Angela hadn't been paying attention the entire time, she had been looking at the statue.
For some reason, she also felt that this statue was familiar looking and she had been lost in its face. She wanted to remember who this was, but she just couldn't think of a name to match this face.
Lin Fan saw that she was in a daze and said, "Angela, what's wrong?"
When she heard Lin Fan's words, Angela snapped back to focus and after a slight pause she said, "No, nothing."
This was the first time since Lin Fan met her that she had been in a daze like this. It was clear that whatever she had seen, it had affected her quite a bit.
However, Lin Fan didn't ask her about this. Just like before, whenever she didn't seem to want to talk about something, Lin Fan never bothered asking.
If she ever wanted to talk about it, she would speak up, but before then, he wouldn't force his way in.
Lin Fan just asked, "Which way do you think we should go?"
It was only then that Angela realized that there were two paths in front of them.
After a bit of a pause, Angela pointed to the path on the left.
Lin Fan and Momonga looked at each other and without any hesitation, they walked towards the left path.
Angela stopped for another second to take one final look at the statue before following Lin Fan and Momonga through the corridor on the left.
They continued on through this corridor at a cautious pace since they didn't know what was ahead of them, they just knew that the King Beasts had arrived before them and they definitely had a lead.
While it wouldn't be a problem for them to kill the King Beasts, the only problem would be the consequences afterwards. Everyone would be doubtful as to how Lin Fan's group had slaughtered twelve King Beasts with just three people. This would definitely draw attention and people would start digging into their backgrounds, which was the last thing that Lin Fan wanted.
So for now, they would try to avoid the King Beasts as much as they could while trying to find the artifact, or even some information as to what the artifact was.
They continued through this normal looking hall under Momonga's darkness laws, being ever vigilant of anything that might come up, but there was nothing that did.
Eventually, they arrived at another room that was just like the previous one, but this time, there wasn't the same statue that was in the center of the room. This was just a room with three different exits this time.
Lin Fan and Momonga both turned to Angela again.
Lin Fan asked, "Which way should we go this time?"
Angela paused for a second to look at the center of the room before pointing at the middle corridor and saying, "That way."
They noticed the strange way Angela was acting, but still Lin Fan and Momonga followed her direction without any hesitation.
Momonga might have doubted it before, but after seeing it in action in the Sacred Rock Realm, he no longer had any doubts.
They moved down the same corridor as before and once again they came into another room.
This was another room that didn't have the statue in it, but there were four exits in front of them.
Just like this, they continued following Angela's direction to move through the various rooms with increasing amounts of exits. So far, they hadn't encountered anything, which meant that it seemed like they were on the right path, but they weren't sure either.
If they were on the right path, something should have happened or they would have escaped this infinite loop of rooms, right?
But still they continued on in this infinite loop of rooms.
Two exits turned to three, three exits turned to four, four exits turned to five, five exits turned to six, and so on and so on.
It seemed like they would never reach the end until something finally changed.
As they were walking through the corridor to their next room, they suddenly found something that shouldn't have been there.
On the floor of the corridor, there was a skeleton with a blade right beside it.
Neither the skeleton nor the blade had anything special about them, they didn't even give off an aura which would be normal for the corpse of an expert.
As far as they could tell, this was the corpse of a completely normal person, but how would this person have come this far to leave a corpse here? Unless it was a human that had incredible luck.
Lin Fan's group came over to look at the skeleton and the blade.
As far as Lin Fan could tell, it wasn't something that he had seen before and it was clearly not something that didn't seem important.
But when Momonga looked over the corpse, especially seeing the mark that was on the blade, he couldn't help knitting his brows. He carefully looked over the blade and the more he looked over it, the deeper his brows knitted.
It was clear that he recognized this blade and probably the owner, but since he was still checking the body, Lin Fan decided to leave him be for now.
That was until Momonga suddenly turned to Lin Fan and said, "Bring out one of the Desert Horrors for me."
Lin Fan was confused why Momonga suddenly asked this of him, but he still brought one of the giant ants out.
When the giant ant came out, it was surprised and confused why it was called out, but it didn't have much time to feel this way. Momonga suddenly tapped it on its forehead and the light in its eyes disappeared as it crumpled to the ground.
Lin Fan was surprised by this sudden action, but when Angela saw this, she also suddenly knitted her brows.
Lin Fan asked, "What did you do that…"
But before he could finish, Momonga raised his hand and made a "shh" gesture, telling him to be quiet for a bit.
Lin Fan was confused, but still he listened to Momonga and sat there in silence watching the Desert Horror. However, no matter how he looked at the Desert Horror, he couldn't understand what was happening.
However, based on how Momonga and Angela were looking at the Desert Horror, he knew that there must be something wrong.
After a while, Lin Fan finally noticed what was wrong.
As he looked over the Desert Horror corpse, he couldn't feel a single thing from it. It was just like it was an empty husk, not the corpse of a Silver Realm beast that had just died. All of the life energy that should have been in the corpse had already been drained away by an unknown thing.
When he realized this, Lin Fan couldn't help turning back to look at the skeleton and the blade on the ground.
Momonga gave a thoughtful hum before saying, "This place seems to be more dangerous than I thought."
When Lin Fan saw that Momonga was finally willing to talk, he asked, "What is going on here?"
Momonga looked up from the Desert Horror to look at the skeleton again and the blade before saying, "To tell you that, I have to tell you about this skeleton first."
Lin Fan looked back at the skeleton and asked, "What about it?"
Momonga paused for a second before giving a sigh, "There're many people who wouldn't remember him, but I'm one of those that do. This is the corpse of a rather well known Ruler from back in the days, but he suddenly disappeared one day. Everyone assumed that someone took care of him, but no one would have expected his corpse to be here."
Lin Fan was surprised when he heard this.
If this had been before the Sacred Rock Realm, Lin Fan wouldn't have known what this was, but after the Sacred Rock Realm, he had a deep understanding of Rulers. They were the ones that stood at the top of all the realms in this universe, being far above even the upper realms and the Stellar Kingdoms.
For a Ruler to fall in this lower realm, it must mean that there had to be something special here. For a Ruler's corpse to be completely drained of all its life energy, that must mean that something must be quite dangerous or mysterious…
Lin Fan then asked, "How do you know that this is the corpse of a Ruler when it has no life energy?"
Momonga pointed at a mark on the blade and said, "This is a special mark that only belonged on the weapon of this Ruler, no one else would ever be able to use this mark because it was a mark that was linked to his Realm. Even if he dies, with the imprint his Realm left on this world, it would have been impossible for anyone to copy it unless they were even stronger than him. So it's very likely that this is the original which makes it easy to recognize him."
Lin Fan finally knitted his brows when he heard this, "Does that mean that whatever is here is at the same level as Rulers or even higher?"
Momonga finally revealed a faint smile, "Isn't it exciting?"
As he said this, Momonga had slowly raised his hand and there was a seal that had formed in his palm as he watched Lin Fan's expression. He was completely tense, ready to make a move at any second.