'er and their ship "Batihar".Miraculously, neither our boat nor the adjacent "Batihar" landed on the ground at the moment, but stuck tightly to the platform wall and continued to float in mid-air, as if it were an iron body attracted by a magnet. Nail the same.

Quickly scanning the room around, I found that the layout of this fan-shaped room looks like a pier, except that the floor of the room has no water, but is paved with a shiny metal plate that exudes light silver .I probably counted, and there are about [-] branch platforms where ships can berthed.However, these platforms are now empty, only our small boat and the adjacent "Batijar" are docked here.

I moved my gaze to the silver sailboat beside me again, and then gave the order to everyone behind me to prepare to leave.

I decided to take a look on that ship first. (To be continued. If you like this work, you are welcome to come to the starting point to vote and monthly pass. Your support is my biggest motivation. Mobile phone users, please go to m to read.)

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