In the dimly lit basement, Sabrina, by the faint candlelight, finished the fruit wine in front of her in one gulp and said self-deprecatingly, "What third-in-line? Right now, I'm nothing but a stray dog."

Todd glanced at Rachel, who gave him a look that said, "Take it easy."

Sabrina continued, "When Clarence was alive, I lived a pretty good life. Now I can only hide underground and live like a rat!"

At this moment, Rachel explained to Todd, "For Sabrina's sake, Eleanor has put up a bounty among the alien races. Whoever captures her will receive a large reward, dead or alive."

Todd asked, "Why is Eleanor targeting her like this?"

Sabrina pointed to her head, her young face filled with a sense of weariness and helplessness: "Because of my special ability... I can house my soul in the blood within my body, and through this blood possession, I can abandon my original body and acquire a new one. In this way, I can indirectly obtain infinite life."

Todd understood her situation somewhat: "That's why Eleanor, who is pursuing immortality, has made your superpower her target and is so eager to capture you."

Rachel nodded: "I was able to enter the library of Eliard this time and copy the books I wanted, thanks to Sabrina's ability. She took over the body of a masked servant and opened the way for my infiltration."

At this point, Rachel extended her hand to Sabrina: "What happened to what I asked you to keep?"

Sabrina didn't move, but instead asked Rachel, "What about what you promised me?"

Rachel tilted her head to look at the girl in front of her and said with a smile, "Even King Muxi risked his life to come here to see you and me. Don't you still believe my promise?"

Sabrina lowered her head and thought for a moment, then gritted her teeth and made up her mind. She left her seat, walked to the corner of the basement, lifted a floor tile, and took out a heavy wooden box.

Sabrina placed it on the table, opened the box, pointed to a pile of notes inside, and said to Rachel, "The whole thing is here."

Todd took the notebook out of the wooden box and carefully flipped through it.

Dozens of notebooks were filled with a large amount of text and drawings. What gave Todd a headache was that some of the text was in Common Language, some in Imperial Language, but most of it was in a language he couldn't understand at all.

“These are all in ancient Taro, translations of ancient scrolls.” Seeing the look in Todd’s eyes, Rachel quickly raised her hands and said, “Don’t look at me like that. Although I know more than a dozen languages, I can’t understand this script at all.”

Left with no other option, Todd skipped the words and began to focus on the pictures.

A massive black tower, shimmering underground passages, and a mysterious inverted pyramid pattern...

The upper part of the notebook is full of descriptions of crystal constellations and beacon towers. Judging from this, these things were already circulating among the people long before the invention of writing.

Todd turned to a page in his notebook and suddenly stopped what he was doing.

It was filled with strange characters, the very symbols Meredith had shown him in the soul space.

There are dozens of such strange symbols, all of which are randomly arranged using horizontal lines and circles.

Todd clenched his fist and rested his chin on it as he pondered deeply, wondering to himself, "Could these regular symbols be some kind of code?"

Rachel leaned closer to look at the notes and whispered, "These symbols are from the records of the only person who entered the Beacon Tower room thousands of years ago. According to his description, these symbols filled the crystal screen, constantly jumping, changing, and floating. Perhaps... these are the language used by the Absolute Will?"

“I feel like I’ve seen this symbol somewhere before,” Todd said, scratching his head. “But I can’t quite place it right now.”

Sabrina, who was sitting next to Todd, leaned over, rotated the notebook on the table 90 degrees, and placed it in front of her eyes, glancing at it curiously.

Looking at the notebook in front of him, which had been rotated 90 degrees, with the horizontal lines now vertical and all the symbols transformed into strings of numbers in groups of three, Todd was struck dumb and momentarily forgot to breathe.

"..."

Todd's unconscious muttering caught Rachel's attention.

"What's wrong? What did you find?"

Todd pointed to the notebook and said in a trembling voice, "A thousand years ago, those ancient Talos probably got the paper orientation wrong when they were copying and translating ancient scrolls..."

"You've got the paper facing the wrong way?"

“It was supposed to be formatted horizontally, but it was mistakenly formatted vertically…” Todd said, pointing to the notebook. “So, these horizontal lines should be vertical, and these symbols are actually numbers, a bunch of numbers made up of 0s and 1s.”

Rachel looked closely and murmured, "That's right, these symbols, when viewed upside down, do indeed resemble the numbers used by the Empire, 0 and 1... So, what do they represent?"

Todd rubbed his temples hard with his fingers: "In my hometown, 0 and 1 are used as the most basic computing language. Their arrangement and changes can be used to store information, express logic and formula calculations... Therefore, it is widely used in the program assembly of intelligent machines."

Rachel became increasingly confused: "You mean the symbols displayed in the beacon tower control room are actually a machine language of heaven?"

"This language is called binary language, and it's considered a computational method that can achieve the results of everything, but... why? Why would it appear in a beacon tower?"

Todd crossed his arms and pondered deeply: "Could it be that the Beacon Tower and the Crystal Nest are both man-made products? The dimensional experiments, the War of the Chosen Ones, and the racial selection are actually all related to humanity in the future?"

Todd, who couldn't come up with an answer no matter how hard he tried, sighed deeply at the rooftop, his face full of distress.

Rachel comforted him, saying, "We still have too little information at hand. If we can translate these Tarot texts and study them carefully, we might find more answers."

Todd nodded, placed the notebook into the wooden box, and gestured for Rachel to keep it safe. Then he asked, "When will a ship be able to return to Twilight City?"

“I’ve already sent someone to make contact,” Rachel replied, locking the wooden crate. “A two-masted cargo ship will arrive at the port the day after tomorrow evening. After boarding, we’ll first head west to bypass the Imperial naval patrol, and then head north to Twilight City.”