"A lot of people died here, huh..." Hao Xuan muttered coldly, peering towards the glowing blue and purple silhouette that was hiding within the tree trunk.
*Beep*
Baracus activated himself of his own accord without Hao Xuan asking him something first, which was relatively unusual.
"I need to collect more data which will require further clarification from you about things related to this new ability to better understand what is happening to your body and how it could affect you in the future. Please describe how you know that other beings 'died' here? Did the whispers say it explicitly?"
Hao Xuan took a puff from the cigarette, an entire lungful.
"Not explicitly, no. It more of how they said it rather than what. Plus, if what you say is right, whispers are only created when the person goes through something extreme right? Something that makes their emotions flare-up in a sense?"
"Affirmative."
"Then since all these emotions are so loud and so negative, it's only natural to assume that something bad happened to them here. And I have this weird feeling that...most of them didn't make it out of this place," he finished talking and walked around in a circle around the black and purple grass that surrounded the area around the trunk.
He stopped after coming back to his initial position.
"Somebody made this, it's not natural," Hao Xuan commented.
It was quite obvious that this place had been cleared out on purpose to make space for this. Not to mention that the black and purple grass created a perfect circle of around 3 meters in diameter.
What were the chances it was all a natural phenomenon? And how could so many people have found their way here over and over again.
Hao Xuan bent down and picked up a small rock from nearby before throwing it towards the tree trunk with full force. Even though he was aiming for the inside of the trunk, somehow it connected with the outer bark and fell into the grass, disappearing without a sound.
Hao Xuan's brow furrowed even more. He was much weaker than usual and his aim COULD have been off, but not by that much.
Hao Xuan raised his foot to move forward but suddenly took a few steps back instead.
"What's wrong?" Baracus asked seeing his strange movements.
"The whispers, they are getting louder," Hao Xuan said through spiritual sense.
When he was more than 10 meters away and the intensity of the whispers had diminished considerably, he bent down and picked up a larger rock. This one was the size of a brick. He pulled back his arm and aimed for the trunk again.
This time he put in a lot more strength, enough to throw it in a straight line like a bullet.
*Whoosh*
It tore through the air and impacted with the trunk again, making it visibly shake.
If it was an ordinary tree trunk it would have been torn to shreds, but this one barely shook.
Hao Xuan's expression darkened and he quickly jumped back several times until he was back at the 'entrance' of this cavity. The hair at the back of his neck were standing straight up like needles.
Alarm bells had begun to ring inside his head the moment he threw the rock, only lowering by a few degrees until he backtracked all the way back above ground.
"What the fuck is this place?" Hao Xuan mumbled peering down into the cavity.
The entrance of the cavity was inside the ground with a diameter of five meters. It slowly descended at an angle of 50 degrees until reaching the clearing with the tree trunk. It was surrounded on all sides by large trees that provided cover for it.
It could be easily missed unless someone knew what to look for.
Hao Xuan rubbed his shoulders trying to shake away the goosebumps that had crawled onto his skin. He felt disgusted for some strange reason and just standing there was enough for him to vomit.
He had to physically stop himself from doing so.
He stood in that spot for close to 15 minutes. The intensity of the whispers was changing constantly, like the crashing waves of the ocean. He couldn't tell what they wanted from him, repeatedly telling him of the same things over and over again.
It was at this time that the sky cleared up. The clouds had given way to the white light that finally fell down.
Hao Xuan's eyes were too used to the darkness so he had to close them for a short moment to let them adjust. But when he opened them again, the scene in front of him had completely changed.
Hao Xuan jumped, landing on a tree not far from him. His hearts were beating so fast that they could be heard even outside.
"You deceitful piece of shit!" he cursed through gritted teeth.
The white light, whatever it was, had opened Hao Xuan's eyes to a new world. It had a sort of cleansing effect on the area, showing what it actually was.
The previous rocky cavity was gone. In its place was an obvious mouth of some kind of a creature. The entrance was actually made of its lips that looked like thick earthworms going around in a circle.
It's insides through which Hao Xuan had descended further down now looked like blackened muscles made of hard tissue. The clearing at the bottom of the cavity had also changed.
The black and purple grass now resembled wriggling tentacles, each one half a meter in size at least. The tree trunk was replaced by a bobbing red mass of hardened flesh surrounding a bright blue flower.
The flower was releasing a constant stream of dust-like particles that permeated the surroundings.
If Hao Xuan had stepped onto those black and blue tentacles, that would probably have been the end of his story.