Seeing the trapdoor Shirong narrowed his eyes. He stopped there and first made sure that there were no actual traps on it. Only when he was sure did he approach it further.

Lin Wu, who was just below him simply extended a blunt spike from his head which came under Shirong's foot. Having touched Shirong, Lin Wu instantly entered the spatial storage ring.

Shirong didn't even pay attention to the little obstacle that had come under his food, thinking of it as a random stone. He instead stepped onto the platform and tried to read the carvings on the tiles.

They were in a language he couldn't understand though he felt like he had seen these before.

"What are these?" He wondered.

"System, any input on this?" Lin Wu asked.

~Ding~

——

SCANNER ACTIVATED: Target selected

UPDATING DATA BANKS: New parameters found.

ANALYZING: please wait a minute

…

ANALYSIS COMPLETE: The carvings on the tiles have a 58% similarity to those in the temple of the three beasts.

——

"The temple of the three beasts?" Lin Wu repeated.

He went through his memories and could indeed link some of them with the carvings in there.

"Why is this here though? Is this perhaps another temple or something like that?" Lin Wu wondered.

'They did say there was a sect here, so perhaps it is an old temple that was buried deep in the ground?' he hypothesized.

Unlike Lin Mu, Shirong did not know this and kept on staring at the carvings. Not being able to figure it out, he just decided to open the Trapdoor. There were no handles on the trap door and only the seam could be observed which differentiated it from the other tiles.

He probed it with his spirit sense and discovered the formations that were inlaid. With his little expertise with the formations, Shirong found the correct one and managed to unlock the door by infusing a little bit of spirit Qi in the right node.

~Rumble~

The trap door moved slowly before opening up to reveal a long staircase that went to unknown depths. Shirong couldn't see the end of it in the darkness and even his spirit sense couldn't reach the end.

He turned around and saw that the foot prints of the Specter Skull Beast actually ended right at the point where the platform had ended. The reason why there were no traces of the platform was because the mud and water would come and hide it below it quite easily once it went inside the ground.

"Seems like it came from here," Shirong said in understanding.

He then created a small arc of lighting that turned around his body, as a source of light. Only Shirong who had mastered the Immortal Sky Shaker Art could do something like this. No one else would use lightning attribute spirit Qi as a mere lamp!

The lightning kept on circling around Shirong's body, providing him with 360 degrees of illumination.

The steps were made of a similar stone like those of the tiles of the platform. Though these did not have any carvings on it and were plain. Both Shirong and Lin Wu constantly observed the area with their spirit sense.

Lin Wu had also gotten the system to scan the area but it had faced a restriction in the form of an interference field again. This one was even stronger and wouldn't let it spread its signals anywhere in the area.

The most the system would be able to do was to do an observational scan if Lin Wu asked it, but not an exploratory scan. Seeing that even the system was in the dark, Lin Wu decided to be even more careful.

He activated his innate skill of radiation manipulation to create an invisible shield around Shirong and in turn himself. This Shield would either stop spirit Qi attacks or at least weaken them before they would reach Shirong.

Shirong felt that something was different when the shield appeared but couldn't place his finger on it and attributed it to the strangeness of this place. Having traveled for over an hour, Shirong finally reached the bottom of the place.

It was a wide open temple that had many statutes. Pillars rose up from an equal distance, supporting the roof of the temple. Shirong walked up to one of the statues to observe it properly and saw that it was of a bird.

The bird had a long neck and lustrous feathers that were all over its body. The color of the bird could not be told because of it being a stone statue, but the sculptor's skill in it, showed that the feathers were vibrant.

It had five long tails feathers with the center one being the longest and the others decreasing in size as they went toward. It had a sharp beak and fierce eyes. Its crown feathers were majestic and would inspire glory within the eyes of the viewer.

It had five talons on each leg that grasped upon a long branch of an unknown tree. It was made in the posture of letting out a cry.

Shirong felt impressed upon seeing the statues and could tell the effort made in it was extensive. This statue could easily compare to those in his own clan. But when he looked at the large number of them, he realized that even his clan may not be able to afford to make so many of them.

It was not just the skill that was involved in the making of the statue, but Shirong could see formations being inlaid in each of the statues. All these formations were unknown to him but his best guess was they were an offensive formation.

Seeing that there were over a hundred of these statues and each had the same formation, they probably worked together as an array.

But while Shirong was marveling about the statues and the formations, Lin Wu was surprised about something else.

"All these statues… aren't they… aren't they of the Vermillion bird, one of the four guardian beasts?" Lin Wu said.