The ancient ruins are dormant in the darkness. Thousands of years have failed to erode the solid artificial building materials, but they have eroded the human breath that once existed here. A cold and humid air is entrenched in the corridors and rooms that have experienced vicissitudes. Here, there is neither life nor death in the air.
This atmosphere lasted for so long until it was broken by outsiders.
The light from the magic spar illuminated the way forward. The squad of heavily armed Cecil combat soldiers, led by Knight Byron, walked in the depths of the corridor. The monsters that came out were nothing more than a few mice since they entered the ruins until now.
Knight Byron walked in the front of the team, while a soldier behind him was holding an oil lamp. With the bright magic spar, the lighting effect of the oil lamp was not too great. Its main function was to Give an early warning when there is a lack of oxygen around, and respond when there are shadows and unclean things around.
According to Gao Wen's order, they went deep into the ancient mountain ruins. It is already the second day of activities in the ruins, and the things they saw along the way still haven't changed much. It is nothing more than a well-planned and surprisingly wide corridor. With empty rooms one after another, the architectural structure in the mountain feels very complicated at first, but after exploring for a period of time, you can grasp its laws: this facility is obviously not designed to make people get lost .
But no matter how boring the things he saw along the way, Byron dutifully drew the map and marked the rooms in various places.
The light of the magic spar shone into another deep room. Byron and others came to the end of the corridor temporarily marked as "the third corridor". Lower sentinel: They are going to take a break here.
Exploring in the dark ancient ruins is quite exhausting. The physical exertion of walking is not a big deal, but groping in the dark is quite a test of one's spirit. The soldiers brought in this time are already experienced and ambitious veterans, but they still need to rest in time before they can go on.
After checking the risk factors, the soldiers camped in the open space in the corner of the room. They placed the magic spar around them to provide lighting, and then took out their own dry food and drinking water, and took the time to eat and replenish their strength. Byron sat on a piece of magic Beside the spar, he looked at the map in his hand by the light.
This hand-drawn map marks the areas that have been explored so far. Since the corridors and rooms are very regular, the map is very simple and easy to understand. Although the three-dimensional interior of the facility has caused some trouble to draw the map, as long as the It is not a problem to draw the plane of each layer separately on paper.
Byron, who was a mercenary, was familiar with this.
"My lord, there seems to be nothing on this floor," said a veteran beside him, "All useful things have been emptied."
"Valuable things are often found in deeper places," Byron replied, and pointed to a place on the map, "According to the previous rules, this should be the big staircase leading to the next floor, and we will go to this place later. side walk."
"yes."
Byron turned his attention back to the map, and casually glanced at the oil lamp that had just been unshaded. The bright flame was still burning well and trembled slightly due to the breeze.
wait a minute... wind
Where does the wind come from in the completely blocked mountain ruins? The ventilation holes don't form such a large airflow, do they
The vigilance cultivated during the mercenary period made Byron not let go of this detail. He immediately closed the map, wet his fingers with saliva, and carefully sensed that there was indeed a wind.
"There is airflow here," he immediately reminded, "Light a few more lights, and search separately. There should be more than one entrance and exit in this room."
The soldiers immediately acted and began to search for secret doors and mechanisms in the room, and soon they discovered something unusual.
At the end of the room, there is an obvious rectangular depression on one wall, which looks like a door, and beside the depression, there is a pile of decayed sundries, which are wooden shelves and steel scraps that have been weathered for thousands of years.
The light in the room was dim before, and similar wall depressions and piles of debris can be seen everywhere in the ruins. Most of them are traces left after the equipment was dismantled, so the soldiers didn't pay attention to these things at all.
But there is air blowing out of this place, and it is obviously connected to the outside world.
Byron ordered the soldiers to remove the accumulated sundries, only to reveal a section of metal half buried in the wall. It was a cylinder less than half a meter in diameter, perpendicular to the ground, and half buried in the wall. The exposed part is covered with complex patterns, and its upper part is still a downward-sloping plane: obviously it cannot be used as a table for placing items.
"What is this?" A soldier looked at the metal pillar curiously, with a tense expression on his face, "Could it be a trap..."
"No," Byron shook his head, while recalling some common sense Gawain gave him, "According to the Duke, items with this appearance are usually used in this way..."
While speaking, he put his hand on the inclined plane at the top of the metal object, but the latter did not respond.
There was no embarrassment on Byron's face: "Of course, most of the things inside are not usable. After all, it will go bad after a long time. This is common sense."
A soldier said carelessly: "My lord, can you try taking off your gloves?"
Byron's old face didn't turn red at all, and he gave the big soldier a look: "Then you have a try!"
As expected, the soldiers on the other side were brought out by Byron. They were not polite at all. They took off their gloves and imitated Byron's way of putting their hands on the slope.
In the next second, the complicated patterns on the surface of the metal object brightened slightly, and at the same time, there was a slight vibration coming from nowhere. While the soldier showed a look of astonishment on his face, Byron heard the noise coming from inside the metal object. A somewhat distorted and unusually dull voice came: "Detection... sample tester... stabilization period... allowed to pass. Opening the isolation door..."
Then, accompanied by the creaking sound of the ancient machine running, the sunken place on the wall actually shrunk inward, revealing a previously hidden passage!
Everyone looked at each other in blank dismay.
"I... I didn't do anything," the soldier quickly withdrew his hand, with a nervous and bewildered expression, "You all watched."
Byron glanced at the dark passage behind the gate, took off his gloves suddenly, and put his hands on the metal slope.
The metal device also lit up, and an old-fashioned distorted voice soon came from inside: "Detection... Sample tester... Stability period... Allowed to pass, the isolation door is already open."
"Me too?" Byron was stunned, then frowned, and ordered a soldier at random, "You try!"
The soldier imitated his hand on the device, and then exactly the same thing happened: the metal device lit up, and a voice from inside announced that passage had been granted.
Dare to feel, but anyone who puts his hand on it can pass the test.
"It's probably broken..." After testing two more soldiers, Byron was slightly relieved, "After all, it's such an ancient thing."
A soldier asked cautiously: "My lord, where do we still..."
"Go in and have a look." Byron's face was still cautious, but his heart was slightly excited. As a former mercenary who had traveled all over the ruins of the southern border without overturning his car, he seemed to have smelled something good. "I've been looking for it for so long. , I finally found something!"
…
While Byron and his party continued to go deep into the ruins in the mountains, a new guest also set foot on the new territory of the Cecil family.
This is a young woman with a graceful figure. She is wearing a light gauze dress that does not look like Ansu's style. Her long hair is loose behind her. A lavender veil covers her face, leaving only a pair of bright and lively eyes. With her eyes exposed, she just walked into Cecil's territory openly, passed through the soldiers' post, passed through the gate of the camp that was now a small town, and walked among neat wooden houses.
Cecil's subjects were busy coming and going right next to her, but everyone ignored her.
The woman wearing a veil just walked around like this, observing the town with eyes full of curiosity, which is theoretically only a few months old. Those well-ordered wooden houses can already be regarded as qualified urban buildings in other places. After all, in most places of this era, the living conditions of common people are not even comparable to this kind of houses, but in fact these wooden houses are still obvious "transitional buildings". Buildings”, because on both sides of the town’s avenue, houses that are being demolished and rebuilt can be seen everywhere. Those houses have rammed their foundations and are built with bricks and tiles. They are obviously the next generation of houses in this town.
Strange noises came from not far away. The woman wearing a veil looked around and found that the direction of the sound was a factory building emitting smoke and dust. She walked over curiously, opened the door openly, and saw the inside I was stunned after the sight.
It turns out that this is the place where bricks and tiles are fired, but there are two strange looking machines in the canopy in the center of the yard. One of the machines has an obvious magical reaction. The powerful rotating shaft drives another machine connected to it, and that machine continuously presses the mud-sand mixture as the raw material into regular porcelain adobes. These two machines are not only surprisingly efficient, but also obviously do not require complicated Control: Only two civilians in coarse clothes were watching by the machine, while more people were busy loading the rapidly formed bricks onto the carts and pushing them to the neatly lined bricks on the other side of the yard. , In a row of kilns that are several circles larger than ordinary brick kilns.
What are those two large magical devices...
Magic mechanism? But what about the mages who control them? Who is infusing them with magic? Who is regulating the flow of their magic? Who controls their speed and start and stop
Could it be those two ordinary people who didn't have any magical reaction all over their bodies? !
Speaking of which... this place seems to be able to sense magic reactions everywhere, which is really strange. Could it be that the entire territory is built on a magic focus
The woman wearing a veil frowned beautifully. She really wanted to disassemble the two machines to have a look, but to make such an outrageous move, I am afraid that no clever stealth or psychological suggestion would be effective, so she could only Shaking his head regretfully, he exited the yard and closed the door.
And at this moment, a seemingly familiar and energetic voice suddenly came from behind her: "Ah! Which one are you?!"