The eight red lines of light collided at the center point, locking into a precise octagonal pattern. A shifting thud echoed, deafening those present. The belly of the cauldron split open, revealing a circular hole that swallowed all surrounding light. The giant carapace monster in the sky dropped its body even lower. The air pressure caused the blue stone ground around them to crack in long fissures.
"The cauldron is opening!" Han Dong shouted, shielding his head with both hands.
The red crystal pillar near Zhao Lin erupted with a humming sound. A sudden pull shot out from the cauldron's hole, slamming directly into Zhao Lin's body. The youth did not even have time to scream as his feet were forcibly uprooted from the ground. He was pulled and vanished into the darkness of the bronze hole in the blink of an eye.
"Zhao Lin!" Li Wei screamed in terror, seeing his friend swallowed by the hole. Before Li Wei could move away, the fourth pillar near him reacted. A pillar of red light enveloped Li Wei's chubby body. Li Wei howled hysterically, his hands reaching into the empty air before he was pulled upward with brutal speed. His body struck the lip of the cauldron hole and was instantly swallowed inside.
The eight-pillar formation now functioned like a giant vacuum suction machine. The seventh pillar lit up and captured Fang Hua. The girl did not resist; her limp body was instantly lifted into the air. Lin Mei followed the next second, pulled from her sitting position with blood still dripping from her head.
"Xinghe! What is happening in there?!" Han Dong shouted, holding back panic, his hands tightly gripping the stone foundation.
"Don't resist the pull, Han Dong! Let the cauldron take you!" Chu Xinghe shouted back. He held Xin Yan's arm tightly so the girl wouldn't be thrown in the wrong direction due to the windstorm from the monsters above them.
Han Dong nodded in resignation. He released his grip on the stone foundation. The third pillar emitted a gravitational beam and immediately sucked Han Dong upward. The youth vanished into the belly of the cauldron without a trace. On the ground, the situation grew even more devastated. One of the giant tentacles from the sky slammed into the black wooden pavilion area in the distance.
The ancient building exploded into wooden splinters that flew in every direction. The shockwave threw Yun Hai forward. The sixth pillar responded to Yun Hai's blood. The red light caught the girl's body while she was still floating in the air from the explosion. Yun Hai was sucked up in an inverted position, entering the cauldron followed by shards of blue stone that were also pulled in.
Now only two pillars remained glowing for Chu Xinghe and Xin Yan. The distance to the carapace monster with dozens of yellow eyes was now only a few dozen meters above their heads. "Xin Yan, your turn!" Chu Xinghe pushed Xin Yan's back toward the fifth pillar.
Red light immediately wrapped around the girl's body. Xin Yan was pulled upward. Her hand reached out toward Xinghe. "Come with me, Xinghe! Quickly!"
Xin Yan vanished into the hole. Chu Xinghe stood alone on the shattered land. He ran around toward the first pillar where his blood was smeared. The sound of giant bones cracking echoed from the edge of the formation. The five dead black dragons that had been lying stiff suddenly opened their jaws wide and roared softly. The four phoenixes beside them spread their black wings simultaneously, shrieking loudly until the ground beneath Xinghe's feet broke into pieces.
The iron chains binding them tightened hard. The first pull from the dragons made the entire foundation of the bronze cauldron sway. Chu Xinghe jumped exactly toward the first pillar. The red pull from the cauldron hole caught his body. He was sucked upward just as a giant thorny tentacle slammed into the spot where he had stood a second ago. Xinghe passed the bronze lip. Absolute darkness greeted him, followed by a hard impact as his back hit the cold crystal floor.
He rolled for several meters and stopped after hitting something soft. It was Han Dong's leg. Inside the cauldron room, the eight youths lay tumbled on top of the platform floor. Not one of them had the strength to stand up immediately. They moaned in pain while feeling their limbs to ensure nothing was broken. The bottom of the bronze cauldron closed back up with a very loud thud.
The last gap that brought light from the dead planet was perfectly sealed. The room was again illuminated by the dim glow of the purple mist on the ceiling and the rotating disc in the center of the platform. Outside, the giant dragons and phoenixes moved their wings and bodies brutally. The bronze cauldron jerked upward with great force. Every member of the group was thrown back to the floor, fighting off nausea. The cauldron raced up through the thin atmosphere of the blue planet in a straight trajectory.
The crystal floor beneath them gradually became transparent. This allowed them to look straight down at the land they had just left. Chu Xinghe forced himself to crawl, pressing his face against the crystal floor. His other friends also peered down with bated breath. The carapace monster with dozens of yellow eyes landed exactly on the eight-pillar formation area.
Its incredibly massive body crushed the remains of the pillars into glittering dust. Hundreds of faceless pale creatures, some of whom were still prostrating on the ground, were instantly flattened, dying immediately under the monster's weight. Their blue blood sprayed everywhere, staining the planetary stone. The purple-tentacled entity followed in its descent. Its giant tentacles struck the land, creating new craters the size of continents.
They moved, crawling in search of remnants of life, destroying everything in their path. The valley holding the liquid mercury pool churned violently due to the pressure from above. The thick blue glowing mercury fluid overflowed from its nest, flooding the stone land and sweeping away the remains of the giant butterfly skeletons. The lotus-bud-shaped crystal stone in the middle of the pool was crushed under the foot of one of the thorny tentacles.
"They are destroying that planet," Li Wei muttered, his teeth chattering in fear. He hugged his own body tightly.
The speed of the black dragons and phoenixes continued to increase. They had already pierced through the boundaries of the dark blue planet and returned to the void of space. However, the sight of the destruction below was not over. The tentacled monster and the black carapace monster did not come alone. From behind the vacuum, dozens of other cosmic beings with much larger and more disgusting forms descended toward the planet.
Some resembled giant earthworms with mouths full of saw-like teeth, while others appeared as thick acid mists that dissolved the planet's rocks in seconds. The mass of dozens of giant entities was too heavy for the structure of the dead blue planet to bear. Bright yellow glowing cracks began to appear along the planet's equator, spreading quickly to both poles. The planet's core emitted a blinding light.
"The planet is cracking," Yun Hai said with a trembling voice. She pointed toward the yellow fissure growing larger on the crystal floor display. "It's going to explode soon..."
The fissure erupted. The dark blue planet shattered into pieces before their eyes. Fragments of rock the size of continents were thrown in all directions into the void. The planet's core released a blue and yellow shockwave that swept through space at a lethal speed. The shockwave of the planet's explosion hit the swarm of cosmic monsters that were devouring its land.
Several smaller monsters were reduced to cosmic ash, while larger entities were thrown away with horrific burn marks on their bodies. Purple flesh and black carapaces flew among the remains of the planet's stone. The shockwave continued to spread wide and finally caught up with the position of the bronze cauldron. A powerful wind struck the bottom of the cauldron with a thud that rang in their ears.
The platform room fell silent a few moments after the explosion. Han Dong struck the crystal floor with his remaining strength. "What kind of place did we just go to? What kind of monsters are they?!"
"That is no longer our business," Chu Xinghe replied flatly. He sat cross-legged, rubbing his shoulder which felt numb. "That planet is gone. We are lucky we didn't turn to ash along with it."
Zhao Lin sat hugging his knees in the far corner. He cried silently, his shoulders shaking up and down. The wealthy youth who was always arrogant was now nothing more than a hollow shell, scared to death.
Lin Mei tore the bottom of her shirt and tied it around her injured head. Her blood had stopped dripping heavily, but her face was extremely pale. Fang Hua helped her tie the knot with hands that were still trembling.
"Xinghe, you told us to smear the blood earlier," Xin Yan said, crawling closer to Xinghe. "How did you know the cauldron would respond to our blood?"
"I didn't know for sure," Chu Xinghe stared at the dried bloodstains on his fingernails. "I only saw the support pillar react when Lin Mei's blood touched it. The paintings on the second floor of the pavilion showed a process of blood cleansing. Hu Yan also wrote about cheating death. I just combined the guess that this place was designed to read the blood of living beings."
Li Wei wiped the snot from his nose. He looked at Chu Xinghe with a mixture of emotions. "You gambled with our lives. If your guess was wrong, we would all be dead down there, Xinghe."
"If I hadn't gambled, we would definitely have died trampled by those tentacles, Wei," Chu Xinghe replied without emotion. "In this place, there are no guarantees; we have no user manual, and we can only grope around in the darkness."
Chu Xinghe looked at his friends as a whole, realizing that they were all injured. He lowered his head again and closed his eyes for a moment; his knuckles still felt sore, and the view outside continued to sweep around this giant bronze vessel. He straightened his face again, staring at the seasonal disc on the floor.
"Look," Chu Xinghe said, staring somewhat blankly at the disc. "Spring-Autumn. I have the thought that when we landed in a place like that, the disc chose the leaf and 'dropped' us, perhaps like we were being shed. And when we re-entered by giving blood to the pillars..."
Chu Xinghe raised his hand, pointing toward the disc with a slight tremor. "It changed back to spring. I'm starting to think, humorously, that this is like a womb. When you are in the womb, you keep waiting and looking out, hoping to see what kind of world it is. And when you are born, you fall from your mother's belly to face the world and stop at several places in your life."
"We are confused and didn't want this furnace because it took us far from Earth," Chu Xinghe muttered, looking down again. "Yet when danger occurred and it was the only shelter in this vast universe, we found no protection as good as what this furnace provides, even if we don't know where it will go next."
Chu Xinghe bent his knees and hugged them. He closed his eyes, but the image of the giant tentacle leveling the blue stone hill was still burned into his corneas. He exhaled softly as Li Wei tapped his shoulder, raising his head again to look at his chubby friend.
"Enough, you're starting to talk too far." Li Wei gently patted his friend's shoulder while his hand reached into the backpack now lying in the middle of the eight people.
Li Wei took out several vacuum water pouches and handed them to Lin Mei and Fang Hua. His hands were still trembling slightly, but hunger and thirst were pressing. Han Dong received a metal ration box and forced it open.
"Eat," Han Dong said shortly, offering a nutrition bar to Yun Hai, who was leaning her head on Xin Yan's leg. "We don't know how long this journey will take. Save your strength. Let's not have anyone passing out again."
Yun Hai accepted the food with hands dirty from blue stone dust. She chewed it slowly, her eyes staring blankly at the seasonal disc, which had returned its glow to the spring flower symbol. The scent of mountain jasmine filled the room again.
"Xinghe is right," Yun Hai muttered between chews. "This furnace is like a womb. But where is this womb taking us? If that planet was destroyed by those monsters as if it were just a clump of dirt, what will happen if they find Earth?"
"They won't find Earth," Han Dong replied quickly, as if trying to reassure himself. "The distance is millions, maybe billions of light-years. We just jumped through space. Earth is safe."
"Safe?" Zhao Lin laughed dryly. He had stopped crying, but his eyes looked wild and unstable. He held his water pouch with such a strong grip. "Did you see those dead dragons and birds? They came from the outside to Earth! They rose from beneath the harbor of Guangzhou, Han Dong! If the corpses pulling this furnace can come to Earth, what guarantee is there that those tentacled monsters can't enter through the same hole?"
Zhao Lin's question silenced everyone. The fear was real. If the pillars beneath Guangzhou were a landing pad, then there was a possibility those pillars could also serve as an entrance for other entities. Chu Xinghe did not join in the meal. He just sat and accepted water from Li Wei while staring at the dragons and phoenixes outside.
"They won't enter Earth," Xinghe said softly, wiping his lips. "They... maybe they came because I mentioned that name earlier."
"What are you talking about, Xinghe? Don't start with that nonsense!" Han Dong set his ration box down roughly. His eyes stared at Xinghe sharply. "You said it was a coincidence. You said you only read what was written on the stone. Now you're saying those monsters came because of you?"