As the wind swept the scraps of paper past everyone's feet, Chu Yao's projection suddenly stabilized, her mechanical voice carrying an unusual urgency: "The residual energy fluctuations of the battlefield have been analyzed, and the overlapping trajectory of the extradimensional particles and the ancient star map has been detected." She tapped her fingertip, and a pale blue star map floated in the air, "The coordinates are locked in the abandoned 'Cangwu Ancient Ruins' in the northwest suburbs of Yun City."
Lin Yi's grip on the longsword tightened slightly.
He could feel the void in the origin of spacetime within his body slowly healing, like the first drop of living water seeping into a dried-up riverbed.
“Ancient Ruins?” Su Qing wiped the blood from her face, her icy blue hair still dripping with melted ice crystals. “The Reality Alliance explored it three years ago and said it was a sacrificial site of the Xia Dynasty, but they didn’t even dig up a single bronze artifact.”
“But the exploration team at the time missed the three underground levels.” Chu Yao pulled up a blurry video—it was footage from a surveyor’s recorder. As the camera panned across the rock wall, a dark pattern flashed under the flash. “This rune belongs to the common language of the ‘Chaos Era,’ which translates to ‘spacetime anchor point.’”
Long Wu patted the dragon scale armor on his chest, and the shattered pieces of armor fell to the ground with a clatter: "Who cares about anchor points or traps, I'm itching for a fight." He grinned, revealing two sharp dragon teeth, and blood seeped from the corners of his mouth, making it look like he had deliberately drawn up battle makeup.
A dark figure emerged halfway from the shadows, its voice hoarse: "I'll go scout ahead." Before the words were even finished, it transformed into a wisp of black mist and disappeared into the cracks between the ruins.
Lin Yi gazed at the closed "eye" on the horizon, his silver-blue pupils churning with dark undercurrents.
The owl's laughter still lingered in his ears, and the mysterious figure's "expectation" felt like a thorn in the back of his neck—they wouldn't expose their whereabouts for no reason; this might be bait, but... He gripped the hilt of his sword, and the fragments of the spacetime rift on the blade suddenly shone like stars. "Go."
The wind in the northwestern suburbs of Yuncheng carried the smell of rust.
The bronze door of the Cangwu Ancient Ruins was half-closed. The Taotie pattern on the door was blurred by acid rain, but it suddenly emitted a faint light when people approached.
Just as Su Qing's ice cone was about to solidify, Lin Yi raised his hand and pressed it down: "Don't use elemental power." He squatted down and lightly touched the ground with his fingertips—a slight vibration came from under the stone bricks, like the heartbeat of some ancient instrument.
“Look here.” Long Wu’s dragon claws parted the moss in the corner of the wall, revealing runes carved into the cracks in the stone. “It looks a bit like the ‘time-space anchor’ that Chu Yao mentioned.” Before he finished speaking, the runes suddenly turned blood red, and the air in the entire ruins began to distort.
A chill ran down Lin Yi's neck instantly.
He could clearly perceive that the spacetime lines around him were like a ball of yarn tangled by a naughty child. The stone pillar to the east, which was clearly ten meters away, was now casting a shadow to his left rear.
"Trap!" he hissed, pulling Su Qing behind him. "All personnel on alert!"
His response was a deafening roar.
The ground cracked open like a spiderweb, from which black slime gushed out, solidifying into translucent monsters—they had octopus tentacles, lion claws, and eyeballs that resembled rotating star charts, each radiating an epic aura of power.
The monster at the front opened its mouth, but instead of venom, it spat out turbulent currents of spacetime, which directly blew away the job changers three meters away.
"Faith Link!" someone shouted.
At the same time, golden patterns lit up between the brows of all the job changers, which were the contracts they had made with Lin Yi using the power of their faith.
In an instant, a sacred aura filled the air, and the previously suppressed power erupted like a volcano—the swordsmen's weapons glowed with divine light, the fire wielders' flames condensed into phoenixes, and even the most ordinary shield warriors had ancient gods' reliefs appear on their shields.
Long Wu's roar echoed across the sky.
His skin cracked open, and blue dragon scales covered his entire body like a tide. His dragon tail swept away three stone pillars, and with a breath of dragon breath, ten monsters were burned to ashes: "Damn it, I was holding back my strength before because I was afraid of hurting you, now go all out!"
Su Qing's ice pick was not broken this time.
She conjured icy blue rhomboid ice crystals from her fingertips, each one carrying an absolute zero chill. Wherever they passed, the monster's tentacles instantly froze into ice sculptures and shattered into dust.
The shadowy figure was like a ghost, always appearing with bloodstains—his dagger was specifically aimed at the monster's star chart eyeballs, and with each stab, the monster's strength plummeted.
Lin Yi, however, did not join the battle.
He traversed through the void, his silver-blue pupils reflecting distorted lines of time and space.
At the spot where the blood-red rune had been, a dark purple ball of light was now pulsating, contracting and expanding like a heart. "This is the core of the trap," he murmured, reaching out to touch it. But the ball of light suddenly expanded three times its original size, enveloping the entire ruins in a transparent bubble.
"Mr. Lin, how have you been?"
The sound of an owl came from the top of the bubble.
He leaned against the throne in the void, his black cloak fluttering in the wind, twirling a blood-red crystal between his fingers: "I knew you would follow the clues—after all, you are the master of time and space, how could you tolerate an enemy hiding secrets right under your nose?"
Lin Yi's pupils contracted sharply.
He could feel that the spacetime inside the bubble was completely locked, and his spacetime rift ability was suppressed by 70%, making even traversing difficult.
Su Qing's ice spike struck the bubble wall and bounced back, almost injuring herself; Long Wu's dragon claw slammed onto the bubble, only creating a ripple; the shadowy figure's form thinned, almost revealing its shape.
“This is the ‘cage’ that I and that lord have tailored specifically for you.” Night Owl snapped his fingers, and more black slime gushed from the ground. This time, each monster exuded a mythical level of pressure. “Take your time playing. When you’re tired of playing…” His smile was like a poisoned knife, “I will personally come to take your spacetime origin.”
The sky outside the bubble suddenly darkened.
Cracks began to appear on Long Wu's scales, with golden dragon blood seeping from each crack; Su Qing's breathing gradually became rapid, and the condensation of ice crystals slowed down by a third; the golden light patterns on the job changers dimmed, and several of them could no longer support themselves and knelt on the ground.
Lin Yi gazed in the direction where the night owl had disappeared, but the light in his silver-blue pupils shone even brighter.
He plunged his longsword into the ground, and fragments of the spacetime rift rained down from the blade, cutting fine scratches into the bubble walls.
"Chu Yao," he called softly.
"The weak point of the cage has been located. The formula for breaking the cage is being calculated." Chu Yao's projection finally stabilized, and data streams flickered on the tips of her hair. "It will take 3 minutes and 17 seconds."
"That's enough." Lin Yi tore off a piece of his clothes to wrap his bleeding hand and looked up at the approaching mythical monster.
Their tentacles had already brushed against Su Qing's hair, and Long Wu's tail was entangled, emitting a muffled roar.
He smiled.
It was a laugh that was almost insane, a laugh of absolute certainty.
“Come on,” he said, his voice not loud, but it cut through all the noise. “Let me see how long you can last.”
The sky outside the bubble darkened completely, like paper soaked in ink.
In the darkness, a silver-blue light was burning ever brighter.
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