Demon King: Hero, don’t run away!

Stepping through the white curtain, Yang Yu steadily landed on a surface emitting a faint blue glow, facing a blue wall.

Lutte Ais softly said, ”Don’t move yet, recite this word with me, ’Luca——’.”

Yang Yu and the others followed suit, countless points of light gathered beneath them to form a light platform.

Lutte Ais continued to guide, ”The ruins are vast. As long as you think of the direction you want to go in your heart, the light platform beneath you will lead you there. Follow me closely to avoid getting lost.”

With that, Lutte Ais slowly rose into the air.

Yang Yu merely thought ”follow up” in his heart, and the light platform beneath him soared up, catching up with Lutte Ais.

Bai Jin already knew how to use [Dancing in the Air], this level of control was nothing to her.

He Meng lazily transformed into Slime form, hiding inside the hood of the White Mallow Robe.

Iyas and the humanoid-form Lotcar were clearly experiencing flight for the first time, struggling to grasp it, yet enjoying it immensely.

Lutte Ais told Yang Yu that the first people to explore the ruins didn’t know this command word, which was accidentally discovered when someone, drunk and babbling, inadvertently stumbled upon it.

With this command word, they could quickly move through the ruins and reach their destinations without spending much time.

However, in order to quickly reach certain important locations, researchers had still established several teleportation spots.

Yang Yu and the others were there for a visit, spending most of their time on a cursory tour, listening to Lutte Ais’s explanations, not needing those special teleportation spots.

By lightly touching a wall, a long corridor appeared in front of Yang Yu and the others, with Lutte Ais leading the way.

”I don’t really know where to start showing you around, but since the ruins are so accessible, let’s just take a look anywhere.”

Yang Yu and the rest first arrived at a dormitory area.

Hexagonal rooms formed two sides of a ”honeycomb,” with the passage they walked through being the gap between the two honeycombs, roughly estimated to be two kilometers wide.

Upon receiving permission, Yang Yu gained the right to enter one room for a closer look.

The majority of rooms were locked by something, seemingly requiring special rules to open; Yang Yu could only enter those that were damaged.

Unfortunately, despite being spacious, the rooms had been emptied, with nothing to see.

This situation was also found in many other areas.

Yang Yu could only get a glimpse of the original appearance of these areas from Lutte Ais’s descriptions, who often depicted the removed items as ”never-seen-before curiosities.”

Along the way, Yang Yu and the others saw quite a few researchers, some transporting equipment, others tinkering aimlessly with machines.

Seeing these people, Lutte Ais suddenly said:

”Researching the ruins is quite arduous. Some people work on it for decades without any results.”

”Do they regret it?” Yang Yu asked.

”Regret? Who knows? I think rather than regret, they hate not being able to, in their lifetimes, unearth the answers they seek with their own hands. Humans have only a few decades of life, which is too short.”

Lutte Ais gave a helpless bitter smile; he too didn’t know whether he could see the real secrets of the ruins revealed in his lifetime.

Lutte Ais smiled, ”Not everything is hard to research, like the area we’re going to next.”

The speed of movement gradually increased as Yang Yu and the others arrived at a fantastical world.

This was a circular area displaying numerous bizarre stones.

Instead of stones, they’re more like bones...

These bones were arranged in the shapes of different creatures.

Yang Yu knew what these things were.

They were fossils.

Yes, fossils.

The remnants, relics, or traces of ancient organisms that once lived here, turned into fossils through geological changes.

Yang Yu never thought he would see such things in this world.

”The items here have long been thoroughly researched.

They’re just ordinary stones, but more than just stones.

There are two theories:

One suggests people who once lived here made these artistic creations using different animal bones into statues after petrification for entertainment.

The other proposes these creatures did exist, but due to some reason, only their bones remain, and for another unknown reason, they all turned into stones.

The first theory was dominant until a researcher remembered seeing similar things in the outside world and brought actual samples back. Now

No matter what, we can’t understand why people back then placed all these stones here, occupying such a large circular area.”

Yang Yu directed his light platform to ascend slowly, getting a bird’s eye view of this area from the dome, where he saw several highly recognizable fossils...

Saber-toothed Tiger, Mammoth, Horror Bird, Tyrant Dragon, Triceratops, Deng’s fish...

Returning to the ground, the light platform beneath his feet disappeared, and Yang Yu officially set foot in this fossil area, feeling as though something was drawing him from the edge of the circle to the center step by step.

How did humans come to be?

In some worlds of fantasy, either this question is deliberately avoided or it’s straightforwardly answered, with humans being created by some god.

But in these ruins, Yang Yu saw another explanation.

With each step, Yang Yu felt hundreds of thousands of years passing by him, his posture gradually changing, and the fossils around him slowly coming to life.

He first turned into a fur-covered ape, with various giant beasts roaming around, being alone and weak, until a sharp saber-tooth suddenly pierced through his throat from behind.

The next moment, he became a peculiar monkey leaping through the forest dominated by gigantic birds; while he was busy watching the giant birds, he accidentally ran into a branch and fell from the tree, the terrestrial bird used its giant claws to pin his body, and its enormous beak thrusted towards him.

In the next instant, the giant birds morphed into dinosaurs, devouring a recently caught Triceratops, while he became even smaller, turning into a mouse hiding in a tree hollow. A four-winged dinosaur found his nest and launched an attack; he cowardly shrunk to the corner of the cave but couldn’t escape the fate of death.

Step by step, death circulated in front of Yang Yu, with enemies changing one batch after another, yet each time, he couldn’t conquer death.

His form constantly evolved, shedding hair to grow scales, shedding scales as his skin became moist, then regrowing scales, diving into the ocean, swimming and swimming, becoming more primitive, losing limbs, losing swimming fins, losing jaw, losing notochord, losing vision..... becoming smaller and smaller until he was but a tiny, invisible microbe.

Raising his hand, everything returned to normal, and Yang Yu seemed to have traversed through billions of years, becoming who he was now.

In front of him was a glass box placed on a pillar, with nothing inside.

But Yang Yu knew what was inside.

”——Luca (LUCA).”

The last universal common ancestor of all living things.