Alicia gripped the rapier at her waist, her knuckles turning white from the force.
Elune bit her lip, her pale purple eyes staring intently at the golden figure struggling to maintain his position on the puppet’s shoulder.
The three elves who had been pursued had long since collapsed to the ground, currently unable to even speak.
Finally, the violent magic essence inside the crystal core began to recede.
Under the continuous erosion of Jiang Lin’s ice soul power, it gradually solidified and froze.
The deep blue light began to dim in concentric circles outward from the center of the core.
In its place, a ghostly blue frost spread from the point where the sword tip made contact.
The puppet’s right arm lifted one last time, its muzzle pointing at Jiang Lin, who was mere inches away.
Light condensed within the muzzle, flickering unsteadily, but in the end, it failed to fire.
The crystal core was completely frozen.
The ghostly blue light in the puppet’s eyes flashed violently twice before extinguishing.
Its massive body froze in place, the right arm dropping while the tower shield on its left arm slammed onto the metal floor with a heavy clang.
The tank-tread chassis ceased its rotation.
Jiang Lin leaped down from the puppet’s shoulder. He stumbled slightly upon landing, dropping to one knee.
The Eight Extremities Holy Sword trembled slightly in his hand, its light flickering before finally dissipating.
The web between his thumb and forefinger had split, and blood dripped down the back of his hand.
The liquid holy light magic essence that had only recently solidified within him was seventy to eighty percent depleted from the confrontation, leaving his meridians throbbing with a hollow, stinging pain.
His chest ached from the shockwave, and with every breath, he could feel a dull soreness in his ribs.
It was an internal injury—not severe, but it certainly hindered his movements.
He took a deep breath, stood up, and flexed his numb fingers.
“As expected of a 6th-rank peak puppet, it was quite impressive.”
“It seems that at my current 4th-rank early stage, I only have the combat power of a 6th-rank peak.”
“As I progress further, the gap between each rank truly does grow wider.”
He walked over to the crystal core in the puppet’s chest and pressed his hand against its frost-covered surface.
His Space Perception caught a faint, lingering trace of magic essence within the core.
Though it could no longer power the puppet, it was still an incredibly valuable magic material.
He took out the remaining energy from the spatial Star Core Fragment Zoe had given him, temporarily anchoring and folding the space around the core before extracting the entire head-sized crystal intact.
The crystal core was cold to the touch. The frost on its surface slowly melted in his palm, revealing the deep blue crystalline structure within.
Faint cracks were visible inside the crystal—marks left by the penetration of the ice soul power.
He stowed the crystal core into his spatial ring and turned to look toward the edge of the plaza.
Fenrir, Alicia, and Elune were still standing there, their expressions varied.
Fenrir’s mouth was hanging open, his jaw nearly hitting the floor, and he had even forgotten to lower his greatsword.
Alicia’s eyes were strikingly bright, her pale gold pupils reflecting Jiang Lin’s silhouette.
Elune, meanwhile, walked over quickly, taking a handkerchief from her robes and handing it to him.
Jiang Lin took it, casually wiped the blood from his hands, and then tucked the handkerchief into his spatial ring without returning it.
“Teacher Matthew,” Alicia said as she stepped forward, her tone even more respectful than before. “Your true combat power... what level is it actually at?”
“6th-rank peak, I suppose.”
Jiang Lin adjusted his shoulder, which had been jarred during the fight, the bone letting out a faint click.
“I can win, but it takes effort and I’ll sustain some injuries. It’s not like before where I could completely steamroll the opponent.”
He paused before continuing his assessment.
“If it were a 6th-rank early stage opponent, I should be able to crush them easily with my current combat power.”
“A 6th-rank mid-stage would require some effort, but the odds of victory would be very high.”
“A 6th-rank peak is difficult to fight; it would depend on my condition and performance.”
He glanced at the frost-covered wreckage of the puppet and added, “This kind of puppet is one thing since it lacks intelligence and only follows a program. Once you find its weakness, the battle ends quickly.”
“If it were a true 6th-rank peak powerhouse with combat experience, intelligence, and the ability to adapt, it would be much harder to fight.”
“6th-rank peak...”
Alicia repeated the words softly, a complex light in her pale gold eyes.
Fenrir, however, recovered from his shock quite quickly.
He shouldered his greatsword and walked over to the puppet’s remains, poking the tower shield still standing on the ground with the tip of his blade. The runes on the shield had completely dimmed, but the metal itself remained incredibly hard.
“If we could haul this thing away and melt it down to reforge, we could make at least dozens of high-quality weapons.”
He turned back to Jiang Lin, his eyes full of anticipation. “Teacher Matthew, can we take this?”
“Take whatever you can carry.”
Jiang Lin surveyed the area around the plaza.
This circular plaza was clearly an important node in the middle layer. The metal pillars surrounding it were covered in runes; though most had dimmed, a small portion still flowed slowly.
The flow of those runes all pointed toward the north.
“There’s something over there.”
He withdrew his gaze and began walking north.
Elune walked by his side, her pale purple eyes occasionally glancing at his right hand, which was still seeping blood.
“Your hand... don’t you need to bandage it?”
“It’s a minor injury.”
Jiang Lin raised his right hand. The wound on his palm had already stopped bleeding and was beginning to heal.
The three rescued elves were still collapsed at the edge of the plaza. The lead male elf stood up and gave Jiang Lin a deep bow.
“Thank you for saving our lives. I am Cedric, a fourth-year student from the Magic Department of Silver Moon Academy. These two are my teammates.”
He introduced the two elves behind him, a male and a female, both of whom still looked shaken.
“How did you end up being chased by that puppet?” Jiang Lin asked as he walked.
Cedric gave a bitter smile.
“We discovered a storage room in the middle layer that contained several ancient magic crystals.”
“As soon as we took them, that puppet emerged from the wall.”
“We fled all the way here until we ran into you.”
“Do you intend to continue deeper?”
There was a hint of hesitation in Cedric’s voice.
“The middle layer is already very dangerous, and further north is the core area. The Dean said we must not enter the inner layer...”
“We’re just looking around the middle layer for anything valuable; we won’t go further down,” Jiang Lin said.
Cedric opened his mouth but ultimately said nothing more.
He glanced at the frost-covered remains of the puppet and asked, “Then, may we follow you?”
“At least... at least we can look out for one another.”
“No problem, come along.”
Thus, seven figures continued their journey toward the depths.
The silver-white metal pillars became increasingly dense, and the runes on them grew more complex.
As Jiang Lin walked, he released his Space Perception, capturing every subtle ripple in the surroundings.
The flow of those runes converged in his mind into a vast network, like blood vessels or nerves, extending from all directions toward a single point.
At a certain point, the metal pillars abruptly ended.
In their place was a wide, open clearing.
In the center of the clearing stood a massive stone tablet.
The tablet was ten meters high and about five meters wide, carved entirely from a deep black stone. Its surface bore no runes or patterns, polished as smooth as a mirror.
It stood there in isolation, with no other buildings or decorations around it—not even a trace of artificial carving.
“What is... this?”
Fenrir set down his shield and walked to the stone tablet, reaching out to touch the smooth surface.
Jiang Lin approached the tablet, his golden eyes staring at the smooth black surface.
His Space Perception failed in front of the stone tablet.
The spatial elements that were normally everywhere formed a vacuum zone around the tablet, devoid of any ripples, as silent as stagnant water.
He also placed his hand on the surface of the tablet and extended his perception inward.
“The inside of the tablet is empty,” he said, withdrawing his perception. “And the space is quite large.”
However, as his probe went deeper, his brow furrowed more and more.
“No, it’s not empty.”
“It’s Space Folding.”
“The stone tablet is just a shell; the real space has been folded into a tiny anchor point.”
He walked around the tablet once, using Space Perception to investigate every detail of the vacuum zone surrounding it.
The method of folding was extremely sophisticated, “cutting” an entire area of space from its original location, folding it into a tiny point, and then stuffing it into this stone tablet.
This was something far beyond his current capabilities.
However, to unlock the anchor, he didn’t need to be able to perform it; he only needed to find that anchor point and then “release” the folded space.
He closed his eyes, sinking his entire mind into the perception of the vacuum zone around the tablet.
Under his limit-broken Space Perception, those ripple-less spatial elements finally revealed a minute flaw.
Three inches to the left of the very top of the stone tablet, there was an extremely faint, almost imperceptible spatial ripple.
That was the anchor point.
He opened his eyes and leaped onto the top of the tablet.
The anchor point was right beneath his feet.
He could clearly feel the folded space vibrating slightly inside the anchor point, like a sleeping behemoth breathing.
He crouched down and pressed his right hand against the anchor point.
A magic circuit silently lit up at his fingertips, and a circle of pale silver light spread from his palm.
He began to release it.
He was slowly releasing the space that had been folded for an unknown number of years from that tiny anchor point.
The stone tablet began to vibrate.
Fine cracks appeared on the mirror-smooth black surface, and a blinding silver-white light seeped through them.
The light grew brighter and more intense, illuminating the entire clearing as if it were broad daylight.
Fenrir instinctively stepped back several paces, holding his greatsword across his chest.
Alicia gripped the rapier at her waist, her pale gold eyes staring fixedly at the crumbling stone tablet.
Elune stood by Jiang Lin’s side, her right hand resting on the hilt of the sword at her waist.
Cedric and his two teammates had long since retreated to the edge of the clearing, their faces filled with terror.
The cracks spread rapidly across the surface of the tablet.
From top to bottom, from center to edge, they branched out like spiderwebs or tree roots, dense and crisscrossing.
Then, the stone tablet shattered.
Countless black fragments suspended, rotated, and drifted away within the silver-white light.
The space that had been folded for an unknown number of years was finally released.
It surged out from the anchor point like a silver-white flower bud blooming in an instant.
The light was blinding to the extreme before quickly receding.
When visibility returned, a door had appeared in the center of the clearing.
It was a silver archway five meters high and about three meters wide, the frame forged from silver-white metal and covered in dense elven runes.
Inside the doorway was a chaotic void where nothing could be seen.
“Is this... a portal?” Alicia’s voice was filled with disbelief. “Where does it lead?”
Jiang Lin walked to the archway and reached his hand into the chaotic void.
His Space Perception extended through his fingertips, passing through layers of spatial folds to reach the other side of the door.
“It’s a ruin,” he said, withdrawing his hand. “A very large area of ruins, and... there seem to be many puppets?”
Fenrir hoisted his shield, a flash of excitement in his eyes. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go in and see!”
Jiang Lin looked at Elune.
She gave a slight nod.
He looked at Alicia.
She gripped her rapier, her thin lips pursed slightly.
He looked at Cedric and his two teammates.
The three of them looked at each other and finally nodded vigorously.
“Let’s go.”
Jiang Lin was the first to step into the archway.
The chaotic void swallowed him.
When his vision cleared, he was standing amidst a field of ruins.
The sky was a dark purple, with eerie red light occasionally peeking through heavy clouds, illuminating the land like a vision of hell.
Beneath his feet were shattered silver-white stone slabs, the cracks between them overgrown with dark purple moss that emitted a faint bioluminescence.
In the distance were rolling ruins of buildings.
Towering spires had mostly collapsed, leaving only broken remains piercing toward the sky.
Massive domes had crumbled into piles of rubble, the runes upon them having long since gone dark.
Broken pillars, shattered statues, and fragments of mechanical constructs half-buried in the debris cast twisted shadows under the dark red sky.
This was an abandoned city.
A ruin of the ancient elven civilization.
Fenrir, Alicia, Elune, and Cedric’s trio stepped through the archway immediately after him.
They stood behind Jiang Lin, looking at the vast ruins before them, and everyone fell into a long silence.
“What... is this place?”
“This should be the core of the Starfall Corridor,” Jiang Lin said, his Space Perception already spreading out. “The true secrets of the ancient elven archmages are likely hidden here.”
He stepped forward, walking toward the depths of the ruins.
The further they went, the more staggering the scale of the ruins became.
Though the collapsed buildings were now mere wreckage, the scale of their foundations and the remaining decorations suggested a level of past splendor that far surpassed the most magnificent structures in Silver Moon City.
“There is no record of this city in any of the Silver Moon Kingdom’s history books.”
Alicia crouched by a section of ruined wall, her fingertips brushing over a relief carving that was still clearly discernible.
“The history here must go back at least several thousand years. However, because it was sealed, it seems it wasn’t affected by the passage of time.”
“And since this secret realm can only be entered by those at the 5th rank or below, yet reaching this place requires the combat power of a 6th-rank peak to defeat the guardian puppets outside—along with sufficient proficiency in spatial magic—I expect very few people have ever made it here over the years.”
Jiang Lin, who was walking in the lead, came to a halt.
He raised his right hand, signaling for everyone to stop.
......
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