Starting Off Survival With A Small Treehouse
Chapter 145 - 144: Altar in the Night

Chapter 145: Chapter 144: Altar in the Night

The appearance of the altar has changed?

"What do you mean?" Xu Xin frowned.

"Literal meaning." Ji Chaoyang’s footsteps could be heard from the other end of the call, "The four stone pillars and statues at the corners of the altar have disappeared, the sacrificial table moved to the side, and a staircase passage has appeared on the ground at the center of the altar!"

Staircase passage?

"A staircase passage leading below the altar?" Xu Xin asked.

"It does head downward, but..." Footsteps stopped, and Ji Chaoyang’s voice became a bit puzzled, "This passage is a dead end. After walking just a few dozen meters, it’s blocked."

Xu Xin had already moved away from the surrounding hills and entered the resource area.

To his surprise, the red mist seemed to only linger around the hills, not entering the resource area surrounded by them.

The area still had its original appearance, but looking around, it was encircled by hills shrouded in red mist.

"I’ve passed through the Red Mist, I’m almost at the altar, hang on, let me check my situation here first."

"Alright."

Xu Xin rode the Silver King, heading towards the altar at the center of the resource area without stopping, and reached the edge of the altar in just over a minute.

Seeing the current appearance of the altar, even though he had heard Ji Chaoyang’s description, he was still startled.

Just like Ji Chaoyang said, the stone pillars and statues on the original corners of the altar had completely disappeared, leaving only four smooth stone bricks at their original positions, distinctly different from the rough and uneven surface of the altar.

And the sacrificial table seemed to have been pushed aside, sliding entirely, with its original position now vacant, revealing the dark passage below.

To him, it felt like a coffin lid sliding open, somewhat eerie in the night.

Xu Xin rode the Silver King into the altar.

"Ka." A familiar sound came from underground again.

He walked to the entrance of the underground passage and looked inside.

Thanks to his night vision, Xu Xin quickly saw everything inside the passage, even catching a glimpse of the end.

It’s only about fifty or sixty meters to the end. Just like Ji Chaoyang described.

"Keke, is there any danger inside?" Xu Xin patted Keke’s head and asked.

"Whimper." Keke shook its head to signal no, then climbed onto Xu Xin’s shoulder. It knew Xu Xin was about to enter.

Xu Xin instructed the Silver King and Mimi to guard the entrance while he, along with Keke and the bat, stepped into the roughly two-meter-wide staircase passage.

Unlike the staircases in the dungeon, the staircase below the altar was not damp at all, in fact, it was quite dry, with thick dust covering the steps and the walls.

The passage was very hot.

Although it’s true that the current temperature wasn’t low, coupled with the windless day, making the outside stuffy, the heat inside the passage was even stronger, exceeding forty degrees. Staying too long might lead to heatstroke.

Xu Xin wiped the sweat off his forehead and continued downward.

There were some patterns carved on the passage walls.

He scrutinized them and found that these patterns were basically the same as those on the stone pillars outside and somewhat similar to the blood markings on mutant creatures.

Upon touching, Xu Xin felt the walls were unusually hot. This was likely the culprit causing the stifling heat and dryness inside.

The altar’s stone pillars had a similar situation. When he first touched a stone pillar, it felt unusually hot, and during sacrificial rites, the pillar would emit astonishing heat.

With the same patterns on the walls as the stone pillars, Xu Xin guessed that this passage might, like the stone pillars, need to be illuminated through sacrifice to activate the patterns.

Keke jumped off his shoulder and ran towards the end of the passage.

"Don’t run around, be careful of danger," Xu Xin warned Keke.

"Whimper!"

The bat was staying obediently by his side, and when Keke left Xu Xin’s shoulder, it landed back on his shoulder for a rest.

The further down they went, the hotter and more stifling it became, the temperature rising even higher.

At the end of the passage, although he walked only fifty or sixty meters, Xu Xin was now drenched in sweat, with a dry mouth.

"Whimper!" Keke called to Xu Xin from the end of the passage, with something placed on the ground by its side.

Xu Xin stepped forward, narrowed his eyes at the object on the ground, and picked it up with his hand.

[Damaged Little Windmill (White): Once possessed notable abilities, after being sacrificed, it is now completely damaged, becoming an ordinary little windmill.]

It was the little windmill Xu Xin had given to the little boy statue previously.

It seemed the Chang Yin Family also came into this underground passage.

But since it was a sacrificial item that lost its abilities, why did it appear here?

Keke stood upright, examining the paintings on the wall at the end of the passage.

"Whimper!" Keke touched the wall at the end of the passage with its little paws, quickly retracting them, rubbing its paws together.

Standing in front of this wall, Xu Xin could clearly feel the surging waves of heat coming from it.

The wall in front of them was completely out of place compared to the passage walls, as if it was a barrier inserted in the passage.

The patterns on the wall even emitted a faint glow, making the designs on the wall stand out clearly in the darkness.

"Is that... a bear?"

An animal was carved on the wall, standing upright with one paw raised ready to strike down. Clearly, it was a bear.

The bear carved on this wall looked incredibly solid and its limbs were extremely robust, unlike a black bear. Instead, it resembled the jungle king he had encountered before, the mighty brown bear that seemed as if it weighed tons.

This altar, what is its relationship with that brown bear?

Since that brown bear severely injured the Silver King and left with the wolf pack’s prey, Xu Xin had not seen it again in this jungle, nor had he seen its red glow on the map.

Excluding the brown bear, the most formidable beast Xu Xin had encountered in this jungle should have been the tiger that was poisoned and killed by the mutant cat.

He tried touching the wall with his hand, and sure enough, the temperature was extremely high, likely around seventy to eighty degrees.

Keke stepped back far from the wall after being burnt by it.

"Whimper!" Keke climbed onto Xu Xin’s shoulder and pointed at the scorching bright wall with a cry.

"Hmm? Are you saying there’s something good behind the wall?" Having cooperated for so long, Xu Xin could already understand the meanings in Keke’s varied cries.

"Whimper! Whimper!" Keke nodded its little head vehemently.

As expected, there was a path behind this wall, but he still didn’t know how to open it.

Taking out a spear, Xu Xin forcefully scratched the wall several times, yet he didn’t even leave a shallow mark.

It seemed impossible for him to break through this stone wall with sheer force given his current abilities.

He carefully examined his surroundings only to find nothing else, and with his mind dizzy from the heat, Xu Xin hurriedly led Keke and the bats out of the cave.

Once out, he wiped the sweat off his forehead that was about to drip into his eyes and sighed deeply.

"...It’s way too hot in there." Xu Xin licked his already cracked lips, feeling as if there was fire burning in his throat.

He immediately contacted Ji Chaoyang.

"How about on your side; any discoveries?"

"Same as you, also encountered an underground passage."

The two exchanged information and found their experiences were somewhat different.

The most obvious difference was that Ji Chaoyang’s side wasn’t very hot. Although the stone walls did emit some heat, the temperature was relatively normal, only a few degrees warmer than above ground.

Meanwhile, on Xu Xin’s side, by the time he reached the end, the air temperature had become ridiculously high. He had been in a sauna before, and the sauna room temperature was around 55 degrees. The end beneath the altar was definitely hotter than that, and much drier too, dry and hot like torture.

Another difference was that on Ji Chaoyang’s stone wall, there was an engraving of a ferocious-looking tiger.

"...Do you think the carvings on the wall symbolize the offerings we’re supposed to make? Offering the beasts depicted on the wall might open the wall blocking the passage," Xu Xin thought aloud.

"There’s another possibility, which is that the carved beasts are actually behind the wall," Ji Chaoyang shared his assumption, "and we might have to increase the progress of offerings to the ’Deity’ to open this wall."

Ji Chaoyang’s reasoning made sense.

Xu Xin hadn’t seen that brown bear for a long time. The bear was undeniably powerful, even a regular intermediate mutant beast would not survive a slap from it.

If anyone could limit its activities in this world, the so-called ’Deity’ would be a strong candidate.

If it mutated, it would surely be a boss-level entity, given that even in its unmutated state, it could defeat all intermediate mutant creatures Xu Xin had encountered so far.

Clearly, the wall at the deepest part of the passage wasn’t the end of it. There must be a way to open that wall.

To open the passage beneath the altar, sacrifices must be made at the altar.

When Xu Xin touched the scorching wall earlier, no notifications were triggered, so he couldn’t confirm whether his hypothesis was correct, but he had a hunch that the tunnel’s temperature might be associated with the progress of sacrifices.

As for why it was much hotter on his side compared to Ji Chaoyang’s, it’s likely because the Chang Yin Family had made offerings here, increasing the altar’s progress compared to Ji Chaoyang’s side.

The presence of the Chang Yin Family’s small windmill in the passage indicates that the altar’s changes are not permanent. They came here several days ago, and by noon today when Xu Xin arrived, everything had reverted to its original state.

...Wait a minute, could they have just been here?!

No, probably not. The ground in the passage had a layer of dust, and when he stepped on it, he left faint footprints. There were no other footprints when he entered, indicating the Chang Yin Family hadn’t visited recently.

Xu Xin’s mind started working furiously, considering various possibilities.

Ji Chaoyang told him that during the jungle hunting activity, he hadn’t returned to the treehouse at night and was still hunting near the altar. At that time, the altar hadn’t changed at night.

This indicated that the altar’s anomaly tonight wasn’t something that happened every night.

Xu Xin looked up at the sky.

Tonight there was no moon, no wind, and the starry sky was radiant. Meanwhile, a circle of hills around them was still covered in red mist.

Could it be that the underground passage of the altar only opens on a night without a moon?

The moon in this world wasn’t like Earth’s, where a moonless night occurs once a month. He had also noticed there were times when one day it was a new moon, and the next day suddenly a full moon.

After discussing, they agreed to return tomorrow during the day to confirm any alterations at the altar. Once the beasts return, they would immediately proceed with the sacrificial offerings.

Ending the call, Xu Xin exhaled.