The moment they vaulted over, the first thing they felt was a change in the wind.
The draft welling up from below carried a layer of warmth.
Lu Yuan's fingers gripped the threads, and using the power of the Blue Knight's transcendent weapon, the two of them slid rapidly down against the wall.
With his march lamp hanging from his waist, the flame inside the copper-cased lantern was suppressed by the rising draft to the size of a finger. It barely illuminated a tiny patch of rock half a step beneath his feet, serving almost no purpose as a light source.
The further down they went, the more the cliff face slanted, though it had started out nearly vertical.
This entire copper wall was not rectangular at all, but trapezoidal—narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, flaring outward the deeper it went.
Footholds for the threads became increasingly difficult to find, as the protruding rock crevices on the slanting wall grew sparse.
Fortunately, the Blue Knight's threads possessed immense strength. With Lu Yuan pressing against the wall to guide their descent, their speed did not decrease but instead grew faster and faster.
At the same time, the swirling eerie inscriptions on the surrounding walls were more than twice as dense as those above.
Rings of arcs crowded together, merging into larger clusters, with some even fusing into solid sheets that nearly blanketed every inch of the cliff face within view.
Tens of thousands of arcs surged from all directions. Viewed from a certain angle, the entire world seemed to spin along with them.
Lu Yuan averted his gaze from the inscriptions, focusing solely on his hands and feet.
Under the protection of the Blue Knight's transcendent weapon, these things still could not affect him, though staring directly at them made his eyes ache slightly.
At the edge of his vision, the grey-white text kept flashing as they descended.
【Inscription (Advanced · Eerie Inscription): +1...25.5/50】
【Forbidden aura detected. Please stay away immediately.】
【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +1...81.9/100】
【Inscription (Advanced · Eerie Inscription): +1...26.5/50】
A massive amount of experience points kept flashing before his eyes, which was the only good news.
As for the prompt warning him to stay away, Lu Yuan ignored it entirely.
As they descended deeper, the golden light below, tainted with black mist, grew increasingly thick. It seeped out from the crevices of the cliff face in clusters, illuminating a small area around them.
The light carried an extremely contradictory aura, with warmth and malice tangled together, making it impossible to distinguish which was which.
The journey down was exceptionally quiet, save for the faint rustling of the threads scraping against the cliff face.
Lu Yuan and the Blue Knight were wrapped tightly together.
Lu Yuan suddenly spoke.
“Blue Knight, why were you so determined to come down? There doesn't seem to be anything to see down here.”
The Blue Knight's voice came from behind him, sounding slightly muffled through the layers of threads.
“That is not something you need to know.”
Lu Yuan shifted the threads slightly to the left and tapped his toes against a protruding rock surface, using it as leverage to slide down another stretch.
If she didn't want to say, he wouldn't press her.
After a moment, he seemed to recall something. “Is there a knight in your Knight Academy who knows how to use Timekeeper?”
The Blue Knight seemed to be looking at something, and only spoke after a brief pause. “Yes. How do you know about that?”
“Kraus mentioned it before,” Lu Yuan explained. “He also said he wanted me to study at the Knight Academy for a while. How does that knight use it? Is it the same as me?”
“Completely different from you.” The Blue Knight paused. “I cannot tell you exactly how it differs. If you really plan on going to the Knight Academy in the future, you can see for yourself.”
Lu Yuan muttered to himself.
Timekeeper had only three functions: Acceleration, Stasis, and Deprivation. What other ways could it possibly be used?
Could there be a fourth function he had never seen before? He suppressed the thought and didn't ask further.
If he had the time, he would just make a trip to the Knight Academy.
The threads scraped against the cliff face, producing a series of short rustles as their speed picked up once more.
Lu Yuan had no idea how deep they had descended.
Time was difficult to measure in this pitch-black void. He only knew that the grey-white text was popping up with increasing frequency, and the golden light below was growing brighter by the second.
After another while, the texture of the cliff face beneath them suddenly changed. The jagged fractures of rock and bronze vanished, replaced by vast sheets of pure bronze.
Lu Yuan was already nearing the vanished copper wall.
He slowed his descent, hanging against the cliff face with the Blue Knight like a spider, peering downward using the faint glow of his march lamp and the golden light reflecting from below.
The copper wall below was completely different from the one in his memory.
The last time he had been here, the copper wall had been as smooth as a mirror, its inscriptions precisely aligned.
Now, the thing was full of pits and covered in a dense network of cracks. Massive chunks of bronze were warped and peeling away, as if ruptured by some internal pressure, exposing fractures of an eerie color beneath.
The golden light bled from these cracks and ruptured gaps. It wasn't particularly blinding, but it seemed to possess a physical form, flowing down and clinging to the cliff face.
The copper wall was still sinking.
The continuous vibration beneath them was unmistakable; the entire wall was slowly but steadily plunging deeper into the abyss.
Lu Yuan's brow furrowed tightly as he stared at the riddled copper wall.
He knew exactly what was sealed inside this wall. Back when he had touched the bronze pillar at the bottom of the abyss, the inscription memory had shown a crown—a golden crown with seven points, each embedded with a glazed gemstone, hovering silently in place. It was likely the sealing artifact that the City Builder had locked inside the copper wall.
The crown in that vision was merely an object, which logically shouldn't possess its own consciousness.
But why had the copper wall ended up like this, as if the thing inside had broken free?
Could it have been reverse-eroded by the flesh body below during the countless years of sealing, giving rise to its own consciousness?
Lu Yuan's heart tightened.
His main purpose in coming down here was to find the fifth fragment, wanting to confirm if it lay within this copper wall.
However, the forbidden aura was so incredibly dense that the connection between the fragments was almost entirely severed, leaving him unable to sense a thing.
There was only one way to confirm it now: he had to touch it himself.
Having no other choice, Lu Yuan steeled himself, manipulated the threads, and carried the Blue Knight downward inch by inch.
The copper wall was not sinking very fast, and the two of them quickly caught up to it.
He didn't touch it immediately. First, he unwrapped the threads from his right hand, exposing it completely.
He glanced back at the Blue Knight. “If anything goes wrong with me in a moment, get me out of here immediately.”
The Blue Knight's gaze lingered on his bare hand for a brief second before she nodded. “Understood.”
She didn't ask why Lu Yuan was so determined to touch this copper wall.
She had heard that his pathway seemed to allow him to perceive bizarre things. From the looks of it, he needed to make physical contact with objects to receive that information.
The Blue Knight mused silently to herself.
Lu Yuan took a deep breath, extended his right hand, and pressed his fingertips against the copper wall.
The expected shock did not occur.
When his palm met the bronze, there was only a faint, subtle warmth. An indescribable sense of familiarity washed over him, as if something comforting and familiar lay on the other side of the copper wall.
This feeling struck Lu Yuan as bizarre. Describing a city wall as comforting felt inherently strange, yet such an emotion had undeniably welled up from the depths of his heart.
Lu Yuan couldn't make sense of it, but he knew now was not the time to dwell on it.
He had to confirm whether the fifth fragment was down here.
Thus, he tried to connect with the other four fragments in his possession, reaching out as far as he could in search of the fifth.
As expected, the response he hoped for did not come.
The fifth fragment was clearly not here either.
Lu Yuan's heart sank. The fragment most likely had nothing to do with this copper wall.
Just as he was about to withdraw his hand, his vision suddenly went black for an instant, and his consciousness felt as if it were being violently yanked away.
A new vision materialized before his eyes.
It was a pitch-black space where a massive, entirely golden object hovered high in the air, its golden light illuminating the surrounding darkness.
It resembled a sun, yet it was not a sun.
Lu Yuan recognized it at a single glance. It was the very crown he had seen in the bronze pillar's memory.
With seven points and seven glazed gemstones, the golden crown hovered right in the center of the darkness, radiating a gentle glow.
But before he could even bask in that warmth, the golden crown began to mutate.
The golden light was devoured by something at a visible rate, turning into a turbid dark red starting from the edges of the crown, slowly creeping toward the center.
The glazed gemstones on the seven points also transformed one by one. The seven-colored luster on their surfaces faded, replaced by pupil-like patterns as they turned into eyes.
Six of them had already opened completely, casting spiteful glares in all directions. Though their movements and directions differed, they were all wrapped in dense malice.
Only the one in the dead center remained unchanged. It was the largest of them all, its entire form shimmering with a dreamlike, colorful luster, still retaining its original appearance without the slightest trace of mutation.
Lu Yuan's breathing slowed.
He realized that over the long period of sealing, this crown had been reverse-contaminated by the flesh below. Its golden light was being devoured bit by bit, and the glazed pearls were gradually mutating.
It didn't seem to be breaking free of its own accord, but rather being dragged down. The contradictory aura of warmth and malice tangled together on its body was clearly a result of this struggle.
Realizing he was trapped in an illusion, Lu Yuan was about to break free when the crown in the vision suddenly changed.
The central glazed pearl, which had remained tightly shut, trembled slightly. Its outer shell began to move slowly, like an eyelid.
A jolt of alarm shot through Lu Yuan as he realized that even the largest pearl was beginning to be contaminated.
The trembling grew increasingly rapid, stirring the dreamlike, colorful luster. Something inside the pearl was waking up.
In the next instant, a microscopic vertical slit cracked open right in the middle of the pearl's surface. Though the slit was incredibly tiny, the colorful light piercing through it was exceptionally violent, exploding outward in all directions.
The vision shattered with a deafening crash.
Lu Yuan's consciousness was snapped back, and before his eyes once again lay the pitch-black cliff face and the swirling eerie inscriptions.
It was only then that he realized the Blue Knight behind him had gone completely stiff at some point.
The Blue Knight's hands on his shoulders were clamped tight like iron bands, her entire body frozen solid. The legs wrapped around his waist had lost all their flexibility, stiffening completely.
Lu Yuan's heart leaped. He instantly realized that the Blue Knight had also been pulled in. Clearly, at the moment he touched the copper wall, he wasn't the only one dragged into that vision.
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