Chapter 145 — The Ancient Proving Ground

Before long, Byron led Gao Yang to the forward edge of the exploration into the Black Mountain Range ruins.

They were already near the middle layers of the ruins, the fruit of several days' unremitting labor by the team Byron commanded. This section connected to the upper levels by a great staircase, and within it lay far vaster spaces and soaring ceilings. Building such extraordinary breadth inside a mountain was no easy feat; if its builders had chosen such a scale, it could only mean that this region required space on that order.

Every corridor was raised, and so was every door and every room.

Gao Yang picked up a map and, by the light of the magic crystal Hetty held up beside him, traced the routes marked on it. Sir Byron had carried out his duty with great diligence, charting the regions along the way; countless straight corridors and rooms were clearly visible, and some of the rooms or corridor forks had been marked with special symbols to indicate unknown objects or suspicious branches within. Clearly, even after several days of exploration, Sir Byron and his company had failed to grasp just how vast this astonishing ruin truly was.

Just how insane was the scale of this thing?

By now Gao Yang, Hetty, Amber, Byron, and a large detachment of soldiers had arrived at that particular room. Byron pointed to the great door that had already been cleared and to the control mechanism: "My lord, our discovery was pure luck. This door was originally sealed shut, but the years must have worn a gap into it, and that was how we caught the draft. The control device beside it should be broken—its identification function has failed, and anyone at all can activate it."

"So even the works of the Gondor Empire can't outlast a thousand years..." Gao Yang sighed. "Show me."

Byron nodded, pulled off his glove, and stepped forward. He placed his hand on the metal device, and a distorted voice issued from it: "Detecting... sample subject... stable period... passage granted. Opening isolation door..."

Amid the creaking grind of machinery, the ancient isolation door set into the wall slowly opened.

"That's all it takes, and the door opens. Then, whether anyone passes through or not, it closes itself within five minutes—or strike this pillar twice in succession, and it closes as well. There's an identical device on the other side of the passage, too," Byron explained in detail.

Two more soldiers stepped forward, and sure enough the device emitted a similar sound, announcing that the isolation door had opened.

It seemed to identify anyone who touched the device as a so-called stable sample subject. The identity verification was pure formality.

But Gao Yang could not help frowning: those words, "sample subject," had sunk him into deep unease.

"This thing can actually talk!" Amber, by contrast, had taken an interest in the device itself. She ran over and imitated the others, placing her hand atop the metal pillar, and said with relish, "I've heard elves and wizards can make talking magic puppets too, but I've never—"

"Detecting... warning, qualification mismatch, unrecognized target, passage closing, alarm activated."

With that stiff, cold voice, the isolation door slammed shut again amid a tremendous noise, leaving a thoroughly bewildered Amber standing beside the device: "Hey... I didn't do anything!"

The instant the words "alarm activated" rang out, Gao Yang's hand had gone to the hilt of the Pioneer's Sword, but half a minute passed and no other disturbance came, so he allowed himself to relax a little: it seemed most of this facility's functions had long since ceased, and this door before them likely operated on its own, incapable of truly raising any alarm.

Byron, Hetty, and the others had been startled by the sudden turn as well, drawing their weapons and falling into stance as though facing a great enemy, until they confirmed that no ancient trap had been triggered. Only then did Hetty let out a long breath and stare in astonishment at the metal device: "What's going on here? Why does it fail the moment Amber touches it?"

"Never mind that for now," Gao Yang said, stepping forward to pull Amber aside and placing his own hand on the metal pillar. "First let's see if the thing still works."

The very next second, the aged access device announced identity verification passed once more, and the isolation door creaked open again.

"...Does this door have no shame at all!" Amber was instantly hopping up and down. "How is it that anyone can touch it and nothing happens, but the moment I do, it shuts?!"

"I think I've guessed what's going on..." Gao Yang said, knitting his brows. From the device's several reactions he boldly inferred a few facts. "This verification device likely isn't broken at all."

Amber looked utterly unconvinced: "Not broken? If it's not broken, why can anyone open it?"

"Perhaps this door's security settings aren't as high as I first imagined. Its only purpose is to ensure that what passes through is 'normal,'" Gao Yang said, brows furrowed. "Remember what Nicolixidan once said? Suspected human experiments were once conducted in this facility. So the 'sample subject' the access system speaks of almost certainly means a living person, and the so-called 'stable period'... most likely means no mutation or other loss of control. In other words, so long as you're an ordinary, normal person, you can pass through this door."

"Then why can't I?" Amber glared. "I'm perfectly normal!"

Gao Yang looked the creature up and down: "Are you a normal, ordinary human? Never mind normal and ordinary—are you even human?"

Amber's pointed ears twitched: "...Fine, fair point."

The others nodded thoughtfully as well; Gao Yang's explanation seemed to have won everyone over. Yet Gao Yang himself, having said it, sank into deep doubt.

Was it really that simple? Was this door merely meant to keep失控 test subjects from escaping? Might it have some other filtering mechanism?

For some reason, ever since he heard the stiff, cold voice of the access system, an exceedingly faint yet unmistakably real aversion and resistance had risen unbidden in his heart—yet search his memory as he might, he could find no source for that negativity.

But whatever lay behind this door, he had to go in.

After confirming that Amber simply could not use the verification device at the entrance, and that following others through the door herself would trigger no alarm, Gao Yang led the team into the space beyond.

They passed through a corridor built of some unknown metal, where rows of metal pillars along both sides made Gao Yang think involuntarily of sterilization or anti-static apparatus. At the corridor's end stood another open isolation door, and beyond it, a great circular hall.

The hall was built of artificial materials. Though the white wall coating was dust-laden and peeling, it still conjured how bright and spacious this whole space must once have been. Around the hall's perimeter stood a great many ancient magic devices arranged along the walls, linked by pipes and metal pillars, and the pipes extending from these devices all converged at the hall's center: there stood a dozen or so strangely shaped objects.

They had metal bases, and atop each base rose a transparent tubular structure like a biological cultivation tank. At the top of each tube sat a heavy lid, carved all over with runes and magic circles—though every rune had gone dark.

This scene, impossible to classify as either fantasy or science fiction, left Gao Yang briefly dazed, but the memories in Gao Yang Cecil's mind—images of the Gondor Empire in its glorious age—quickly dulled his sense of incongruity.