The massive golden eye in the center of the stone door suddenly snapped open.
However, there was no violent impact as they had imagined, nor did any unspeakable, terrifying monster burst through the door.
What caused Ryan's pupils to constrict was a change in what he felt.
The 【Echoing Lantern】 in his palm suddenly erupted with a bone-chilling cold. The cold white spiritual light at the wick twisted violently, beginning to pull away and devour the 【Lantern】 spirituality from the surrounding void on its own.
But Ryan instantly realized something was wrong—the drawn-out spirituality was not filling the lantern. Instead, using the lantern as a medium and channel, it was being dragged by an unspeakable force, pouring continuously toward some end of the void!
The “echo” from just now was not a one-way historical exploration at all.
The moment he used the lantern to observe the past, that perspective hanging high in the void had also traced back along the spiritual connection to capture him in reverse!
“Sever!”
Without a hint of hesitation, Ryan forcefully cut off his spiritual input.
But he was still a step too late.
Tap.
An extremely faint footstep echoed from behind the heavy stone door.
Just that single crisp sound.
Afterward, absolute silence fell.
Yet Ryan's heart felt as if it were being squeezed tightly by an icy hand. Because he remembered with absolute clarity that in the lantern's residual shadow just now, the position where the newly born “creation” stepped out of the sacred vessel and stood...
...completely overlapped with where the footstep behind the door had just landed.
Decades had passed, yet it had not been sealed in some alternate space, nor had it turned to dust.
It had been here all along.
Right behind this final containment barrier that the researchers had risked their lives to build back then, standing quietly, separated from him by only a door, close enough to touch.
“Teacher...” Lucia's voice trembled, her fingertips gripping Ryan's cuff tightly. “The lantern's light has changed. Should... should we continue to use spirituality to reconstruct and see what's behind the door?”
“No.”
Ryan's voice was low and decisive, without a shred of hesitation.
This was the first time since he stepped into the extraordinary world that he had truly abandoned a great secret within arm's reach.
There was no need to look further. They already knew enough—so much that it exceeded the limits of what they could currently bear. This was no longer them unilaterally investigating the ruins; rather, it was the entity behind the door allowing them to see this much.
“Go.” Ryan grabbed Lucia's wrist. “Retreat immediately!”
The two turned around and rushed back toward the passage they came from.
Their pace quickened instantly, but during their retreat, the surrounding environment began to change in a bizarre rhythm.
On the smooth, polished white stone walls on either side, the originally withered and dead moss was growing and spreading at a visible rate, emitting a faint fluorescence. Thick plant roots wriggled out from the stone crevices like snakes. From deep underground, a dense scraping and crawling sound that made one's skin crawl echoed.
Enveloped by a heavy sense of crisis, Ryan pushed his 【Lantern】 spirituality to the absolute limit, staying alert for any attack that could come at any moment.
However, the bloody ambush they anticipated did not occur.
As the faint light of the lantern swept across the darkness to their side, Ryan saw mutated faces hidden in the shadows, tall and bloated beastly silhouettes, and countless double pupils gleaming in the dark.
They were densely packed on both sides of the passage, their breathing low, yet not a single one lunged forward.
They simply stood quietly in the distance.
Or curled up above the stone crevices, staring at the two fleeing figures with cold, chaotic eyes that nevertheless held an eerie spark of intelligence.
They were making way.
Cold sweat drenched Ryan's back, and his speed surged once more. If everything in this grassland realm—from the mutated plants and mutated creatures to the underground life network—had already been silently infiltrated and controlled by that life form, then the monsters' silence at this moment was by no means a stroke of luck.
It was the will of that entity.
For now, it did not want to kill them.
“Teacher! Look there!”
As they passed a certain three-way junction from earlier, Lucia suddenly cried out in surprise, her footsteps instinctively slowing.
In the shadow of the stone crevice on the left, a pure white flower had bloomed at some unknown point. Instead of a pistil, a natural pattern resembling a golden eye sat in the center of the petals.
Drawn to that bizarre and mysterious structure, Lucia was about to step closer to observe.
“Don't look!”
Ryan roughly yanked her wrist, pulling her so hard she almost stumbled.
Lucia was completely stunned. In her memory, her teacher was always calm, composed, and unshakeable. This was the first time she had seen such obvious urgency and tension on Ryan's face.
“Do not respond to any of its visual residues.” Ryan did not explain further. His eyes were locked onto the halo of the exit ahead as he squeezed a sentence through his teeth. “We were seen long ago.”
The light at the end of the passage grew brighter and brighter.
Finally, the two rushed back into the hall area where they had first entered the ruins, only a step away from the sunlight outside.
Ryan stopped in his tracks and whipped his head back to look.
The underground passage behind them remained a deep, profound darkness. No roaring pursuers, no writhing flesh, not even a trace of an unusual draft—it was as silent as if no one had set foot there for thousands of years.
Yet Ryan's gaze suddenly froze.
He looked down at his right hand—the 【Echoing Lantern】 he held was actually tilting slightly toward the dark depths of the passage behind him, without any external force acting on it.
The posture was as if an invisible hand at the end of the pitch-black corridor was gently pulling the handle of the lantern.
Clack.
With absolute decisiveness, Ryan let go, allowing the lantern to crash heavily onto the stone slab with a sharp clack.
The very second the lantern left his hand.
From the deepest part of the passage, in the direction of that distant stone door, a very faint sound echoed.
Faint, yet incredibly clear, it penetrated the entire underground ruins:
“Ry... an.”
Without the slightest hesitation, Ryan did not even respond to the voice. He grabbed Lucia's shoulder and growled a single word from the depths of his throat:
“Run!”
Boom!
The two burst through the final shadow of the ruin's entrance like arrows shot from a bow, and blinding sunlight instantly washed over them.
Lucia bent over, hands on her knees, panting heavily. She instinctively looked back.
In the sunlight, the entrance of the ruins appeared dilapidated and peaceful. Inside was only a silent darkness, as if the soul-shuddering vibrations and echoes from earlier were nothing but an absurd illusion.
But standing in the sun, Ryan did not relax in the slightest.
He lowered his head, staring intently at his palm. The spiritual traces left from using the 【Echoing Lantern】 just now were still slightly hot, burning against his skin.
Cold sweat trickled down his cheek as a conclusion that made even him feel chilled and uneasy fully formed in his mind—
That life form had not begun to awaken just because they touched the stone door today.
It had been awake all along.
From the very first moment they stepped into this grassland realm, finding those specific mutated plants, investigating the ancient ruins, venturing deep underground to find the lantern, and step by step walking up to that giant stone door...
The “exploration” and “investigation” they thought they were conducting had, from beginning to end, been under the gaze of the realm's high-hanging master.
The wind swept across the grassland, kicking up rolling waves of gold.
Ryan slowly turned around, looking out at the vast, boundless sea of grass behind him.
In the endless rustling wind, thousands of tall plants swayed gently with the breeze.
Only a single giant plant, not far from the ruins, defied the path of the wind.
It stood quietly in the center of the grassy waves, slowly turning its thick leaves to point its front... precisely at where Ryan stood.
“Whew... whew...”
Blinding sunlight beamed down without warning. The two finally burst out of the underground ruins' passage in one breath, stepping heavily onto the soft turf of the grassland.
Lucia held her knees, panting heavily. Her fair forehead was covered in cold sweat, her delicate face completely pale.
Ryan immediately turned around, shielding Lucia behind him. The longsword in his hand hung slightly low as his hawkish gaze stared intently at the pitch-black exit of the ruins.
Ten seconds, thirty seconds, one minute.
At the entrance, there was only the rustling of the wind blowing through the wild grass. Nothing chased them out.
Ryan did not let down his guard. He quickly lowered his head to check the 【Echoing Lantern】 in his hand first.
The lantern, which originally emitted a warm white light, now had its internal bronze components covered in a layer of hard-to-remove grey mottling. The spiritual light at the wick had dimmed by thirty percent, as if it had suffered some invisible, heavy pollution.
The “reverse observation” established through the lantern just now had clearly caused some irreversible erosion to this precious 【Lantern】 aspect relic.
Ryan frowned slightly. He guided his spirituality through his entire body, carefully checking his condition.
No physical damage, no soul abnormalities, and his spiritual circuits were running smoothly without any trace of foreign spirituality invasion.
He breathed a sigh of relief, then turned around and placed his hand on Lucia's shoulder.
“Lucia, don't move. I'm going to check your spirituality.”
“...Alright, Teacher.” Lucia's voice trembled slightly, clearly still shaken by the fear brought by that soft sound behind the door.
A faint white halo glowed at Ryan's fingertips. His gentle 【Lantern】 spirituality seeped into Lucia's body like water, flowing slowly along her meridians and spiritual circuits.
In Ryan's perception, Lucia's life rhythm, which belonged to the 【Grail】 aspect, was fluctuating wildly due to fear.
Suddenly, when his spirituality touched the vicinity of her chest, Ryan's perception paused slightly.
There seemed to be an extremely faint, unusual fluctuation flashing there.
Ryan's eyes narrowed, and he immediately pushed his spirituality to investigate repeatedly. However, that fluctuation merged extremely naturally with Lucia's own heartbeat, breathing, and even the rise and fall of her 【Grail】 spirituality, without any sense of abruptness or rejection.
“Teacher... what is it?” Lucia looked up in confusion.
Ryan stared at her for a second, then slowly withdrew his hand.
“Nothing, just normal spiritual turbulence after experiencing panic.” Ryan made a judgment in his mind.
Neither of them showed any abnormalities.
Having reached this conclusion, Ryan's tense nerves finally relaxed slightly.
“We won't linger nearby. Let's leave this area immediately.”
“Alright.”
The two packed up their simple bags, and Ryan prepared to use the lantern to find a way out.
Sunlight spilled over the magnificent golden sea of grass. The scenery was no different from when they came, but the atmosphere had completely changed.
Along the way, Lucia seemed somewhat quiet and taciturn. Ryan assumed she was still shaken by the danger they had just escaped, so he led the way in silence.
Dusk gradually fell.
To be safe, Ryan did not choose to travel in the dead of night. Instead, he set up camp in a windward rocky depression.
After setting up the array to conceal their spirituality, Ryan sat by the campfire. Using the dim light, he pulled out his notebook and began to quickly organize and record all the information they had obtained in the underground ruins today.
Lucia was already exhausted. Wrapping herself in a blanket, she leaned against the rock wall and fell fast asleep.
The night deepened.
The faint firelight flickered in the wind, casting distorted, elongated shadows on the rock wall.
Ryan was writing rapidly, noting down his theories on the “creation” and the “containment facility behind the stone door,” completely oblivious to the changes occurring beside him.
Beside the embers of the campfire, Lucia lay quietly.
Her chest rose and fell evenly with her breathing, her long eyelashes casting a shallow shadow on her face.
Yet in the deepest depths of her spirituality, invisible to the naked eye—within that dark sea that should have belonged solely to her personal consciousness and the source of her 【Grail】 aspect...
...a tiny speck of golden light was slowly pulsing, like a dormant embryo.
It did not violently breach Lucia's spiritual perception, nor did it devour her flesh. Instead, in an extremely perfect, even gentle manner, it integrated itself into Lucia's life rhythm.
It was mimicking.
It breathed with Lucia's breath and beat with her heartbeat.
It even traced along the intertwining of her spirituality and nerves, silently touching Lucia's memories and mimicking her way of thinking.
Then, it gently wove a dream for Lucia.
...
The dream was a dead, silent white.
Lucia found herself standing before a massive pool.
It was filled with a pale gold, viscous liquid, with tiny bubbles continuously rising.
Curiously, Lucia drew closer, wanting to see what kind of monster was being cultivated inside.
However, when the mist within the liquid cleared, she suddenly covered her mouth in shock—
It was... herself.
Another “Lucia” floated quietly in the golden liquid, her eyes tightly closed, her long hair spreading out like water weeds, her chest rising and falling slightly.
Gasp!
Lucia snapped her eyes open, waking from her dream with a jolt!
“Hah... hah...”
She sat up, her forehead covered in fine beads of sweat, her chest heaving violently.
“What's wrong?” By the campfire not far away, Ryan immediately looked up, his gaze sweeping over like a sharp sword.
Somewhat dazed, Lucia looked around at the pitch-black rock walls, then at the flickering flames. It took her a long moment to recover before she let out a breath:
“No... nothing, Teacher. Just a nightmare.”
“What did you dream about?” Ryan asked.
Lucia rubbed her temples hard, her brow furrowing as she tried to recall, only to find that the images in the dream had melted away like snow, leaving nothing behind.
“I don't remember...” She shook her head in frustration. “I think I just dreamed of a white light.”
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