An extremely weak, pure golden shimmer quietly lit up in the cold darkness, like a spore spat out by a dead sea anemone at the bottom of the deep sea.
Ryan did not see that shimmer.
To be precise, he had no spare energy at all to observe the stone wall behind him. The air inside the passage was as thick as congealed grease, requiring considerable physical strength for every step forward.
He had already led Lucia out of the stone chamber. The light of the Echoing Lantern slowly receded, and the thick darkness once again swallowed the two of them from behind.
The passage was narrow and deep, and the stone slabs beneath their feet echoed hollowly from time to time.
Both sides were still made of smooth, polished white stone, but the further they advanced, the more bizarre the marks left on the walls became.
At first, they were just chaotic scratches resembling the clawing of wild beasts, which then turned into neat, deep carvings. Finally, strings of mysterious symbols that Ryan had never seen before appeared on the stone walls.
They did not belong to any known human language or ancient script, looking more like a symbolic system derived specifically to record some precise experimental process.
Circles represented life substrates.
Straight lines represented the spiritual light of the 【Lantern】.
Triangles represented consciousness centers.
When these basic geometric symbols overlapped and intersected at dazzling angles, they constructed extremely complex and forbidden occult structures.
Ryan suddenly stopped in his tracks.
He held up the lantern in his hand, casting a cold white halo onto the icy wall. The cold light interwove with the recessed symbols, casting mottled and distorted shadows.
“These aren't architectural decorations of some ancient religion,” Ryan remarked.
Lucia leaned in close to his side, her bright, dark eyes narrowing slightly as her breath condensed into white mist in the cold air. “Is it... some kind of experimental record?”
“Yes, it should be a complete history of data evolution.”
Ryan extended his fingertips, gently caressing the bone-chilling carvings. The 【Lantern】 spirituality within his body seeped deep into the stone wall through his skin.
In the next instant, the symbols on the wall burst with a faint glow without any warning!
It was not that they were being reactivated at this moment, but rather that the brilliance that had once shone in the “past” was being recreated by the lantern.
The lantern precisely captured the spiritual imprints remaining deep within the stone wall, and an extremely grand yet somewhat blurry projection of light and shadow slowly unfurled before them like a scroll.
It was a grand and cold underground laboratory.
A dozen figures in white robes gathered in the center. They did not carry conventional weapons, nor did they conduct any religious sacrificial rituals. Before each of them lay stacks of thick record drawings, sealed glassware, and continuously operating, gear-clicking precise occult instruments.
And at the absolute core of the laboratory stood a massive circular stone platform.
On the stone platform sat a massive, completely transparent cultivation vessel, filled with some viscous dark red liquid, its edges covered in dark blood scabs.
The liquid was by no means a dead thing. It writhed and surged extremely slowly inside the vessel, emitting a dull gurgling sound, as if something invisible were sleeping deep within the liquid, taking faint, heavy breaths.
Ryan's pupils constricted slightly, his fingertips instinctively tightening around the hilt of the sword at his waist.
Lucia's breathing also instinctively slowed, and she could even hear her own rapid heartbeat. “Is that... blood?”
“No.” Ryan stared intently at the writhing dark red mass, his voice as cold and hard as frozen iron. “That is something more primitive than simple blood—it is life itself, a primordial mass of flesh before being given form.”
The scene advanced rapidly.
Within the residual shadow, an elderly researcher with white hair and deep-set eyes walked to the stone platform, opening a thick hardcover logbook in his hands. His fingers trembled slightly with excitement:
“Experiment seventy-eight.”
“The 【Lantern】 aspect spirituality has been successfully stabilized.”
“The 【Grail】 aspect life substrate has also shown no rejection, and the physical activity has reached an unprecedented peak.”
“The biggest problem at present remains...”
The scene suddenly distorted violently. Piercing static drowned out everything, like sharp glass scraping against metal, and the sound cut off completely.
Ryan expressionlessly increased his spiritual output. The 【Echoing Lantern】 at his waist let out a faint hum, and the cold white halo surged, reorganizing the shattered light and shadow once more.
The researcher's tired, elderly voice finally re-emerged clearly, carrying a despair that spanned across decades:
“...is consciousness.”
“We can create the most perfect flesh and blood.”
“We can reshape severed limbs and allow dead tissues to regain activity and vitality.”
“But no matter how hard we try, we cannot make this perfect mass of flesh and blood truly birth a consciousness of its own... At best, it is merely a breathing piece of meat.”
Listening to this echo that spanned decades, Ryan fell into a long silence.
At this moment, he had finally torn away a corner of the true face of this ruin.
This place was not some treasure vault left behind by the black-robed man, nor was it a simple treasure trove.
This was an extraordinary research facility jointly established decades ago by the two pathways of 【Lantern】 and 【Grail】!
What they were researching was not ordinary relics or weapons of war, but—in an occult sense—true artificial life!
The light and shadow continued to evolve.
The researchers began to fill the petri dish with potent spirituality. A beam of pure white light of order crashed down from the top of the apparatus, precisely piercing the thick liquid!
In an instant, the dark red liquid boiled frantically! Flesh and blood rapidly spread and grew from the bottom of the petri dish like wild moss.
Bones formed, muscles attached, nerves intertwined, and skin covered it...
In just a few short minutes, a rudimentary form of life in the shape of an infant gradually matured within the embryonic liquid.
Lucia's eyes widened slightly, filled with disbelief. “Did they really... create life out of thin air?”
“No.” Ryan's voice was very soft, yet it carried a bone-chilling coldness. “They merely created a body that can move.”
The researchers in the projection also realized this.
The newborn life floated quietly in the cultivation vessel, its chest rising and falling regularly, its heart beating strongly, its blood flowing, and even its eyes and other sensory organs fully developed.
However, it had no consciousness.
It did not cry, it did not move, and its gaze was completely lifeless. It did not even generate any brainwaves or spiritual fluctuations. It was merely a mass of flesh with a complete physiological structure but no soul.
The experimental records were filled with the frantic word “failure.” The second, third, fourth time... attempt after attempt brought nothing but endless dead silence and failure.
Until finally, in their endless despair, the researchers proposed a shocking and insane concept—
They decided to forcefully inject the 【Lantern】 spirituality, representing knowledge, reason, and revelation, into the 【Grail】 embryo, which represented life, flesh, and desire!
To combine the “perception” of 【Lantern】 with the “gestation” of 【Grail】.
As long as the two fit together perfectly, in theory, the fire of consciousness unique to intelligent life could be ignited within the artificially created flesh!
Ryan's expression turned completely solemn. He finally foresaw the direction of this tragedy.
The truly fatal problem was never whether the experiment itself could succeed, but that these mortals had no idea what kind of terrifying existence they were granting... the right to “see”!
The scene shifted to the most critical final phase.
A researcher stood trembling before the cultivation vessel, his hands pressing tightly against the levers of the control console. The embryo inside was no longer in the fragile shape of an infant, but a fully developed humanoid life.
Its skin was pale as snow, its body slender, its eyes tightly closed, and its chest rising and falling weakly.
The researcher's voice turned sharp and distorted due to extreme excitement and fear:
“Vital signs stable!”
“Neural structure completely aligned!”
“Injecting 【Lantern】 aspect!”
“Preparing... final awakening!”
All the researchers held their breath and backed away, staring intently at the vessel.
In the center of the silent laboratory, the humanoid life inside the cultivation vessel fluttered its eyelashes as the beam of spirituality was injected, and then... slowly opened its eyes.
They were a pair of pure golden eyes.
No pupils, no whites, none of the warmth or confusion that a human should have, but only a pure and cold gold like molten gold!
Deathly silence filled the room. All the researchers froze in place, utterly unaware that the logbooks in their hands had fallen to the floor.
Because on the face of that newborn “creation,” there was not even a trace of the confusion or panic that a newborn should have.
It simply stared quietly through the glass at its creators outside.
It was observing.
It was learning.
It was understanding this world... at a hair-raising speed.
Snap!
In the next second, all the spiritual lamps inside the laboratory went out instantly, and the projection plunged into pitch darkness!
Immediately after, the trembling voice of a researcher with a heavy sob rang out in the darkness, breaking the suffocating silence:
“It... it just asked a question.”
Another voice responded, teeth chattering, “What did it ask?! Answer me!”
There was a long silence in the darkness before that near-collapsed murmur came:
“It asked... ‘Who are we?’”
The scene shattered abruptly!
The light of the Echoing Lantern shook violently. Ryan abruptly pulled back from the residual shadow, his breathing slightly rapid.
Beside him, Lucia's cheeks were pale. Her fingertips clawed tightly at the hem of her clothes, her palms drenched in sweat. “Teacher... that wasn't a failure... it's some kind of...”
“I know.”
Ryan interrupted her, his gaze falling upon the complex symbols on the wall as the logical maps pieced themselves together frantically in his mind.
【Lantern】 grants knowledge, and 【Grail】 grants life.
But this group of mad researchers had overlooked the most brutal iron law in occultism—knowledge itself is the most terrifying pollution!
When a newly born soul opened its eyes for the first time, what it received was not mortal wisdom, but a massive amount of high-dimensional forbidden perception originating from the 【Lantern】 pathway.
It in an instant saw the world, it saw life, it saw death, it saw humans...
And even more, it saw the “Observer” who was watching all of this from beyond the world.
A sentence written in blood from Adolf's notes suddenly flashed through Ryan's mind:
“Do not observe yourself.”
That was not Adolf's advice to future generations at all, but the final echo these researchers had bought with their lives!
“Teacher, did they... all die afterward?” Lucia asked in a low voice, barely a whisper.
Ryan raised the lantern once more, the cold white light slicing through the darkness to provide the final answer.
The residual shadow on the stone wall revealed a corridor covered with corpses.
Dozens of researchers lay on the ground one after another, without any obvious wounds or traces of external force on their bodies. Yet the expressions on their faces were surprisingly identical—it was a mixture of ultimate horror, despair, and an insurmountable sense of shame and self-desecration after grasping some unspeakable truth!
Only at the moment of death did they understand what kind of gate to hell they had opened with their own hands.
And at the end of the corridor, that newborn “creation” stood quietly.
It had already grown into a tall form, completely pale and hairless, its eyes shimmering with a burning, pure gold glow. It showed no rage, no pleasure in slaughter, but simply maintained that cold “observation.”
Subsequently, within the residual shadow, it raised its arm, pointing at the ceiling of the laboratory.
There, the lantern's halo illuminated an illusory giant eye.
It was a golden eye so massive it defied common logic. It did not belong to this life, nor did it belong to this ruin; rather, it was like a terrifying reflection hanging high beyond the world!
No pupil, only a slowly rotating golden nebula.
The creation was looking at it.
And that eye, through the eyes of the creation, was also gazing at this world!
This was not a simple experimental accident, nor was it a monster riot.
This was a case of these researchers successfully creating a life with ultimate “perception.” And when this life looked up at the sky for the first time... it allowed that existence hanging high in the void to follow its gaze and truly project its vision down upon this world!
Boom!
The lantern emitted a sharp, shattering wail, fine cracks appearing on the glass cover as all light and shadow disintegrated.
Darkness returned to a dead silence.
Lucia was tense all over, almost grinding her teeth to pieces as she pressed herself close to Ryan. “Teacher...”
“Don't make a sound.”
Ryan pressed down on her shoulder, his ears twitching slightly, his gaze as sharp as a blade.
From deep underground, an extremely slow yet heavy rhythm that made one's heart stop beating was echoing.
Thud.
The ground shook slightly.
Thud.
Dust on the stone walls rustled down like snowflakes.
Thud!
The 【Echoing Lantern】 at Ryan's waist suddenly lit up on its own, completely out of control! The cold white light penetrated the thick darkness ahead, illuminating a colossal stone door towering into the clouds at the end of the passage.
The stone door was over ten meters high. Its surface bore no text, only a massive Circle composed of the perfect entanglement of the 【Lantern】 geometric structures and the 【Grail】 flesh patterns.
And at the very center of the Circle, a lifelike giant eye was carved.
Lucia swallowed hard, looking up at the giant door that radiated an ancient pressure. “Did they... lock that creation behind the door?”
Ryan stared intently at the stone-carved giant eye, slowly shaking his head as he spoke in a low voice:
“No, He has never been locked behind the door.”
“He has been watching us all along.”
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