“Yes.”
Alderon stared at him, his pale silver eyes seeming to pierce through the flesh and look directly into his soul.
After a moment, he nodded slightly, his tone carrying a faint, nearly imperceptible trace of emotion.
“Indeed, you are quite capable. The internal environment of the Starfall Corridor is complex, with ancient magic constructs and guardian puppets scattered everywhere. You must be careful. Also...”
He paused and lowered his voice.
“Elune’s elders have asked me to request that you look after her within the secret realm.”
Hearing this, Jiang Lin was slightly surprised.
It seemed Elune’s family was indeed powerful if they could directly ask the academy dean to pass on a message to him.
“Thank you for the warning, Dean.”
Alderon said no more, turning to walk toward the massive teleportation array in the center of the square.
The teleportation array was over twenty meters in diameter, built from pale gold stone, its surface covered in dense elven runes.
Silver-white light flowed through the runes, looking like a fallen moon resting on the ground in the morning mist.
“Everyone, enter the teleportation array.”
Alderon’s voice wasn’t loud, yet it reached everyone’s ears with perfect clarity.
“The entrance to the Starfall Corridor will open at noon. We must arrive before then.”
Over sixty elven students filed into the teleportation array.
Fenrir and Alicia walked ahead of Jiang Lin, while Elune followed at his side.
The teleportation array lit up, enveloping everyone in pale silver light.
The familiar sensation of weightlessness followed, but without the intense dizziness common with long-distance teleportation arrays.
Elven teleportation technology was clearly more refined than that of the human kingdoms; the spatial channel was as stable as walking on flat ground.
When his vision cleared, Jiang Lin found himself standing on an unfamiliar land.
The sky was a pale purple. There was no sun, only countless tiny points of starlight flickering across the vault, casting a twilight glow over the entire world.
Beneath his feet was gray-black rock covered in a thin layer of silver moss that felt soft to the touch.
In the distance, rolling mountains glinted with a cold metallic luster under the starlight, and the silhouettes of buildings were faintly visible along the ridges.
Soaring spires, collapsed domes, and broken pillars—these were the ruins left behind by elven archmages thousands of years ago.
“The Starfall Corridor,” Alderon’s voice came from behind. “Thousands of years ago, the greatest archmages of the elven race carved out this trial space. Later, after the Great Cataclysm occurred, this space was abandoned, leaving only those guardian puppets and ancient magic constructs still operational.”
He walked to the front of the crowd, his pale silver eyes scanning every student present.
“The secret realm is divided into three layers. The outer layer is the activity zone for ancient magic constructs; the danger level is low.
“The middle layer is the patrol zone for guardian puppets; the danger level is moderate. As for the inner layer... you do not need to go there.”
His tone suddenly turned cold.
“The inner layer was the core research area for the archmages of that era. Space there is extremely unstable, and residual magic traps are still functioning to this day.
“If you accidentally wander into the inner layer, no one can save you.”
The sixty-plus elven students responded in unison.
“Now, form teams freely. Each team must have at least three people,” Alderon said with a wave of his hand. “Seven days from now, the teleportation array will reopen here.”
The students moved quickly.
Fenrir was the first to approach Jiang Lin.
“Teacher Matthew, I’m with you.”
Alicia didn’t speak, but she silently stood on Jiang Lin’s other side.
Elune’s pale purple eyes curved into two crescents. “The four of us make a perfect group.”
Jiang Lin nodded, not refusing. He looked up toward the distant mountain range.
“Let’s go.”
Four figures dashed toward the mountains.
The outer layer of the Starfall Corridor was even more desolate than Jiang Lin had expected.
The gray-black rocky ground was littered with shattered ancient magic constructs—broken humanoid puppets, snapped magic staves, and shards of crystal glinted dimly under the starlight.
The air was thick with a stale scent, a mix of rust and dust.
Occasionally, a wind would blow from deep within the mountains, carrying a bone-chilling cold and a faint, whisper-like humming.
“This place must have been a training ground,” Fenrir said, crouching before a shattered humanoid puppet and examining the runes on its chest. “Elven runes, standard combat puppet structure. Judging by the wear on these runes, it’s been at least a thousand years.”
Alicia stood to the side, her pale gold eyes scanning the surroundings.
“If it was a training ground, there should be an armory or a supply point nearby.
“The ancient archmages wouldn’t have made their students train empty-handed.”
Jiang Lin didn’t join the discussion.
His Space Perception was fully deployed, a pale silver field of awareness spreading out silently, piercing through rock, ruins, and the dust accumulated over a millennium.
Everything within several miles appeared clearly in his mind.
Then, he caught a ripple of fluctuation.
About two miles to the northwest, roughly ten meters underground, there was an abnormal spatial fluctuation.
The ripple was extremely faint, like the heartbeat of someone in a deep sleep, but it was definitely there.
Moreover, the frequency of the fluctuation was incredibly stable. It didn’t seem like a naturally occurring spatial rift, but rather like a man-made seal or storage space.
“Over there,” Jiang Lin pointed northwest. “There’s something underground.”
Fenrir’s eyes lit up.
“An armory?”
“We’ll only know once we see it.”
The four of them sped toward the northwest.
Jiang Lin led the way, keeping his Space Perception active at all times to precisely avoid areas that might trigger traps.
Fenrir followed closely behind him, his greatsword already unsheathed, its blade flowing with a faint golden light.
Moments later, they stopped before a collapsed stone chamber.
The chamber had long since lost its roof, leaving only half-ruined walls and a floor covered in rubble.
However, judging by the thickness of the walls and the quality of the stone, this had once been a quite sturdy building.
Runes were faintly visible on the walls; though most were blurred and illegible, the remaining traces still revealed ancient and precise craftsmanship.
Jiang Lin walked to the center of the stone chamber and closed his eyes. His Space Perception pierced through the thick rubble and soil beneath his feet, and the abnormal spatial fluctuation below became even clearer.
It was a highly sophisticated spatial seal.
If one hadn’t studied spatial magic, breaking it would likely require an attack at the 7th-rank or higher.
“Step back.”
Fenrir, Alicia, and Elune immediately retreated to the edge of the stone chamber.
Jiang Lin crouched down, pressing his right hand against the rubble-strewn ground.
Magic essence circuits lit up silently at his fingertips, and a ring of pale silver light spread from his palm like ripples on a lake after a stone is thrown.
The ripples pierced through the rubble and soil, resonating with the seal below.
The structure of the seal was incredibly intricate—a three-layered nested spatial anchoring. Each layer required magic essence control precise down to the width of a hair to unravel.
Jiang Lin closed his eyes, sinking his entire focus into the perception of the seal.
His limit-broken Space Perception allowed him to clearly “see” every node, every magic essence circuit, and every trajectory of energy flow within the seal.
He began to unseal it.
The nodes of the first layer lit up one by one under his guidance.
It was a precise arrangement; the position and order of every node were strictly dictated. Even a slight deviation would trigger the seal’s self-destruction mechanism.
He carefully adjusted the output frequency of his magic essence, ensuring each node lit up at the exact right moment.
The moment the final node lit up, the first layer of the seal dissipated silently.
The second layer was even more complex.
It was no longer a simple arrangement of nodes but a dynamic maze structure. Every magic essence circuit was constantly shifting, moving like a living thing.
Jiang Lin had to find the pattern within this flux and inject magic essence into the correct circuits at the precise moment.
He didn't rush to act, instead spending a dozen breaths observing the movement patterns of the circuits.
Then he raised his right hand and began injecting magic essence into the wandering circuits.
One, two, ten, thirty.
When the fiftieth circuit was lit, the second layer of the seal unraveled like a loosened knot and vanished.
The third layer was the simplest, yet the most dangerous.
It had only a single node, but that node was encased in an extremely unstable spatial oscillation field.
Any incorrect external force would trigger a violent reaction from the field, tearing everything nearby into shreds.
Jiang Lin took a deep breath and used Space Folding to “fold” the oscillation field around the node, compressing and solidifying it within a tiny area to temporarily render it inert.
Then, with a gentle tap, he lit the node.
Three layers of the seal—all broken.
The rubble-covered ground split open silently, and a circular passage about a meter in diameter appeared before the four of them.
The passage extended downward, its inner walls smooth as a mirror, with faint silver light flowing along the edges.
“Is this... the entrance to a storage space?” Alicia’s voice was filled with disbelief. “Someone sealed the entrance to a storage space underground?”
“It’s a method of the ancient archmages.”
Jiang Lin stood up, his golden eyes staring into the depths of the passage.
“Fixing a storage space to a specific location and hiding it with a spatial seal. Only someone capable of breaking the seal can enter.”
He was the first to step into the passage.
The moment his foot landed, the surrounding space warped slightly, and a familiar feeling of weightlessness came over him, as if he were stepping into a teleportation array.
When his vision cleared, Jiang Lin was standing in a massive underground space.
It was a circular hall over fifty meters in diameter. The ceiling was more than twenty meters high, embedded with dozens of fist-sized moonlight stones that emitted a soft glow, illuminating the entire hall as if it were daylight.
The walls surrounding the hall were covered in dense elven runes, with silver-white light flowing through them, clearly still operational.
In the center of the hall stood dozens of weapon racks and bookshelves.
The weapon racks displayed all sorts of weapons—longswords, shortswords, daggers, spears, and bows—each emitting a faint magical aura.
The bookshelves were neatly lined with hundreds of thick tomes, their covers bearing various titles written in Elvish:
《Essentials of High-tier Swordsmanship》, 《Advanced Principles of Magic Arrays》, 《An Interpretation of Runes》...
Fenrir, Alicia, and Elune stepped into the hall behind him and froze simultaneously.
“Is this... an ancient archmage’s private collection?”
Fenrir’s voice was trembling. He walked to the nearest weapon rack and picked up a two-handed greatsword.
The blade was entirely silver-white, with fine wave patterns on the edge that glinted coldly under the light of the moonlight stones.
He tried injecting magic essence, and the blade suddenly lit up, a sharp aura filling the air.
“A 5th-rank enchanted weapon! It’s worth at least fifty thousand gold coins!”
Fenrir’s eyes went wide as he reached for a second and then a third weapon.
“This one too! And this one! Heavens, there are at least thirty enchanted weapons here!”
Alicia walked to a bookshelf and pulled out a thick tome. She flipped to the first page, her eyes scanning the dense Elvish text, and her pupils constricted slightly.
“This is... a high-tier swordsmanship manual written in Ancient Elvish. Many of these moves have been lost to time.”
Elune, meanwhile, walked to the far end of the hall, where a lone crystal display stand stood.
Floating above the stand was a fist-sized crystal. Inside the crystal, countless tiny points of starlight swirled, as if an entire starry sky had been compressed into that small gem.
“This is...”
The moment she touched the crystal, it flared with light, and countless stars poured out, enveloping her.
“A space-attribute Star Core Fragment!”
Alicia turned to look at the crystal.
“That’s a treasure condensed by ancient archmages using spatial magic and astral power. Depending on the attribute it was condensed with, it permanently and significantly boosts the user’s affinity for a certain element!
“The value of this thing... is immeasurable!”
Enveloped by the starlight, Elune could clearly feel the magic essence within her body resonating with the astral power inside the crystal.
The sensation was warm and familiar, like being embraced by starlight.
The starlight lasted for about ten breaths before slowly receding and sinking back into the crystal.
The starlight within the crystal was slightly dimmer than before, but it still swirled slowly.
“I feel...”
She looked down at her hands, her pale purple eyes filled with disbelief.
“I think... I can feel space elements now!
“However, it seems each person can only use each attribute once. And judging by the state of this Star Core Fragment, it probably won’t last more than a few more uses before it’s depleted.”
She had never possessed space affinity, and her family rarely produced members with spatial attributes.
But now, she could truly feel the omnipresent space elements. Though they were still weak, they were undeniably there.
The Star Core Fragment had not only boosted her space affinity but had also modified her body’s ability to perceive space elements!
Jiang Lin walked to the crystal display stand and stared at the gem.
He could clearly feel the immense energy contained within it—a pure fusion of astral and spatial power.
“Can we take this with us?”
“We should be able to.”
Alicia walked over.
“But a Star Core Fragment likely needs a special container for preservation; otherwise, the energy will slowly leak away.”
Jiang Lin took an empty crystal bottle from his spatial ring—the one that had previously held the Astral Dust. Its material was excellent and should be able to temporarily preserve the Star Core Fragment.
He used Space Folding to take the crystal from the display stand. At the same time, the Star Core Fragment began to act upon him.
He felt his magic essence being purified, and his spatial attribute received a small boost.
It was a boost roughly equivalent to the increase from limit-breaking three or four spatial skills.
...
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