Chapter 1549 The Lost Temple

When the black mist surged, neither Hao Ren nor Lily could escape in time.

This was almost unthinkable. For Hao Ren today, his body and spirit had been tempered and strengthened far beyond the human realm. Therefore, he was very confident in his current reaction speed. Not to mention Lily, who possessed beast-like intuition. In addition, all of this magical idiot's talents were focused on physical ability. She could be said to be the strongest benchmark for agility and reaction speed in Hao Ren's team. Yet, these two superhuman beings with astonishing reaction speeds were swallowed by a surging black mist without even being able to resist.

When the black mist enveloped him, Hao Ren felt the surrounding space and time instantly distort. A strange sense of time stretching gave him the illusion that all his actions were extremely slow. He watched helplessly as he was swallowed by darkness but was unable to move even a finger. He felt as if his spirit had been detached from the real world – an unprecedented and terrifying situation.

In the corner of his eye, he saw Lily slowly turning her head towards him. Every movement of the husky girl seemed slow and ridiculous, as if in slow motion. She opened her mouth towards him, her eyes revealing a completely dumbfounded expression.

The next moment, a dizzying sense of spinning interrupted all his thoughts.

The two disappeared into the rolling black mist. The interior of this ancient and mysterious building instantly returned to its original state. The detached relief murals returned to their completeness, and the cracked walls were restored as before. After a surge, the darkness at the bottom of the building disappeared into thin air, as if there had never been any spatial rift there from the beginning.

Starlight from distant space shone in through the break at the bottom of the temple, casting itself on the mottled ancient murals. The silent starry river seemed to be concealing all the secrets here.

Of course, those who stayed behind on the Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace immediately saw everything that happened in the temple through various monitoring devices. A powerful energy interference had occurred in the temple at that moment, but Nolan still filtered out these clutter waves in time and transmitted the images inside. The sudden "disappearance" of Hao Ren and Lily and the evaporation of that spatial crack caused a burst of exclamations on the bridge. Vivian was the first to shout: "Ah—"

"Re-locating the beacon," the data terminal instantly projected a large pile of complex data charts, "Beacon positioning failed... Encountered unknown attribute interference. Confirming the inspector's life status... Status is normal."

"It seems they are safe," Izhaks breathed a sigh of relief, "But can we contact them?"

"This unit is trying," the data terminal said while mobilizing the Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace and the channel resources of the nearest drone sentry station, "They seemed to have passed through a space-time distortion point just now, but this thing is too strange... This unit's database doesn't even record this form of space barrier... Now only the life induction is normal, which is the highest authority information link and is not interfered with."

Nangong Sanba frowned: "Can you find a way to open the spatial rift again?"

Nolan nodded: "I'll try."

The Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace released a ship-borne engineering probe. The engineering probe came to the bottom of the temple along the route that Hao Ren and Lily entered. However, there was nothing here now. The strange murals had returned to normal, and the black mist had disappeared. There was only a large hole at the bottom of the temple, leading directly to space.

A probe remained where Hao Ren and Lily disappeared. The probe recorded the spatial data of the last moment. It uploaded these data to the engineering probe, but now these data were useless.

"The spatial anomaly has disappeared," Nolan's voice was full of incomprehension, "I have never seen this phenomenon. Terminal, can't you still contact the captain and Lily?"

"All effective channels have been interfered with, and the interference level is quite high," the data terminal's voice became uncharacteristically serious, "I'm afraid..."

Vivian was anxious: "Afraid of what?!"

"They have fallen into some kind of relic left by the Goddess of Creation, perhaps a barrier, perhaps something else," the data terminal said slowly, "Only the seal left by the true God can reach this level – in this universe, there are not many things that can interfere with this unit, and divinity is one of them."

Vivian gripped the console in front of her tightly, her finger joints slightly pale: "Then what should we do?"

"The life monitoring channel is still clear, which means that there are still loopholes in the barrier here, and the spiritual connection between this unit and Hao Ren is special, it will not be easily cut off – it is just suddenly encountered external divine interference, and the channel needs a certain amount of time to adapt," the data terminal's voice calmed people down, "Everyone calm down first and return to their positions. This unit's database has autonomous solutions to deal with various unexpected situations."

After everyone calmed down, Vivian gritted her teeth: "In short, the most urgent task now is to restore contact with Hao Ren, and then... he may need help. Terminal, can you mobilize the drone swarm nearby? Maybe they can help."

The data terminal glanced at Vivian in surprise, and the blue light on the surface flickered slightly: "That's a good suggestion, this unit will start planning a solution."

While the Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace was starting to formulate a series of response plans, Hao Ren had been floating in the darkness for an unknown amount of time – he felt as if he was traversing an endless void space. Although he could not tell the direction and distance, he could always feel that he was still moving. In the darkness, he could vaguely see strange and bizarre lights flashing past from afar. He seemed to see ancient mountains and ridges, and floating lands, rivers, and islands in the void. These things were connected by mysterious light currents, making it difficult to tell whether they were real or illusory.

Hao Ren turned his head and looked around, but he could no longer see Lily's golden eyes flashing in the darkness: he and the husky girl had been separated not long after falling into the darkness. Perhaps the space-time turbulence sent the two to different places.

I hope that idiot is okay.

Just as he was thinking about these things, a change suddenly occurred in the darkness ahead.

A faint glimmer of light appeared at the end of the chaos. This glimmer of light quickly expanded, turning into a hole in the blink of an eye. Hao Ren had just adjusted his posture when he fell heavily on a stone slab floor.

"Bang!!"

A dull sound broke the silence of the ancient temple for thousands of years. A cloud of dust rose in the center of the temple hall, and a violent cough came from the dust. Hao Ren climbed up from the ground with a gray face, and only then did he have time to look around.

He found himself in a wide, circular hall. The hall was dim, but not completely dark. A dim light came from nowhere, allowing him to see the surrounding environment in the dim light.

A circle of stone pillars was distributed around the edge of the hall, but they were not used to support the building, but seemed to be some kind of pure decoration. Between those stone pillars, each gap was also filled with a statue, but most of the statues seemed to have collapsed.

Hao Ren rubbed his shoulders. He realized that the style of this hall was very familiar, so he looked up—

Sure enough, there was no ceiling above the hall. The upper layer of the entire building seemed to have disappeared out of thin air. Looking up, he could directly see a dark and chaotic sky. Some broken stone chairs and metal objects floated above the hollow, floating in the air as if without gravity.

In addition, the fracture above the hall looked neat and smooth, as if cut by a knife and axe.

There was no doubt that this was the missing lower half of the "Space Temple" before.

Hao Ren calmed down and began to try to contact the Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace, but there was no response. Then he opened the spiritual connection and called the data terminal – this time there was finally a weak response, but no meaningful signal was transmitted.

Communication with the outside world was interrupted, and if he guessed correctly, he was now isolated from the outside primary material world: the darkness he had passed through before may have been the result of some kind of space-time distortion.

Hao Ren shook his head. The degree of the situation seemed a little unexpected, but this did not make him panic. He probably could not have done this a few years ago, but now he was no longer what he used to be, and naturally knew what to do first in this situation.

Keep the communication link open, continue to call the data terminal, the Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace, and the drone swarm, and check his current status at the same time.

The body had no external injuries, the spiritual world was stable, and he was not affected by illusions, curses, shadow corrosion, or other negative states.

He opened his portable space again – the situation was still good. The portable space could still be used as usual. Hao Ren breathed a sigh of relief after seeing the mountain of munitions and autonomous machinery piled up in the portable space.

The work-related things were all there, so he didn't have to worry too much about unexpected situations.