Chapter 1

The Grand Mage Haimer appeared reserved and introverted, but this was merely the result of his perpetual immersion in various magical research. Once he began discussing his areas of professional interest, the young master immediately transformed, becoming eloquent and emotionally animated, gesticulating wildly to the point that Hao Ren almost suspected the guy had been possessed on the spot. It was only with great difficulty that Hao Ren found an opportunity to interject after Haimer had calmed down: "You're saying that time inside the ruins is frozen?"

"Uh..." Haimer suddenly seemed a bit embarrassed. "That's just a guess... Our research into the element of 'time' is really quite rudimentary, and even the legendary ancient magic empire probably didn't have the power to control time... Plus, when we entered the ruins, time was flowing normally inside, so I can't really judge what the situation was inside when the ruins were completely sealed off. It's just that the various signs after opening the door..."

Listening to the "Grand Mage Haimer" preparing for another long-winded lecture, Becky, whose brain had already been turned to mush, quickly interrupted, "Alright, alright, alright, no need to give us a lesson. The guy next to me is a professional in ancient building demolition—can you just take us to the site to have a look?"

"Of course, we've already cleared the outer layer of the ruins. Please, follow me..."

Haimer selected a few bright-eyed apprentices to accompany them, and then summoned several high-ranking knights stationed here to serve as guards. He then led Hao Ren and his group to the entrance of the ruins that had been discovered not long ago.

The entrance was located at the foot of the mountain wall not far behind the observation camp. A semi-collapsed, gray-black cave opening appeared there abruptly. From the outside, it looked like an ordinary mountain cave, with nothing special about it. At first glance, probably no one would have thought that this cave entrance would lead to some kind of ancient ruins. The mountain walls on both sides of the cave entrance were covered with vines, dead branches, and dark tree roots, and there were traces of fire and blade marks, which should have been left by the investigation team during the clearing process. Two knights wearing enchanted armor stood guard on either side of the entrance, their expressions serious, their muscles tense, and their knightly swords planted on the ground, looking extraordinarily majestic.

"How did you pinpoint this place?" Hao Ren casually asked before entering the cave.

"The initial energy fluctuations were interfered with by the 'Lorissa Wall' energy field. After the investigation team entered the mountains, they could only search the area thoroughly, with no clue. But not long after, there were second and third energy fluctuations—they were irregular, but occurred very frequently, giving us the opportunity to continue locking on. After filtering out the interference from the Lorissa Wall using mathematical methods, we finally pinpointed this place."

Grand Mage Haimer explained as he led the group into the dark cave that resembled the maw of a beast.

The entrance to the ruins had partially collapsed and looked quite dangerous from the outside, but after walking inside, Hao Ren noticed that the ceiling and walls of the cave were shimmering with starlight-like magical radiance. Every so often, he could see small magic arrays affixed to the stone walls as if suspended in mid-air. After asking, he learned that these were all set up by Haimer to prevent the cave from collapsing.

From the entrance, there was a long, downward-sloping path. They walked nearly a hundred meters before encountering forks and turns, and the deeper they went, the more forks they encountered, as if they were walking into a maze. Fortunately, the investigation team had already explored most of the forks along the way, and there were conspicuous signs at each fork, or even stationed soldiers. Haimer cast a Light spell to compensate for the insufficient brightness of the lighting magic crystals embedded along the cave, allowing everyone to see all the details inside the cave clearly.

Hao Ren saw that some fragmented objects were occasionally exposed in the loose soil of the cave, and on some of the cave walls, he could find traces that seemed to have been artificially carved, but other than these things, he couldn't find any more traces of civilization. He couldn't help but feel a little strange: "Is this the main entrance to the ruins?"

"No, we haven't found the main entrance yet. I suspect that the ruins below are completely sealed off, with no entrances or exits at all. In terms of design, they can only be entered and exited through spatial teleportation or something like that," Haimer explained. "And the end of this cave is actually connected to a branch corridor inside the ruins. They shouldn't have been connected originally, but the energy burst a few days ago caused a small-scale earthquake, which opened up this entrance."

Hao Ren nodded and said nothing more.

After continuing to go deeper for a while, they saw that the cave in front of them suddenly became brighter, with a large number of luminous magic crystals embedded in the walls on both sides. A relatively open cave space was leveled out, with a small laboratory, armory, sentry post, and material piles set up inside. Several magic apprentices and formal mages were busy organizing data in the cave. When they saw Haimer, they immediately stopped their work and came forward to respectfully salute.

"Don't interrupt, continue working." Haimer had a bit of a mentor's demeanor 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 crawl in, you'll truly enter the interior of the ruins."

Vivian summoned two small bats and threw them into the ruins. A moment later, two masses of blood mist floated back out. Vivian nodded: "There's no problem inside. It seems the investigation team did clean it up very well."

Crossing the stone wall that had been cracked by the earthquake, Hao Ren's eyes suddenly widened.

A wide, straight corridor extended to both sides. The corridor was built from some kind of artificial material, smooth and shiny, and emitted a faint glow. On the walls on both sides of the corridor, he could see countless straight stripes, like some kind of mysterious relief, or like pipelines guiding energy. Looking to both sides, he could see that one end of the corridor disappeared into a pile of collapsed rubble, while the other end was a heavy door that had already been opened.

The heavy door was painted with patterns that were completely different from the various decorative styles of Holletta today—various straight lines formed extremely abstract images, like portraits of people and monsters, yet filled with a strange aura.

This was the first gate of the ruins. Grand Mage Haimer and the apprentices he brought with him spent three days and three nights to crack the opening method of this door, but encountered setbacks in front of the second door inside, and only now have they made some progress.

Hao Ren stepped over the door and found that inside was an exceptionally wide hall.

This hall was elliptical, wide and magnificent, but there were no supporting beams or pillars at all. There were no obvious lighting facilities in the hall, yet it was full of light everywhere. All of this demonstrated the power and incredible nature of the former magical empire's technology. At the very least, this mysterious lighting method could not be replicated by the current Holletta civilization. Looking up, he could see that the arched ceiling of the hall was a deep dark blue, dotted with white spots, forming a star-like pattern. Various mysterious constellations were outlined with silver-white lines, and there were curved and twisting character annotations in between—the entire dome was a huge star chart, magnificent and seemingly revealing the pride and self-esteem of the strong magical civilization of that year: it seemed that nothing was worth looking up to anymore except for the essence of the universe's stars.

Around the hall were a series of closed doors. According to Haimer, those were well-preserved laboratories and storage rooms. At the end of the hall was another door, which was the second door that had not yet been cracked—the Grand Mage believed that behind that door lay the core hinterland of the ruins. This hall and the laboratories around it were at most just peripheral research facilities.

"The positions of the stars in this star chart are very different from the star charts we use today, but there are also some points of agreement. It should be a star map from 10,000 years ago," Grand Mage Haimer said, looking up, his tone full of admiration. "Its completeness and accuracy are amazing. Many stars that cannot be observed on the ground are also recorded in it, and through it, we can accurately calculate the positions of many stars in thousands or even tens of thousands of years. I only tried to resolve a part of it, and I found several parameters that could correct the contemporary star charts... Incredible, incredible, it's really hard to imagine how the magical empire 10,000 years ago could have known the starry sky so well..."

"It's simple. They had space observation stations and even satellite colonies. The magic emperors of that year directly completed their star-related research in synchronous orbit," Hao Ren smiled, while having the data terminal check the age readings of various things in the hall. "This place does look unbelievably intact. After 10,000 years, this place doesn't even have a trace of weathering..."

"Not only that, we also discovered many abnormal phenomena—when we entered here, some of the energy arrays in some laboratories were still operating, and in some things that seemed to be alchemy reaction containers, the alchemy reaction had not ended. Some doors were shaking, as if the owners here had just hurriedly left this place, just 'seconds' before we entered here..."

The scene described by Grand Mage Haimer was very detailed, obviously witnessed with his own eyes, no wonder he had previously made such an unbelievable hypothesis as "time has stopped flowing."

At this time, the data terminal also completed the data measurement, and the result it obtained also greatly surprised Hao Ren.

"There are really traces of time having been frozen?!"

"That's right, the machine's measurement won't have any problems," the data terminal replied. "There is a ten-thousand-year age difference between the things in the hall and the things in the cave outside. This can only be explained by time having been frozen."

"What about now?"

"Just look around and you'll know," the terminal circled in the air. "Time here has resumed flowing, and it should be really only recently resumed. The machine guesses that the recent energy bursts and cave-ins destroyed some kind of 'space-time structure' here, which caused it to resume operation."