234 Investigating

Bowing to the figure, Minos thanked him for the knowledge he bestowed to him, even if he knew such thanks was pointless at such a time.

Cleaning the dust off the portrait and tablet, Minos finally walked off, giving the portrait one last look before he entered another room.

This room didn't seem to have anything of interest, so after a quick inspection, Minos headed back down the hallway and back to the center of the palace.

After a quick thought, he decided not to waste time on the first floor, feeling that it was unlikely there was anything good here.

Instead he'd start at the top floor and make his way down, which he thought would save him time.

Wanting to head to the place of most interest first, Minos looked around for a bit before finally finding the emperor's sleeping chamber.

Entering the room, the first thing that came into sight was a large bed, a familiar portrait of the Eleventh Emperor, Lukalu Asmo, situated above the bed frame.

The place seemed completely empty, everything of value stripped, only leaving behind a few superficial items of no value to a cultivator like Minos.

It seemed that whatever ended the Lukalu people didn't come completely out of the blue, otherwise this large palace wouldn't be suspiciously empty.

It was more like the people here were already aware, having long since moved all the valuables to a safer place.

With the sleeping chamber empty, Minos ran through the rest of the mansion, spending a few minutes in each room, his Omniscient Eyes scanning the place firmly so as to not miss anything.

With his Aptus working in full force, even if he only searched each room for a short time, he could still see through everything.

After running through the entire palace, Minos ended up back in the entrance hallway, stroking his long beard as he pondered what he may have missed.

But even after a long thought, he couldn't come up with anything, but he still refused to believe that this place really had nothing.

Wandering around for a bit, Minos ended up back at the portraits, his eyes scanning the face of each Lukalu Emperor before pausing on the First.

Looking down at the tablet, Minos read through it a few more times before he paused, a light suddenly going off in his mind.

'Wait! This tablet isn't just here to venerate the First Emperor, rather it's a clue, a clue to where the answer to this mystery may be!'

Minos naturally didn't pull such an assumption out of nowhere, rather, after reading it a few times, he noticed a few things that were out of place.

Lukalu Luka was usually referred to with five different distinct titles in this tablet, Luka The First, The First Emperor, The Founder, The Sage, and finally, The Chosen One.

Others may think the change in title was just done by the author to make the words flow more organically, which Minos also thought at first, but as he read more, he realized a slight oddity.

The oddity came in two forms, which was the placement of each of these titles within the tablet themselves, and the title 'The Chosen One' specifically.

Unlike the other titles that appeared multiple times, 'The Chosen One' was unique in that it only ever appeared once near the middle of the tablet.

'Hold on… This isn't just a tablet, rather it's a map!' Minos suddenly realized.

'Luka The First represents the north walls, The First Emperor is the south walls, The Founder is the west walls, The Sage the east walls, and finally, The Chosen One represents the palace itself!'

'The only question left is, where exactly is this map trying to guide me?' Minos thought to himself, reading over the tablet one more time.

As he read it again, he paused on a specific sentence, his eyes shining as he read through it a dozen times in quick succession.

'The Sage was known for many things, but few people know that the thing he took pride in the most was the creation of his grand library, which he aptly named the Lukalu Library.'

'Unfortunately, after his death, the Lukalu Library slowly fell into disrepair, eventually crumbling completely, its exact location forever forgotten to history.'

If someone else had read this, they may have been interested in such a library, but would have given up once they realized even the writer of this tablet seemed unaware where exactly it once stood.

But to Minos, the placement of the word was the answer! Comparing where the 'Lukalu Library' appeared compared to the rest of the text, he quickly came up with a general location, which wasn't very far.

With a direction in sight, Minos wasted no time, immediately heading towards what he guessed to be the former location of the grand Lukalu Library.

After a short walk, Minos arrived at another stretch of houses, these one's much more grand compared to the ones in the outer city.

Looking through the mansions for a bit, Minos found the one he was looking for, entering it directly as he slowly looked around.

However, even after a thorough browse of the entire mansion, nothing was discovered, making Minos wonder whether his assumption was actually right in the first place.

With nothing on the surface, Minos didn't give up, instead changing his strategy and using sound instead of sight to inspect.

Slowly walking through the place, Minos would tap each area a few times, listening closely to the sound as it returned.

After reaching the center of the mansion, Minos put his ear against the floor and gave another knock, this time receiving a noise that was slightly off compared to what he heard before.

Even with his strong hearing, the change was extremely subtle, but luckily Minos's sharp mind catched it immediately.

Pulling his Heaven-Sundering Sword from his waist, Minos stabbed it deep into the ground, slowly carving out a large chunk of marble and earth.

After carving away the first layer of stone, Minos resheathed his Heaven-Sundering Sword, pulling a shovel from his spatial ring, which he always kept handy just in case.

After a full half hour of excavating, the earth suddenly collapsed below him, Minos falling feet first into an underground tunnel.

Clearing the dirt from his robe, he pulled a Shining Talisman out and ignited it, the dark tunnel quickly lighting up.

Looking ahead, the tunnel stretched deep into the earth, meanwhile, it was completely cut off at the back, leaving Minos with no other options than to go forward.

The walk was a slow and torturous one, the mystery of what lay ahead coupled with the horror of what erased the Lukalu people causing Minos's muscles to tighten in anxiety.

Fortunately nothing happened during his journey, and eventually, a large rock-wall stopped his path.

Pulling his Heaven-Sunder Sword out once more, Minos cut the wall down, its slow collapse revealing a sight that left him in both complete horror and shock.

"What. The. Hell." He couldn't help but say under his breath, the sight simply being that shocking.

In front of him was a massive underground cave that stretched for miles, tens of thousands of pods filled with green liquid lining the cave floor, tubes running directly into each of them.

Floating within the liquid were the bodies of Lukalu people, their eyes sealed shut tightly as they floated in this viscous fluid.

Their mouths were hooked up to a large tube, likely to help them breath, but by now it was obvious whatever kept this operation working had long since run out of energy.

All that was left was an eerie silence and the well-preserved corpses of what seemed to be thousands of Lukalu people.

Walking inside, Minos began pondering what exactly had happened here, and more importantly, what was the goal.

Reaching the first pod, he paused, taking a glance at the small inscription below it which listed the name, age, and gender of the Lukalu person within.

He was tempted to just directly shatter the glass and see first hand what these corpses had turned into, but he planned to search this place first before doing anything drastic.

Reaching the center of the room, Minos looked up at the massive pod that was dozens of times large then the others, a strange pink brain-like mass floating within it.

Thousands of tubes ran into this large mass of flesh, but what was most interesting was the large tube at the bottom of the mass, where the brainstem would be in a normal person.

Following the tube, Minos's eyes finally paused on a small figure seated right outside the large pod, his body similarly filled with dozens of tubes, the largest of them connected directly to his skull.

Looking at this figure's face, Minos's pupils slightly dilated, the familiar appearance of the legendary Luka The First being no secret to him.

Slowly walking towards the figure, Minos looked up close at his small frail body, his gray skin having long since lost all vitality.

"You shouldn't have come here…" A loud voice suddenly said, reverberating throughout the entire cave and nearly causing Minos to fall backwards.

"Who said that?" Minos shouted, looking around with his sword raised.

"Haven't you already met me?" The voice said, causing Minos to look back towards Luka The First with confusion.

"That's not possible, you should long since be dead…" Minos said.

"You're not completely wrong, in fact I already am dead. The body you're staring at has long since been reduced to a corpse, the only thing left of me is this large brain, which will likely soon give up on me as well." The voice answered.