Chapter Fifty-One: The Pharaoh

One of the eight wonders of the world before the Age of Darkness and the Pyramid Era, this structure was long believed to be beyond the capabilities of human construction. Yet the wisdom of ancient civilizations and the path of development before the Age of Darkness may have differed from what we now imagine. As Ye Bai and his companions arrived at the ruins of this site, they saw splintered logs scattered about.

It was said that these logs served a function similar to wheels, used for transporting heavy objects. Ye Bai gazed at the distant pyramid, at its massive stone blocks—each weighing around 2.5 tons, with the heaviest reaching up to 100 tons. It was hard to fathom how the ancient Egyptians transported such colossal stones from dozens or even hundreds of miles away, and then stacked them to form the pyramid.

Cao Xiaoseng had just expelled the poison from his body. Ye Bai asked the Medicine Spirit to look after him, signaling that he would only be nearby to observe and wouldn’t stray far.

Ye Bai recalled reading in the library that there were records claiming the pyramids were built by extraterrestrials. But after a hundred years into the Age of Darkness, with not a trace of aliens discovered, he found it hard to believe. However, the theory that people like themselves might have existed in ancient Egypt to build the pyramids seemed more plausible.

After all, the technology required to quarry and stack those stones exceeded the capabilities of even pre-Darkness civilization. Not to mention, the pyramid’s four corners were perfectly aligned with the cardinal directions. Ye Bai walked to the front of the pyramid and saw another symbol of ancient Egypt: the Sphinx. To the Egyptians, it was the embodiment of wisdom and power—a pharaoh’s head upon a lion’s body, the head signifying authority, the lion’s body strength. The Egyptians once believed their pharaohs were both human and divine.

According to pre-Darkness measurements of latitude and longitude, the pyramid and Sphinx were aligned with several distant stars in the sky. Ye Bai checked his watch: less than three minutes remained before the pyramid would activate. He called for the Medicine Spirit and Cao Xiaoseng to join him.

When Cao Xiaoseng broke into the beginner’s level, he hadn’t awakened wood affinity, so his recovery was slower than the Medicine Spirit’s. His face was pale, but his eyes sparkled with determination and fighting spirit. The wound on the Medicine Spirit’s ankle was nearly invisible now. It was the first time Ye Bai had seen such a look in Cao Xiaoseng’s eyes outside of battle.

As the sunlight slanted down from the tip of the pyramid onto the back of the Sphinx’s head, the smooth surface reflected a beam onto the shaded side of the pyramid, forming a “door” one meter wide and two meters high.

Ye Bai entered first, the Medicine Spirit followed, and Cao Xiaoseng brought up the rear. As they went in, all three closed their eyes, waiting for their sight to adjust to the stark change in light. When they opened their eyes again, all was darkness.

“Ling’er? Xiaoseng?” Ye Bai called into the darkness. The stench of decaying corpses filled his nostrils.

“I’m here.” “Mm.” The Medicine Spirit answered, moving toward Ye Bai’s voice, while Cao Xiaoseng merely grunted in reply.

“The second stage of the ruin trial has begun.” Arya’s voice echoed from nowhere. As her words faded, oil lamps along the walls flickered to life, casting a line of light from the pyramid’s depths to its entrance.

As soon as they entered, the light-door behind them vanished, replaced by a wall of stone so large it seemed part of the structure itself.

“Xiaoseng, quickly—Water Spirit Thrust!” Ye Bai faced the direction where the oil lamps blazed to life, gripping his long blade, infused with both wood and water affinity.

His eyes barely adjusted to the dimness when he saw a swarm of virtual beasts flooding from the corridor’s depths: sand mummies, sand scorpions, sand sea snakes—some familiar, some unknown, all stampeding toward them.

Though wounded, Cao Xiaoseng reacted swiftly, stepping in front of Ye Bai and pressing his hands to the ground. The power of water and earth surged from him into the corridor.

Ye Bai’s twin-bladed weapon burst into attribute flames as he slashed forward, unleashing fiery explosions among the virtual beasts. Soon his attribute blades faded—his wood and water power had run dry.

Gold, wood, water, fire, earth—these five elemental powers could all be ignited as attribute flames. Such flames were highly compressed energy forms, consuming vast reserves of attribute power. As the virtual beasts reached the corridor’s mouth, Cao Xiaoseng unleashed a water-earth spirit thrust, killing the frontmost beast outright.

When Ye Bai’s power was depleted, the Medicine Spirit channeled her own to aid his recovery. The three retreated as they fought, soon finding themselves back at the entrance, with nowhere left to run. Ye Bai patted the Medicine Spirit’s hand, signaling that he was fine now.

He shaped his hands into claws, wreathed them in fire, and engaged the beasts hand-to-hand. He had expected to face them in close combat eventually, but not so soon—these were only the lowest-grade virtual beasts; they hadn’t even glimpsed the advanced ones yet.

The Medicine Spirit, never adept at fighting, was already struggling amid the dense swarm; her sleeve was shredded, her jade arm covered in wounds. Cao Xiaoseng, still recovering from his recent poisoning, could barely defend himself.

Ye Bai’s heart raced with anxiety; at this rate, they would be wiped out again. No, he thought, they could not face elimination this time.

“Medicine Spirit, you and Xiaoseng fall back. Leave these to me.”

Summoning all his fire affinity, Ye Bai radiated crimson ripples into the air. He closed his eyes, directing the flow of fire power through his meridians. Around him, four red petals blossomed, forming a lotus in his mind’s eye. He squeezed out the last trace of fire within him, letting it bloom upward and outward, his body as the lotus core.

The fire lotus blossomed; the red lotus karmic flame unfurled.

Fiery red blossomed from Ye Bai’s fingertip, drifting outward and igniting every virtual beast it touched. The burning creatures set their companions ablaze, and so, one after another, all the virtual beasts were consumed by red fire.

The Medicine Spirit’s lips parted in astonishment. She knew Ye Bai had learned the Red Lotus from the library, but the last time he’d used it, it was so wild it harmed both friend and foe. That time, although they’d wiped out the beasts, they too had been eliminated. Now, however, the fire was far more controlled, aimed precisely at their enemies.

Ye Bai, utterly spent, half-knelt on the ground, sweat streaming down his face. The beast horde was now a mass of moving flames.

“Go, into the corridor,” Ye Bai said with effort.

The Medicine Spirit hurried to support him, Cao Xiaoseng close behind. As they moved, she channeled wood affinity into Ye Bai to restore his strength.

Ye Bai felt his legs heavy as lead, his vision dimming. He remembered that this technique was never meant for early-stage users; the original author had specifically warned against its use by beginners.

Suddenly, a warm current surged within him. The wood affinity stirred, and under its influence, his energies slowly revived. The familiar herbal scent of the Medicine Spirit reached his nose, and his vision began to clear.

With the birth of the wood affinity came rapid recovery. By the time they finished traversing the corridor, Ye Bai’s attribute power had returned by nearly a third. Cao Xiaoseng, who’d fought less, seemed almost fully restored, a faint red gleam visible in the lamplight.

At the corridor’s end lay a vast chamber, empty but for the evidence that it had housed all those lower-grade beasts. Beyond, the space widened further.

The Medicine Spirit noticed murals painted on the passage walls in ancient Egyptian pigments. The largest showed a statue of a wolf-headed man standing upon a stone platform, surrounded by kneeling worshippers.

“That’s Anubis, the Egyptian god of death,” Ye Bai explained as he saw her studying the mural. “He guides souls to judgment and oversees their trials, preventing a second death. All those mummies outside—he created them.”

No longer illuminated by oil lamps, the walls now glowed with embedded pearls that cast a gentle light.

Up ahead was a still larger chamber. At its center rested a golden sarcophagus, engraved with the likenesses of various Egyptian deities. Around the edges, clay figures knelt in adoration.

As Ye Bai and his companions entered, a muffled thumping resonated from within the golden coffin. After thousands of years of slumber, the Pharaoh was awakening.