This place was extremely eerie. For an ordinary person, simply maintaining their footing would already be difficult. As for searching for information with a calm mindset, only a Nen User could manage that.
Judging from what Ging said, it seemed he hadn't found much either.
Law walked up to him and asked, "Did you find anything on your side? I only came across a lot of stone carvings, but the content didn't reveal any important information."
"I'm pretty much the same."
Ging put down his hand, turned his head to look at Law, and said, "In ancient times, people often had customs related to sacrifices. That building looks like a temple, and it is more likely to be a sacrificial hall. What's rare is that it's still well-preserved."
"Let's go take a look." Law nodded.
The structures on the outskirts of the ruins were in complete disrepair, while the buildings in the inner area retained their general outlines.
With the sacrificial hall that Ging mentioned as the center point, several other bizarrely styled structures nearby also remained mostly intact in terms of their outer shells.
The sacrificial hall was primarily built from bricks, with a square foundation. The architecture itself was also perfectly square and is built on a stone platform with fifteen levels of stairs leading downward.
On the top of the hall, there is a huge crescent-shaped stone carving, which is longer than the building itself. From a distance, it looks like the connected horns of a minotaur.
The entrance to the sacrificial hall was empty. Law and Ging walked up the stone steps to the doorway and peered inside. Beams of blue light, like flashlight rays, streamed in through holes in the ceiling, casting eerie glows across the interior.
Law took out a flashlight, turned it on and shone it into the hall. The bright light instantly dispelled the blue light and fell on the stone paved ground.
Carved into the tiles were countless strange, rune-like symbols, covering the entire floor in a seemingly deliberate arrangement.
"Writing?"
Law muttered in surprise and waved his arms, directing the flashlight to other places.
The hall's floor was covered in carved text, while the walls were adorned with vivid, lifelike patterns. Aside from that, there was only a tall stone statue shrouded in shadows.
When the bright light swept over the statue, Law was startled. The statue was hollow and its appearance was identical to Void. The difference was that the gaps between the bandages were filled with numerous, eerily realistic stone eyeballs.
Ging also turned on his flashlight and roughly observed the situation in the hall. He also noticed the only stone statue in the hall and immediately asked, "Is that Void?"
His understanding of Void was limited to Law's description, and the appearance of this stone statue was similar to Law's description, except that the real Void had no eyeballs.
"It's a little different." Law said as he stepped inside.
"Because of the eyeballs?" Ging asked.
"Yeah."
Law nodded, gathered his Aura in his eyes, and at the same time released all his Aura, wrapping it around his body surface to maintain a Ken state.
Though he hadn't sensed any danger, it was better to be cautious. Meanwhile, Ging had also covered in Aura.
The two approached the stone statue and took a closer look. Each stone eyeball extended into over a dozen thin, elongated stone threads, connected to the thinner bandage-like stone strips. So from a distance, this created the illusion of the eyeballs floating in midair.
"What comes to your mind when you see these eyeballs?" Law reached out and touched the statue, but the White Smoke Font still did not respond, so he silently withdrew his hand.
Ging replied, "There are bodies outside, but what I'm more curious about are the writings on the floor and the murals on the walls."
"Do you recognize these characters?" Law asked.
Ging was silent for a moment, then said, "They somewhat resemble the script of the Selbo people. I'm not entirely sure, though."
"Selbo people?" Law asked doubtfully.
"They have another name, called Cave Dwellers." Ging explained, "They were first discovered 368 years ago by a young man named Serbo in a massive underground cave ruin somewhere in the Begerosse Union."
"According to the bizarre naming laws at the time, the discoverer had the right to name them. Whether out of mischief or something else, he named the race after himself."
"The exact era is impossible to trace, but calling them ancient humans wouldn't be inaccurate. Archaeologists spent years studying them and found that the Selbo people had a fully developed writing system, but with so few reference points, translation was extremely difficult."
The Begerosse Union is one of the V5 nations, boasting formidable national power. It once dispatched a thousand elite soldiers to the Dark Continent, only to suffer a crushing defeat.
The remains of a super-large underground cave were discovered within the Begerosse Union. The distance between them and Demon Island is so great that one is at the end of the world and the other is at the cape.
Ging's tone became a little more serious, and he said, "The reason why the Selbo people settled in underground caves is to escape harsh natural conditions and the threat of ferocious beasts. This is quite suitable for the environment of Demon Island, but..."
At this point, Ging looked at the mural on the wall and said, "Do you think the Selbo people here settled underground to avoid the island's poisonous creatures and brutal living conditions?"
"Giant creatures…" Law silently turned his gaze to the murals on the wall. The contents of the paintings gave him a familiar sense of déjà vu.
'Unbelievably massive creatures!'
'It is because of the tiny humans in the murals that the size of those creatures can be reflected. Combined with Netero's descriptions of the Dark Continent, it could easily imagine that...'
'The Selbo people had fled underground to escape those colossal monsters.'
'Leaving aside whether humans could even survive on the Dark Continent, if they did, they would likely have no choice but to live underground, becoming the most ancient of Cave Dwellers.'
'After all, the environment there was infinitely harsher than Demon Island's, and human survival on the surface would be impossible.'
'Why do so many human ruins feature depictions of giant creatures?'
'If it's dug more deeply, if the ancestors of human beings originated from the Dark Continent, then it was possible that creatures from there had also crossed the seas, arriving in the world humans now inhabited.'
'However, that may have been a long time ago, so long ago that most traces had been lost to history. Back then, humanity was probably still in its Stone Age.'
'If Earth's biological evolution was used as reference, those enormous creatures would be even more terrifying than dinosaurs.'
'In the current world map, humans stood at the top of the food chain. But is the reason for this situation due to the rapid development of high technology, or the emergence of Nen Abilities?'
Just as Law fell into silence and considered whether to examine the murals and floor inscriptions more closely, a strong Nen fluctuations came from the entrance, which made both Law and Ging tense instantly.
They immediately entered combat stances and looked towards the doorway.
"I found something good!"
Kuro's voice rang out from the entrance. He was seen holding a stone box shaped like an urn in his hands. The strong Nen fluctuations came from the stone box.
However, that was not a normal Nen fluctuation, but an astonishingly dense black Aura.