This Archmage Haimer looks reserved and introverted, but this is just because he has been indulging in various magical research all year round. Once he talked about his professional field of interest, this young master immediately talked like a different person He became emotional and danced so that Hao Ren almost suspected that this guy was impaled by someone on the spot—he finally found a chance to intervene after Haimo calmed down; "You said that time in the ruins is still?"
"Er..." Haimer was a little embarrassed, "This is just a guess... Our research on the element of 'time' is really superficial, and even the legendary ancient magic empire should not have the power to control time... Plus, in our When entering the ruins, the time in the ruins also flows normally, so I can't tell what's going on inside when the ruins are completely blocked. It's just the signs after opening the door... "
Hearing that the "Master Haimo" was going to talk at length again, Becky, who had already been confused by him, hurriedly interrupted: "Okay, okay, don't make up this lesson with us. Alright, the person next to me is a professional in the demolition of ancient buildings—quickly let us have a look at the scene?"
"Of course, we have already cleared the outer layer of the ruins, please follow me..."
Haimo selected a few Ling Guang's apprentices to accompany him, and then called several high-ranking knights stationed here as guards, and led Hao Ren and his party to the entrance of the ruins that were discovered not long ago.
The entrance is at the foot of the mountain wall not far behind the observation camp, and a half-collapsed gray-black cave suddenly appears there. From the outside, it looks like an ordinary cave, nothing special. I'm afraid no one would have guessed that this cave would lead to some ancient ruins or something. The mountain walls on both sides of the cave entrance are covered with dead branches of vines and dark tree roots, and there are still traces of being chopped by fire and knives, which should be left by the investigation team when they cleaned up. Two knights wearing enchanted armor stood guard on both sides of the entrance, with serious expressions and tense muscles, and the knight swords in their hands leaned on the ground, looking extremely mighty.
"How did you lock this place?" Hao Ren asked casually before entering the cave.
"The initial energy fluctuation was disturbed by the energy field of the 'Wall of Lorisa'. After entering the mountain range, the investigation team could only conduct a blanket search without any clue, but after a while, the second and third energy fluctuations occurred — it happened irregularly, but it happened frequently, giving us the opportunity to continue to lock. After filtering out the interference of the wall of Lorisa through mathematical methods, we finally locked on this place."
While explaining, Archmage Haimo led everyone into the dark cave that looked like the mouth of a beast.
The entrance of the ruins was half-collapsed, and it looked quite dangerous from the outside, but after entering, Hao Ren noticed that there were dots of magical light floating on the ceiling and the walls on both sides of the cave. The array was set up against the stone wall as if floating in the air. After asking, I found out that it was set up by Haimo to prevent the cave from collapsing.
After entering from the entrance, there is a long slope that slopes all the way down. It took nearly a hundred meters to encounter a fork and a turn, and the deeper you go, the more forks you encounter. It's like entering a maze, but fortunately, the investigation team has found out most of the forks along the way, and there are conspicuous signs or soldiers stationed at each fork. Haimo used the light technique to make up for the lack of brightness of the lighting magic crystals embedded along the cave, so that everyone could clearly see all the details in the cave.
Hao Ren saw that some fragmented utensils were exposed from time to time in the soft soil of the cave, and traces that seemed to be excavated by humans could be found on a small part of the cave walls, but apart from these things, there were no traces of civilization. He couldn't help being a little strange: "Is this the main entrance of the ruins?"
"No, we haven't found the main entrance yet. I suspect that the ruins below are completely enclosed, without any entrances and exits. They can only be entered and exited through space teleportation in design," Haimer explained, "and this cave The end of the tunnel is actually a branch corridor leading to the ruins. They should not be connected at first, but the small-scale earthquake caused by the energy explosion a few days ago opened up the entrance and exit."
Hao Ren nodded, but did not continue speaking.
After continuing to go deeper for a certain distance, they saw that the cave in front of them suddenly became bright, and a large number of glowing magic crystals were inlaid on the cave walls on both sides, while a relatively open cave space was leveled out, and a small Several magic apprentices and full-time mages were busy sorting out data in the cave in the laboratory, weapon depot, outpost, and material pile. When they saw Haimo, they immediately stopped their work and came to salute respectfully.
"Don't interrupt, keep working." Haimo had a bit of a mentor's bearing when facing his apprentices and assistants.
After the apprentices and assistants left, he pointed to the crack at the end of the cave: "That's the entrance. After you get in, you'll really enter the interior of the ruins."
Vivian summoned two little bats, raised her hand and threw them into the ruins. After a while, two balls of blood danced back from them. Vivian nodded: "There is no problem inside. It seems that the investigation team cleaned it up really well." .”
After crossing the stone wall that was cracked by the earthquake, Hao Ren's eyes suddenly opened up.
A wide and straight corridor extends to both sides. The corridor is made of some kind of man-made material, clean and smooth, and emits a faint glow. Countless straight stripes can be seen on the walls on both sides of the corridor, like some kind of mysterious relief. It is also like a pipeline that guides energy. Looking to both sides, one end of the corridor can be seen disappearing into a piece of collapsed rubble, and at the end of the other end is a heavy door that has been opened.
The heavy door is painted with patterns that are completely different from the various decorative styles of Holletta today—a variety of straight lines form an extremely abstract picture, like portraits of characters and monsters, but full of weirdness.
This is the first gate of the ruins—it took Master Haimo and his apprentices three days and three nights to crack the opening method of this gate, but they encountered setbacks in front of the second gate inside. There has been some progress.
Hao Ren stepped through the gate, and found an abnormally wide hall inside.
This hall is oval-shaped, broad and magnificent, but there are no supporting beams and columns, and no obvious lighting facilities can be seen in the hall, but it is full of light everywhere. All this shows the powerful and incredible technical power of the magic empire in the past , at least this mysterious lighting method cannot be replicated by the Holletta civilization today. Looking up, you can see that the vault of the hall is deep dark blue, with dots of white dotted on it, forming a picture like a starry sky. Various mysterious constellations are outlined by silver-white lines. You can see the crooked character annotations—the entire dome is actually a huge star map, and the grandeur seems to reveal the pride and pride of the powerful magic civilization at that time: it seems that apart from the essence of the stars in the universe, there is no longer any Anything worth looking up for them.
Around the hall, there are a series of closed doors. According to Haimer, those are well-preserved laboratories and storage rooms, and at the end of the hall is another door, which is not yet opened. The second door that was cracked—Master Da. believes that behind the door leads to the core hinterland of the ruins. The hall and the laboratories around the hall are at best peripheral research facilities.
"The positions of the stars in this horoscope map are very different from the horoscope maps we use today, but there are some parts that fit together. It should be the starry sky picture 10,000 years ago," Archmage Haimo raised his head, his tone not without admiration, "Its perfection and precision are astonishing. Many stars that cannot be observed on the ground are also recorded in it, and it can also accurately calculate the positions of many stars thousands of years or even tens of thousands of years later. I just tried to After solving part of it, I found several parameters that can correct the current astrological map... It's incredible, incredible, it's really hard to imagine how the magic empire 10,000 years ago was so familiar with the starry sky... "
"It's very simple. They have space observatories and even satellite colonies. The magic emperors of the past all completed the research on astrology directly in the synchronous orbit." Hao Ren smiled, and at the same time asked the data terminal to check the age of various things in the hall. Reading, "This place looks really unbelievably intact. It has been ten thousand years, and this place has not even a trace of weathering..."
"More than that, we also found a lot of abnormal phenomena - when we entered here, the energy circles in some laboratories were still operating, and in some things that seemed to be alchemy reaction vessels, the alchemy reaction had not yet ended, and some gates Shaking, as if the owner had left the place in a hurry just a moment ago, 'seconds before' we entered here…”
The scene described by Master Haimo is very detailed, and he obviously saw it with his own eyes. No wonder he made such an unbelievable assumption that "time stops flowing".
At this time, the data terminal also completed the data measurement, and the result it got also surprised Hao Ren.
"There really are traces of time standing still?!"
"Yes, there will be no problem with the measurement of this machine," the data terminal replied. "The things in the hall and the things in the cave outside are 10,000 years old. This can only be explained by the fact that time has been stopped."
"what about now?"
"Look around and you will know," the terminal circled in the air, "The time flow here has resumed, and it should have resumed flow not long ago. This machine guessed that the recent energy explosion and landslide destroyed the flow here. Some kind of 'space-time structure', which caused it to resume operation."