Next up was dealing with those wicks.
Elias stepped forward, striding over several tangled pipes on the floor.
He did not blindly insert the lamp-aligning pin directly into the slot.
In this world, relying on brute force to work miracles usually just led to instant death.
Elias took a deep breath, calming his slightly ragged breathing.
Leaning down slightly, his right hand as steady as a surgeon's, he held the lamp-aligning pin and brought the sharp tip close to each of the densely packed black wicks in turn.
A bizarre scene unfolded.
As the tip neared the first few wicks, the seemingly dry and lifeless black leads suddenly began to shudder violently without warning.
Like living things, they drifted slightly in the direction the tip was moving.
The twisted way they bent looked exactly like leeches smelling fresh blood, desperately stretching their bodies to latch on.
It was exceptionally disgusting.
Elias resisted the urge to shoot them and continued moving the tip.
Until the tip neared the second-to-last wick.
This wick hung quietly in the lamp base, without trembling or bending, as dead and lifeless as a piece of actual cotton thread.
Amidst this chaotic swarm of fake wicks, it seemed completely out of place.
“I choose you, honest one.”
Elias's eyes narrowed. Without further hesitation, he precisely inserted the lamp-aligning pin into the slot next to the real wick.
Almost the exact second the pin clicked into place, the sea salt crystal at the end of the lamp-aligning pin suddenly flared to life.
Immediately after, a layer of white frost spread rapidly across the crystal's surface at a visible rate.
It worked.
Elias's tense shoulders relaxed slightly, and he let out a soft chuckle that was hard to define as either mockery or relief.
“The wick is found too.”
He stood up straight and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.
“As expected, the one that looks the least alive is what a lighthouse should actually have.”
Beside him, Bloodsong cast a glance at him.
A hint of eccentricity flashed in her beautiful eyes, her valiant and cold face remaining expressionless.
“You don't usually look like someone who takes work seriously.”
Bloodsong's voice was very cold, like a block of eternal ice.
Elias curled his lip, stuffed his hands into his trench coat pockets, and grumbled back:
“I just hate working overtime. It doesn't mean I don't know how to do my job.”
“Those are two different things, don't mix them up.”
As a lighthouse keeper, he still possessed this level of professionalism.
However.
Before the two could finish their bickering.
A dull, strange sound suddenly echoed within the newly quieted space at the top of the tower.
Thump... Thump...
The sound did not come from the outside, but directly from inside the lamp room.
This sound... was a heartbeat!
The fake wicks, which had been perfectly disguised, seemed to finally realize they were completely exposed the moment the lamp-aligning pin locked into place.
They stopped playing dead.
Swoosh...
Hundreds of black fake wicks began to multiply frantically within the brass lamp base.
The originally tight brass oil valves also began to squirm, turning into bulging, dark-red tumors.
And the brass pipes meant to deliver phosphor whale oil became the worst-hit area.
Countless barbed roots of flesh burrowed out of the stone crevices, tightly wrapping around the pipes, constricting and squeezing them in a frenzy.
The oil delivery was on the verge of being cut off.
Once the real wick lost its oil supply, this tower would be completely useless.
“Dammit!”
Bloodsong cursed under her breath, a fleeting look of sheer financial pain crossing her cold, beautiful face.
Moving with extreme speed, she gritted her teeth and pulled a bottle of shimmering, deep-blue spirit restoration potion from her coat.
She popped the cork and downed it in one gulp.
The moment the potion went down, her expression turned exceptionally grim.
It wasn't because the potion was bitter.
It was pure, unadulterated financial pain.
She had taken an absolute bath on this run!
“Get back!”
Bloodsong growled, and her spirituality erupted in that instant.
Infernal fire instantly wrapped around her hands.
She lunged forward, instantly filling the space Elias had vacated.
Her fire was extraordinary, burning hot enough to melt steel in an instant.
But in this place, she didn't dare unleash it on a wide scale.
The area surrounding the lamp base was packed with highly flammable whale oil pipes. Even a single stray spark landing on the wrong oil line would turn the entire top of the tower into a massive bomb in an instant.
Sending both her and Elias sky-high.
Therefore,
each of her strikes had to be incredibly precise.
Whoosh—
The dark-red flames transformed into delicate scalpels, slicing right along the edge of the real wick.
It was precise and ruthless.
Burning the mutated flesh tendrils that tried to approach the pipes into ash.
The movement
was like dancing on the edge of a sharp blade, lighting a fire on the most treacherous tightrope.
At the same time,
she was frantically calculating in her mind.
Once this mission was over and she made it back to Hastings Port alive, she would absolutely demand more mission rewards from the organization.
Mission allowances, expense reimbursements, and emotional damages!
Otherwise, she would truly lose everything on this trip!
Beside her,
Elias braved the incoming wave of rancid heat while staring intently at the mechanical structure before him.
His hands moved so fast they left afterimages, struggling to calibrate the height of the real wick amidst the gaps in the writhing flesh.
Looking at Bloodsong, he even had the leisure to comment:
“I didn't realize you had such impressive fire control.”
“You should consider making crepes. Guaranteed never to burn.”
Bloodsong didn't even turn her head, the flames on her hands burning even brighter.
“I'm so stressed right now I want to burn this entire tower down!”
Elias shrugged and tactfully shut his mouth.
His gaze swept across the chaotic surroundings of the lamp base.
Soon,
he noticed something amiss.
The movement trajectories of the multiplying fake wicks were very strange.
They weren't moving simply to destroy or disguise.
As they moved, they vaguely formed a defensive perimeter, as if protecting a certain area behind the lamp base.
That position
was wedged right between the massive Fresnel lens base and the intricate oil lines.
It was an absolute blind spot.
Just what was hidden inside?
Elias narrowed his eyes, his thoughts racing wildly.
The fragments of logic pieced themselves together.
The bizarre scene before him suddenly reminded him of the battle from earlier.
From start to finish,
Sarah had been like a spell turret with zero cooldown, relentlessly casting high-cost spells.
In the common sense of mysticism, this was utterly impossible.
For transcendents like them, running dry of spirituality was the most fatal red line.
If ordinary transcendents ran out of spirituality, they might lose their sanity and fall into endless madness.
But what about those cultists of the Mist Veil Society?
Those people were already completely insane to begin with.
Not only were they crazy, but even the “Lord” they worshipped was an absolute madman.
Therefore,
Elias had never paid special attention to the issue of cultists running dry of spirituality.
He had subconsciously assumed that madmen simply didn't have to make sense.
But thinking about it now,
that assumption was clearly inaccurate.
No matter what,
rules were rules.
Even if cultists didn't need sanity and running dry of spirituality wouldn't make them any crazier, it should at least affect their ability to cast spells.
Yet Sarah had been too fluid when using those high-powered spells.
There was absolutely no sense of lag.
She had even displayed an arrogance in battle that showed she completely disregarded the consumption of her spirituality.
Then there was that bizarre, almost shameless regeneration and self-healing ability.
This couldn't help but make Elias wonder.
Was there a “resonance core” existing somewhere inside this tower?
Otherwise, why was it called a resonance tower?
This core
was responsible for projecting the power of the Divine Scion from the void into reality.
And,
within a certain range, greatly amplifying the influence of this power.
Naturally,
that would include providing a sort of “infinite battery life” to this group of fanatical cultists.
Then there was the bizarre mist outside the tower that shrouded the entire bay.
Ordinary transcendents couldn't sense that faint negative spirituality at all.
Yet ordinary people without supernatural power would react strongly after inhaling the mist, vomiting and fainting.
Wasn't this the perfect directional wireless charging?
Was it possible
that this negative spirituality could continuously replenish the spirituality of these cultists?
That was why
they never worried about their spirituality running dry or their spells failing.
They had this entire tower as their home-field advantage.
“The core of the entire tower is kept in here.”
Elias stopped his movements, extending a finger to point straight at the shadow-draped blind spot behind the lamp base.
He turned his head and said to Bloodsong:
“It must be hidden under some kind of concealment spell.”
Bloodsong took a moment to glance at the spot, her eyes narrowing.
She wasted no words.
With a flick of her right wrist and a sharp clang, a gleaming, razor-sharp dagger appeared in her hand.
“Destroy it directly?”
Bloodsong asked coldly, her entire being radiating a dangerous aura.
If Elias nodded, she wouldn't mind giving that spot a devastating blow.
“I'm afraid not.”
Elias shook his head, immediately rejecting the simple and crude proposal.
Deep caution showed in his eyes.
“When they set this place up, there's no way they didn't consider the possibility of it being forcefully destroyed.”
“We don't know if they've rigged any other self-destruct mechanisms to take us down with them.”
Bloodsong frowned.
“Then what do we do?”
Elias turned his head to look at the real wick, which had already been fully calibrated.
The corners of his mouth curled up slightly.
“We light the lamp directly.”
Rate on N.U.
