But perhaps I should go back a little. The reader will recollect that when we last left Yu Yao and Art, they were setting off into the swamps outside Megamegamegapolis, Whyiohiowa, following a divination delivered by Art’s sister with the power of VTubing. There they were hoping to find… well, something… that might let them get back to their world from ours.

In olden times, the swamps outside of Megamegamegapolis had been massive, bordered by multiple forests, deep and broad and full of life; but time and the powers of industry had chopped down the forest and drained much of the swamp, and what remained was a bitter and twisted shadow of itself. Hollowed and tortured trees littered the blasted landscape, the dark terrain only occasionally lit by a flower or two, and were it not for the crotchety old crows there would be no birds roosting in the tree branches. They cackled as they watched the pair of adventurers wading through the muddy waters.

“It should be about here,” Art murmured almost to himself, holding the crude map in his hands as he scanned the heath for the signs he was looking for. Yao followed along behind him, still content to leave the journey in his hands, convinced as she was that this was all a transmigrator-induced vision that would vanish as soon as Art was satisfied with his teaching.

Art was beginning to grumble about the interminability of his search, when he quite literally tripped over the sign he was looking for. The square stone stuck out from the muck of the swamp, its weathered surface still clearly covered with ancient carvings.

Yao and Art leaned in close, examining these with some enthusiasm, although they were swiftly disappointed - while the carvings evidently had something to do with cultivation or magic or theurgy or suchlike, their details were too faded to make out anything in specific.

Still, this was the object of their search, and Art wasted no time in following the rest of the instructions of his sister’s divination. He squatted down in the filthy water, heedless of the grime clinging to his skin, and muttered to himself as his fingers felt their way across the sunken carving, searching for a clasp.

Yao stood beside him, examining the stone with some curiosity. “I have to say, I was not expecting there to be anything resembling cultivation in this world - when I talk to transmigrators, they usually emphasise that the world they came from had no cultivation or magic, that powers weren’t real, and other things of that sort.”

She did not say that she was surprised, because while she hadn’t been expecting to find magic the fact was that the world transmigrators came from was a fabrication made for the purpose of transmitting their highly allegorical teaching, and hence any transmigrator could add magic to their “past life” at will.

“Mmm. Not surprising,” Art said, as his fingers proceeded down the surface of the carving at a rapid pace. “Magic’s always been here, of course, but only if you look for it - and most transmigrators don’t; they just wait for it to come to them.”

Yao folded her arms in their sleeves. It was a compelling enough excuse, she supposed. “Makes sense.”

“Like everything valuable, it hides - the good scholar is like the good adventurer; he digs, and hunts, and journeys, and is unfailingly polite to the locals, and perchance he’ll find a treasure hidden in a deep valley, beyond the lights of men,” Art continued, ruminating on a favoured theme.

“There’s no need for you to convince me,” Yao said, even though her face showed clearly that she was unconvinced. “What you’ve said was more than enough to show why you and your sister and probably many others know something of wizardry.”

“Glad to hear it, although my skill is nothing special. At any rate, there’s a great deal out there that’s still hidden from view, and… Why are you writing all this down in a notebook?” Art interrupted himself.

“I’m compiling notes on your mythological narrative for later analysis by scholars,” Yao said perfunctorily.

“Uh huh, if you say so. Well,” but before he could finish his thought his fingers found the clasp, and with a rattle and a rasp the stone sank from view. A hideous slorping sound followed, the water and mud in the surrounding puddle draining down the hole. Eventually all that was left was a jagged, unusual gap cut into a stone base, the aged entryway to the underground having slowly warped over the years.

“Say what you will about your own skills, your sister’s divination skills are truly terrifying,” Yao murmured.

“Yeppers. She got this location right in one go,” Art replied proudly, as if it was his feat. “So, should we go?”

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The entryway yawned wide before them. The carving had sunk down and into it, vanishing into the floor below as it unsealed the entrance. Beyond it could be seen a dark and malodorous passageway, opening up into impenetrable depths.

It must have been sealed for quite some time, for in spite of the terrible stench and uncomfortable feel of the walls there were none of those indications of subterranean life one finds so often in submerged ruins, and no water dripped from the ceilings.

Yao muttered to herself, a small ball of fire flickering into existence on the end of her fingers, and took the lead. The carvings inside the tunnel were clearer than those of the sunken carving, and their journey was marked by occasional gasps of startled recognition from Yao, as she was every now and then able to piece together the meaning of a set of glyphs or images.

“These were definitely inhabited by cultivators,” she said, as she admired a colossal image cut into the walls. It showed a creature that looked half like an arachnid and half like a squid forming a highly awkward lotus pose, waving lines either pointing towards, or emanating from, the creature as it meditated. “Although I can’t imagine they were humans.”

“Mmm,” Art replied, as he took a tracing of an especially surreal diagram. “There have been stories of higher civilisations which lived deep, deep within the earth. Perhaps this was the entryway to one of these.”

In spite of herself, Yao was impressed. Such imagination! She paused beside a pair of gouges carved into the wall which may once have held torches, and tried to decipher the symbols.

“What do you think these were?” Art asked, examining the same symbol as her. “A depiction of the creatures’ history, perhaps? Or are these instructions for cultivation - manuals, diagrams, overviews, etcetera? Or a recounting of their mythology?”

Yao shook her head. “I’m afraid I can’t say; I recognise none of the glyphs inscribed on the wall. It could be all of them, or it could be none of them.”

Art was about to speak further, when one of the glyphs he was feeling suddenly lit up with an ethereal fire. The glowing blue flame hopped to another glyph, which hopped to a third and a fourth, and with a series of such leaps and bounds the entirety of the wall was all aflame.

Art stepped back nervously, but the flames didn’t seem to have any negative effects… at least, not immediately. The now glowing walls lit up the tunnel through which they were moving, revealing that it had, somehow, been carved in the shape of a perfect cube - each side precisely equidistant from the other - and that, far from proceeding in a perfectly straight line, it was slowly trending downwards. Several hundred feet from their current location it broadened out into what was evidently some sort of cavern, although its contents were too far away for Art to clearly discern them.

“Well, that’s handy,” Yao cheerily remarked. Slowly, cautiously, she continued down the hall towards the cavern, Art following after her.

The cavern was also carved in a perfect but far more colossal cube, every surface inlaid with symbols and glyphs and pictographs and images. Their order was totally random; if there was any pattern present, it was completely non-apparent.

The room was mostly empty, devoid of any furniture or rock formations. In the centre of the cavern, however, was the ossified corpse of a…

“A dragon,” Yao breathed to herself, walking as if in a trance towards the beast. Art didn’t follow, his face struck dumb with surprise; he recognised the beast, and knew it was no dragon.

“Uhh, Yao, may I recommend a bit more caution? We don’t know why this corpse is here,” he said, staring nervously at the thing on the floor.

“It’s fine; I can detect no formations on the creature, nor any sign of traps. I wouldn’t have approached it otherwise.” Yao reached the dragon and ran her hands down its mummified flesh, its paper thin skin crinkling under her touch.

“It has no wings,” she murmured, as a touch to its back confirmed that they hadn’t just been ripped off. “And what’s with these arms?”

Before Art could say anything, however, the earth heaved underneath them, a mighty rumble which nearly tossed Art and Yao off their feet.

Evidently the strange fire was starting to take effect, as the flames in the wall carvings gave intermittent flickers in tune to the quaking, and the room even tilted slightly. At last, finally, it steadied, the tremors ceasing.

“Phew,” Yao said. “At least that’s over.”

And then the great eye opened.

Yao staggered backwards as the ‘dragon’ climbed to its feet, staring down at the pair of trespassers, its hunger surprisingly clear in its emaciated eyes.

The T-Rex gave a mighty roar.

“Ah… How strange - it doesn't emit the vibe of a jiangshi. It must not be dead, properly speaking, and we must have awoken it,” Yao said, casually hurling herself backwards. A quarter of a moment later the rock where she'd been standing was annihilated, the creature’s tale slamming down with a thud.

“A fact which raises more questions than it does answers, for these creatures have been extinct for some sixty five million years,” Art replied.

Yao wanted to ask him what he meant, but the extinct, mummified monster was starting to glow with an ethereal light, its preserved flesh burning away as some unknown technique ate away at its heart.

Yao made an unladylike sound at the back of her throat, her fingers dancing in a formation. “Taijitu - First Phase, Master of the Active Yang.”

A hieroglyph burned in the air before the creature. It gave one final roar, and then its bones caught, and alchemical fire consumed the creature.

Yao turned to Art. “What the heck was that?”