Yarra’s Adventure Notes
Chapter 215 - 69 The Secret in the Moon_1

Chapter 215: Chapter 69 The Secret in the Moon_1

(263...084...458...improve your book group, pals, just join the flock. PS: All you lovely passers-by, please support us with your collections and recommendations; your backing is our biggest motivation. Besides, can we all give more feedback, folks? Thank you. PS2: There’s been a change in the book title, please refer to the related works. PS3: A massive shoutout to our friend, No Ling You, who donated a massive 100 Qidian coins, and to our friend, peom123, who bestowed 588 Qidian coins upon us. Thank you all for your continued support and encouragement).

The base of the pit was smaller than expected, with only six or seven hundred square meters compared to the thousand square meters at the entrance. As you look up from the base of the pit, you can catch only a small glimpse of the blue sky. In contrast to the walls of the pit, it appears particularly minuscule.

The base of the pit is covered in bare rock, with no traces of plant growth. A small pile of leaves, blown in from the surrounding jungle, have accumulated at the bottom of the pit. The leaves have broken down, creating a strange smell.

"It’s pretty damp here," Catherine picked up and sniffed a piece of decomposing leaf. "There’s no sign of it drying out, it’s completely rotten."

"The pit is so deep that it doesn’t get much direct sunlight," Pannis said, kicking a rock that seemed to have been there for years. There was damp soil under the rocks but no signs of insects: "There is something wrong with this place. No moss, no trees, not even the common insects. I don’t know if it’s just this pit or all seven."

"Why is that?" Catherine lifts a few more rocks, confirming no visible signs of life. "Could it be true what Elrad said – that there’s still a devastating power here?"

"Nothing so dramatic. If there was a special force affecting the human body, I would certainly feel it," Pannis shook his head, pointing to a few decaying leaves. "As you can see, the leaves have decomposed, which indicates that normal fungi can survive here. The lack of typical animals and plants could be because of certain minerals underground, making the soil unfavorable for their growth. But at least for now, it seems there won’t be any issues for short-term activity."

"Are you sure?" Catherine seemed a little skeptical but realized what Pannis was referring to. In the corner of the pit’s wall, there were some insignificant, charred marks. Around one such mark remained some small animal bones and debris.

"Over the past thirty years, at least two groups have camped here and they didn’t leave in a hurry," Pannis said as he studied the area meticulously. "They tided everything up before leaving. This means that no major threat would emerge in a short period."

"I can’t understand why anyone would camp here," Catherine shook her head. "They’d easily get seriously injured or even killed if there were landslides, and there’s no escape route. It’s a dead-end."

"Perhaps there were special reasons, like encountering a thunderstorm," Pannis shrugged, nonchalantly. "Rather than standing in an open field waiting for a lightning strike, why not hide down here? There are warning signs before a landslide, and it’s only about a hundred meters high, so a little caution should suffice. Let’s go, let’s check out the next one."

"How did you dismiss this place so easily?" Catherine pulled out four climbing hooks and hung them on the rope. After adjusting for a moment, she briskly climbed the rope even before Pannis could reply.

"Based on that diagram we garnered." Pannis’s voice floated up to her.

"Huh???" Scared by Pannis’s sudden response, Catherine almost fell off the rope. She turned her head and saw Pannis climbing bare-handed at the same pace, without using ropes. "Hey, are you a monkey? Aren’t you afraid of falling to death?"

"I don’t carry a hundred kilos of equipment and supplies on my back like you." Pannis took a sideway jump, grabbed the rope beneath Catherine to boost himself up, bypassed a nearly two-meter flat rock, and started climbing again. "My gear only weighs twenty or thirty kilos, so of course, climbing is easier for me. Don’t worry, I won’t drop."

"Shut up," Catherine scolded. "Just focus on climbing. Don’t make jokes about safety, and no talking. We’ll talk after we get up there."

"Okay, okay, you’re always right, Chief," Pannis grumbled slightly and nimbly climbed the cliffs, surpassing Catherine rapidly and disappearing into the pit’s opening.

When Catherine poked her head out of the pit, she saw Pannis running towards the next pit and jamming an iron peg into the ground, while Lina shouted from the camp: "So, big sis, did you find anything?"

"Nothing yet. Just be careful you don’t wake Vivian," Catherine shouted back. "I won’t save you if she beats you."

"She can’t beat me," Lina shouted back. "Once she’s asleep, she won’t wake. Not even by loud noise."

"Explosive Flame Spell." From the distant campgrounds, a giant ball of fire flashed by, followed by Lina’s sharp laughter.

"The world is finally quiet." Catherine put away her climbing irons and ropes, patting the dust off her head as she walked over to Pannis. Pannis had already secured another set of climbing gear, waiting for her arrival.

"I’ll go down first. Be careful when you follow; this hole was the one Vivian used as a trap yesterday." Pannis explained, "Although there’s no movement now, we can’t rule out that a Marrow Eater survived by a stroke of luck. Best to be prepared for defence."

"Okay." Catherine raised up the Falcon Shield, controlling the rope with one hand to descend swiftly after Pannis. After several uses of the rapid descender, she landed smoothly on the ground. Inside the pit, Pannis was desperately trying to piece together the scattered fragments of corpses on the ground, hoping to count the number of bodies.

"I remember a total of fifteen jumped down." Catherine asked, "We killed one together above, so the remaining fifteen are all down here, right?"

"Yes, all of those down here are dead, but I need to count to make sure the numbers match." Due to the many protruding rocks on the ground underneath the pit, several bodies had fallen on the rocks and were crushed, their limbs scattered. Blood and brain matter had congealed on the scattered ground, and shattered flesh and bone were everywhere. It was impossible to piece the bodies back together, so Pannis could only rely on his experience to quickly patch them together and count the bodies.

"Huh, there’s actually water here." At the side of the bottom of the pit, there was a deep groove, pitch black inside. They couldn’t see its interior, only hear the rushing sound of water from inside the groove. Catherine tossed down a rock to test. About two seconds later, the sound of the rock falling into the water reverberated, "The groove is deep, and the water flow is fast, and deep. An underground river?"

"Yes, there should be an underground river under these seven pits, and this river should be quite large. Otherwise, it couldn’t have caused such a large-scale collapse on the surface and formed such a terrain," Pannis finished counting the corpses and then lit a piece of a small-capacity light-attribute crystal shard and threw it down. The space below was not small, but the weak crystal light couldn’t fully illuminate it. Only a light ball fell straight to the bottom of the groove, was swept away by the water, and disappeared rapidly, "Be careful not to fall down. If you really fall and are swept away by the water, your chances of survival are almost zero."

"Such a narrow gap, I wouldn’t fit even if I wanted to," Catherine said, "So? Did you finish the count? Did any escape?"

"No, exactly fifteen." Pannis answered, "They’re all dead, no survivors."

"That’s good. Now we don’t have to worry about Dora and the others," Catherine said, "Could this place be the one indicated on the map? Although a puddle is shown on the map, from yesterday’s observations, there are no puddles in the center of the pits. The only water-related thing might just be this spot. Well, we might find more clues later, but I think this place is a strong possibility."

"That is also a possibility." Pannis furrowed his brow as he looked at the sky, "But my thoughts are just the opposite, it’s not here."

"Why?" Catherine asked, "I’ve been curious since earlier, how did you just look up and determine this?"

"It’s actually not just a simple glance." Pannis answered, "Allow me to explain."

Pannis spread the map out and pointed to the three moons, "Last night, no, earlier this morning when I was carefully observing this map, I found something unusual. The pits in this map are sketched rather crudely. But look at these three moons, I recalled the moon shapes from the Magic Tide Night and I feel that these sketched moon shapes are almost identical to the real ones."

"Is that so?" Catherine closed her eyes, recalling the moons she watched every night. The moons she had become so familiar with suddenly felt so foreign. "I’m sorry, I can’t really imagine it. But that’s fine, you continue."

"Then I thought, why is it like this? If they just wanted to mark the time, illustrating the full Azure Moon would be enough. Why would they need to sketch the other two moons so accurately?" Pannis stroked his chin as he pondered, "And a map, its purpose is to provide enough clues for the user to find their target. What if there are hints hidden in these three moons that we have not discovered?"

"Aren’t you being overassertive?" Catherine posed her doubts, "Just relying on the phase of the three moons can’t support your conjecture."

"Right, I thought so too. So I asked Vivian to do something." Pannis said, "My calculation skills are not high, and I’ve forgotten a lot about astronomy. I couldn’t support my calculations, so I asked Vivian to help. Using the proportions on the map and the lengths of the shadows of some objects measured with a ruler, she calculated the angles of the three moons from the ground. Amazingly, these angles matched the positions of the three moons when magical energy activity was at its peak during the Azure Night. Meaning, the shapes of the pits on this map were arbitrary, but the distances between the three moons and the lengths of the shadows were drawn to scale."