I’m Trapped in a Cube - Chapter 125

“Let’s keep going up for now. It’s too unsafe here.”

Bai Zhou and Li Luo clearly hadn’t figured out the connection between Martin and the robed figures’ ritual either.

The two checked the robes they were wearing and slowly made their way upward.

“If someone questions you and you can’t answer, just act directly,” Bai Zhou instructed.

Li Luo nodded.

They couldn’t communicate with the robed figures, so conversation was a real problem.

The passage upward gradually became steeper, but all these holes had zigzag wooden stairs installed by hand, with woven vines fixing the steps into the cracks of the rock.

It looked extremely primitive and rough.

“Were these made by the people from the monitoring station?” Li Luo asked curiously.

Bai Zhou went up to take a look, and after a while shook his head, replying, “No, this is way too primitive. It was probably made by those twisted people, they love these retro creations.”

Seeing Li Luo’s puzzled expression, Bai Zhou continued to explain.

“Did you see those guys holding torches? They obviously have lighting equipment, but they still like to light torches, as if they have a clear aversion to all technological creations.”

Bai Zhou pointed to the distant metal elevator, which was now overgrown with all sorts of plants from disuse.

“We could have just taken the elevator straight up, but instead they built a wooden staircase and abandoned the elevator.”

Mo Ling flew up toward the elevator and found that it connected to a much higher hole. If it still worked, it would save a lot of time, but now it seemed completely unusable-whether it even had power was unknown.

Li Luo thought for a moment, then asked Bai Zhou, “Did they forget how to use this equipment? Did those organs modify their brains?”

Bai Zhou thought about it, then shook his head again. “It’s rejection. They still know how to use it. They even used the monitoring station’s surveillance to look for me before, but I happened to catch them at it, and they never used it again.”

How strange.

“They clearly knew how to use it, but rejected technology? Was this connected to their forgetting normal written language?” Mo Ling’s doubts only deepened.

Following the wooden stairs upward, they reached a platform, which was connected by a crude suspension bridge to a distant spot. After repeating this process several times, they finally reached the highest point of the hole.

The elevator door stood there in plain sight.

Bai Zhou and Li Luo exchanged a glance and spread their hands, indicating they were just as baffled.

At the top, a spacious hole extended inward.

Bai Zhou glanced at the map and said to Li Luo, “Ahead is a jungle. It could be dangerous, so stay alert.”

Sure enough, as soon as they entered the hole, the walls rose sharply, and a vast space opened up before them.

They seemed to be close to the edge of the Black Tower, with many holes on one side connecting to the outside. Bright sunlight streamed in from outside.

Water was still dripping from the ceiling, probably collected from elsewhere in the Black Tower.

The sunlight and moisture made the plants here extremely lush and diverse. Some small animals, plump and well-fed, ran back and forth through the jungle.

What was remarkable was that all the plants here grew at odd angles, some even toppled over, straining desperately toward the sunlight.

This made the entire jungle’s vegetation look very strange and low to the ground, all growing at similar angles.

It was called a jungle, but it looked more like a forest blown over by a violent wind.

Very soon, Mo Ling realized where the danger Bai Zhou mentioned was.

These slanted plants grew so densely that there was nowhere to step. A lizard-like animal crawled back and forth in the gaps, and as soon as it sensed movement, it swarmed over, trying to attack.

Even though they were small, they rushed over in droves, completely fearless.

“They’re poisonous. Take care of them quickly and don’t get bitten,” Bai Zhou warned, then summoned water tentacles to attack the swarming lizards.

Mo Ling quickly activated his teleportation, pulling both trees and lizards into the cube, cutting square holes through the slanted jungle.

The swarm of lizards was soon wiped out. Bai Zhou looked at the smooth cuts all around and sighed to Li Luo, “Your relic is really impressive.”

Looking at the cuts he’d made, Mo Ling suddenly had an idea.

He aimed at a straight line ahead and began teleporting.

As the plants blocking the way vanished one after another, a straight path instantly extended forward.

Brown earth was exposed, as if a dirt road had been laid out.

In the once uniform slanted jungle, a sudden, abrupt gap appeared.

This move left Bai Zhou stunned.

“It’s better not to use relics recklessly. The old mermen in my tribe always warned me about that.”

He offered this advice as he walked onto the path Mo Ling had cleared.

Before long, more lizards appeared, but they seemed afraid to enter the bare path, hesitating at the edge.

Mo Ling was about to keep clearing the way when he noticed Bai Zhou crouch down, making a stop gesture.

” Something up ahead?”

Mo Ling couldn’t see far, so he quickly dropped down and hid the cube among the bushes.

Inside his helmet, Bai Zhou’s eyes widened slowly, as if he’d seen something truly shocking.

He asked in disbelief, “Is that… a village?”

Li Luo stared for a long time before slowly nodding, also looking incredulous.

“What did they see?” Mo Ling wondered, itching with curiosity. The two’s reactions were just too exaggerated.

Luckily, they didn’t watch for long before Bai Zhou signaled to move forward.

After tidying their robes, they began leaping from trunk to trunk, making their way to the front of the village.

Mo Ling carefully followed behind, and the village gradually came into view.

The moment he saw it, Mo Ling’s mind went blank.

Because the buildings in the village were just too bizarre.

It was a clearing in the jungle, clearly man-made, very large, and densely packed with buildings.

All the buildings were wooden, probably made from the trees cut down when clearing the land, so the wood was all similar in color.

The strangest thing was that, like the slanted trees outside, the houses were also crooked, and it seemed intentional.

If normal houses are rectangular, these looked like parallelograms from the front.

Not only that, but the houses slanted in the opposite direction from the surrounding plants, away from the sunlight.

The houses and the plants were like two waves going in opposite directions.

“Can people even live in these?”

Mo Ling finally understood why Bai Zhou and Li Luo had looked so shocked earlier.