“This is…” Despite having mentally prepared themselves, the disappointment was written plainly on everyone’s faces.
Influenced by those few, the others also looked up at the sky, and quickly discovered the undeniable fact of two moons hanging overhead.
“How can this be?” Many cried out, unable to stop themselves. The last remaining hope of going home was shattered — they would never see their families again. Many of the female students broke down sobbing. It was now clear to everyone: they had truly gone far beyond Earth, and there was no going back.
“Mars… has two moons… equivalent to what we see as the moon from Earth…” Kai De murmured in his imperfect Chinese, then broke into rapid English, exchanging words with Li Xiaoman.
Over the past decades, several space probes had transmitted a great deal of valuable data about Mars back to Earth. Both moons orbiting Mars were extremely small bodies. Taking into account their altitude and other factors, if observed from the Martian surface, Phobos would appear roughly half the size of the moon as seen from Earth. Deimos would be even smaller, but still far brighter than ordinary stars — a miniature moon.
Those with some knowledge of Mars explained all of this, and a deep, heavy disappointment settled over everyone. There appeared to be no path home. The immediate priority was to find a way to stay alive.
They had already moved six hundred meters from the Five-Colored Altar. The faint light source was now much closer — seemingly no more than five hundred meters away. Without further delay, the group continued pressing forward.
A night breeze drifted softly, carrying a faint chill.
After another hundred or so meters, the light source was drawing ever closer. Then, at that moment, someone let out a startled cry — a collapsed structure had been discovered. It appeared to be an ancient pavilion that had crumbled under the wearing of time.
“A man-made pavilion — there must be people on this Desolate planet. We can surely find a way to survive.”
“Is this really Mars? Why would there be human structures here? The air, temperature, gravity — none of it feels all that different from Earth. It feels just like a desert back home.”
Although the disappointment was immense, no one had fallen into despair. They had many questions without answers.
“We’ve already seen Dragon Corpses — what does all this amount to compared to that? Perhaps this is some special region of Mars.”
“Perhaps. There is a grand Five-Colored Altar built here that could receive those nine Dragon Corpses and the Bronze Coffin. Calling this a place sealed by the gods isn’t out of the question.”
“If our guess is right and this is only a small, special region of Mars, then the space we have to survive in might be very limited.”
Those words brought a hush over everyone.
“If this is only a small patch of pure land on Mars, then what future do we have?!”
Everyone’s emotions surged and churned. It was a matter of their lives and their future — no one could stay calm.
“Ah…!” A female student suddenly let out a sharp scream, ringing out with particular clarity under the night sky.
“What happened?” Everyone’s expressions shifted as they rushed to ask.
“A skull — a human skull!” The girl’s face had drained of color. Her body trembled uncontrollably as she stumbled backward step by step.
Not far from the collapsed pavilion, half of a snow-white skull was exposed from the gravel — the female student had just stepped on it, which was no wonder she was so terrified.
All the male students crowded over. Pang Bo nudged the skull free from the sand with his foot. It was clearly the skull of an adult. No telling how many years it had been there — it was nearly weathered away, the bone surface no longer smooth, covered in many rough cracks.
What was startling was a perfectly regular circular hole in the skull’s frontal bone, roughly the width of a finger, as though driven through by a sharp weapon. The edges of the hole were perfectly smooth.
“It seems this place is full of unknowns and variables. Though these are old bones left from many years ago, it would still be wise for us to be careful.”
The unfamiliar environment and its many uncertain factors sent a chill into everyone’s hearts.
“What are those things ahead?”
Beneath the hazy night sky, the two small moons gave off only a dim glow, and all that could be made out in the distance was a series of undulating shapes — what appeared to be clusters of jumbled rocks linked together, uneven in height, jagged and irregular.
When they drew close, everyone stopped in their tracks, stunned. It was a vast stretch of ruins. What loomed before them was only a small portion — a far greater expanse of ruins spread laterally off into the distance.
Broken walls and crumbling remnants, the ground littered with rubble — all of it seeming to speak of some tale long lost to history. Under the moonlight, the place exuded a profound desolation. In its time, this must have been a magnificent, sprawling palace complex; now it was a scene of utter ruin.
These were massive ruins, covering enormous ground, with every foundation constructed of stacked boulders. One could easily imagine the grandeur and scale of the palace as it had once stood.
And the light source lay at the very far end of these ruins — just beyond a broken wall.
“Are we… truly on Mars? There was once a magnificent palace complex here?”
“How many people would it have taken to complete a project of this scale?”
“What could have caused this to become a ruin — what brought down these great, towering structures entirely?”
Everyone had nearly forgotten their fear. The vast ruin before them filled every person with wonder. If they truly were on Mars right now, all of this was beyond comprehension.
Ye Fan said calmly, “In fact, there’s nothing so strange about it. Today we’ve experienced many things that by any rational measure should not have happened. At this point, even if someone told me that this vast ruin is the remains of a Celestial Palace, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Pang Bo sighed. “Ruins of a Celestial Palace… it genuinely seems possible. After all, we’ve already seen Dragon Corpses with our own eyes.”
Hearing those words, everyone couldn’t help but be taken aback. Ruins of a Celestial Palace — perhaps that was not so far-fetched after all.
The light source lay just ahead, spilling softly from behind that broken wall, casting a faint ring of pale luminescence around it — an indescribably hazy, sacred glow.
“What is that, exactly?”
The light source drifted and shifted at the far end of the ancient ruins, making the broken walls and crumbled remnants appear all the more desolate and forlorn — which only deepened the sense of mystery.
Crunch… crunch… crunch…
The sounds of the group treading over rubble rang out in waves, carrying far through the wide-open night sky. They made their way past one after another of the collapsed palaces, and at last passed through the vast expanse of ruins. Just ahead, though that broken wall had lost a portion of itself, it still stood four to five meters high — one could only imagine how towering it must have been in its prime.
“Let’s see once and for all what that light source actually is!”
The group carefully rounded that great broken wall and came to the very edge of the ruins. All at once, a breath of air that brought ease to the body and mind swept over them. It seemed as though a divine light cut across the void, entering every pair of eyes.
They had fully emerged from the ruins, coming out on the other side of the broken wall — and now they could clearly see what lay ahead as the light source.
Fifty meters away, an ancient temple sat in quiet stillness — a flickering blue-flame oil lamp before an ancient Buddha, a single pinprick of light.
Before the ancient temple, an ancient Bodhi tree stood vigorous and gnarled as a coiling serpent, its entire form withered and bare. Only a sparse scattering of five or six leaves clung to a single dried branch hanging two meters above the ground. Each leaf was crystalline and translucent, shimmering with a green radiance — like jade of divine make.