The next morning, when they set off again, Xue Hua sat on the back of the thunder beast, frowning and thinking about yesterday's problem, but no matter how much he thought about it, he couldn't think of a reason.
Suddenly, his eyes were attracted by a huge sandstone pillar at the edge of the oasis - the stone pillar shimmered slightly in the morning sun in the desert.
Then he suddenly thought of a sentence he had seen on that map.
“On all sides of the distant oasis, there are vast abyss of sand dunes and cliffs. These abyss are filled with white mist and poisonous miasma. Anyone will lose their way in these mist, so it is still unclear where they lead.
People know it.”
This is a digression that the map author will mark under each area on the map. It means that he hopes that lucky professionals can explore some secrets in these areas that no one has yet been able to understand.
Xue Hua has read this digression about the distant oasis many times, and has never found anything wrong before, because the terrain that the King Insect scanned around the oasis is indeed the same as what is described in the digression.
However, when he personally stood on the back of the thunder beast and used his own eyes to look at the sandstone pillar that had appeared in the king insect's observation field of view from a horizontal position, he suddenly felt a little uncoordinated.
The vast oasis is surrounded by vast sand dunes and abyss filled with white mist and poisonous miasma. And then, at the junction of the oasis and the sand dunes, there is such an inexplicable stone pillar standing?
Is this too abrupt?
And this and the stone pillars...how should I put it...seem to be a little too regular.
Generally speaking, shouldn't naturally occurring sandstone pillars have an uneven surface and a shape that gradually tapers from bottom to top?
Why does the surface of this stone pillar look so smooth and even reflective?
And the most important thing is that this stone pillar is as thick as the top and bottom?
The more Xue Hua looked at it, the more he felt something was wrong, so he decisively ordered the insect mother to change its direction of travel and move closer to the stone pillar.
After receiving the order, the insect mother quickly led the insect swarm to open a path in the direction pointed by Xue Hua, and the thunder beast that Xue Hua sat down also changed its direction.
This change was quickly felt by the two girls who were standing on the edge of the Thunder Beast's back carapace, shooting arrows at the monster group below.
They looked at each other, then turned to look at Xue Hua, only to see him leaning on a bone plate, frowning and thinking about something.
The two girls did not disturb Xue Hua's contemplation, but turned their attention to the direction in which the insect swarm was traveling.
They also saw the red sandstone pillar.
"That pillar... is so strange, it doesn't look like it was formed naturally..." Anne whispered.
"Yeah, but it looks like it's... broken?" Funia blinked her eyes curiously.
Of course her words were unintentional, but they made Xue Hua's eyes suddenly light up as he was thinking about it.
That's right! No wonder the King Insect never noticed anything unusual about the stone pillar, because it was broken!
Looking over the head, what you see is the broken surface of the stone pillar, and because the break is irregular, it looks like a naturally formed sandstone tower. This kind of stone tower is common in deserts and Gobi areas, so Wang
The insect didn't pay much attention to it...
And the most important thing is that this stone pillar does not emit any psychic disturbance or abnormal biological fluctuations.
This is the most critical reason why the king insects ignore it.
"Isa, have you scanned the map of the king insect?"
Thinking of this, Xue Hua quickly asked the adjutant for the map recorded by the King Insects when they searched the area before, and Isa quickly sent the map to the main nest mind.
Xue Hua followed the map to find the location of the stone pillar, and sure enough he found that the stone pillar looked like a sandstone tower with uneven surfaces from a high altitude.
Moreover, he also found another huge red stone next to the stone tower. This thing was half buried in the soil of the jungle floor. The surface was covered with vines and attached vegetation. If you didn't identify it carefully, you would just think that it was
It was a naturally raised part of the jungle floor, or the remains of a giant tree.
Seeing this scene, Xue Hua became more convinced of his idea, and then he also thought of the huge stone statues with human heads that existed in remote oasis areas and even other areas in the desert in previous games.
Could this stone pillar be the same thing as those stone statues?
But he hasn't found that kind of human-headed stone statue anywhere else in the world?
In any case, the stone pillar is definitely not a naturally formed thing.
As for what it is and whether it has anything to do with what Xue Hua is currently looking for, we can only draw a conclusion until we get closer.
...
As the saying goes, Wangshan is like running to death, and there is really no problem with this statement.
Even at the speed of the insect swarm, and even relying on the Thunder Beast to act as a forklift at the front of the team, by the time Xue Hua really approached the stone pillar, the time had changed from early morning to that afternoon.
It wasn't until he actually came under the stone pillar that Xue Hua discovered that the height of the stone pillar was far higher than he had imagined before. At the same time, he also confirmed his guess - this stone pillar was by no means naturally formed.
Even after countless years of wind and rain, and even though the stone pillar has been covered with moss and various wall-climbing plants up to its waist, there are still vague traces of artificial carvings and rest on the stone pillar.
Xue Hua summoned a supervisory king insect and asked it to lower itself to inspect the upper part of the stone pillar. Then he discovered that the stone pillar was covered with all kinds of exquisite flower carvings and various mysterious runes, large and small.
And even with Xue Hua's cultural relic identification skills, which can't even be called a three-legged cat, he can easily identify that the carvings on it are definitely not human craftsmanship.
The reason is very simple, because all the "characters" in the exquisite decorations on the stone pillars all have a "cat face".
This is the work of cat people.
But a new problem has arisen.
Cat people?
Shouldn't they have been eroded by the energy of hell and all entered hell in the year of the demonic invasion?
The tribe of cat people left in the desert are all just projections of those cat people who have been transformed into demons.
In other words, they are just monsters.
The reason why they can still live together in groups is just the habitual traces retained by their bodies.
Just like the fallen demons.
But you have to say that the cat-man projection can carve flowers and erect such an extremely majestic stone pillar with unknown purpose here...
No matter what reason you give, Xue Hua won't believe it.
And speaking of cat people, he suddenly remembered another question.
That's why there are no cat-person projections in this oasis?
You must know that in the game, there are cat people in the distant oasis, and judging from the information Annie found in the tavern, many professionals have encountered cat people projections in this oasis.
However, until now, Xue Hua had never seen even a single cat hair, let alone a cat person.
And just when Xue Hua was puzzled about the purpose of this stone pillar and the time of its establishment, the Supervisory King Insect, who was closely observing the upper half of the stone pillar, made some discoveries.
From its field of vision, Xue Hua saw that below the fracture of the stone pillar, there were long strips of small holes with very neat edges. The way these small holes were divided was very interesting. They were arranged in a very dense form.
The parts of the piece are together, but sometimes there is a long distance between the two pieces, as if someone had thrust countless long swords of the same width into it at intervals.
In addition, there are many deep scratches all over the stone pillar. These scratches are criss-crossed and densely covered the entire upper part of the stone pillar.
The moment he saw these scratches, the first thought that flashed through Xue Hua's mind was...
——Could it be that the two sword immortals who accidentally traveled here had a big fight here?