Lake walked over and took the bundle of containment cloth from Glock. The squirming inside the fabric was weaker than before but had not yet stopped.
He untied the knot and placed the fragment of the Serpentine Amalgamation, still wrapped in the cloth, into the container. The fragment dropped into the vessel.
The greyish-white flesh suddenly contracted, and roots sprouted out toward the sides, only to curl and retract instantly upon touching the isolation inscriptions on the inner wall. The lid was closed, and the seal clicked into place.
Glock glanced down at the object in the container, frowned, and handed the vessel to a soldier behind him, gesturing for him to move it further away.
At that moment, the sound of boots stepping on metal rungs echoed from within the sinkhole.
Adrian was the first to climb out. The old Archbishop’s face looked even worse than when he had gone down; his lips were pale, but his pace remained steady.
The tome hovered above his shoulder. Its holy light had been completely retracted, leaving only a seemingly ordinary old book slowly rotating in mid-air.
The first thing he did upon reaching the surface was look up at the sky, his brow furrowing deeply.
Lu Yuan followed closely, grabbing the edge of the sinkhole and pulling himself up. The night wind poured into his collar, making him shrink his neck against the cold. Once he stood firm, he saw it too.
High in the air toward the Polymath Tower, scattered light specks were still drifting. Their colors had faded considerably, most leaving only a faint fluorescence that slowly dissipated in the night wind.
However, the inscriptions on the Polymath Tower itself were still pulsing, with dark gold light throbbing in rhythmic bursts.
Lu Yuan remembered the last thing he had seen before descending: several wisps of colored shimmer drifting far overhead.
He hadn't paid it much mind then, but now it seemed that was the beginning of the Sea of Knowledge leak.
The Great Ascendant was the last to emerge, his metal skeleton making a dull thud as he stepped onto the edge of the sinkhole.
His silver-grey pupils swept across the sky, lingering for half a second before turning elsewhere.
Behind them were the Descendants.
Their mechanical joints clattered rhythmically against the rungs as they climbed out of the sinkhole one by one, forming two rows at the edge of the square.
Margaret spoke only after everyone had surfaced.
“The night you went down, the river of light above the Polymath Tower exploded.” Her voice wasn't loud, but everyone present could hear her.
“Knowledge fragments overflowed in massive quantities. Inscriptions barely managed to seal the rift, but the entire tower has been shaking. It still hasn't fully stabilized.”
Adrian turned to look at her.
“Where is Kraus?”
“He took Hilde and rushed over there,” Margaret replied, her gaze sweeping over the people who had just returned from underground. “He left some instructions before he went.”
Lake frowned. “Do they need more hands at the Polymath Tower?”
“They do,” Margaret paused, then added the second half of her sentence. “But Kraus’s order is that no one is allowed to go there.”
The square fell silent for two seconds.
“He wants you to focus on the tasks at hand. Finish the tunnel maps, compile the dive summary, and prepare for the second dive as quickly as possible.” Margaret’s gaze moved from Lake to Lu Yuan, then to the Great Ascendant.
“He will handle the Polymath Tower himself. Until the second dive is completed, no one is permitted to head toward the tower.”
Adrian remained silent for a while. The old Archbishop’s hand rested on the holy emblem at his chest, his thumb unconsciously rubbing it back and forth.
“Did he give a reason?”
“No,” Margaret shook her head.
Lu Yuan stood where he was, his gaze shifting from Margaret back toward the Polymath Tower.
The light from the inscriptions continued to pulse in bursts, the tower’s silhouette appearing and disappearing in the darkness.
Kraus wanted everyone to stay away from the Polymath Tower and focus all their energy on the underground situation.
Lu Yuan didn't overthink it; since Kraus had made these arrangements, he would follow them.
He pulled his notebook from his waist, flipped to the pages containing the tunnel records, and began organizing the rough maps he had drawn during the dive.
Lake looked at Margaret, silent for a few seconds.
“Are you sure he doesn't want us?”
Margaret met his gaze and gave a single nod.
“He’s sure.”
Lake said nothing more. He turned and leaned against the low wall next to the sinkhole, pulling a short-blade from his coat pocket to begin cleaning the residual ghoul fluids from the blade's surface.
The atmosphere in the square grew heavy.
The inscriptions toward the Polymath Tower continued to pulse, while the light specks in the sky slowly faded.
Lu Yuan squatted on the open ground by the sinkhole, his notebook spread across his knees.
The light from a march lamp shone on the pages. The rough sketches of the tunnels he had drawn during the descent looked a bit messy in the dim yellow light, but all the critical information was marked: fork directions, tunnel widths, inscription flows, and fracture points.
He began re-evaluating everything starting from the first fork.
From the sinkhole, they had entered the pipe network layer, passed through the copper protective layer to the abyss entrance, and then followed the tunnel downward, where it branched into different directions at three separate forks. At the first fork, the right tunnel had a steeper downward slope and the inscriptions leaned to the right; the team had taken the right. At the second fork, the left side was wider but the inscriptions were broken, while the right continued downward with the inscription patterns extending into it. At the third fork, the tunnel suddenly widened, leading directly into the first large void.
There was one bronze pillar in each of the two voids.
Lu Yuan used his pen to mark the approximate positions of the two pillars and the extension directions of the inscriptions on their bodies, then stopped to look at it for a moment.
Based on the tunnel's trajectory and the convergence of the inscription patterns, the core area of the sealing network should be located even deeper. The tunnels they had traversed this time were generally downward, but the slope wasn't steep enough; many sections extended almost horizontally. To reach the abyss core where the inscriptions finally converged, the next dive would have to specifically target tunnels with a steeper downward incline, skipping the horizontal branches entirely.
He drew a downward arrow in his notebook and wrote two words next to it: Go deeper.
Then there was the issue of the bronze pillars.
Based on his calculations, the two pillars were located in the peripheral area of the sealing network. The density and arrangement of the inscriptions were relatively simple, far from the complexity of the core-level nodes Hilde had described. They likely belonged to scattered peripheral anchors responsible for maintaining local functions of the sealing network, without containing much information about the overall structure.
Lu Yuan closed his notebook and reviewed everything in his mind.
The amount of information that could be gathered from peripheral nodes was limited. The visions he had triggered at the first bronze pillar—the scorched earth, the abyss, that man—were only due to the resonance between Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker and the bronze pillar's inscriptions, which shared the same pathway. However, those vision fragments were severely disjointed, lacking enough context to deduce the exact location and structure of the sealing core. To get more useful information, he had to reach the bronze pillars closer to the center.
And being closer to the center meant going deeper.
He tucked the notebook back into his waist and stood up, glancing at the people in the square.
Adrian was sitting on the low wall with the tome resting on his knees, the old Archbishop’s eyes closed as he recovered his strength.
Agnes stood beside him, holding a bottle of holy water with less than thirty percent of its contents remaining.
The Great Ascendant stood near the Descendant formation, his silver-grey pupils scanning back and forth between several Descendants as the metal parts on his face rotated slowly.
He was likely assessing the Descendants’ remaining combat power and available numbers.
The Blue Knight leaned against a stone pillar on the east side of the square, her hands crossed in front of her, her grey-blue cloak remaining motionless in the night wind.
The night wind blew from the direction of the inner city across the square, carrying the chill of the copper walls. The last few fluorescent specks of knowledge fragments in the sky were completely extinguished in the wind. The inscriptions on the Polymath Tower were still pulsing, but noticeably slower than before.
Margaret walked over to Lu Yuan and glanced down at the notebook in his hand.
“Is the map finished?”
“The general direction is set.” Lu Yuan opened the notebook and pointed to the page showing the tunnel trajectory. “The next time, we need to go deeper.”
Margaret looked for a few seconds without asking further questions, then turned to arrange the logistics.
The square became quiet once more.
Lu Yuan lowered his head. Deep within his consciousness, the extremely thin thread between the two fragments was still vibrating faintly, extending toward the depths of the earth.
In the corridor of the Polymath Tower’s main control room, it was unknown how much time had passed.
Kraus leaned against the stone wall to the left of the crystal protective door. The hem of his grey trench coat was stained with dust, his longsword was still at his waist, and the bone ring on his ring finger slowly deformed before shrinking back.
He had repeated this action no less than ten times over the past few hours. Each time, it stopped halfway through the deformation. The crystal protective door could not be touched, the energy circuits inside could not be broken, and the channel to the Sea of Knowledge could not be allowed to collapse.
Arthur squatted to the right of the protective door, his back against the pillar of the bronze railing, with a stack of inscription sketches spread across his knees.
The sketches were filled with the trajectories of energy conduits and circuit nodes inside the main control room, with dense numbers and symbols marked next to every line.
He was trying to find a way from the outside to bypass the defense mechanism without triggering a circuit collapse. He flipped to the fourth page of the sketches; the first three were all crossed out.
Arthur’s finger paused on the fourth page for a few seconds. He put down his pen and rubbed his temples.
The sleeves of his mage robes were rolled up to his elbows, and the backs of his hands were stained with inscription ink and dried sweat.
“It’s still no good,” he said, his voice raspy and dry.
“All the entry points eventually pass through the main circuit. As soon as the main circuit is touched, the defense mechanism will be triggered. He designed this system too cleanly.”
Kraus did not respond, his gaze remaining fixed on the interior of the protective door.
The semi-transparent crystal barrier separated them from most of the main control room. The view was somewhat distorted by refraction, but the primary scene remained visible.
The old Dean still lay in the sarcophagus, with ghostly blue energy light-beams still extending from the surrounding copper pipes to pierce his limbs and temples.
The old man’s facial muscles were spasming, the intensity greater than it had been dozens of minutes ago. He clearly couldn't hold out for much longer.
Kame stood by the sarcophagus, the dark black fragment in his hands devouring the ink-colored light flowing toward it. The edges of the fragment occasionally flashed, its color deeper than when they had started.
K remained in the same posture, his face half-hidden by his black hood, leaning against the copper pipe supports in the corner of the main control room.
Footsteps echoed from the end of the corridor as Hilde walked quickly down the spiral staircase, clutching several silver needles in her hand. The surfaces of the needles were blackened, and the inscription patterns had become too blurred to read.
“The intensity of the overflow above is still rising.” She walked to Kraus’s side and placed the ruined silver needles into a copper box.
“I’m on my third batch of silver needles. The longest one lasted only twelve seconds before collapsing. The concentration of knowledge fragments has exceeded the bearing limit of the silver needle inscriptions.”
She paused, her voice dropping half a notch. “The river of light in the sky is still expanding, and the density of eyes is even higher than an hour ago. The low-level mentors and students have all retreated to the perimeter, but the area covered by the river of light is growing. Now even those at the perimeter are starting to experience headaches and hallucinations.”
Kraus’s gaze did not shift from the protective door. “What stage has the harvesting reached?”
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