At that moment, Nie Chuan quipped, "Do you think this is like the Tower in Dragon Ball, where we have to climb for three days and nights, and at the top, the Cat Sensation lives, ready to hand out a Senzu bean to each of us?"

"Senzu beans? More like he’ll hand you a pack of Wangzai steamed buns," I scoffed mockingly.

Daxiong chimed in again, "It might not be the Cat Sensation; maybe it’s more like the beanstalk in Greek mythology. Climb all the way to the top, and you'll discover it’s the world of giants up there."

I was speechless at the imagination of these two, but as I looked up at the endless expanse above, my own mind began to wander.

However, I had firmly shifted from the realm of imagination to the camp of action. Instead of guessing what the top might be like, it was better to quicken our pace and see what was actually there.

After the three of us rested sufficiently, we drank some water and ate some dried rations, then continued our ascent toward higher ground.

What happened next truly seemed to resemble the Tower from Dragon Ball.

Because after climbing another fifty meters or so, we discovered indentations on the inner wall that looked like ladders.

While they weren't steps we could walk freely upon, using both hands and feet to climb them was far less taxing than clinging to spider silk.

These indentations were long, rectangular, sunken structures. Calling them ladders wasn't quite accurate; perhaps they were once used to hold something.

Or maybe they were simple climbing aids left behind by the artisans who constructed this all-bronze tunnel.

Anyone who has taken a cable car at a scenic spot knows that looking down at the mountain terrain often reveals simple stone or earth steps—stairs so basic they look like mere scratches on the ground.

This so-called ladder before us was akin to those rudimentary stairways.

Regardless of how they were formed, we were grateful for the design, as it offered us a convenient path.

Climbing along these rudimentary steps, we soon noticed the passage above was gradually widening, giving the ladder structure an incline.

The steeper the slope, the more exhausting the climb; before, it was more like rock climbing, but now, we could almost sprint on these treads.

This significantly increased our travel speed.

As the incline leveled out, the ladder-like grooves became increasingly dense.

In the darkness not far ahead, we glimpsed several objects standing there, resembling tombstones.

There were quite a few of them, making it feel for a moment as if we had entered a graveyard, sending a chill down our spines.

Building a cemetery in such a high, cavernous space was something I had never heard of.

And who would be buried here? That was what concerned me most.

Filled with curiosity, we quickened our steps.

As we approached these tombstone-like objects, we saw that most were completely draped in a layer of white spider silk.

We could only make out that these things stood about waist-high, seemingly cast from bronze as well, merging almost seamlessly with the bronze floor beneath.

Carefully slicing away the spider silk from one of the tombstones with a knife, a human skeleton was suddenly revealed within.

This person had been dead for a very long time; the bones were already turning gray, likely to crumble into dust with the slightest touch of a finger.

The skeleton wore nothing, or perhaps it did, but the clothing had long since rotted into ash.

Thus, we found nothing of value on the skeleton, but one detail puzzled us greatly.

Two chains, each about the thickness of an arm, bound the entire skeleton to the tombstone behind it.

These chains were neither copper nor iron, dull and ash-colored, their material utterly unknown.

Two chains this thick securing a scrawny skeleton—no matter how one looked at it, the skeleton seemed pitifully confined.

What kind of person required such massive chains for restraint?

Driven by this question, we moved to examine the inscription on the tombstone.

Wiping away the accumulated dust, we saw crooked characters etched there, but we couldn't decipher them at all. They resembled Arabic script, yet upon closer inspection, they did not quite match.

We couldn't even tell if the writing belonged to a Western or Eastern language system.

"What kind of gibberish is this?" Daxiong muttered in frustration.

We had no answer for him, merely frowning at the script.

Bored, Daxiong started fiddling with the thick chains.

To our astonishment, even exerting all his strength, his face turning beet red, Daxiong couldn't budge the chains an inch.

Nie Chuan and I knew Daxiong’s strength; when enraged, he could send an ox tumbling a full one-and-a-half somersaults backward. For such power to fail to move even a link in the chain?

Holding back our own disbelief, Nie Chuan and I stepped up to examine the chains, and indeed, putting both our strengths together, we still couldn't shift them.

"Is it because we’ve climbed so high that we’re exhausted?" Nie Chuan asked me.

I thought to myself that even so, it shouldn't be possible for two people to be unable to move a single chain.

Next, we tried to analyze the material of the chains, but after much study, we couldn't determine what they were made of.

They possessed neither the luster of metal nor the coldness of stone; in short, we had never encountered anything like them before.

Then, I remembered the trident I had seen in the Poseidon Temple within the Durban ruins. The material of that trident seemed similar—possessing immense weight for its small volume.

The murals suggested Poseidon’s trident originated from a strange stone pulled from the seabed. Could these chains also hail from the depths?

After a moment’s thought, I decided not to delve further.

Because regardless of the chains’ origin, the use of such rare material implied they were meant to lock away exceptionally important prisoners.

If someone as ordinary as us were bound by them, we would be crushed to death by the chains before any punishment was even administered.

We continued moving forward and soon saw more tombstones, almost every one securing a skeleton with similar chains.

Again, these were ancient skeletons, devoid of clothing or any identifying objects.

The more we looked, the stranger it seemed. We didn't know how many such tombstones and skeletons lay here; it felt less like a cemetery and more like a prison block.

Moving ahead, we hoped to find some clue.

Since we could only illuminate our path with flashlights, we couldn't see the layout clearly, only knowing that the terrain grew increasingly steep the further we went.

Just as we were progressing blindly, achieving nothing, a clanking, ringing sound suddenly echoed from not too far ahead.

Before we could make out what was happening, a figure suddenly descended from above, landing solidly in front of us.

On closer inspection, it was the Hooded Kid.

His clothes were more torn than before, his face stark white, and his fingers were bleeding.

The Kid stared at us with a cold expression and spoke, "Didn't I tell you not to make any noise?"

His words reminded me, and the apology was already forming on my lips when I saw him make a silencing gesture.

He glanced around, then drew the pitch-black blade on his back.

It was then that I clearly saw it: a Black Gold Ancient Blade nearly a meter and a half long.

Black Gold wasn't a common metal; it was said to form from strange subterranean stones over millions of years, resulting in a material of incredible hardness, though the blade itself was exceptionally heavy.

The defining characteristic of Black Gold was its dark, ebony surface, which, when struck by light, reflected a golden sheen.

Though I didn't know where the Kid got his blade, I knew that him drawing it meant nothing good was about to happen.

Indeed, within ten breaths of him unsheathing his weapon, the distant, dragging sound of chains—clank, clank—resounded nearby.

A staggering footstep slowly approached us, and the air filled with a palpable tension.