Chapter 170 The Controller

Under Bai Huo's lead, the group quickly arrived at the top of the Spirit Realm Clock Tower.

This towering tower, floating in the void, had now recovered from its warped state. The dark shadows that once covered its entire body had completely faded with the removal of the Godslayer Sword. Its surface now revealed those intricate and mysterious ancient runes once more. Pale gold and red divine script covered the tower, allowing the strange structure to emit a steady, soft glow in the dark space.

The top of the tower had been destroyed in the Godslayer War ten thousand years ago. Although the Spirit Realm Clock Tower was the best-preserved structure in the entire Corpus, that was only in relative terms. No object could truly remain intact during the Godslayer War. After the tower's spire was blasted off, the original hall at the top became a semi-open rooftop platform, and the shattered fragments of the building floated around the platform like an asteroid field.

Hao Ren landed on the platform at the top of the tower. He looked around and saw a large number of irregular, broken stones floating around the edge of the platform. Above him was the vast and unattainable starry sky. He felt like he was standing in the universe. He gently stamped his foot and felt that the gravity here was less than a third of normal, and the direction was somewhat skewed.

"See, nothing," Bai Huo landed next to Hao Ren, pointing around. "Only ruins. Be careful of those shadows floating in the air. They can suddenly generate gravity storms. Getting too close might throw you out—or pin you to the ground."

Lily was pinned to the ground ten meters away by a gravity anomaly. She was on all fours, her face red with exertion. "Why didn't you say so earlier..."

Vivian stood next to Lily, making snide remarks. "When are you going to get rid of this habit of poking everything you see?"

"She'd be betraying her ancestral chromosomes if she could change," Hao Ren muttered casually, instructing the data terminal to use its teleportation function to rescue Lily. He then looked around for anything that looked like a control panel. "The center point of those connections should be on this platform..."

After rescuing the husky maiden, the data terminal returned to Hao Ren's side and opened a holographic projection showing the locations of the previous connections. They were indeed at the top of the Spirit Realm Clock Tower. Vivian glanced at it, a little skeptical. "Didn't you say that the rifts would move as soon as they were observed from the outside? Some have moved several times. Can you still be accurate when you connect them in this situation?"

"This unit has considered this issue," the data terminal flashed blue. "First, this unit checked the transfer rules of all the rifts and found that no matter how they move, they will not leave the temple to which they are attached. Secondly, they are all moving on the surface of a large spherical shell, so the position of the sphere's center, to which the rifts jointly point, has never changed—which further confirms that the control end of this trans-dimensional vault is on the Spirit Realm Clock Tower."

"I'm worried about one thing now..." Hao Ren looked at the platform, which had been blasted into an open-air structure. "Could the controller have been destroyed since this place was blown up like this?"

The data terminal immediately shook from side to side. "Impossible. If the controller is offline, these rifts would not have appeared. Let's look carefully. There must be some equipment still running here, but the Creation Goddess's own tech tree is too weird… I guess the controller's form might be hard to recognize."

The group immediately split up to look for anything that looked suspicious on the square. Even Gun ran around happily to help. Although the cat girl's values were questionable, her mind was still sharp enough. As long as they explained the purpose clearly to her, she could be of great help. Moreover, felines were excellent hunters and detectives. Her carefulness and intuition might be very effective.

Hao Ren was with the data terminal. He looked thoughtfully at the vague floating temples in the distance. "These rifts should be something left behind by the Creation Goddess, right? Some kind of safe."

"Obvious."

"And each rift is attached to a temple. According to Bai Huo, they will only appear within a hundred meters of the temple. So we can assume that the floating position and orbit of each temple around the Spirit Realm Clock Tower were actually set by the Creation Goddess—in order to maintain her 'safe,' these temples cannot change their positions at will."

"Obvious."

"These temples were destroyed in the Godslayer War. The Corpus space is actually a fragment blasted from the Origin Star. We initially thought that the reason these temples were floating in the air was the result of random explosions, thinking that their floating was completely random. But now it seems that the situation is completely different: everything is precise."

"This unit understands your meaning."

"That goddess precisely calculated where each of these temples would float in the future when she fell—she even knew what form the future Corpus would take. The position of each ruin here was arranged with unparalleled precision. You know what this is like? A person's home is blown up, and this person knew before the explosion where every brick and tile in the house would fly. This person even meticulously arranged the use of each brick and tile after being blown away: she used these bricks and tiles to put together a giant puzzle spanning hundreds of kilometers, just to safely and securely store something after her death, and not be discovered by a certain 'person'."

The data terminal said slowly, "So now there is a problem—"

"That's right, there is a problem," Hao Ren nodded. "Did the Origin Star explode due to the Godslayer incident overloading it, or did the Creation Goddess detonate it herself? The explosion was so precise... I don't believe that the Creation Goddess didn't do a lot of preparation for directional blasting."

"The Origin Star was detonated by the Creation Goddess herself—partner, have we been exposed to too much information recently?" The data terminal's voice also showed a rare hint of entanglement. "Now this unit almost suspects that even those 'rebellious children' of that year were cultivated by the goddess herself."

Hao Ren shook his head. "It shouldn't be that far. I still insist on my initial guess: the Godslayer incident was indeed a conspiracy by a third-party black hand, and the Creation Goddess was one of the victims. But now we need to increase the Creation Goddess's initiative in the entire incident. Her arrangements before her death... were quite a few."

At this moment, Lily's voice suddenly came from afar. "Landlord! Come and take a look at this!"

Hao Ren quickly ran over to check the situation. Lily pointed to the ground and asked him to look at it. "Aren't these patterns interesting?"

Hao Ren originally thought that Lily had found an ancient device or something else, but he didn't expect it to be just some lines on the ground. But soon he found that these lines were indeed concerning: it was a perfect circular pattern about two meters in diameter. At first glance, the pattern was just a beautiful carving, but after closer inspection, he found that it was a huge, three-dimensional spherical pattern pieced together from a large number of irregular fragments.

It was almost identical to the overall diagram of the "trans-dimensional vault" simulated by the data terminal.

"This..." Bai Huo was a little surprised. "I know there used to be reliefs on the ground here, but it didn't look like this."

"It wasn't like this before?" Hao Ren was stunned. "Could it be that it appeared with those space rifts..."

Before he could finish speaking, Gun, who was looking around on the ground with her head down, suddenly shouted, "Big cat! Words are popping up here!"

Hao Ren looked down and saw lines of text gradually emerging from the edge of the circular pattern. The translation plug-in was activated immediately, and the words suddenly became as clear as his native language to Hao Ren:

"Creatures of Origin Blood can read this text. With this bloodline, the Sacred Vault can be opened."

"Creatures of Origin Blood?" After a brief moment of stunned silence, Hao Ren subconsciously looked at Vivian beside him, who also turned her gaze over at almost the same time. "I didn't use the translation plug-in just now... I understood what was written on it directly."

"So this is for you," Hao Ren swallowed. "It's something the Creation Goddess left for you!"

"Wow," Lily whispered aside, "Suddenly a epic achievement pops up."

Vivian's expression was like sleepwalking. She hadn't been able to accept this amount of information yet. Then, she subconsciously asked, "What should I do?"

Without saying a word, Lily grabbed Vivian's arm and bit down. "Is that even a question? The manual says, bleed! Nom!"