Chapter 224 | Transmigrated with a Sanity Gauge

The runes on the walls had flickered with a faint light when he last visited.

Now, most were dark, lighting up only occasionally.

The team followed the escort through the corridor, heading toward the main tower.

The entrance to the main tower was a massive bronze gate, over ten meters high and covered in runes.

The last time he was here, those runes had emitted a faint blue glow like an ancient seal, flowing slowly like living things.

Now, the bronze gate stood half-open. The runes on it were far dimmer than he remembered; only a few lines still held a faint flow, while the rest were illegible.

‘Is the Polymath Tower destroying its own defenses? On purpose?’

Hidden in the darkness of his hood, Lu Yuan’s brow furrowed.

The team passed by the bronze gate without entering, continuing along the corridor on the perimeter of the main tower.

The Church's maintenance route did not go inside the main tower. That was the administrative center and where the headmaster worked, which was outside the scope of purification.

But in the few steps it took to pass the bronze gate...

Greyish-white text surfaced.

【Environmental Perception: Remains detected... Extreme danger... Please immediately... keep your distance】

【It, who should have fallen into the void, seems to be reviving... You seem to have the ability to observe it...】

【Sanity: -1... 91/120】

Lu Yuan’s pupils contracted for a split second when he saw the text.

There were those black blocks again, where things were completely invisible.

The warning he saw back in Gelimu involved the existence of a ‘Forbidden’ entity. Why was one appearing here in the Polymath Tower??

Hadn't the Empire strictly forbidden any private contact with such existences?

He had originally thought that going to the Sea of Knowledge to fish for things was already absurd enough, but he hadn't expected the warning he saw last time at the Polymath Tower to actually refer to a ‘Forbidden’ entity itself.

And this time, it was flatly telling him that it was already reviving?

For a moment, Lu Yuan felt a wave of mental exhaustion.

‘I want to run.’

But now that he had entered the Polymath Tower, it was too late to turn back.

Resigned, Lu Yuan could only force himself to stay calm; now was not the time for such thoughts.

He kept his pace steady, fixing his gaze on the heels of the nun in front of him, never wavering.

The team soon crossed the skybridge of the main tower and entered the First Tower.

The corridors of the Rune Department were lined with large-scale alchemical rune matrices. The lines were precise and layered, lighting up for a brief moment as the holy light approached.

The team stopped at the first purification node.

Agnes and two other nuns stood at the node—a copper disc about one meter in diameter on the floor, its surface covered in complex inscriptions.

The three of them extended their right hands simultaneously, palms down, hovering about half a foot above the disc.

A pale gold holy light lit up their palms, slowly spreading across the surface of the inscriptions.

The inscriptions on the disc lit up in response, turning from dim to clear, and the ghostly blue flowing through the lines gradually became pure.

This lasted for about two minutes before the nuns withdrew their hands and the holy light dissipated.

The inscriptions were a bit brighter than before, but only slightly.

It was like adding a tiny bit of oil to a lamp that was about to burn out.

【Environmental Perception: Trace amounts of knowledge pollution have been purified...】

Lu Yuan stood at the back of the team, hands tucked into his sleeves and head bowed in quiet waiting, mimicking the other nuns.

The other nuns in the team didn't seem to notice anything, simply performing their duties in silence.

The escort stood at the other end of the corridor, glancing over occasionally but spending most of his time flipping through the booklet in his hand.

He looked impatient; he had likely accompanied this routine maintenance many times.

The team moved to the next node.

The process was the same.

Stand, reach out, spread the holy light, the inscriptions flash, and the nuns withdraw their hands and leave.

Four nodes in the First Tower took about fifteen minutes.

As they crossed the skybridge to the Second Tower, a slight scent of medicinal herbs entered the air.

Clearly, they had reached the Potion Tower. The corridors of the Potion Department were wider than those of the First Tower, with doors on both sides.

Most were closed, though some had copper tags engraved with classroom numbers.

Passing a half-open door, Lu Yuan caught a glimpse of the interior. Desks and chairs were still there, and a blackboard still hung on the wall with half-erased alchemical equations remaining on it.

After the tower was sealed, the students' whereabouts were unknown.

Three nodes in the Second Tower took about ten minutes.

The team continued forward.

When they stepped onto the skybridge leading to the Third Tower, the smell of herbs suddenly vanished from Lu Yuan's nostrils.

A dry scent filled the air, like the burnt smell of old paper being toasted, though it wasn't strong.

The skybridge was lined with large glass windows set in stone frames.

He remembered these windows.

The last time he was here, the alchemical patterns on the glass refracted the sunlight into a spectrum of colors, like the stained glass of a cathedral.

It had been the most beautiful stretch of the Polymath Tower.

The glass was still there, but several sections of the patterns no longer glowed; only the remaining parts emitted a faint, ghostly light.

Lu Yuan glanced down at the floor.

Most of the runes on the stone floor were still there.

However, in several spots, the lines of the runes were clearly fractured.

And there were no signs of repair at the fractures.

They were simply left as they were.

【Environmental Perception: Residual traces of knowledge derivation detected... Concentration: extremely low...】

It seemed the Polymath Tower’s exploration of the Sea of Knowledge had not stopped.

The team did not halt their pace, and the escort occasionally looked back to scan them.

Lu Yuan lowered his gaze back to the floor, following the steps of the nun ahead.

Upon entering the Third Tower, the escort led the team to the public areas on the ground floor first.

The architectural style of the Alchemy Department was markedly different from the previous two towers.

The walls were embedded with various metal pipes and rune arrays. Whatever should have been flowing through the pipes had all stopped.

The copper pipe walls were covered in a layer of dark green oxidation, and a faint smell of sulfur—the unique scent of the Alchemy Department—permeated the air.

The purification nodes here were denser than in the first two towers.

After all, the Alchemy Department had the most frequent experimental activities, leaving behind more mysterious residues.

The walls of the ground floor corridor had once displayed the students' research results—rubbings of various alchemical arrays, material analysis sheets, and even several hand-drawn elemental reaction flowcharts.

The display cases were still there, but everything inside had been removed.

Nails and thumbtacks remained in the wooden boards, which were pitted and scarred in some places from the tacks.

A white notice board was posted at a corner of the corridor, bearing an official announcement from the Polymath Tower:

“During the sealing period, all experimental data has been unified and placed in the archives for safekeeping. Once normal operations resume, each department may apply to retrieve them according to the standard process.”

The two nodes on the ground floor were purified as usual, and then the team headed upstairs.

They made their way up to the third floor.

Agnes stopped and turned to the escort.

“The purification node on the top floor had a heavy residue during the last maintenance; it requires one person to stay behind and handle it alone this time. I will lead the rest to the Fourth Tower and pick them up on the way back.”

The escort for the Polymath Tower frowned.

“There’s no one on duty up there right now.”

“It is standard procedure,” Agnes said, her tone devoid of emotion.

“It was noted in the last maintenance record. You can go check.”

The escort hesitated, likely not wanting to check records for such a small matter.

“Fine. Just don't deviate from the node area.”

“Of course.”

Agnes tilted her head slightly toward Lu Yuan, a movement so small the escort wouldn't notice.

But Lu Yuan saw it.

He silently stepped back half a pace, exiting the line.

The nuns continued to follow Agnes toward the other end of the stairs, their footsteps gradually fading. The escort followed behind the team without looking back.

Lu Yuan stood at the corner of the third-floor corridor and waited for a while, until the footsteps had completely disappeared.

He turned and headed toward the stairs leading to the top floor.

The stairs were narrow and had no lights on the walls. The only source of light was a long, narrow window every half-floor, where the night poured in from outside, barely illuminating the steps beneath his feet.

The faint glow of the city wall runes drifted in from the distance, casting a blue light so pale it was almost invisible across the window.

Lu Yuan climbed step by step, the hem of his robe dragging against the stairs with a faint rustle.

At the end of the top-floor corridor, there was only one door.

An old wooden door with a line of small characters carved above the frame—Alchemy Department Third Lab.

Below it, a handwritten line had been added in charcoal in a crooked scrawl:

“Laurina's Lab, No Trespassing.”

The handwriting was very elegant.

She had written the same way at the Alchemy Workshop, with the ending strokes always carrying a tiny upward flick.

Lu Yuan reached out and pushed; it was surprisingly unlocked.

There were no lights in the room.

The windows on the top floor were large. Lu Yuan remembered that the last time he was here, the afternoon sun had poured in, offering a view of most of the Bronze City’s silhouette.

Now, the night sky was outside the window, and the faint light of the runes on the distant city walls passed through the glass, casting a greyish-blue shadow on the floor.

But it was enough to see the things in the room.

Lu Yuan stood at the door, not entering immediately. He scanned the laboratory to confirm there was no danger before stepping inside.

Rows of wooden cabinets stood against the walls, their doors half-open or completely flung wide, the interiors empty.

Adhesive residue from torn-off labels remained on the cabinet walls in patches, their color lighter than the surrounding wood, exposing the original color that hadn't been bleached by the sun.

Some labels hadn't been torn off cleanly, leaving only fragments.

Lu Yuan took a step closer to look.

On a half-torn label was Laurina’s handwriting: “Refined mother ore (Batch 3)—” the rest was torn away.

It was obvious that after Laurina left, someone had turned this laboratory upside down.

But judging from the traces left behind, they likely hadn't found anything important.

They had simply emptied the place out as if to vent their anger.

Aside from the cabinets, the only thing remaining was a small table by the window, probably too old to be worth moving.

The tabletop was covered in a thin layer of dust.

Looking around like this, the entire laboratory was empty, seemingly containing nothing Laurina had left behind.

But Lu Yuan froze.

Because within his sight, an aura that shouldn't have been there was hovering around that small wooden table.

That aura was constantly shifting colors.