Chapter 379 The Sunken City
As soon as they crossed over, Zara grabbed Lucian by the arm.
"Stay close, Lucian. Don't wander off, or I'll have to report you missing."
Lucian was speechless.
They had no idea where the portal had brought them this time. It was pitch-black, so Zara pulled out her phone and switched on the flashlight.
There was no signal, but at least the phone could still provide some light.
"Use it sparingly," Lucian said. "If the battery dies, we'll have trouble contacting anyone when we get back."
"It's fine. I brought a power bank." She had come fully prepared.
Lucian had nothing more to say and could only keep moving with her.
They had brought Dino and Aurelion along again this time. After seeing Owen try to kill Aurelion without warning, Zara had decided it was not safe to leave him behind.
For now, however, both of them remained hidden inside her backpack.
The place where they emerged was damp and seemed to be some kind of basement. When Zara turned on the flashlight, its beam revealed piles of clutter everywhere. The room was dark, humid, and suffocating, with cobwebs hanging from nearly every corner.
It was clearly a long-abandoned place.
Zara looked around in confusion. "There's nobody here. Why would a portal open in a place like this?"
"No idea," Lucian replied.
It was only a small room. As they moved forward, the woman kept glancing around. Then she suddenly caught sight of something and went rigid, her eyes widening as though she had been struck by lightning.
Zara followed her gaze but saw only a filthy wall. Beneath the layers of grime, however, a faint symbol could still be made out.
That symbol...
"Huh?" Zara brightened. "I've seen this before."
Wasn't this the symbol of the royal city that had appeared in Soraya's memories?
Winfred had shown it to her before, but she had never expected to find it here.
Lucian studied the mark. "What does it mean?"
"I don't know," Zara said, shaking her head. "It supposedly belonged to a royal city in the Lower Realm, but Winfred told me there was no record of that city anywhere. How did we end up here?"
If the royal city had vanished, surely it should have disappeared completely.
Unless this was some abandoned ruin.
As it turned out, Zara had guessed correctly.
She and Lucian found the door leading out and discovered that they really were inside an underground chamber. There appeared to be no other exit, while an immensely powerful suppressive force pressed down from above, creating a faint but unmistakable sense of suffocation.
Behind them, the woman was trembling so violently that her entire body shook.
Zara found her reaction fascinating. "You were the one who demanded that I bring you back. Now that we're here, why are you shaking?"
The woman looked at her in terror.
Noticing that the red cord was still wrapped around her mouth, Zara loosened it.
The moment she could speak again, the woman cried out fearfully, "Why are you here? How could you possibly have come directly to this place?"
Zara paused, then raised her wrist. "You know where this came from, don't you?"
The woman screamed and immediately refused to say another word. "Don't ask me! I don't know anything! I don't know! I had nothing to do with it!"
She was genuinely terrified.
She had shown no fear when she went to Earth to cause trouble. She had even believed that once she returned to this world, she would be completely safe.
But she had never expected one unforeseen complication.
One that had remained buried for more than a thousand years.
Zara and Lucian exchanged a look.
"What is this place?" Lucian asked.
A smile tugged at the corner of Zara's mouth. "No idea. Maybe because I brought something interesting with me, the portal decided to send us somewhere equally interesting."
She surveyed their surroundings. Judging by where they had emerged, this must once have been a grand hall.
Faint traces of its former splendor remained. The stone pillars surrounding them were carved with dragon-like mystic beasts that closely resembled Aurelion.
The hall was enormous, but fallen rocks blocked nearly every path, and crumbling walls lay scattered throughout the ruins.
It was like the remains of a glorious past long since lost.
Naturally, there was no visible exit.
Zara had a feeling the way out was directly above them.
Getting through it, however, might not be so easy.
She looked up and caught a faint shimmer rippling across the ceiling.
"I think I hear water," Lucian suddenly said.
Zara nodded. "It is water. Unless I'm wrong, we're underneath it."
Lucian fell silent.
He glanced around at the crumbling walls and shattered stone. "Then why isn't any of it leaking in?"
"This may be an underwater city," Zara said. "Or the entire place was deliberately buried beneath the water and sealed away. Someone didn't want it ever seeing the light of day again."
Lucian paused.
From the corner of his eye, he noticed that the woman Zara had captured was trembling at a frequency no normal human body should have been capable of.
She seemed so terrified that she could barely stand, much less walk.
Lucian pointed at her. "She's scared. She knows where we are."
If she did not, her reaction made no sense compared to how fearless she had acted back on Earth.
Zara rubbed her chin. "I think I have a rough idea of what's going on. It's probably some ridiculously melodramatic story. This city has something to do with Soraya."
Lucian raised an eyebrow. "Soraya?"
He had always regarded Soraya as an innocent little girl. Now an entire ruined city was connected to her?
"Yeah," Zara said. "But first, we'll have to see whether I can break the seal."
As she spoke, her body rose gently into the air, as though an invisible force were lifting her.
Lucian tilted his head back and watched her.
Stay calm.
There was already some bizarre wing living inside his body. What was so surprising about a person being able to fly?
Besides, he had known Zara could fly for a long time.
Wonderful.
Zara floated up to the ceiling and reached out to touch the rippling surface, only to pull her hand back almost immediately.
"There's a ward on it."
The terrified woman suddenly burst into wild laughter. Her fear and fury twisted into a sick kind of triumph.
"You can't break it! You have no idea where you are.
Of all places, you actually transported us here!
Now none of us will ever leave. No one outside can get in, and no one inside can get out.
You'll be trapped here for the rest of your life!
Maybe you can survive, but what about that human beside you? "
Zara and Lucian both turned to look at her.
Zara's expression held a trace of pity. "Why would you go and tempt fate like that? I said there was a ward. I never said I couldn't break it."
Then she turned to Lucian. "Give me a minute. I need to study it."
She probably had a way to undo the ward. She just needed some time to work it out.
The woman stared at her in disbelief. "Do you even know who created that seal? You could never break it! No one in this world, no one in either world, could undo it. Not even my master can!"
Once again, she had mentioned her master.