“Called by who?” Hao Ren frowned at Vivian's statement. “Was it a voice?”

“I can't explain it,” Vivian said, her eyes constantly scanning the enormous mountain of steel. “It was just a moment, like someone was reminding me to look in that direction… but there's nothing now.”

Lightning-fast thoughts raced through his mind, and Hao Ren vaguely guessed what it was: “A divine artifact—it seems the legends are at least half true.”

There weren't many things that could cause such a bizarre reaction in Vivian, and a creation directly left behind by the Goddess of Creation was the most likely. The myths and legends of the Ark Remnants spoke of a divine artifact that had protected the entire world, and now Vivian was feeling a strange summons near the Ancestral Furnace. It was impossible not to connect the two. It seemed this exiled fleet had indeed received some kind of protection, and that protection… came from the Goddess of Creation!?

Willie didn't understand what Hao Ren and the others were talking about. He asked curiously, "What's wrong?"

"You're a local, do you know how to get into the Ancestral Furnace?" Hao Ren asked directly.

"Local? I'm not a local, I was born and raised in Hearthstone City…" Willie subconsciously answered the first half of the question, then suddenly reacted. "The Ancestral Furnace?! What are you talking about? You want to go into the Ancestral Furnace?!"

"Is that not allowed?" Nangong Sanba raised an eyebrow. "Didn't we come here to solve this problem?"

Willie's face was all wrong. He had many guesses about the origins of this group of strangers, but he never expected they would be so whimsical as to want to enter the Ancestral Furnace to find out what was going on. "That's a pipe dream! The Ancestral Furnace is a place only the dead can set foot in. I've never heard of a living person being able to walk into that place! Anyone who steps into the furnace will be cursed by the power of the underworld, their whole body will be burned, their skin will peel off, their internal organs will bleed, and they will eventually be burned to death—you actually want to go in?!"

Hao Ren was greatly surprised to hear this. He didn't know the generator units were so dangerous, nor did he know if there was a problem with the local myths or if the ship's power furnace itself had any safety measures to prohibit visitors from entering, but he was definitely going in. "Is there no other way to get in?"

Willie shook his head vigorously. "Impossible, impossible, that's suicide. And even if there were daredevils who wanted to force their way into the Ancestral Furnace, it would be impossible. Blood Servants guard all the entrances and exits day and night. Those soldiers don't even listen to the king; they only obey their mission. What madness has seized you to want to go to that place?"

The young man seemed to be frightened by Hao Ren's plan. After desperately trying to dissuade them, an expression of suspicion gradually appeared on his face. Looking at Lily and Vivian's indifferent expressions, Willie suddenly remembered this group's "witchcraft" and some dark and terrifying legends, and his body trembled. "What… what exactly do you want to do?"

"Relax, relax, kid," Vivian said, a faint red light flashing in her eyes. She used the power of blood magic to forcibly calm Willie down. Her tone was slow and filled with a strange magical power. "Don't you want to end the winter? And look at the Ancestral Furnace now… it's broken, very seriously broken, and we know how to fix it. That's why we're here."

Vivian only had a few small tricks in her blood magic that could affect the human spirit, but Willie was an ordinary person who knew nothing about magic and had a weak will, so he was easily calmed down without any resistance. His eyes were cloudy for a moment. "But the Ancestral Furnace can't be entered. There's the power of the underworld inside, and the Blood Servants won't let you…"

"Then how are your king and the scholars he gathered together planning to solve the reactor problem?" Lily asked curiously. "They don't know how to fix it from the outside, and they can't get in. Are they just going to watch?"

Willie muttered a lot of nonsensical guesses, containing chaotic witchcraft, misinterpreted technical terms, pseudo-mechanical knowledge, and a bit of fatalism. He didn't need to ask him; Hao Ren knew that the people of this world couldn't possibly know how to repair that reactor. Just like every time the reactor shut down in the past, the scholars would gather together to chant spells and bow to the ancient circuit diagrams and circuit boards, but in the end, people still relied on the Ark System's tenacious self-repair to survive each winter—but this time, the Ancestral Furnace had a crack stretching for kilometers, which was not something a system reboot could handle.

Hao Ren had originally planned to have Willie and Scholar Ouro lead the way, and then he and his group would find an opportunity to enter the reactor internally through the guards of this place, openly and legitimately, thus avoiding bloodshed and all accidents, but now it seemed that the local people's knowledge of the Ancestral Furnace was more fragmented than he had imagined, and in the end, he would have to force his way in.

"You should go back to your resting place first, we have things to do," Hao Ren said, patting Willie on the shoulder after inquiring about the "Blood Servants," and letting the young man leave on his own. Then, he walked towards the high wall on the side of the royal city. He had observed the terrain earlier and believed that a gap there was one of the entrances to the reactor. "Let's go take a look at the situation."

The group walked through the bustling and crowded streets of the royal city, heading towards the gap.

The surrounding area was still bustling. Although a terrible event had occurred here not long ago, and everyone in the royal city had seen the reactor explosion up close, the streets of this city were still as lively as ever. The people of this world seemed to have become accustomed to the fact that the world around them would occasionally have some problems. Although this time, the crack in the Ancestral Furnace was a bit unprecedented, the civilians calmed down after the backup power of the sanctuary was activated. Men, women, old and young, were talking about the previous explosion on the streets. Some were telling strange legends to explain the phenomenon. Pessimists and optimists gathered together, but everyone's actions were the same: everyone gathered together, talking loudly, using words to dispel the haze.

Of course, the substantive damage that the previous explosion had brought to the city could not be ignored. When the electric fire tore through the reactor's outer shell, some fragments were blasted off. These fragments fell along the direction of artificial gravity on the edge of the city, smashing some houses. In addition, a series of small fires were caused by the power system failure afterwards, so there were many messy places to be seen in the royal city. Soldiers and craftsmen were cleaning up the destroyed areas, and the closer they got to the Ancestral Furnace, the more severe the damage became.

Thanks to the chaotic social order of this world and the messy situation in the destroyed districts, Hao Ren and his party passed through all the intersections smoothly without attracting anyone's attention. Finally, they arrived at a special exit in a corner of the royal city. Just as Hao Ren had guessed, after going out through this gap and walking on a high ground, he could see one of the entrances to the Ancestral Furnace in the distance.

But the facilities around that entrance were heavily guarded. Some strangely shaped soldiers were guarding the place. The soldiers were wearing simple leather armor, their upper bodies exposed to the cold air. They didn't seem to be afraid of the low temperature at all. Their skin was pale and sickly, and their muscles were particularly developed. Dark red blood vessels were visible through their almost transparent skin, like strange red tattoos. These soldiers walked around the reactor entrance, occasionally muttering strange sentences in a low voice. The sound was like a mixture of beasts and humans. When they spoke, saliva even dripped from their chins to the ground.

Hao Ren muttered, "These are the Blood Servants Willie mentioned?"

"...Radiation symptoms," the data terminal sneaked out, its surface glowing. After slightly detecting the facilities behind the soldiers, it understood what was going on. "This unit actually forgot to check the radiation value of this area—this reactor is leaking, and the radiation intensity behind those metal walls is terrifying. These soldiers have been guarding the place only a wall away from the radiation source for many years, and they've all become severely diseased!"

Blood Servants, the chosen ones who guard the Ancestral Furnace. They are selected from the most powerful warrior families in the Four Kingdoms and are the most valiant and skilled young men. These soldiers are ordered to guard the entrance to the Ancestral Furnace, and their bodies are bathed in the light of the gods and ancestors, thus gaining some extraordinary qualities. Although their lives are short, they are full of glory—this is the local explanation of the "Blood Servants," and what follows is the truth—these are just a group of pitiful radiation patients. Their greatest combat power comes from their radiation-burned appearance. The ordinary people of this world dare not be enemies with people of this appearance at all.

"They choose the strongest healthy people to guard this place, but they're actually wasting valuable labor in radiation," Lily said, her eyes wide. "This is really... incomprehensible."

"When the Black Death was at its worst, people were keen to burn women who knew how to use herbs to stop the plague," Vivian said expressionlessly. "And the guards here are at least a little necessary: ​​those doors are indeed not places where living people should go. No matter what the first person to discover this was thinking, at least he was right to send people to lock the doors."