Chapter Ninety-Three: A Hidden Corner

“Could this place be an ancient burial ground?” Su Yi said in surprise.

One after another, bones stained a cherry hue were dug up, yet many more still lay deeper below, emerging little by little as the excavation went on.

The scene looked as though this small stretch of coral rock had been built atop a heap of skeletons.

Fortunately, the coral rock was not very hard. The apprentice bear smashed through it with ease, clearing away a large section along the shore.

“This probably wasn’t formed naturally,” Su Yi analyzed. “It feels more like... the nest of some monster, maybe, with the remains piled up here. Then, for some reason, the nest was abandoned and gradually buried by coral.”

Boom!

“Rubei!?”

The apprentice bear shattered another rock, but what appeared behind it made it cry out in alarm.

“Grrr!”

It urgently called Su Yi over.

“A cave?” Su Yi walked over and said in surprise.

Behind the coral rock the apprentice bear had broken was a rock wall, and in that wall there was an opening only large enough to crawl through.

“Let’s take a look inside.” Su Yi stopped digging and decided to crawl in and investigate.

After entering, he found a fairly large chamber, though not a tall one, only about eight feet high.

Rotom Phone switched on its flashlight at the right moment.

“This...” Su Yi blurted out as the scene before him came into view.

The cavern was not empty at all. There were many traces left behind by living creatures.

For example, a stove-like structure made of stacked rocks, broken vessels, and some processed bones.

But all of these had long since gathered dust and were already in a state of ruin.

“This used to be a camp, maybe even a small settlement?” Su Yi guessed as he looked around the ruins.

“Su Yi, there are murals on the ceiling, Rotom!” said Rotom Phone.

Following the beam of light, Su Yi looked up and saw pictures carved into the rock wall.

On the mural, a group of little people with cat ears stood around a horselike creature with a single horn.

The creature reared its hoof, and lines around the horn on its head indicated radiance, while streaks of lightning fell from the sky.

“Cat ears... they should be the Felyne tribe. Could this be the Plateau Performers? And that creature, if nothing unexpected has happened, should be Kirin,” Su Yi said.

“Lucky...” Chansey walked beneath the mural and seemed to discover something, brushing the dust away with her hand.

“There’s more below...” Su Yi leaned in to make out the details.

But after the erosion of time, the lines here had become very blurred.

Still, it could be seen that Kirin stood upon the plateau, with something beneath it, and it was launching an attack at that thing.

“Kirin was fighting something. It should be some kind of elder dragon too. An elder dragon of the Coral Highlands... could it be Namielle?” Su Yi guessed from what he knew.

“Su Yi, there’s a mural here too, meow,” said Tsukika as she pried away the thick layer of dust with a short blade.

“What does this one record?” Su Yi had Rotom Phone take a picture of it, then stepped forward to study the mural.

On it, the Felyne tribe was scattered in panic, fleeing in all directions as the earth split apart and rocks crashed down.

“An earthquake? Or were they caught in the aftermath of an elder dragon battle?” Su Yi stroked his chin, finding it more and more interesting.

This was clearly an ancient tale recorded by the Felyne tribe.

They revered the mighty power of elder dragons, struggled to survive in a world of dragons and monsters, and witnessed the changing of this land.

“Are there more murals?” Su Yi very much wanted to know what else had happened. These murals were the epic of this plateau.

He used his knife to clear away the dust accumulated on the rock wall, knocking here and there at random, while Tsukika and the other Pokémon searched through the surrounding ruins.

“No more?” Su Yi said with regret.

There were no more murals on the wall, or else they had been so badly eroded that only traces of lines remained.

“Su Yi, meow, we found this,” Tsukika said, holding up a bone.

“This is... a bone flute?” Su Yi took it and examined it, discovering several holes that had been man-made, making it look very much like a modern flute.

“A musical instrument? Then this could have been a camp belonging to the ancestors of the Plateau Performers,” Su Yi said, putting the bone flute away. He planned to ask Coral from the Plateau Performers about it later and see whether he knew anything.

“Then could the burial ground outside the cave be where they placed the bones of their prey?” Su Yi guessed.

“Didn’t expect an unexpected find here too,” Su Yi said, looking around the cave with a sigh.

If not for the low ceiling, he would have wanted to use it as a camp.

“Let’s go,” Su Yi said.

Having found nothing else of value, the group climbed out of the cavern.

Crack...

On the rock wall, a place Su Yi had casually tapped, a block of rock—actually a layer of clay applied later, hardened over the years—split open and fell away, revealing the mural behind it.

On the mural, it could be vaguely seen that two monsters wielding lightning were attacking a larger monster together.

Meanwhile, the Felyne tribe knelt in terror, praying for the disaster to end as quickly as possible.

...

Outside the cave, Su Yi gathered up some of the better bones, then marked the place as a bone tomb resource site.

There was a great deal of skeletal remains here, enough that they could not be dug up in a short time, and they would need to be sorted carefully as well. They could only be left for later, to be excavated slowly.

“Let’s keep moving,” Su Yi said, continuing toward the middle layer of the plateau.

...

Climbing upward along one terrace after another, they finally reached the middle section of the Coral Highlands.

“Phew!” Su Yi let out a long breath and looked back. Even from the middle tier, the scenery below spread out in full view.

The strange, radiant coral-rock plateau resembled a range of mountains. Rooted in the Rotten Vale, they broke through the miasma and soared skyward, and after countless ages, coral had adorned them into the beautiful forms they wore today.

“There are traces here, meow,” said Tsukika, her sharp eyes catching a discrepancy on the vast plateau before them.

“Looks like droppings, meow. Perfect, the stink bomb has run out too, meow,” Tsukika said as she walked toward a few pitch-black heaps not far away.

“Who has such bad manners? Leaving that lying around everywhere?” Su Yi turned back and looked. On the beautiful plateau, those black mounds were truly an eyesore.

He followed her over, only to find that something about the heaps seemed off.

“Wait... that shape, and a bit of red. Aibo! Don’t get close, it might explode!” Su Yi shouted urgently.

“Meow?!”

Tsukika flinched and hurried backward, her fur standing on end.

“Ex... explode, meow?” she said in terror.

“That’s right. Those should be unburst scales left behind by Bazelgeuse. I have no idea whether they’re still active,” Su Yi said.

To be honest, the explosive scales Bazelgeuse left behind were just a black lump, and they did indeed look like something else.

“From far away it looks like droppings, and up close it still looks like droppings. That thing couldn’t have flown off very far, could it?” Su Yi said darkly.