“This is the ‘great secret’ you mentioned?” Qi Xia asked coldly.

“Heh heh…” The old man gave a strange laugh, then raised his head to look at Qi Xia. “Isn’t this a ‘great secret’?”

Hearing the old man’s laughter, Qi Xia looked down at the skull again. Although he could only see the back of the skull, judging from the dried cracks on the skull and the amount of sandy soil on it, it was simply that someone had died and been buried here.

Perhaps he had been dead for decades, or perhaps for several years.

No matter how you thought about it, this wasn’t anything extraordinary, much less a “secret.”

No one could say clearly how many people had died in this city over seven years, or how many corpses had been produced.

“Looks like I bet wrong,” Qi Xia raised his head to look at his now-empty forehead. “After all, it’s gambling—no one can always win.”

After Qi Xia finished speaking, he was about to leave, but the elder called out to stop him.

“Don’t go, young man!” The old man happily held up the skull, holding the kerosene lamp in his other hand. “Aren’t you curious?! I dug for so long to dig up this skull—how can you not be curious?”

Qi Xia helplessly stopped in his tracks and slowly turned around. In his eyes, this elder was no different from an ordinary madman.

Seeing that he had kept Qi Xia there, the elder hurriedly walked forward two steps, but he still clutched the skull tightly. “Young man! There’s more below! There’s a lot more!”

Qi Xia looked down expressionlessly at the skull in his arms. The lamplight was very dim, but he could still clearly feel that there was nothing special about this skull.

“So what’s the secret?” Qi Xia raised his head and asked.

“Young man… you must believe me… as long as you believe what I say, I’ll tell you everything!”

The elder said with a strange expression, “But you absolutely cannot think I’m a madman!”

“Alright, alright, alright!” The elder happily held the skull, then sat down on the ground with a thump.

Qi Xia also crouched down, and the two of them surrounded a small pool of lamplight in the pitch-black alley, staring at the skull before them.

The old man was about to speak when he suddenly froze slightly, then raised the kerosene lamp and moved it to a few centimeters in front of Qi Xia’s face, softly asking in confusion, “Young man… what’s wrong with your eyes? Are you sick?”

“Are you going to miss this opportunity?” Qi Xia asked.

“Look how anxious you are!” The old man grinned. “Then I won’t ask! I’ll tell you!”

Then he lowered his head, brought the kerosene lamp close to the skull, and said, “Young man… what do you say humans evolved from?”

Hearing this question, Qi Xia frowned slightly and asked, “What do you mean?”

“I’m saying… before humans became humans, what were they?” the old man asked again.

“Are you discussing ‘evolution theory’ with me?” Qi Xia felt somewhat mentally exhausted. “As long as you’re willing to believe it, humans can have evolved from anything other than humans.”

“Good…!” The elder nodded excitedly. “Hearing you say that… I can share my secret with you at ease! Do you believe… that ‘evolution theory’ also exists in this place?”

Qi Xia’s eyes grew slightly cold as he said, “You’re crazier than I imagined. As long as ‘Echoes’ exist, theoretically humans can turn into anything overnight—there’s no need for something like ‘evolution’ at all.”

“Yes… what you say makes a lot of sense, but I’ve felt its calling.” The elder reached out and patted the skull beside his hand.

“Calling?”

“I can feel that something incredible is buried beneath this city… so I used the iron shovel I found to start digging. After all this time… I’ve finally dug it up.”

After speaking, he slowly turned the skull beside him around to face Qi Xia with its front, then lowered the kerosene lamp to reveal the true appearance of that skull.

After seeing it, Qi Xia slowly widened his eyes.

This skull was very strange.

Although its exterior was completely in the shape of a skull, its front was actually smooth.

Not only did it lack eye sockets to hold eyeballs, it didn’t even have holes for nasal cartilage. The bottom of the entire skull was connected to the mandible, and even the position where teeth should have been was just flat. Qi Xia reached out to turn the skull around and discovered that indeed, even the position of the cochlea had no indentation.

In other words, the owner of this skull…

Had no face.

“Young man… say something!” The elder was clearly getting excited. “Doesn’t this skull overturn all your understanding?! Can you tell how long ago the owner of this skull died?”

Qi Xia kept a stern face and said nothing.

“At least ten years!!” The elder waved his hand and said, “Do you believe that the people here are evolving…? ‘Evolution theory’ really exists! Ten years ago, the people here didn’t even have faces!!”

Qi Xia reached out his hand and gently touched that skull. Having just emerged from the soil, its texture was warm and moist.

“Isn’t this a ‘great secret’?!” the elder said happily. “There are more similar skeletal remains below! Definitely not just one or two!”

After the elder finished speaking, he stared at Qi Xia for a long time, but discovered that the young man before him remained silent throughout.

“Why aren’t you speaking?” the elder said with a trembling voice. “I’m not crazy, am I? This skull really has no face!”

Qi Xia slowly stood up, then walked to the edge of the pit and looked down carefully. His eyes could generally adapt to the darkness in the alley now, and he could indeed see that the black soil below had exposed white bones—clearly there were many more skeletal remains waiting to be excavated.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” The elder came to Qi Xia’s side holding the kerosene lamp, saying with an excited expression, “Originally I wanted to dig for a while and then come up… but unexpectedly, I kept sensing the calling from deep underground… as if there was a mysterious force making me continue digging. Who would have thought that after digging and digging, I couldn’t get back up.”

After hearing this, Qi Xia picked up a small stone from the ground and casually tossed it into the deep pit.

“This is the deepest pit I’ve ever dug, and I never expected to really have a harvest…” the old man continued to mutter to himself. “I need to ‘Echo’ quickly and remember this location. Maybe I can discover an even greater secret deeper underground! I might be about to find the answer to this world!”

After a long silence, Qi Xia finally spoke. He let out a deep sigh and said, “Old man, if a person’s face is flat, can they still be called a ‘person’?”

“Why wouldn’t they be a person?” the elder said excitedly. “Young man, didn’t you just see? That skull is connected to a spine! It’s not some art piece someone made. Its bones have signs of oxidation. Although the face has no organs, there’s space to hold a brain. That is genuinely a human skull!”