"Ronaldo, why did you stop? Hurry up and go!"
The pirate who stopped was behind Iron Skin, forcing the pirate at the very end of the line to stop as well.
The room was dim. The pirate held his torch higher and saw his companion in front of him trembling slightly, occasionally twitching.
Then, he turned around, his eyes empty and blank, staring intently at the pirate in front of him.
By the torchlight, Lex saw the pirate's gaze, and his skin immediately broke out in goosebumps.
Edwina in front immediately shouted, "Get away from him! Something's wrong with him!"
Suddenly, the people at the front and back of the line quickly scattered. Only after they had all moved away did the pirate named Ronaldo suddenly roll his eyes upwards, leaving only the whites visible.
Then, with a 'click,' he sharply tilted his head, and the muscles in his face abruptly pulled upwards, revealing eight teeth, one of which was made of gold.
After giving everyone a 'naive' smile, Ronaldo suddenly turned and lunged towards the nearby window, leaping out without hesitation.
He rapidly fell, and soon after, he crashed to his death at the rugged foot of the mountain!
The air seemed to solidify for a moment.
After a while, Edwina finally uttered a sentence: "He was probably possessed by an evil spirit."
Lex immediately tapped the scabbard of his 'Devil May Cry', causing the pristine white surface of the greatsword's scabbard to emit a dark golden Light, making the surrounding pirates feel warm and dispelling the evil.
Lex, who had once again used Sun Halo, said, "We need to leave quickly."
Edwina nodded in agreement. She wasn't afraid of evil spirits, but in this environment, a conflict could trigger a terrifying disaster.
She looked at the corner of the wall, where thick wooden beams extended from the hard cliff, supporting this wooden house.
"Walk along the wall, keep your distance, and watch out for each other."
Iceberg Admiral quickly gave the order, then took the lead, walking along the wall, stepping on the footholds supported by the wooden beams, demonstrating.
In this way, they passed one wooden house after another, crossing one platform after another.
During this process, no one else was possessed by evil spirits, but they saw many corpses. From the simple clothing and strange ornaments on the corpses, it was not difficult to tell that these were the natives of the Sea Island.
There were male and female corpses, old and young, all reduced to mere skeletons.
Some corpses were curled up in a ball, as if they had endured boundless fear before dying.
Some corpses were tightly bound by tree vines, which seemed to indicate they were to be sent to the previous tunnel for some kind of punishment, but for some unknown reason, they ultimately remained in the wooden house.
Some had even killed each other, and such remains accounted for the majority. These remains were concentrated in one wooden building, almost filling the ground, forcing the pirates to clear a path to get through.
As they passed through this wooden building, a question arose in everyone's minds: what exactly happened back then?
After finally passing through this cluster of buildings, what appeared before them were the same tall, steep stone steps. And from here on, there were large murals on the cliff face.
Although the colors of these murals had faded with age, their content could still be barely made out.
The first mural seemed to depict the life of the Sea Island natives. They fished, hunted, and cultivated what appeared to be bananas.
After a native died, the body would be given to nature, to be consumed by wild beasts and other scavengers. When only the skeleton remained, the head would be cut off and sent to the mountain, embedded in the mountain body, while the body would be burned and buried under a tree.
"What strange customs," Danitz exclaimed as he ascended the stone steps.
Edwina looked at the mural and said, "Many primitive tribes have ancestor worship. The natives believe that after their ancestors die, if a part of their body is left behind, the ancestor's Soul can remain in the world through it, continuing to protect them in some form."
"On other Sea Islands, I've also found customs of preserving the deceased's nails, fingers, or eyeballs. These all stem from the idea of ancestor worship."
Listening to Iceberg Admiral's textbook-like explanation, Lex, while gaining understanding, also couldn't help but marvel at how much Edwina resembled a university lecturer.
In the next few murals, it could be seen that the Nether Lord suddenly appeared above the Sea Island, landing at the volcano. In the first mural, the volcano had been smoking.
By the third mural, with the Nether Lord pressing down, the volcano was no longer smoking, as if it had suddenly become an extinct volcano.
Furthermore, the natives of the Sea Island worshipped the Nether Lord and the people on it as deities.
In one mural, the natives were all prostrate on the ground, as if they had received a divine oracle. Then they began to build stone steps, open tunnels, and attach their houses to the cliff.
"The natives' minds are very simple," Edwina explained to the pirates during a break. "They built their wooden houses on the cliff, hoping to live as close as possible to their deities, so they could be bathed in divine grace day and night."
"There are similar examples on other Sea Islands, where some local natives build houses on the highest mountain on the Sea Island, based on this very idea."
Absorbing her explanation, the pirates leaned against the cliff, taking out dried food and gnawing on it.
Only after everyone had basically eaten did Iceberg Admiral give the order to 'continue forward.'
But after rounding one side of the mountain, Danitz, who was scouting ahead, suddenly discovered that there were only three to five stone steps left. Further up, it was a smooth cliff.
And at this point, there was still some distance to the summit.
Danitz was instantly dumbfounded.
"No more path?" Hearing this news, Edwina personally went forward to investigate and indeed found that after a few more stone steps, it was a smooth mountain body.
"Why didn't those natives build the stone steps all the way up? They only built two-thirds of the way. What's the reason?" Danitz squatted down nearby, complaining incessantly.
Edwina held her fist loosely, gently resting it on her chin, her clear eyes sweeping around, passing over the skulls embedded in the mountain body on the cliff: "This is probably because the natives believed that the deities on the mountain should not be trespassed upon, so the stone steps were deliberately only built this far."
Danitz grumbled, "I think they all need to see a doctor. It makes no sense for stone steps to be almost at the summit and then they just stop working."
Jodeson smiled, looking at the mountain above and said, "Perhaps I can climb up and then throw a rope down. You can just climb up with the rope."
Lex saw his gaze sweep over the skulls on the mountain body and knew that Jodeson planned to use these skulls as leverage. However, at this moment, Edwina said, "Perhaps I misunderstood. It seems the natives did build this staircase all the way to the summit."
"It's just that this next section of the staircase requires activating a certain mechanism to appear."