Half an hour later, the distant roar of helicopters echoed across the horizon. Watching the blinking lights approach through the dim sky, everyone was taken aback—just how many helicopters had General Zuma sent?
Six transport helicopters, packed to the brim with fully armed soldiers, and four attack helicopters slowly descended around the campsite. Bai Qi estimated silently that, with the war still raging, the general had probably pulled every available helicopter he could spare just to protect Xu Ze on this mountain excursion.
Seeing the escort force had arrived, Jida glanced at his watch and said urgently to Xu Ze: “Xu—if we’re going up the mountain, we have to move fast. Once it’s fully daylight, we can’t guarantee you’ll make it to the Sacred Mountain and reach the temple safely.”
“Temple?” Xu Ze raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t known there was a temple on the Sacred Mountain—though he wasn’t sure if this was the place he was looking for.
He looked up at the sky. At most, they had half an hour before full daylight. Without hesitation, he nodded to Bai Qi and the others, then took the lead and boarded the helicopter that had been standing by at the edge of the camp.
Four attack helicopters flanked them as escorts, while seven transport helicopters cruised steadily in formation. All eleven helicopters cut through the pre-dawn darkness, heading straight for the Sacred Mountain.
After some time in flight, the sky began to lighten. Sitting in the helicopter, Xu Ze could faintly make out a towering, majestic peak rising above the surrounding mountains.
He narrowed his eyes, gently sniffing the moist air that rushed in, and sensed that faint, almost imperceptible energy fluctuation—now on the verge of vanishing entirely. Finally, he murmured to himself: “Yes… it’s straight ahead.”
Down in the mountains, the tribes had just finished their pre-dawn rituals. Most of the exhausted indigenous people had only just fallen asleep—but they were jolted awake by the roaring engines overhead.
Countless Black Africans poured out of their thatched huts in panic, looking up at the sky. Seeing the dense formation of eleven helicopters heading straight for the Sacred Mountain, an uproar broke out.
The tribal prophet who had presided over the morning ritual—already alarmed by the strange disturbances on the Sacred Mountain earlier—had dressed in his ceremonial robes and was preparing to go to the temple to offer sacrifices. Hearing the deafening roar, he hobbled out the door with his staff. When he saw the helicopters flying directly toward the Sacred Mountain, fury blazed in his eyes. He raised his staff and shouted angrily at the sky.
Hearing the prophet’s enraged cries, the tribesmen rushed back inside. Moments later, they emerged fully armed—bows on their backs, sharp spears in hand—and under the command of their chieftains, they began marching swiftly and furiously toward the Sacred Mountain.
Jida looked down at the tribal prophet cursing in fury from the settlement, and at the fully armed tribal warriors pouring out of the huts. His expression grew dark.
Xu Ze watched the scene below in silence, his lips pressed together in grim determination. No matter what, for Xiao Dao’s sake, he had to go up that mountain and see for himself—what on earth could have caused Xiao Dao to end up like this.
The helicopters pressed on without pause, gradually approaching the midsection of the majestic peak. In the growing daylight, Xu Ze could now make out the faint silhouette of an ancient temple nestled against the cliff face.
By now, that residual energy fluctuation was growing ever weaker. Yet even as they drew closer to the mountain, Xu Ze could still sense faint traces of energy lingering in the air.
“No… not the temple… the summit.” Xu Ze caught the very last wisp of the fading energy and suddenly lifted his head, staring at the peak above.
“The summit?” Jida looked at the temple now just ahead, gritted his teeth, and barked into the radio: “Change course—head for the summit!”
At his command, all the helicopters began to climb, gaining altitude as they soared toward the mountaintop.
As they rose higher, Xu Ze noticed that the summit seemed to be composed entirely of extremely hard rock—and the higher they went, the steeper it became.
The closer they got to the peak, the more tense Xu Ze grew. He could now clearly sense faint traces of energy bursts lingering in this area—and only here. Everywhere else, he could feel nothing at all.
Seeing Xu Ze’s growing tension, Bai Qi and the others became anxious as well. Though there was no visible sign of any living creature near the summit, the fact that their commander—who had faced an F-16 attack without flinching—was now this tense made them instinctively chamber rounds and grip their weapons tighter.
Jida, too, could see Xu Ze’s extreme anxiety. His own confidence wavered, and he quickly issued new orders over the radio.
Following his commands, two attack helicopters accelerated upward and began circling the peak.
After a moment, once Xu Ze’s helicopter was only thirty or forty meters from the summit, Jida’s radio came back with an all-clear signal.
Jida shot a puzzled glance at Xu Ze, who still looked intensely strained. But he said nothing, letting the helicopter carry Xu Ze up to the peak’s altitude.
All the soldiers watched the center helicopter with curiosity. They wondered why, at a time like this, the general had pulled so many helicopters and elite troops just to escort a foreigner to see this bare, rocky summit.
Xu Ze crouched at the helicopter’s hatch, his right hand gripping the doorframe tightly. He stared blankly at the bare summit, his face betraying profound disappointment. He could no longer sense any trace of energy fluctuation. And the peak was nothing but a sharp, massive slab of solid rock—there was nothing else. Just a few tiny weeds quivering in the wind stirred up by the helicopter rotors, clinging to cracks in the stone.
Still, he could basically confirm that the energy burst had originated right here, on this summit. Yet he could find no trace of it whatsoever.
To everyone’s gasps, Xu Ze suddenly leaped from the helicopter onto the summit, grabbing the edge of the rock to keep from sliding off.
He lay there like a frog, crouched awkwardly against the peak’s surface to prevent himself from slipping, and slowly ran his hands over the top of the massive rock. He focused his psychic perception to its utmost—but he was disappointed.
He felt nothing unusual about the rock at all. Taking a deep breath, he tried to command: “Activate X-ray penetration…”
But as he had expected, there was only silence. No response. Xiao Dao and the automatic response system were utterly unresponsive—as if Xu Ze had simply muttered meaningless nonsense.
Pale and grim, Xu Ze struggled to his feet, standing atop the peak. He closed his eyes, slowly spread his arms, and poured every ounce of his concentration into sensing the spiritual energy in the surrounding air. A long moment passed.
All around, the soldiers in the helicopters circling the summit watched as Xu Ze stood on that sharp pinnacle—with not a single handhold in sight, a single misstep meaning certain doom. They couldn’t help but draw sharp breaths.
Bai Qi and the others were equally horrified by Xu Ze’s actions, but none of them dared to make a sound, for fear of startling him and causing an accident.
If anyone had been watching from outside, they would have seen a remarkably striking scene: a young boy standing atop a thousand-zhang peak, sheer cliffs dropping away on all sides, with over a dozen helicopters roaring around him in sweeping circles. It was truly an awe-inspiring sight.
But at this moment, Xu Ze felt none of that grandeur—no sense of standing above the world. All he felt was utter dejection and disappointment. He raised his head, let out a soft sigh, and reached out to climb back onto the hovering helicopter—when his gaze caught the ancient temple halfway down the mountainside.
As Xu Ze climbed back aboard, everyone let out a collective sigh of relief. But his expression remained grim. He said flatly: “We’re going to the temple.”
“The temple too?” Jida was startled. “Xu… by the time we get to the temple, those guardian tribes will have caught up. If that happens…”
“Hurry—I have to see it.” Xu Ze cut him off decisively.
“Alright.” Seeing Xu Ze’s insistence, Jida gritted his teeth and gave the order. After all, they had brought this many troops precisely to escort Xu Ze into the temple. If he had only wanted to see the summit, there’d have been no need for a military escort—they could have just flown straight there.
At Jida’s command, the eleven helicopters banked in midair and accelerated toward the temple below.
Jida knew perfectly well that if Xu Ze wanted to enter the temple, they had to beat the guardian tribes to the spot. If the tribal warriors arrived first and blocked the entrance, the only option would be all-out war—they’d have to kill every last one of them to get through.
By now, daylight had fully broken, though the sun had yet to rise above the distant mountains. Under Jida’s orders, the escort force managed to reach the temple just ahead of the tribal warriors.
From above, they could already see countless tribal fighters rushing up from the foothills. At their pace, they would arrive in no more than ten minutes.
There was a small plaza in front of the temple, with a cliff beyond it. However, several ancient towering trees shaded the area, preventing the larger transport helicopters from landing directly. The escorting soldiers from General Zuma’s army had to rappel down to the plaza.
Once the soldiers had secured the defensive positions in front of the plaza, Jida led Xu Ze and the entire Wolf Fang team down the ropes.
Jida barked a few harsh words at the terrified guides who had slid down behind him, then said quietly to Xu Ze: “Xu—we have to be fast. If we take too long, we’ll have to fight. This is the Sacred Mountain. We must avoid spilling blood here if at all possible. Killing the guardians of the Sacred Mountain would put even the general in a difficult position.”
“Understood—we’ll be quick.” Xu Ze acknowledged and strode briskly toward the temple.
Only now did Xu Ze see just how magnificent this temple was—up close, it was anything but unremarkable. Built directly against the cliff face, its front hall alone appeared to be over thirty meters tall. Four massive stone pillars, nearly two meters in diameter, supported enormous stone beams overhead. Carved into the beams were strange, intricate patterns, weathered by wind and rain into indistinct forms.
Above the beams, a tangle of thick, ancient vines wound everywhere, a testament to the temple’s profoundly ancient history.
Behind them, the four guides had fallen to their knees, praying in terror before the temple.
Jida had visited this temple once before, when he was fifteen or sixteen. He and some friends had come out of curiosity to explore.
The temple was usually empty. Only the guardian tribes of the Sacred Mountain would come to offer sacrifices during the annual Harvest Festival. So it was always quiet inside.
The temple interior was extremely dark. It only brightened when the first rays of the rising sun shone directly inside. Jida unzipped the bag on his back and pulled out several high-powered flashlights, handing them to Xu Ze, Bai Qi, and a few others. The rest of the soldiers had small tactical lights mounted on their assault rifles for nighttime operations—so they were fine as well.
The group strode forward. As Xu Ze stepped inside, he shone his flashlight around—and was struck by just how vast the space was. In all his experience, he had never seen a hall this grand.
It wasn’t completely dark inside, but it was deeply shadowed. Under the illumination of several high-powered beams, the space quickly became much brighter.
Jida led the way. Bai Qi had initially planned to have his men scout ahead of Xu Ze, but Xu Ze waved them back. He walked slowly, his steps light, holding his breath as he focused his senses on the surrounding atmosphere.
As he pressed forward, they passed through the forecourt and carefully descended a few steps, finally entering the main hall of the temple.
The main hall was equally towering and magnificent. A broad passageway, over ten meters wide, ran down the center. On either side, at intervals of about ten meters, stood pairs of towering, bizarre stone statues—some with lion bodies and human heads, others with six legs and strange, monstrous forms. Along the side walls, countless two-meter-tall humanoid stone figures stood holding spears, tridents, and other weapons.
Looking at this scene, Xu Ze felt an odd sense of familiarity—as if he had seen it all before.
