The Blue Knight was already standing before the domain wall. She peered into the darkness for two seconds before stepping aside to yield the front position, clearly deciding that she was not suited to handle the situation before them.
The Great Ascendant stepped forward from the back of the group, his silver-grey pupils scanning the surface of the wall.
In the next moment, an alloyed fist was raised. With the mechanical snap of engaging joints, he threw a punch straight into it.
Cracks exploded outward from the point of impact on the dark wall, spreading in all directions as the entire surface vibrated violently under the force of the blow.
Shattered eyeballs drifted down from the edges of the rift—seven or eight of them, varying in size. Their sclerae were grey and their pupils had lost their luster. After peeling off the wall, they tumbled twice through the air before hitting the ground and shattering into viscous residue.
A gap appeared.
A breach wide enough for two people to walk through side-by-side was torn through the center of the dark wall. The darkness inside the breach writhed slowly, attempting to close, but the repair speed was incredibly sluggish; after several seconds, the gap had only narrowed by a finger-width.
The Great Ascendant retracted his fist. A layer of moist black residue clung to his alloyed knuckles; with a casual flick, the residue dripped onto the ground.
Lu Yuan turned sideways and slipped through the gap. The edge of the darkness brushed against the cuff of his coat, a freezing sensation grazing his skin as grey-white text surfaced in his vision once more.
【High-risk pollution source detected. Please stay away immediately.】
Lake followed closely behind, the hem of his trench coat brushing the edge of the breach.
Adrian went in third. The Blue Knight slipped in silently, and the Great Ascendant was the last, his broad metal skeleton forcing him to turn sideways to squeeze through the opening.
The five of them passed through the Guardian’s domain wall.
The world inside the domain was starkly different from the outside.
The closer they got to the Polymath Tower, the thicker the darkness became, though the overall domain was dissipating.
Pitch-black aura slowly descended from above, settling onto the flagstones to form a thin layer of black mist. There was no resistance when stepping on it, but the temperature was incredibly low, with a chill seeping up through the soles of their shoes.
A faint, metallic scent of blood hung in the air, similar to the scent of the pitch-black aura on the Guardian, but far more diluted.
Lu Yuan quickened his pace, crossing the final stretch of the flagstone path until the square in front of the Polymath Tower came into view.
A dozen or so people lay scattered across the square.
Some wore mage robes, others academic faculty robes. Some were sprawled on the steps, while others had slid down against stone pillars to sit on the ground. Grey-white text flickered rapidly at the edge of his vision, detection messages rolling by one after another.
【Detection Target: Polymath Tower Mentor】
【Sanity damaged to varying degrees. No immediate life-threatening danger.】
Lu Yuan’s gaze swept over these people. Most were deathly pale with their eyes tightly shut, their lips trembling slightly, but they were still breathing.
They had been here when the Guardian deployed his domain. The force field of an eerie transcendent had crushed these low-level Knowledge transcendents directly; those whose Sanity could not withstand it had collapsed on the spot.
They were lucky to be alive.
He noticed two people.
Calvin Morton was positioned furthest from the Polymath Tower’s entrance.
This mentor had clearly tried to run at the first opportunity. The hem of his mage robes was covered in dust, the soles of his shoes were scuffed white, and his monocle had slipped from his face and was hanging against his chest. He lay face-down on the very edge of the steps, just one step away from escaping the domain’s coverage.
Selena lay a few steps away from Calvin, her loose hair plastered across her face.
Her posture was more composed than Calvin’s; she was curled on her side at the base of a stone pillar, one hand still clutching the wreckage of some instrument.
They had stopped their work and attempted to evacuate the moment the Guardian deployed his domain, but they hadn't made it out.
Lu Yuan did not stop. He moved past the fallen mentors and headed straight for the Polymath Tower’s entrance.
Adrian’s pace slowed as he passed Calvin, his gaze falling on the face pressed against the ground.
The old Archbishop’s lips parted slightly before he pressed them together. He said nothing, retracted his gaze, and continued walking. Lake, the Blue Knight, and the Great Ascendant followed, none of them lingering in the square for even a second.
The five of them stepped onto the stairs in front of the Polymath Tower.
The doors of the Polymath Tower were ajar. Every inscription on the doorframe was dark, and a very thin layer of black residue remained on the copper surface—the mark left when the Guardian’s aura crushed it.
The five of them entered in single file.
It was very dark inside. The dense, ghostly blue inscriptions that once covered the walls were all extinguished. From the entrance to the depths of the corridor, not a single lamp remained lit, a complete contrast to Lu Yuan’s previous impression of the Polymath Tower.
They didn't know the location of the Main Control Room.
The internal structure of the Polymath Tower was complex, and the routes taken during previous visits had varied. However, the marks on the floor provided a direction; shattered flagstones and pulverized copper dust stretched all the way down. A section of inscription patterns had been completely ground flat, suggesting something massive had crushed its way through with force the stone could not withstand.
The five followed these marks deeper inside.
The corridor turned twice. The debris on the floor became denser, with copper dust mixed with fine crystal shards covering the ground, crunching under their feet.
An open space appeared at the end of the corridor. The entrance was piled with shattered crystal fragments and twisted pieces of copper railings. Semi-transparent crystal dust still hung in the air, glinting with dull refractions in the little light that remained.
This had originally been the arrangement for the crystal protective door and the energy circuit nodes, but now it was so shattered that its original structure was unrecognizable.
Kraus leaned against the stone wall at the end of the corridor. The hem of his grey trench coat was stained with dust and copper powder, his longsword hung at his waist, and his expression was worse than Lu Yuan had ever seen it.
The bone ring on his ring finger slowly deformed before shrinking back. Seeing Lu Yuan and the others appear at the corridor entrance, he frowned slightly, but ultimately only nodded without speaking.
The faint sound of silver needles buzzing came from near the entrance.
Hilde stood beside a figure leaning halfway against the wall. Her hands emitted a faint light, and seven or eight silver needles hovered in the air around her.
The silver needles descended slowly, touching the person’s skin before floating back up and descending again.
With each descent, the inscription patterns on the needles dimmed slightly. Three of them had already turned completely black and useless, discarded on the floor.
She was delaying the spread of something, but the effect was poor; the silver needles were being consumed far faster than they could be replaced.
Lu Yuan followed Kraus’s gaze into the open space.
Arthur was crouched before a bronze console, his hands pressed against the inscriptions on the surface. His fingers trembled slightly, and sweat beaded on his forehead.
The massive black eye in the sky had not yet vanished, and the closing of the harvesting channel was not yet complete. He was progressively cutting off the final few energy circuits.
The old Dean lay on the floor beside the console.
A puddle of greyish-black sludge lay on the floor.
The surface of the sludge was covered in dozens of black eyeballs of various sizes. They had stopped rotating, and faint remnants of a humanoid silhouette lingered at the edges—the curve of a shoulder and the line of an arm were still recognizable, but the facial features had long since vanished.
Grey-white text flickered at the edge of his vision.
【Detection Target: Unknown Human (Remains)】
【The corpse of a rank 3 Knowledge transcendent, contaminated by eerie mutation.】
Further away was a black solid mass covered in eyeballs, irregularly shaped and wedged between the floor and the copper pipes. The pupils of the eyeballs on its surface had all lost their luster, appearing grey and shriveled.
【Detection Target: Unknown Human (Remains)】
【The corpse of an eerie transcendent.】
Two corpses.
Lu Yuan didn't know who they were, but judging by the marks on the ground and the state of the remains, the Guardian had taken action, and he had shown no mercy.
The eyeballs densely covering that puddle of greyish-black sludge were of the same origin as those floating around the Guardian—a method that tore a person apart from the inside out.
“What happened here?”
Lake’s voice came from behind him.
Kraus retracted his gaze from the Guardian, his voice kept very low.
“The Grey Covenant was making a move, using the old Dean to force open the harvesting. The Guardian stepped in.” He paused. “He’s in very bad shape right now. I’ve already notified Margaret to send suppression potions.”
Only then did the group look closely at the figure leaning against the wall in front of Hilde.
The Guardian.
He was in a completely different state than before.
His white hair shone grey in the gloom, the wrinkles on his face were a layer deeper than the last time they had met, and the outline of the bones beneath his skin was terrifyingly distinct. He was hunched over even more severely, his complexion so poor he was almost unrecognizable.
The pitch-black aura still flowed slowly around him, but its concentration and density were far thinner than when they had seen him at the clock tower; it had transformed from an overflowing mist into thin threads that seeped out intermittently.
The black eyeballs seen previously at the clock tower and in the narrow street had floated within the pitch-black aura around the Guardian, maintaining a distance from his body.
Now, eyeballs were emerging directly from the surface of his body. Black sclerae and pupils squeezed out from the flesh of the back of his hand, rotated slowly twice, and then retracted as the skin closed over them.
A few seconds later, another bulge appeared on the side of his neck, pushing out half an eyeball before its pupil shifted and it sank back beneath the skin.
The eerie mutation within him had already permeated the surface of his body; the boundary between the transcendent power and his physical flesh was collapsing.
At the edge of Lu Yuan’s vision, grey-white text surfaced.
【Detection Target: Guardian (Bronze City)】
【A human transcendent about to step completely into the Abyss. Perhaps death is the only release.】
Lu Yuan stared at that last line.
“Perhaps death is the only release.”
Lu Yuan stared at those words for two seconds. He knew what they implied, but his own specialized research was almost useless. However, if he could get his hands on the potions, there might still be a chance.
Lu Yuan then turned to look at Kraus.
“Let me see the potions first when they arrive.”
An irritable Kraus looked at the determined Lu Yuan and finally nodded without asking for the reason.
Time ticked away, second by second.
Hurried footsteps echoed from the other end of the corridor.
It was Margaret rushing over, her breathing ragged. She carried a copper box and seven or eight bottles in her arms, with multicolored liquids sloshing inside the glass containers.
To cover the distance from the sinkhole to the Nightwatchers base and then to the Polymath Tower so quickly, she had clearly exerted herself to the limit.
“I’ve brought the potions and supplies.” She lined up the copper box and bottles one by one on the floor. A dark blue eerie mutation inhibitor was placed at the very front, followed by a milky white Sanity restoration fluid and colorless, transparent holy water. A greyish-brown paper packet of blood-stanching powder was placed behind them, and three spare silver needles were laid out on the lid of the copper box.
Her gaze swept over the Guardian’s condition, and she pressed her lips together tightly, saying nothing more.
Kraus tilted his head toward Lu Yuan.
Lu Yuan crouched down, his gaze scanning the various bottles and jars.
His materials were limited. He closed his eyes, and the Knowledge Worm deep in his left eye writhed slightly as their symbiotic link expanded across his consciousness.
Grey-white text surged from the edge of his vision.
【Forbidden Lore: Specialized Research activated】
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