Stones began to fall from the dome of the entire ruins, like a sand pot being gripped by an invisible giant hand.
Lin Yi's palms were sweaty, and the spacetime rift exploded with tiny blue light at his fingertips—that was the energy resonance before the [Spacetime Barrier] was activated.
"Yao Yao, analyze this fluctuation!" he shouted, glancing out of the corner of his eye as he noticed that Chu Yao's mechanical right eye had switched to scanning mode, with data streams weaving a pale purple grid on her iris.
The girl's voice carried the chilling quality characteristic of electronic audio: "Analyzing... Frequency 117 Hz, similar to the Shadow Force's erosion wave, but with 370% higher energy intensity."
Before the words were even finished, the dark purple liquid suddenly boiled.
The viscous substance that had been bubbling suddenly stood up, forming dozens of tentacles-like spikes that "poofed" through the bluestone slabs and pierced towards the mural area where the three were!
The crack at Lin Yi's fingertip suddenly expanded, and a pale golden light membrane enveloped the three of them.
The tentacles struck the barrier, producing a piercing sound like fingernails scraping a blackboard. Dark purple slime flowed along the light membrane, corroding it and producing wisps of blue smoke.
Whitebeard's short blade flashed from its sheath, the leaping crimson flames evaporating the approaching slime into white mist: "Young friend, this thing is aimed at something on the wall!"
Lin Yi followed the tip of his knife and his heart skipped a beat.
Although the tentacles lashed out in all directions, each one was approaching the mottled mural on the rock wall—a mural depicting nine floating portals to different times and spaces, behind which shone the light of different stars.
The ancient book at their feet, its cover turned to a certain page, had its cover patterns faintly glowing with the vibrations.
"It's looking for clues." Lin Yi gritted his teeth, veins throbbing on his forehead.
Maintaining the [space-time barrier] requires constantly drawing time from the surrounding area. He could clearly feel that time outside the barrier was slowing down—the vibrations that were originally ten times per second now looked like a slow-motion movie inside the barrier.
But the cost was that his own physical strength was being consumed at a visible rate, and the back of his shirt was already soaked with cold sweat.
"Master, the barrier's limit is three minutes." Chu Yao suddenly spoke, and the mechanical arm popped up a data panel, "It is recommended to actively interfere with the source." Her fingertip touched the holographic projection, which showed the energy trajectory extracted from the dark purple liquid, ultimately converging at the altar deepest in the ruins.
The Milky Way in Lin Yi's pupils spun even faster.
He suddenly grabbed Chu Yao's wrist, and with his other hand pulled at the white-bearded man's robe: "Hold on tight!"
The next second, the three figures left a trail of afterimages in place, like a video that had been fast-forwarded.
When [Time-Space Teleportation] was activated, Lin Yi was able to clearly perceive the folds in space—it was as if they had passed through a layer of water film, and when they reappeared, they were already standing on the edge of the altar.
As they moved, they faintly heard soft sounds coming from beneath the surface of the ruins, and occasionally some tiny cracks appeared in the ground, but they had no time to pay attention to them at the moment.
However, the anticipated head-on confrontation did not occur.
The dark purple liquid in the center of the altar suddenly collapsed into a vortex, from which rose not a solid object, but a constantly twisting shadow.
The shadow had no fixed shape, yet it sent a chill down Lin Yi's neck—its "gaze" was so clear, it seemed to have a life of its own.
"This is... a consciousness entity?" The flame on the white-bearded short blade shrank to the size of a bean. "Old man, I've traveled all over the world, and I've never seen an energy entity that can detach from a physical body!"
They had previously discovered some ancient fragments with peach wood carvings around the ruins, and Whitebeard had also heard the legend that peach wood carvings could suppress such shadow energy.
The shadow suddenly expanded, transforming into a giant mouth that spewed dark purple mist towards the mural area.
Lin Yi instantly understood the other party's intention—it couldn't directly touch the physical object, so it wanted to destroy the clues through corrosion!
He immediately activated [Time Travel] again, standing in front of the fog and raising his hand to unfold a smaller but more sturdy barrier.
The fog crashed against the barrier, emitting a shrill sound like a baby crying.
"Master, its attack pattern is changing!" Chu Yao's voice was unusually tense. "It was a physical attack before, but now it's switching to mental interference... Your brainwave frequency is abnormal!"
Lin Yi felt a throbbing pain in his temples, and fragmented hallucinations flashed before his eyes: a blood-red portal, countless pupils resembling dark purple eyes, and... the mysterious figure in the system space who had been facing away from him when he awakened was now slowly turning around—
"Pfft!" He staggered half a step, blood spilling from the corner of his mouth.
This is the backlash from the psychological shock.
The shadows seized the opportunity to split into several thin streams, bypassing the barrier and wrapping around the mural!
"Young friend!" the white-bearded man shouted, throwing out a crimson slash with his short blade.
The moment the flame touched the shadow, it was swallowed up as if it had been plunged into hot water in an ice cave.
The old man's pupils contracted: "This thing...devours energy!"
At the critical moment, Lin Yi bit his tongue.
The excruciating pain dispelled the illusion, and his eyes shone with a dazzling light like the Milky Way—that was the activation of the ultimate eye technique of the [Master of Time and Space], the [Eye of Time].
In those eyes, the movement of shadows was slowed down infinitely, and the direction of each fine stream was as clear as a golden line etched in the void.
"Place it for me!"
He flicked his finger, and a golden chain of light shot out from his fingertip.
That is a [spacetime anchor point], which can reduce the flow of time in a specific area to an infinitely close level of zero.
The thin stream of shadows froze the moment it touched the mural, like a film that had been paused.
"Yao Yao!" Lin Yi said without turning his head, "Record these energy characteristics!"
Old Bai, burn that slime!
Chu Yao's robotic arm instantly deployed a holographic projector, and countless data streams darted into the shadows like silver snakes, instantly replicating its fluctuation frequency.
The white-bearded man then tossed out three talismans—fire-starting talismans he had carved from century-old mountain peach wood, which would ignite upon contact with fire.
The talisman landed on the dark purple liquid, but the rising crimson flames were no longer consumed. Instead, they hissed and evaporated the liquid into pale purple smoke.
"It worked!" The white-bearded man's eyes lit up. "This slime is afraid of peach wood carved magical artifacts!"
But the shadows were clearly aware of the crisis.
The originally distorted shape suddenly contracted, and a bright dark purple light shone forth.
Within Lin Yi's [Eye of Time], a blurry outline emerged at the core of the shadow—was it... half a human face?
"Watch out!" Chu Yao suddenly lunged forward, knocking Lin Yi to the side.
A dark purple beam of light grazed his shoulder, scorching a black mark on the stone wall.
"It has its own consciousness!" Chu Yao's mechanical arm showed scorch marks, but her voice remained calm. "Analyzing attack patterns... predicting the next attack in 1.3 seconds, direction 3 o'clock, angle 27 degrees."
Lin Yi shielded Chu Yao behind him, and a spatial rift formed rotating blades of light around them.
He could sense that his [space-time barrier] was nearing collapse—the mental shock just now had consumed too much of his primordial power.
But what worried him even more was that the shadow's attacks were becoming more and more frequent, and Whitebeard only had two fire tags left.
"We must finish this quickly." Lin Yi took a deep breath, and a ball of light shimmering with starlight condensed in his palm—the prototype of [Spacetime Collapse], capable of compressing energy within its range into a singularity.
But just as he was about to throw, a sudden, intense tremor came from the ground of the ruins.
Unlike the previous overall shaking, this time it felt like countless creatures were crawling underground.
"What is that?" Whitebeard's short blade ignited again as he warily looked around.
Countless bubbles suddenly appeared in the dark purple liquid.
With each bursting bubble, a denser shadow seeped out.
The shadows solidified into physical forms the instant they landed—transparent bodies, twisted limbs, and ghostly green flames flickering in their eye sockets.
They hissed hoarsely from their throats, their long, hooked claws crawling out of the liquid from all directions and surging toward the three of them.
Within Lin Yi's [Eye of Time], the number of these shadow creatures is still surging.
He gripped the spacetime collapse sphere tightly, when suddenly he heard Chu Yao's notification: "Bio-brainwave detected... Highly similar to a Shadow Force soldier, but with a higher energy level."
Whitebeard twirled his short blade in his palm: "Well done!"
The old man was worried about having nowhere to test his newly refined talismans! But his gaze swept towards Lin Yi—both of them knew that the real crisis had only just begun.
The roars of the shadow creatures grew closer, and those in the front row raised their claws and pounced towards the spacetime barrier.
Lin Yi gazed at the distorted figures and suddenly recalled the words of the mysterious figure in the system space: "When darkness descends, you will understand that some awakenings are destined to be ended."
He threw the spacetime collapse sphere into the air, and starlight exploded in the ruins.
At that moment, all of time seemed to stand still for him.
In the dark corner, a dark purple eye was slowly narrowing, as if anticipating something.
The roars of shadow creatures, mixed with the rumble of time-space collapse, echoed through the ruins.
Lin Yi wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, his gaze sweeping over the well-preserved murals and ancient books—at least, for now, they hadn't lost.
But when he looked up, he discovered that the pupils of those shadowy creatures had also begun to glow with a dark purple light.
Their movements suddenly became synchronized, as if controlled by some unified will, as they launched a desperate charge from all directions toward the weakest point of the barrier.
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