After walking around for about two hours, it became so dark inside the halls that one couldn’t see their fingers stretched out before them.

Everyone returned to the main hall and lit a bonfire.

The guards accompanying the Queen began setting up pots to boil water and cook food, while Feng Miaojun wandered throughout the hall, hoping to find clues related to the Ao Fish inscription.

The place was simply too vast. Even with her divine sense extended to its limits, she couldn’t thoroughly investigate everything in a short time.

Chen Dachang suddenly said, “There are no living creatures here.”

Yu Haizhen started: “What?”

“Normally, abandoned places are crawling with vermin, but not here,” Chen Dachang casually pointed around, “There isn’t even a single spider web.”

Everyone exchanged glances, then carefully observed their surroundings, only to discover he was right:

Apart from the humans present, there were no other living beings in this enormous temple.

Forget scorpions, centipedes, or green snakes—not even moths, ants, or other common small creatures found in every rural household could be seen here!

Yet once outside the main hall of the Celestial Deity, such creatures were everywhere.

Feng Miaojun solemnly asked Yu Haizhen, “Do you sense anything?”

Yu Haizhen slowly opened his eyes and shook his head.

After thinking for a moment, Feng Miaojun took out a walnut-sized ant nest from her garments, placed it on the ground, and tapped it gently twice.

Blood-red ants immediately rushed out from the nest. Each was only the size of a pinhead, yet bore terrifying large mouths.

These were the infamous Heart-Devouring Ants. Normally, with just a command from Feng Miaojun, they would charge forward unhesitatingly, even into a sea of boiling oil or raging fire.

But this time was different.

The Heart-Devouring Ants circled the ground twice, seemed to space out for a moment while scratching the antennae on their heads, and then hurriedly retreated into their nest—much faster than they had emerged.

No matter how Feng Miaojun urged them, they refused to come out again.

Everyone who witnessed this found it extremely strange.

After some thought, Feng Miaojun took out a Ghost-Faced Nest Spider and placed it on the ground.

This mother spider carried hundreds of baby spiders on her body. Feng Miaojun had intended to use them to search the hall, but as soon as the spider touched the ground, it froze as if under a paralysis spell, not moving an inch.

When its mistress touched it again, the Ghost-Faced Nest Spider immediately climbed back up her finger and into her sleeve.

Feng Miaojun took a light breath: “Both spirit pets sense an invisible pressure within the hall that prevents them from moving freely or even facing it directly.” That’s why they retreated to their nests seeking their master’s protection, though they couldn’t clearly express exactly what they felt.

After all, they were just two creatures without spiritual intelligence.

But precisely because of this, they were many times more sensitive than beings with higher intelligence.

Chen Dachang suggested in a low voice, “Perhaps we should move elsewhere?”

“No need,” Feng Miaojun nudged aside a small pile of embers with her toe. “Humans have often lit fires and spent the night here. Even if there is a deity watching three feet above our heads, it won’t single us out for punishment.”

But Chen Dachang pointed to the stone platform below the divine statue: “There are bloodstains there.”

He had been sitting there earlier and noticed some blackish marks on the platform. Everyone present was battle-hardened; they could tell at a glance that these were the remnants of congealed blood, darkened with age.

A guard walked over and moved aside the jumbled debris in front of the platform, revealing more bloodstains to everyone.

These bloodstains weren’t randomly splattered from an animal’s neck but appeared deliberately placed—a dab here, a smear there. The stone platform wasn’t blank either; it was carved with extreme precision into a scroll painting.

The carving depicted humans, beasts, and demons, along with strange creatures others couldn’t even name. But they were all prostrating in worship, their gazes directed toward a large tree in the center of the image.

The carving was incredibly lifelike, even capturing the expressions on the creatures’ faces.

The reverence, adoration, and submission were heartfelt.

Feng Miaojun let out a soft “hmm,” prompting Yu Haizhen to immediately ask, “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Feng Miaojun shook her head, though she was inwardly shocked. This carved scroll seemed familiar to her—on the Ji vessel fragments she had retrieved from the ancestral shrine in Yao Kingdom, there were similar figure depictions. However, the fragments showed only limited content; she knew all the figures were looking at something but didn’t know what that object was.

Now she could guess—it was the great tree carved in the center of the stone platform.

If the Realm Deity’s altar had been complete, would it have shown this same pattern? Given the relationship between the Celestial Deity and the Realm Deity, she was quite confident in making this connection.

“I just find it strange that this stone platform carving has no coloring,” Feng Miaojun looked around, “Look at the surroundings.”

With her prompting, everyone noticed the anomaly:

Not just in the Celestial Deity’s main hall, but throughout the temple complex, all interior decorations were vibrantly colored, primarily in red, blue, and green. Moreover, there were digging marks everywhere in the hall, where treasure hunters in later ages had forcibly pried off the genuine gold plating.

Regardless, this reflected the aesthetic preferences of humans then. The stone platform stood directly beneath the deity’s statue, occupying the central position in the entire hall. Its importance was self-evident, yet it retained its original grayish-white base color without a trace of pigment.

The carvings must have consumed the heart’s blood of countless skilled craftsmen. How could the original builders have been so careless as to forget to color it?

The only explanation was that this “blank canvas” was intentional.

Combined with the placement of the bloodstains, Yu Haizhen suddenly realized: “Someone used blood to find a mechanism.”

Stepping back several dozen paces, one would notice that the bloodstains were strategically placed, mostly on the eyes of the carved creatures and on the leaves of the great tree they were worshipping.

Rather than “staining,” it was more like “rubbing.”

When transcribing tablet inscriptions or vessel patterns, people often use the rubbing method, applying ink, and covering with paper. Here, fresh blood had replaced ink. Following their guidance, everyone discovered that all carvings stained with blood had a protruding quality, like—

Like buttons.

In other words, among the treasure hunters, someone like Feng Miaojun had noticed the stone platform’s special nature but had thought even further, attempting to use blood-rubbing to find mechanisms hidden within it.

That person firmly believed something was inside the platform.

This was entirely possible. The statue was so magnificent, and the stone platform beneath it stood ten feet high and several tens of feet long. If it were hollow, the space inside would be quite substantial—at least several dozen square feet.

Chen Dachang stroked the platform: “I wonder what material this is made of. It seems very solid.”

Feng Miaojun was more direct, taking out her Star Sky Awl and stabbing it directly into the stone wall.

“Ding!” A few sparks flew, but the stone wall remained undamaged.

She gradually increased her force, but the result remained unchanged. Not even a white mark could be left on the grayish-white stone surface.

“No wonder that person went to such lengths to find a mechanism. This thing is incredibly hard and can’t be forcibly opened.” As Feng Miaojun said this, she suddenly understood, “That’s it—Zhao Yun!”