Greyish-white debris drifted slowly down from midair.
Ryan did not move. He remained standing by the pile of rubble, his right hand tightly gripping the 【Echoing Lantern】. His black eyes, calm as a frozen lake, quietly watched the drifting fragments of spirituality as they floated away.
Under normal circumstances, these residual traces of spirituality, having lost their host, should have weathered and dissipated within seconds.
But the situation before him was entirely different.
A portion of the debris was moving—not drifting with the wind, but swimming in a straight line toward a single direction under some invisible pull.
That direction was the temple.
Ryan slowly raised his head.
The massive temple, hidden deep within the thick fog, remained completely silent. Its towering stone pillars and pitch-black doorway resembled an open, giant mouth, silently waiting for them to approach.
He pondered for a moment, ultimately deciding not to forcibly intercept the debris.
Something was collecting them.
In that case, he would let it. At least on the surface, that hidden extraction mechanism was in no hurry to make a direct move against them.
Ryan turned around.
Lucia was huddled by a piece of rubble, her face as pale as paper. Traces of dried, dark red blood remained beneath her nose. The mental blast from the previous battle had clearly drained whatever strength she had left.
Ryan walked over and knelt down in front of her.
“Can you still walk?”
Lucia looked up. She first glanced at the dormant temple not far away, then at the lantern in Ryan's hand, before replying in a weak but firm voice:
“Yes.”
Ryan nodded. “Then let's go.”
The two of them, one after the other, set off toward the temple once more.
The closer they drew to the temple, the thinner the surrounding fog became. The greyish-white mist that had blanketed the wilderness seemed to be forcibly held back by an invisible barrier around the temple steps, leaving an exceptionally clear, vacant zone in front of the entrance.
Ryan stopped before the first stone step.
He did not step forward immediately. Instead, he slowly raised the 【Echoing Lantern】, casting its cold white daylight forward like a rippling wave through the space before them.
There were no traps, no hidden spiritual creatures, and no sudden bursts of lethal intent.
Yet an indescribable sense of dislocation spread from the depths of his mind.
A grand, physical structure clearly stood before them, yet within the vision of his 【Glimpse】 eye technique, that space seemed to be missing a piece. The spiritual circuits inside and outside the doorway were completely severed, as if two entirely unrelated spaces had been forcibly stitched together by some brutal force.
Ryan extended his left hand, his fingertips hovering half an inch from the doorframe.
Cold, silent.
“Once we go in, do not stray more than three steps from me.”
“Understood, Teacher.”
Their figures, one after the other, crossed the invisible threshold.
The moment they stepped into the temple, the entire world fell silent without warning.
It was no ordinary quiet, but rather a complete draining of all background noise at once—the wind vanished, the crunch of gravel beneath their feet disappeared, and even the sounds of their own heartbeats and breathing within their chests were largely swallowed up.
Lucia paused instinctively, a look of primal dread flashing in her eyes.
Ryan did not look back, his steps remaining steady as he walked forward. “Keep moving.”
The two of them walked down the corridor, one behind the other.
The sheer scale of the temple's interior far exceeded expectations. A massive, straight corridor stretched deep into the shadows, flanked on both sides by greyish-white stone pillars towering over ten meters high. Every pillar was carved with intricate feather patterns, but these feathers varied in shape—some were full and intact, some were damaged and broken, some had stiff shafts, while others were weirdly curled as if scorched by high heat.
Ryan carried the lantern forward for another twenty steps before suddenly halting without warning.
Lucia nearly crashed directly into his back, hastily braking. “Teacher?”
Ryan did not answer, merely crouching down.
The marble floor was exceptionally clean, to an almost eerie degree—there was no accumulated dust of ages, no fallen rubble, and not even the slightest trace of micro-fungi growth.
Yet on this flat, smooth stone slab lay an extremely fine groove.
Ryan extended a finger and lightly traced the stone surface.
The scratch was incredibly long, stretching in a straight line from beneath their feet all the way into the shadows at the end of the corridor. Furthermore, as the lantern light swept across, a second and third parallel scratch appeared in succession.
Their spacing was almost perfectly uniform, resembling the hard tracks left behind by some incredibly heavy and massive metal machinery being dragged back and forth across this corridor countless times.
Ryan raised his lantern, quietly activating his 【Glimpse】 eye technique.
An extremely faint, cold white daylight coalesced over the scratches. For a brief instant, a highly blurred residual shadow of spirituality emerged from within the grooves—it was the phantom of a colossal, heavy vessel completely devoid of life, being dragged at an incredibly stiff pace toward the depths of the corridor by some invisible force.
The image vanished in a flash.
Ryan withdrew his finger and stood up.
“Did you see something, Teacher?” Lucia asked in a low voice.
“People used to work here,” Ryan said, brushing invisible dust from his fingertips.
“Work?” Lucia was somewhat bewildered. In her limited understanding, a temple was a place to worship gods, which seemed completely at odds with the concept of "work."
“Yes.” Ryan glanced at the tight, cold architectural structures on both sides. “This is not a temple in the ordinary sense.”
He offered no further explanation, simply leading the way deeper inside.
Open stone doorways gradually revealed themselves along both sides of the corridor. The interiors of these rooms were filled with numerous defunct, ancient stone platforms and heavily rusted metal racks. Some of the structures closely resembled large preparation benches or testing instruments, while others had entirely unrecognizable purposes.
Proceeding down the corridor, the two arrived at the entrance of a highly peculiar room.
The room was completely empty, save for seven tall stone platforms arranged in a semi-circle. Atop each platform sat an ancient, long-extinguished lamp holder. The design of these lamp holders was bizarre to the extreme, resembling giant stone eyeballs shut tightly.
Ryan stood at the threshold, not stepping in rashly.
He slightly raised the 【Echoing Lantern】, and the colorful flame inside the casing flickered gently.
The moment that beam of light illuminated the room, an extremely faint, cold white glow actually flickered deep within those seven dead eyeball lamp stands!
Ryan had already committed this place to memory. The hidden circuits beneath the seven lamp stands were completely interconnected. In the distant past, they must have collectively formed some incredibly massive spiritual guiding circuit.
He took a deep look at the room, then turned. “Let's go.”
The two returned to the main corridor.
Rustle.
An extremely faint rubbing sound suddenly echoed through the dead silent space.
Ryan stopped instantly, and Lucia tensed up right behind him.
Rustle...
The sound came again, very clear this time, emanating from within the left wall which was carved with giant feathers.
Ryan slowly turned his head, raising the 【Echoing Lantern】 in his hand.
As the cold white daylight washed over the ancient wall, the massive feather carving actually folded slightly within the shadows cast by the light!
In the next moment, a palm-sized black shadow quietly peeled away from the stone wall.
It was extremely tiny, shaped like a moth with wings as thin as cicada silk. Yet it possessed no flesh or bone; its entire torso was composed of pure, pitch-black spirituality, and the surface of its wings was covered in dense, silver patterns resembling shattered mirrors.
It did not launch any form of attack, simply hovering quietly in midair, facing the two of them with its bizarrely patterned wings.
Ryan quietly activated his 【Glimpse】 eye technique.
Within his vision, the spiritual structure inside the black moth was extremely simple, yet a microscopic, nearly transparent thread of spirituality extended from its wings. The thread drifted lightly against the spiritual protective barrier on Ryan's body, then silently dissolved.
It was reading and recording.
Ryan suppressed his instinct to strike, allowing the fine spiritual thread to make contact with him.
A few seconds later, the mirror-like silver patterns on the black moth's wings flashed alternately. A cold white spot of light, highly similar to the 【Lantern】 aspect within Ryan's body, flickered across the center of its wings.
It was "learning" and replicating the spiritual frequency it observed.
Ryan raised the lantern slightly. “Step back.”
Lucia obediently took several steps back.
As the intense, cold white light swept across, the black moth showed no sign of resistance or flight. Under the illumination of the daylight, its pitch-black torso gradually faded and blurred, ultimately dissolving back into the stone wall like a drop of ink in water, returning to its state as a rigid feather carving.
Lucia stared intently at the wall. “Is it... dead?”
“No,” Ryan replied coldly. “It is merely watching us.”
Lucia's expression grew increasingly uneasy.
The two of them continued forward for another few dozen meters when the rustling sounds of friction rose again, overwhelming the space.
This time, it was far from just one.
From the walls, the shadows of the massive stone pillars, the crevices of the vaulted ceiling, and even the cracks in the stone floor, one black mirror moth after another slowly peeled away and emerged. Dozens of pairs of wings covered in shattered-mirror patterns fluttered gently in the darkness, reflecting the silhouettes of Ryan and Lucia.
They possessed no hostile intent, merely hovering in midair in overwhelming numbers like dozens of cold eyes, silently recording every bit of data about the intruders.
Standing in the center of the swarming storm of black moths, Ryan's expression remained unchanged.
He raised the 【Echoing Lantern】 once more, casting the daylight out in rippling waves. Without any resistance, the dozens of black moths faded back into the surrounding walls and stone pillars, vanishing without a trace.
Yet this foreign sensation of being monitored in real-time from every angle by the entire building clung to them like a shadow.
“Teacher...” Lucia's voice carried a hint of trembling.
“It is fine. Keep walking.” Ryan turned, burying all his vigilance deep within himself.
After advancing another hundred meters or so, Lucia suddenly halted without warning.
Ryan turned his head instantly. “What is it?”
Lucia did not answer immediately. She stared blankly at a half-open stone door at the far end of the corridor, her eyes slightly red. “Teacher... is there someone standing over there?”
Ryan looked in the direction she was pointing.
At the end of the corridor was only an empty, ruined stone doorway. Deep inside the doorway was a dead, silent darkness, devoid of any living thing.
“No,” Ryan replied.
“But...” Lucia pointed over there, her voice laced with confusion and fear. “I clearly saw someone standing by the door just now, watching us.”
Ryan walked to her side, his 【Glimpse】 eye technique erupting once more.
His penetrating vision swept across the corridor, the stone door, and the cracks in the slabs. There was indeed no sign of life there, only the extremely faint remnants of ancient spirituality drifting in the air.
However, just as Ryan was about to withdraw his gaze, his peripheral vision caught something precisely at Lucia's chest.
Completely unbeknownst to the girl, a wisp of pitch-black spiritual feather patterns suddenly flashed and vanished on the skin beneath her collar!
It was incredibly brief, so fast that it would have been impossible to detect had his eye technique not been pushed to its absolute limit.
Ryan's dark eyes contracted sharply, but his expression remained entirely undisturbed.
“What did the person you saw look like?” Ryan asked calmly.
Lucia rubbed her temples, trying hard to recall. “I... I can't remember clearly. It seemed like a very tall person, but I couldn't make out the face.”
“Then do not think about it anymore,” Ryan said, his tone sharpening slightly. “In these ruins, do not actively investigate anything you cannot understand or hear clearly.”
Awed by Ryan's severity, Lucia nodded obediently. “I understand, Teacher.”
The two of them stepped through the half-open stone door.
Not long after they departed, a very faint black shadow, like a falling feather, brushed silently against the wall from within the gap of the half-open stone door before completely merging into the shadows.
Passing through the stone door, they were met with a grand circular hall of unprecedented scale.
In the center of the hall sat a massive, though long-ruined, circular stone platform. Carved from some unknown black ore, the edges of the platform were deeply indented with seven perfectly straight, thick grooves, all pointing directly toward the exact center of the stone platform.
In the center lay a fist-sized circular depression—something of critical importance had clearly been embedded or placed there originally, but it was now completely empty.
Ryan stood at the edge of the stone platform, not rashly drawing closer.
“Teacher...” Lucia's voice came from behind him, carrying a highly unnatural hesitation.
Ryan turned his head. “What is it?”
Lucia pointed at the stone platform with the central depression, her brow furrowed tightly. Her gaze seemed somewhat dazed and lost. “This place... feels a bit familiar to me.”
Ryan stared at her with his dark eyes. “Have you been here before?”
“No, absolutely not.” Lucia shook her head repeatedly, her hands anxiously gripping the hem of her clothes. “But I just feel... like a long, long time ago, I saw this stone platform somewhere, and these seven grooves...”
Ryan did not respond immediately.
He took a deep look at Lucia, then at the empty circular pit in the center of the stone platform, silently noting down this extremely dangerous piece of information.
“Let's leave this place and go further inside.” Ryan turned, carrying the lantern.
“Are we not going to investigate this stone platform, Teacher?” Lucia was somewhat surprised.
“We have too few clues right now,” Ryan said, his tone cold and highly rational. “Before we understand the true nature of this place, rashly touching any core component of the ruins would make us nothing more than test subjects for whatever is hiding in the dark.”
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