Linde went outside, and after completely severing all connections between the evil god's core and the outside world, he did not immediately leave the silent rift. He needed to gather his thoughts and plan his next move.
With a casual wave of his hand, the scattered, relatively flat pieces of fungal rock around him were cut and shaped by an invisible force, quickly assembling into a simple yet sturdy stone seat.
He sat down calmly, leaning against the cold rock wall, his deep purple eyes gazing at the narrow alien sky above the rift valley, cut apart by distorted light.
In my mind, information surged and collided like a tidal wave.
“A failed product from an ancient battlefield, an abandoned wreckage…” Linde calmly sorted through the information. “Its value lies in its research significance as a ‘sample,’ and the fragmented information it contains about that war and the nature of the evil gods. But it knows almost nothing about the current dynamics of the evil god forces, their main attack direction, or even the truth about that ‘light of rule correction.’”
This core is more like a guardian of a historical site, protecting a past long since sealed away. It offers limited direct help to Linde's goal of exploring threats in the "present."
"The dragon's star map marks several coordinates where 'abnormal activity' might exist. The first coordinate points to this place, the ruins of an ancient battlefield. So what about the other coordinates? Are they similar ruins, or... still active strongholds?"
He cannot place all his hopes on these ancient markers. The cosmos is vast, time and space are ever-changing, and errors and accidents can happen at any time.
"We must proactively gather more timely and macro-level information," Linde concluded.
His gaze seemed to pierce through the rock strata and reach into the boundless starry sky.
This star field was once the battlefield of an ancient war. Even though that mysterious "light" erased most of the traces, a conflict of this scale would inevitably leave some "ripples" on a cosmic scale that are difficult to completely disappear.
For example, subtle distortions in spatial structures, residual energy background radiation in specific frequency bands, or... certain "residues" floating in the void that have not been completely cleaned up.
This information is imperceptible to the Tar insectoids or the half-dead core of the evil god, but it might be a clue that Lind, with his [Deconstruction Aura] and powerful perception, can detect.
"Instead of blindly relying on potentially outdated star maps to travel through the area, it would be better to first conduct a detailed 'on-site survey' centered on this star region."
Lin De's mind raced. "Scanning the nearby starry sky, searching for clues left over from the ancient war, and analyzing the energy flow might allow us to deduce the intensity of the battle, its main impact area, and even... some characteristics of the source of that destructive force."
It's like a detective investigating a crime scene years later; although time has passed, their superior skills and keen insight can still uncover crucial evidence.
With that in mind, Linde no longer hesitated.
He closed his eyes, focusing most of his mind into his body, connecting with the purple crystal deep within his consciousness and the system interface.
The primal power of the Light Vein and the Shadow Abyss flowed slowly within his body, maintaining a delicate balance and providing him with almost inexhaustible energy for his upcoming actions.
He pushed the power of [Deconstructing the Halo] to its limit, but this time, the target was no longer a specific substance or life form, but a more abstract and grander existence—the "rule network" and "energy background" of this star field itself.
His perception was like a superdimensional radar wave, spreading silently outwards from himself in all directions, into the depths of the starry sky, and even into the gaps between dimensions.
This perception is not visual or auditory, but a direct reading of the universe's underlying information.
He "heard" the steady gravitational song of stars, "saw" the faint pulsations of planetary magnetic fields, and felt the slow drift of interstellar dust clouds under radiation.
These are all normal "background noises" in the universe.
Linde patiently filtered through this known information, as if discerning specific whispers in a noisy marketplace.
He was looking for anomalies—spatial folds that didn't match the age and material distribution of this star field; residual, unnatural high-energy particle radiation; gravitational waves of a specific frequency with "artificial" traces; or... an extremely faint energy decay signature that didn't belong to any known astrophysical phenomenon.
Time passed in silence.
The rotation of the planet Qitar caused changes in the brightness of light, but to Lind deep in the rift, everything outside seemed to stand still.
He was like a diver plunging into the deep sea, carefully searching for any possible, glittering "pearls" in the ocean of information.
One day, two days...
Finally, on the third day, when Lind's senses touched a patch of interstellar dust on the outskirts of the Thal system that was originally thought to be empty, he caught a very faint "dissonance"!
It was a very peculiar spatial ripple, extremely subtle, like a string that had been plucked and had long since stopped vibrating, but whose body still retained a negligible resonance.
The essence of this ripple is not gravity, but rather more like... a "spacetime memory" caused by the remnants of some extremely powerful force that acts on the level of rules!
Its frequency and decay pattern have a faint resemblance to the destructive "Light of Rule Correction" that he sensed in the core memory of the evil god! It is only a billion times weaker and almost indistinguishable in the cosmic background.
“Found it…” Lin De’s eyes moved slightly beneath his tightly closed eyelids.
He immediately focused all his senses on that interstellar dust belt, and the power of the [Deconstruction Halo] acted like the most precise probe, deeply analyzing every point of the spacetime structure in that area.
More details have been uncovered:
• Extremely wide range: These subtle ripples in spacetime are not limited to a single point, but rather spread across a fairly vast area in a fan-shaped pattern, as if they were caused by some kind of wide-range attack.
• Directionality: The decaying gradient of the ripples suggests that their source appears to be in a specific direction within the star field, while the direction of diffusion points towards... the region where the planet Qitar is located, and further back.
• Residual Information: In the core of the ripples, in the area that has almost subsided, the [Deconstruction Halo] barely managed to capture some extremely fragmented pieces of information "imprinted" on the spatiotemporal structure. These fragments are not words or images, but a more essential "concept"—"negation," "purification," and "restoration of order."
Linde suddenly felt enlightened.
“That’s right, this is it. That ‘light’… or rather, that ‘rule-correcting’ power, is coming from that direction.”
He looked at a seemingly ordinary location in the starry sky, “Its influence is extremely wide, and its power is enough to instantly wipe out an evil god's fleet, and even to some extent ‘repair’ a severely polluted planet. Its essence… tends to maintain a certain ‘basic order’ of the universe.”
This discovery is of great significance!
It not only confirmed the authenticity of the core memory of the evil god, but more importantly, it pointed Lind in a direction—the direction of the source of the power that destroyed the invasion of the ancient evil god!
Although it is unknown whether the "source" still exists or has changed after such a long period of time, this is undoubtedly a clue more worthy of being followed than the ancient star map of the dragon race!
Tracing the source of this power may lead to the key to combating or even completely eliminating the threat of extraterrestrial evil gods!
Linde slowly opened his eyes, his purple pupils flashing with a cold and sharp light.
He stood up, and the stone seat behind him quietly crumbled, returning to ordinary fragments of fungal rock.
The first exploration, although it failed to reach its target (the active stronghold of the evil god), unexpectedly yielded a precious ancient sample and found a clue that might lead to a greater truth.
“The next target is there.” Linde looked into the depths of the starry sky, towards the direction from which traces of the “rule-correcting” power still lingered.
He needs to return to the surface of Qitar, take advantage of the relatively open environment, reactivate a "Star Scale Ship," and head to the next dragon-marked coordinates in that direction, or... directly explore deep space along this newly discovered clue.
In any case, his interstellar journey has taken a clearer, and perhaps more dangerous, direction because of this unexpected discovery.
He ignored the imprisoned core of the evil god beneath his feet, and with a flash, he disappeared into the silent rift, leaving behind only endless darkness and silence, and that ominous heart that was still slowly pulsating with a weak energy supply.
Its fate is sealed; it will become a treasure in Linde's knowledge repository. Linde's journey, however, points to the depths of the starry sea, to the ultimate mystery concerning the balance between order and chaos.
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