Chapter 792: Evolution

"Is this the 'big secret' you mentioned?" Qi Xia asked coolly.

"Hehe..." The old man let out a strange chuckle and looked up at Qi Xia. "Isn't this a 'big secret'?"

Qi Xia heard the old man's laughter and looked down at the skull again. Although he could only see the back of it, judging from the dry cracks and the amount of sand and soil on the surface, it was clearly just the remains of someone who had died and been buried here.

It might have been decades ago, or perhaps just a few years.

No matter how he thought about it, this wasn't anything extraordinary, let alone a "secret."

No one could say for sure how many people had died in this city over the past seven years, or how many bodies there were.

"It seems I bet wrong." Qi Xia looked up at the empty space above his head. "After all, it's gambling; no one can win every time."

Qi Xia finished speaking and started to leave, but the old man called out to stop him.

"Don't go, young man!" The old man excitedly picked up the skull and held the kerosene lamp in his other hand. "Aren't you curious?! I dug for so long to find this skull—how can you not be curious?"

Qi Xia stopped reluctantly and slowly turned around. In his eyes, the old man was no different from a typical madman.

Seeing that he had stopped Qi Xia, the old man quickly took a couple of steps forward, all while clutching the skull tightly. "Young man! There's more below! A lot more!"

Qi Xia looked expressionlessly at the skull in the old man's arms. The light was very dim, but it was obvious that the skull had nothing particularly unusual about it.

"So, what's the secret?" Qi Xia asked, looking up.

"Young man... you have to believe me... If you believe what I say, I'll tell you everything!" The old man said with a strange expression. "But you absolutely can't think I'm a madman!"

"Alright." Qi Xia sighed after hearing this. "I'll give you one chance. You talk, and I'll listen."

"Good, good!" The old man happily held the skull and then plopped down on the ground.

Qi Xia squatted down as well, and the two of them huddled around the small light in the dark alley, staring at the skull.

The old man was about to speak when he suddenly paused. He lifted the kerosene lamp to within a few centimeters of Qi Xia's face and asked softly, with a hint of doubt, "Young man... why are your eyes like that? Are you sick?"

"Are you going to waste this opportunity?" Qi Xia asked.

"Look how anxious you are!" The old man grinned. "Then I won't ask! I'll tell you!"

He lowered his head and brought the kerosene lamp closer to the skull. "Young man... what do you think people turn into?"

Qi Xia frowned slightly at the question and asked, "What do you mean?"

"I mean... before people become people, what were they?" the old man asked again.

"Are you discussing 'Jin Hua Lun' with me?" Qi Xia felt a bit exhausted. "As long as you're willing to believe it, people can turn into anything besides humans."

"Good...!" The old man nodded excitedly. "Hearing you say that... I can confidently share my secret with you! Do you believe that there's 'Jin Hua Lun' here too?"

Qi Xia's gaze turned slightly cold as he said, "You're crazier than I imagined. As long as 'Hui Xiang' exists, theoretically, people can turn into anything overnight; there's no need for 'Jin Hua Lun' at all."

"Yes... you're right, but I felt its summons." The old man reached out and patted the skull beside him.

"Summons?"

"I can feel that there's something extraordinary buried under this city... so I started digging with the shovel I found, and after so long... I finally dug it up."

With that, he slowly turned the skull beside him to face Qi Xia directly, then lowered the kerosene lamp to reveal its true appearance.

Qi Xia slowly widened his eyes after seeing it.

This skull was very strange.

Although it looked completely like a skull on the outside, its front was actually smooth.

Not only did it lack eye sockets for eyeballs, but it also had no holes for the nasal cartilage. The entire lower part was connected to the jawbone, and where there should have been teeth, it was just flat. Qi Xia reached out and turned the skull over, finding that even the position for the cochlea was not recessed.

In other words, the owner of this skull...

Had no face.

"Young man... say something!" The old man was clearly excited. "Doesn't this skull overturn all your knowledge?! Can you tell how long ago the owner of this skull died?"

Qi Xia remained silent, his face stern.

"At least ten years!!" The old man waved his hand. "Do you believe that people here are evolving...? 'Jin Hua Lun' really exists! Ten years ago, people here didn't even have faces!!"

Qi Xia reached out and gently touched the skull; it had just been unearthed from the soil and felt smooth.

"Isn't this a 'big secret'?!" The old man said happily. "There are more similar skeletons below! Definitely more than one or two!"

After the old man finished speaking, he stared at Qi Xia for a long time but found that the young man remained completely silent.

"Why aren't you speaking?" The old man said with a trembling voice. "This isn't me going mad, right? This skull really has no face!"

Qi Xia slowly stood up and then walked to the edge of the pit to look down carefully. His eyes had mostly adapted to the darkness in the alley, and he could indeed see the dark soil below exposing white bones, clearly indicating many more corpses waiting to be excavated.

"Impressive, right?" The old man came over to Qi Xia's side with the kerosene lamp, his face excited. "I originally planned to dig for a while and then come up... but I didn't expect to keep feeling a summons from deep underground... as if some mysterious force was making me continue digging. Who would have thought that as I dug, I couldn't stop?"

After hearing this, Qi Xia picked up a small stone from the ground and casually threw it into the deep pit.

"This is the deepest pit I've dug so far, and I didn't expect to really find something..." The old man continued muttering to himself. "I need to quickly 'Hui Xiang', then remember this location. Maybe I can discover even bigger secrets deeper underground! I might soon find the answer to this world!"

After being silent for a long time, Qi Xia finally spoke. He sighed deeply and said, "Old man, if someone's face is flat, can it still be called a 'person'?"

"How is it not a person?" The old man said excitedly. "Young man, didn't you just see? That skull is connected to the spine! It's not some artificial artwork; its bones show signs of oxidation. Although there are no facial organs, there's space for a brain, so it's definitely a human skull!"