Chapter 65 — The Ancient Facility

Another hour passed, and the group was still advancing through corridors and passageways that seemed to stretch on without end.

The scale of this thousand-year-old facility had already surpassed anything Gao Song had imagined.

Even in the "Starlight Era" of Gondor's full glory, the Empire had rarely built facilities of such magnitude—even if it served simultaneously as a military fortress and a research installation, its size far exceeded Gao Song's expectations. It seemed it truly had been built by hollowing out an entire mountain, and as the downward ramps and stairs grew more numerous, Gao Yang even suspected they had hollowed out more than just one.

The magical signature was still coming through steadily, and still quite faint. Because they had encountered too many forks and side corridors, Hetty's guidance had grown unreliable—she could only determine a general direction, and had to rely on divination spells like spirit-calling to judge which branch to take. Even so, the group had taken several wrong turns and discovered no small number of dead ends.

Although Knight Byron had been marking the way as they went, and Hetty had used magical marks to sketch out guideposts, advancing for so long inside an ancient ruin still made the soldiers uneasy. Noticing this unease, Knight Byron came over to Gao Yang's side: "My lord, venturing deeper, we may well get lost in here. Everyone's sense of direction is completely thrown off."

Gao Qi frowned. He had in fact considered the problem of getting lost—it was just that he had more confidence than anyone else. The satellite spirit's extraordinary memory was at work; he had memorized practically every detail of every fork along the way, and a rough map was even taking shape in his mind. But these abilities were hard to explain, and even if he explained them, they would not exactly put everyone at ease.

After all, this place was simply too vast.

If Amber were here, things would be fine... at least she could be sent out to scout the path, and she could roam freely through the Shadow Realm besides, and she was skilled at picking locks—she certainly would not be trapped in a ruin as easily as ordinary people. She had already proven that in the Cecil family tombs.

This time Gao Yang was considering the matter quite seriously.

Unfortunately, Amber was not here. Gao Yang could only shake his head. "Your concern is reasonable. Then let us go a little further, set a few more marks, and then, whether we find anything or not, we turn back first and come again next time."

Though the lord had not ordered an immediate return, Gao Yang's ambiguous words still let the soldiers breathe a sigh of relief, as though they had received some kind of guarantee. The group once more mustered its courage and pressed on.

After a stretch of downward stairs, another great hall opened ahead. This hall held more than the previous ones: a row of enormous obsidian rectangular blocks was arranged neatly around its perimeter, like stone steles set against the walls, and from beneath the blocks extended many metal conduits or "tracks," all converging at the center of the hall, where there stood a strange hemispherical device.

Gao Qi frowned, walked over to the hemispherical device, and rubbed it a few times with his gauntleted hand. Some of the black ash and oxidation on its surface was scraped away, revealing the silvery-white metal beneath.

"What is this thing?" Hetty leaned in curiously. The installations in this room were clearly "fixed furnishings" that could not be carried away, a rarity in this ruin. Those obsidian blocks and metal connectors gave her a strange intuition related to magic.

"A mana focusing array—though I would very much like to call it a mana capacitor," Gao Dai said, drawing on knowledge that no one in this era knew anymore and lacing it with some even more baffling vocabulary. "These obsidian blocks connect to the mana wells in the facility, and this hemisphere can focus tremendous energy, producing a very brief but extremely intense flow of energy, which is then carried through this main conduit—"

Gao Yang pointed at a thick conduit extending from the hemispherical device and finally buried in the wall.

"...to carry the energy wherever it is needed."

Hetty's eyes widened slightly. As a mage, seeing this ancient magical apparatus from a thousand years ago made it impossible for her to contain her excitement. "Focus tremendous energy? So this is a weapon?"

"No, this is an auxiliary power source for research facilities, usually used to provide an instantaneous 'ignition' for devices that consume enormous energy—rainbow-light lenses and the like," Gao Yang shrugged. "In the Gondor era, magic was not only for fighting—though that was indeed one of its important uses—but magic could also do a great many other things. In fact, in my view, what mages truly ought to do is apply their knowledge and magic to this kind of research."

"Research..." Hetty murmured in disbelief.

She was no stranger to the word. Mages had always been synonymous with researchers; delving into the mysteries of magic and analyzing the laws of runes was their most prized work. But whatever the research, its ultimate purpose always came down to how to improve one's spellcasting ability, and a mage who could not improve his own spellcasting was regarded as a third-rate researcher.

Hetty instinctively felt that the "research" Gao Yang spoke of was probably not the same thing as the research she was familiar with.

This Mystic Vein Sect leader always seemed to fix his gaze on a very distant and very broad angle. He was always bringing up "universality" and "mass production," and the mages' way of specializing in themselves—even deliberately isolating themselves from one another—seemed to run directly counter to his thinking.

Hetty shook her head and flung those irrelevant thoughts aside. She heard Knight Byron asking, "My lady, is the magical signature coming from this place?"

Hetty concentrated and sensed for a moment, then shook her head. "No, but it's very close now."

"Mark this place down," Gao Yang spoke up. "This ancient device is thoroughly wrecked; no need to consider repairing it. But it can be dismantled for at least half a ton of mithril and seven or eight tons of obsidian, plus a great pile of adamantite and purple copper and purple steel."

"Wait..." Hetty gave a start and stared wide-eyed at Gao Yang. "Ancestor... you intend to... dismantle this priceless ancient magical device?!"

"And why not?" Gao Yang glanced at her. "This thing needs ultra-high-purity mana to 'ignite,' and the corresponding mana-purification techniques are long gone. And even with an energy source, after sitting here for a thousand years its internal structure is rotted through; repairing it would be no easier than building a new one."

Hetty was taken aback, her expression odd. "You, who came from seven hundred years ago, may not feel it, but this thing is an antique..."

Gao Yang's face twitched. "This thing was already an antique before I died. But we have to start from practical value: sitting here, it has no value at all. Only by melting it down can it be reborn."

Hearing Gao Dai say this much, Hetty realized nothing she said would make any difference, and so could only nod with a face full of heartache.

They say a child selling off the family fields feels no pain, but it seems the elder selling off the fields himself does not look all that pained either...

The discovery of the mana-focusing device meant they were already very close to the deep research facilities. And connecting this with the magical signature Hetty had sensed earlier, the target was very likely some research device that was still running.

Gao Heng quietly activated the knight's "Danger Sense" skill, so as to be ever on guard against magical traps or ancient radiation that might lurk here.