The bronze door creaked under Lin Yi's palm, and a chilling, earthy smell seeped from the cracks.
Chu Yao's mechanical pupils flashed with a stream of eerie blue data. She raised the detector on her wrist: "The fluctuations of the spatial blockade are receding. Time flows three times slower inside the door than outside—this is the spacetime anchoring technology of an advanced civilization."
"Anchoring?" The white-bearded man stroked his silver beard, and the bronze dagger in his hand suddenly gleamed. "I saw similar patterns back in Kunlun Ruins. They were used to suppress ancient ferocious beasts." Before he finished speaking, the bronze door slammed open to the sides, revealing a deep passageway behind it.
Lin Yi stepped in first, and the moment his boots touched the bluestone slabs, the stone lanterns above his head lit up with a "whoosh".
In the warm yellow light, flowing runes appeared on the walls on both sides, like activated nerve pathways.
Chu Yao's fingertips traced the wall, and nanomechanical structures seeped from beneath her skin, outlining a three-dimensional model in the air: "These are variants of ancient Elamite, but with a quantum entanglement encoding method—someone deliberately mixed symbols from different civilizations together."
"Trap." The white-bearded man suddenly grabbed Chu Yao by the back of her collar and pulled her back.
The bluestone slab she had just been standing on cracked open with a "crack," and three poisoned bronze spikes shot out from the ground, grazing her hair and embedding themselves in the opposite wall.
The old man used a short blade to pick up a copper spike, brought it to his nose, and sniffed it: "Aconitine mixed with other substances is extremely potent; even a little bit will leave you bedridden for three days."
Lin Yi's fingertips traced silver paths in the void as [Space-Time Perception] activated.
He could clearly see countless bronze tubes buried beneath the floor of the passageway, connecting the traps in different locations like blood vessels. "The third stone slab on the left," he suddenly said, his white-bearded dagger striking the slab precisely with a "click," and the bronze tubes of the entire row of traps simultaneously retracted into the ground.
"How did you know?" Chu Yao blinked, her hair still dusted with stone fragments from when the trap was triggered.
"They're breathing." Lin Yi pointed to the ground. "The trigger frequency of the traps is synchronized with my heartbeat—someone is testing the intruder's vitality." He rotated his wrist, and the spacetime vortex pulsating in his palm suddenly split into seven thin streams, each disappearing into the runes on either side of the passageway.
The rune array emitted a buzzing sound, and the originally flowing symbols suddenly solidified into a kind of star map.
Chu Yao's pupils instantly dilated to their limit, and nanomachines formed a data stream around her: "This is the location of Betelgeuse in Orion!"
But Betelgeuse will explode as a supernova in 2030, and these star charts show it is still in its main sequence phase—
"This means the builders came from Earth at least five thousand years ago." Whitebeard's voice suddenly deepened, his short blade twirling in his palm. "Or... from Earth in another timeline."
The stone gate at the end of the passageway opened automatically as the three were talking.
The view is of a huge circular space, with hundreds of luminous pearls embedded in the dome, illuminating the bronze altar in the center in every detail.
Eight dragon-carved pillars stand around the altar, each wrapped with a translucent band of energy that flickers in rhythm with the breath.
The three cautiously entered the circular space. Chu Yao's nanomachines began to scan the surrounding environment in detail, Whitebeard observed the surroundings warily, and Lin Yi concentrated on sensing the spacetime fluctuations within the space.
"This is..." Chu Yao's voice suddenly stopped.
The moment her nanomachines touched the nearest band of light, she felt as if she had been thrown into a torrent of data. The nanomachines began to operate frantically, attempting to analyze this massive and complex dataset.
After a series of difficult attempts, the nanomechanics finally deciphered some of the data: "Warning!"
Quantum entangled memory detected!
"Deepening analysis..." After a period of analysis, "Analysis complete!"
She suddenly raised her hand, and a holographic projection appeared in the air—it was a flowing mural.
In the scene, countless warriors clad in dark purple armor surged out from the torn space, their foreheads bearing the same dark patterns as those on the shredded cloth in the laboratory.
Against them was a group of beings surrounded by starlight, whose leader bore a striking resemblance to Xuan Mingzi!
"An interdimensional invader..." Lin Yi's Adam's apple bobbed.
He remembered the "Civilization Trial" mentioned in the system notification, and the war in the scene was clearly the source of the trial.
Whitebeard's short blade clattered to the ground.
He pointed tremblingly to the edge of the mural, where a tiny figure stood—wearing modern combat gear and clutching the same dark purple crystal as the Night Owl organization: "That's... my old captain who disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle thirty years ago."
Chu Yao's nanomechanics suddenly condensed into physical pages, ancient documents extracted from the energy light band.
She flipped through the pages rapidly, her voice growing increasingly urgent: "The records show that the Night Owl Organization's dark markings are marks left by the invaders. They absorb human spiritual energy through games to prepare for opening dimensional portals... and Xuan Mingzi..." She abruptly looked up, "...he was both the executor of the trials and a traitor to the invaders!"
Just as the three were immersed in the awe brought by the murals and documents, the ground suddenly shook violently, and the luminous pearls in the dome burst one after another, shattering into stardust.
The light bands on the eight dragon pillars turned blood red at the same time, and the originally gentle energy suddenly became violent, coiling around the three of them like a living venomous snake.
Lin Yi instantly activated the [Space-Time Domain], and a silver light membrane protected the three of them in the center.
He could clearly sense that the spacetime structure of the entire ruins was being forcibly twisted by some force, and a deep chanting sound came from below the altar, as if some sleeping entity was being completely awakened.
"Get out of here!" Whitebeard's short blade ignited with blue flames, severing the entangling band of light. "This isn't a ruin at all, it's a seal!"
Chu Yao's nanomachines frantically scanned her surroundings: "Energy level has broken through to S-rank!"
Locating the source... at the center of the altar!
Something's about to come out!
Lin Yi stared at the altar that was gradually cracking, the spacetime vortex in his palm spinning wildly.
He could sense that the being about to awaken resonated with—or rather, repelled—the mythical class within him.
Suddenly, the air was filled with the stench of rotting flesh mixed with the metallic odor, and dark purple viscous liquid seeped from the cracks in the altar, spreading into eerie runes on the ground.
All three communicators simultaneously emitted a piercing static sound, and Chu Yao's voice distorted: "Detected... dimensional fluctuations... something... is..."
"Retreat!" Lin Yi shouted, and the three of them retreated rapidly towards the tunnel, enveloped by the spacetime domain.
Just as they rushed out of the stone gate, a deafening explosion came from behind them. The dome of the entire ruin collapsed with a roar, and rubble rained down like a storm.
But that's not the scariest part.
When the last piece of gravel landed, the three of them froze on the spot.
On the stone gate behind them, a dark purple eye had appeared out of nowhere and was slowly opening.
Those eyes had no pupils, only churning chaos, as if they wanted to suck all who looked at them into an endless abyss.
What made Lin Yi's hair stand on end was that the outline of this eye completely overlapped with the pupil of the mysterious figure in the system space when he awakened [Time and Space Dominator].
"Prepare for battle." He clenched his fist, the spatial rifts crackling at his fingertips. "We... have awakened something we shouldn't have."
Before he finished speaking, the entire ruins trembled again, with a shockwave ten times more intense than before rising from the ground.
The bluestone slabs beneath their feet shattered, revealing a dark purple liquid bubbling beneath, as if some living thing were breathing.
The fishy smell in the air grew stronger, and Chu Yao's mechanical arm suddenly extended a laser blade, causing the white-bearded man's short blade to burn even more fiercely.
In Lin Yi's pupils, the image of the Milky Way reversing became clearer and clearer—it was the [Time and Space Dominator] warning that a crisis far beyond their imagination was slowly opening its eyes in the darkness.
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