Ahead lay a relatively well-preserved cluster of buildings.
The towering spires still stood tall, the massive domes had not collapsed, and the fractured columns had been repaired. Though the work was crude, the signs of manual restoration were unmistakable.
In the center of the complex was a vast circular plaza.
The plaza was packed with a dense crowd of puppets.
These puppets were completely different from the ones they had encountered before.
They were taller, cast entirely from a deep blue metal, with intricate magic runes flowing across their joints.
Their right arms were cannons, their left arms were shields, and fist-sized purple crystal cores were embedded in their chests.
The eyes of the puppets in the front row lit up with a ghostly blue glow, locking onto Jiang Lin in unison.
“The twelve 5th-ranks and that one 6th-rank peak from before were just the appetizers,” Fenrir said, his voice trembling slightly.
Jiang Lin withdrew his gaze, his golden eyes as calm as still water.
“Prepare for battle.”
He took a step forward, and the Eight Extremities Holy Sword condensed in his palm. The white-gold blade was wrapped in deep blue ice soul power, and the eight-colored runes at the crossguard flowed slowly.
Liquid holy light magic essence surged through his body, pushing the light on the blade to its absolute limit.
Fenrir took a deep breath, shouldered his tower shield, and drew his greatsword.
Alicia gripped her rapier, the intent to fight burning in her pale gold eyes.
Elune drew the sword at her waist, her silver-purple hair fluttering in the wind.
Cedric and his two teammates also drew their weapons. Though their faces were pale, their gazes remained firm.
The front row of puppets stepped forward simultaneously, the muzzles on their right arms lighting up with a blinding blue glare.
Seven figures stood against a massive legion of puppets in the dead silence of the ruins.
Then, they moved at once.
The battle lasted for a long time.
It lasted until Fenrir’s arms were so sore he could barely hold his sword, until several notches were chipped into the blade of Alicia’s rapier, and until Cedric collapsed to the ground, gasping for air, unwilling to stand up again.
But finally, the last puppet’s crystal core shattered under Jiang Lin’s blade.
Jiang Lin stood atop a small mountain of puppet wreckage and put away the Eight Extremities Holy Sword.
His long golden hair was soaked with sweat, strands sticking to his forehead.
His deep blue robes were torn in several places, revealing skin bruised by the shockwaves of the battle.
The wound on his hand had long since healed under the effects of healing magic, leaving only a few faint scars.
He looked up toward the building at the end of the plaza.
It was a massive, temple-style structure.
Built entirely of silver-white stone, its front featured twelve pillars tens of meters high, each covered in dense elven runes.
Between the pillars was a massive metal door.
The door had no handle or keyhole—only a fist-sized deep blue crystal embedded in the center of the panels.
Countless tiny specks of light flowed slowly inside the crystal, as if an entire starry sky had been compressed into that small gem.
Jiang Lin walked to the metal door and pressed his hand against the deep blue crystal.
The moment his fingertips touched the surface, the specks of light inside became frantic. Like a swarm of startled fireflies, they spun, collided, and converged within the crystal.
A ripple of pale blue light spread from the center of the crystal, racing along the nearly invisible lines etched into the door.
The entire metal door began to vibrate.
Light spread from the center of the door to both sides, illuminating the dense elven runes on the frame.
Then, the door slid open silently.
Behind the door was a long corridor.
Fist-sized moonlight stones were embedded in the walls on both sides. Their light had mostly dimmed, leaving only a faint pale blue halo that barely lit the path ahead.
The floor was made of solid silver-white stone slabs. There was no dust in the cracks between them; they were as smooth as if they had just been laid.
“This place... feels a bit off,” Fenrir whispered, carrying his greatsword as he walked behind Jiang Lin. “It’s too clean. The ruins everywhere else have moss, dust, and the marks of time. This place... it looks like someone was cleaning it yesterday.”
Alicia knelt down, her fingertips brushing over the floor slabs.
“No dust, no wear, and the air doesn't even have that stale, ancient smell. Something is definitely strange here.”
Jiang Lin didn't stop. He expanded his Space Perception to its limit, probing every inch of the space along the corridor.
The walls were solid, with no hidden compartments or secret rooms.
However, his Space Perception could not penetrate whatever lay at the end of the corridor.
It was a zone of chaos where space elements were twisted, folded, and compressed, forming a formulaic structure similar to a spatial anchor, yet far more complex and precise.
“A teleportation array,” Jiang Lin concluded. “And a very powerful one at that.”
The corridor ended in a massive circular hall.
The hall’s dome reached dozens of meters high, embedded with dozens of fist-sized moonlight stones. Their light intertwined into a pale blue curtain of radiance, illuminating the entire space as bright as day.
The surrounding walls were covered in dense elven runes, their complexity far exceeding those found in the storage room or on the stone tablet.
In the center of the hall, a massive teleportation array hovered.
The array was over ten meters in diameter, forged entirely from silver-white metal and covered in a dense web of runes.
Silver-white light flowed through the runes, circulating across the surface of the array like living blood vessels.
In the center of the array was a circular indentation about three meters wide. At the bottom of this indentation, seven fist-sized deep blue crystals were arranged in a ring.
However, the light of those crystals was extremely dim, their magic essence nearly exhausted. Several crystals even had fine cracks on their surfaces, with a faint, dying blue glow seeping through the fractures.
“A teleportation array...” Alicia walked to the edge of the array and reached out, her fingertips hovering over one of the crystals. “It’s damaged. The energy in these crystals is almost gone, and some are even cracked.”
“Can it be fixed?” Fenrir asked.
Jiang Lin knelt down and pressed his right hand against the runes at the edge of the array. He closed his eyes, allowing his Space Perception to seep into the internal structure of the teleportation array.
The flow of the runes converged in his mind into a complex network. Every node, every circuit, and every point of energy convergence appeared clearly in his perception.
Zoe’s notes had detailed the architectural principles of teleportation arrays.
Although he had never operated one in practice, those theories, formulas, and calculation processes had been rehearsed in his mind countless times.
The damage to the teleportation array was lighter than he had expected.
The main issue was the energy supply. Three of the seven crystals were completely dead, two were on the verge of failing, and only two could barely maintain operation.
The runes themselves were not damaged; only a few connection nodes had loosened due to the lack of energy.
The teleportation coordinates were still perfectly preserved, pointing to an extremely distant spatial anchor.
“It can be fixed,” Jiang Lin said, opening his eyes and standing up. “But I’m not sure where we’ll be sent once it’s repaired. The coordinate anchor for this array is still there, but the location it points to... is far. Very far.”
“How far?”
“At least countless times further than the distance from the Silver Moon Kingdom to the East Continent.” Jiang Lin paused. “It might not even be on our planet anymore.”
The hall fell silent for a moment.
“Not on... this planet?” Cedric’s voice was a bit airy. “Are you saying this teleportation array can send us... beyond the planet?”
“The design of the array itself is meant for long distances.”
Jiang Lin walked to the indentation in the center of the array and knelt, carefully observing the cracked crystals.
The direction and depth of the cracks, as well as the remaining magic essence flow, were quickly analyzed in his mind.
“To fix this, I need a few things. High-purity space-attribute magic crystals—at least three to replace the ones that have completely failed. Astral Dust to reactivate the loose rune nodes. And... a stable spatial anchor as a reference. The array’s own anchor is still there, but I need to confirm if that anchor is currently active.”
He stood up and looked back at the group.
“I can try to repair it. Once it's fixed, I’ll test if the channel between the two sides is stable. If it is, we can go through and take a look.”
Fenrir was the first to speak.
“I’m with you.”
Alicia gave a slight nod.
Elune also nodded.
Cedric and his two teammates exchanged a look and finally nodded as well.
Cedric said, “Since we’ve come this far, we can’t go back empty-handed.”
Jiang Lin took out the spatial Star Core Fragment he had obtained from the storage room from his spatial ring.
He had used some of its energy before, but quite a bit remained.
He placed it at the edge of the array, along with several magic crystal fragments extracted from the puppet cores.
Then he knelt down and began to dismantle the dead crystals.
The dismantling process was harder than he had anticipated.
Those crystals had been embedded in the teleportation array for an unknown number of years, and a layer of incredibly hard energy crystallization had formed between the surfaces and the rune nodes.
He had to use spatial cutting to peel that layer away bit by bit without damaging the runes themselves.
Fortunately, with his limit-broken Space Perception and spatial cutting, every movement was precise to the level of a hair’s breadth.
When the first failed crystal was removed, Fenrir let out a long breath.
The second, the third, the fourth.
By the time the fifth failed crystal was successfully removed, beads of sweat had formed on Jiang Lin’s brow.
But he didn't stop. Instead, he cut and polished the spatial Star Core Fragment and several magic crystal fragments according to their size and energy purity, embedding them into the vacant slots.
The embedding process was even more difficult than the removal.
Every new crystal had to fit perfectly with the surrounding rune nodes. The angle, depth, and frequency of energy output all had to be consistent with the other crystals.
Jiang Lin seeped his Space Perception into the interior of each crystal, feeling their energy pulses, then adjusted the angle and depth of the embedding until their pulses were perfectly synchronized with the others.
The moment the last crystal was fully embedded, the entire teleportation array suddenly lit up.
A pale silver light spread from the center of the array to the surroundings, lighting up the rune patterns layer by layer, from the inner circle to the outer, from the bottom of the indentation to the edge of the array.
The once-loose rune nodes became stable again under the activation of the Astral Dust, and silver-white light flowed through the runes like blood surging through veins.
The seven crystals lit up simultaneously, their pale blue light intertwining into a curtain of radiance that shrouded the center of the array.
The teleportation array was repaired.
But the moment it was fixed, Jiang Lin sensed something was wrong.
The energy output of the teleportation array far exceeded his expectations.
It seemed... it had already been activated?
Under the guidance of the runes, the embedded crystals and Star Core Fragment released magic essence far more massive than his calculations had predicted.
The entire teleportation array began to vibrate violently. Silver-white light spilled from the edges of the array, spreading rapidly along the floor, walls, and ceiling.
In the next instant, silver-white light exploded from the center of the array.
The light was blinding to the extreme, swallowing everyone’s vision.
The teleportation array had opened!
An intense feeling of weightlessness followed.
Jiang Lin instinctively grabbed Elune’s wrist beside him, while his other hand condensed a spatial anchoring spell, trying to stabilize the surrounding spatial tunnel.
However, the energy inside the tunnel was too violent; his spatial anchoring held for less than a breath before collapsing.
His vision shook violently in the darkness.
After an unknown amount of time, the exit of the spatial tunnel finally appeared ahead.
It was a cluster of silver-white specks of light, like a lighthouse in the dark.
The spatial tunnel shoved them toward that direction, and then...
The light exploded.
Jiang Lin fell from mid-air, his right foot hitting the ground first. He bent his knee slightly to absorb the impact, and his right hand released Elune’s wrist to brace against the ground. He rolled once before stabilizing his posture.
Elune, protected by him, stumbled a couple of steps but did not fall.
Fenrir was not so lucky. His massive body slammed down from mid-air, crashing directly into the ground and creating a shallow pit. The greatsword slid off his back, landing a distance away with a loud clang.
Alicia twisted her waist in mid-air and landed steadily, though her knee buckled slightly as she hit the ground, forcing her into a single-knee kneel.
Cedric and his two teammates were even less graceful.
The three of them fell in a heap, rolling several times on the cold ground before coming to a stop.
“Is everyone okay?” Jiang Lin stood up and flexed the hand he had used to brace himself.
“I’m alright...” Fenrir climbed out of the pit and patted the dust off himself. “It just hurt a bit.”
“I’m fine.”
“Still alive.”
Cedric and his teammates also scrambled up. Though they looked disheveled, they didn't appear to have sustained any serious injuries.
The feeling of weightlessness returned as everyone lost the sensation of solid ground beneath their feet, their bodies floating in the air.
Only then did Jiang Lin have the time to observe his surroundings.
They were in a massive circular hall.
The hall’s dome was dozens of meters high, but it was transparent.
Above their heads was a pitch-black void. Countless tiny specks of starlight twinkled in that void—some bright as diamonds, others dim as dust.
That was the starry sky.
The true starry sky, viewed without the obstruction of an atmosphere.
“Are we... no longer on the planet?”
Alicia looked up at the boundless starry sky, her voice trembling.
Jiang Lin’s Space Perception had already spread out.
The walls surrounding the hall were made of a silver-white metal, their surfaces as smooth as mirrors, devoid of any runes or decorations. The floor was the same metal—cold and hard.
...
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