Lu Yuan didn't stay idle for the rest of the afternoon.
Sitting at his experimental table, he continued to identify the ninth symbol on the bone fragment.
This symbol was more difficult than the previous ones.
The lines branched into three paths in the middle section, and after each branch curved and bent, they merged back into the main line, forming a nested structure.
After staring at it for nearly two minutes, his temples began to throb with a dull ache.
【Inscription (Advanced · Eerie Inscription): +0.1... 3.5/50】
【Sanity: -1... 82/120】
Lu Yuan rubbed his forehead and set the bone fragment down.
That made nine.
He was only one away from the threshold of ten that Duo Hawke had mentioned.
However, he had serious business to attend to this afternoon.
There was no rush with the symbols.
He went to the logistics canteen for a meal at noon.
After returning, he leaned back on his bed to rest with his eyes closed, meanwhile circulating Guard twice.
【Guard I: +0.3... 8.8/10】
The outline of the river deep in his mind became a tiny bit clearer.
By the time he opened his eyes, the light outside the window had shifted.
It was afternoon.
Lu Yuan returned to the second floor of his residence to check his equipment.
Flame was fully loaded, and Lu Yuan also slotted in two gold-plated enchanted bullets just in case.
He took two bottles of advanced holy water from the storage cabinet and tucked them into his side pockets.
This stuff could not only restore Sanity but also deal with pollution and the eerie.
Lu Yuan decided not to bring the copper sword at all; aside from dealing with ghouls, it was far less effective against other eerie entities than his revolver.
Moreover, its inherent hardness and strength were problematic.
He closed his toolbox.
Lu Yuan hurried to the mission location indicated by Klaus.
Soon, the three of them met at the entrance to the branch's underground passage.
Bolen leaned on his cane, carrying a flat leather bag in his other hand.
It was a portable inscription toolkit.
A set of tools for basic inscription analysis in the field, with three blank sheets of rubbing paper tucked into the side of the bag.
The old man glanced at Lu Yuan.
“The journey for this mission is estimated to take two hours. My legs haven't been good lately, so walk a bit slower for me.”
Lake was already there.
Since his identity had been recognized by some in the pipe network layer, Lake had completely stopped pretending in front of Lu Yuan and the others. If he could worm-ify, he would.
At this moment, Lake's body, composed of meat-worms, writhed under the light of the march lamps.
The short brown hair clinging to a head with no discernible features was the only characteristic proving he was human.
Lake didn't say much.
Tentacles extended from the sides of his torso, silently spreading forward and probing along the copper walls.
“Klaus should have told you—I’m in command for this operation. When I say retreat, you must move fast!!”
“No problem.”
“Understood.”
The three of them then entered the pipe network layer.
The closer they got to the inner city, the better the condition of the pipe network became.
In this section, the copper plates were intact, and the inscription patterns on the surface were clear, with a dim golden light pulsing through them in a steady rhythm.
It was just as Klaus had said.
This section of the pipe network had been cleared.
They didn't encounter any ghouls along the way, nor did they see any other pollution.
As they walked, Lake’s tentacles made of worms occasionally contracted, and the light from the march lamps cast long shadows against the copper walls.
After walking for about an hour.
Bolen stopped.
He propped his cane vertically against the ground, and a blue-white shimmer seeped from the tip, spreading forward along the seams of the copper plates.
Bolen's face looked somewhat bewildered under the blue-white light.
“The inscription pathways ahead are broken?”
“And it was done artificially?” Bolen crouched down, tapping his cane against the copper surface twice to listen to the echo.
“A very strange technique. I’ve never seen it before.”
Lake’s tentacles silently probed forward, extending about five or six meters before retracting.
“No one has walked this path,” Lake’s voice emerged from his writhing body.
“At least not in the last few decades. There isn’t a trace of an aura around here. It shouldn't be like this.”
Hearing this, Lu Yuan looked ahead, but neither auras nor greyish-white text appeared. Clearly, there was no danger or anything special immediately before them.
Bolen stood up and tapped his cane on the ground.
“Keep moving.”
The three of them found a gap at the edge of the blockage and continued forward.
Then, after rounding a corner, all three of them stopped simultaneously.
The once-smooth copper floor and pipe network walls were completely replaced here.
Dense inscriptions covered everything.
The floor, the walls, and the ceiling.
The inscriptions spread out like a living thing, forming a clear boundary line. On one side of the line was the normal pipe network; on the other was the territory of inscriptions.
The pipes of the network layer had also vanished.
The Bronze City’s water supply and exhaust pipes—all the copper conduits embedded in the walls—terminated abruptly at the boundary.
It was as if the builders of the Bronze City had deliberately bypassed this area when constructing the pipe network.
Bolen looked at everything before him in shock.
“How is this possible...”
Bolen’s voice was squeezed through his teeth.
He stood before the boundary line, leaning on his cane and staring forward motionlessly.
“The core inscriptions of the Bronze City are only found on the underground copper pillars and the inner city walls. The pipe network layer has never had independent inscriptions... Why are there so many here?”
He crouched down, the tip of his cane touching the floor inscriptions as blue-white light seeped into the grooves.
The old man’s face turned deathly pale under the light.
“And these aren't large-scale inscriptions.”
He looked up at Lu Yuan.
“These are eerie inscriptions.”
At the edge of Lu Yuan’s vision, greyish-white text emerged.
【Target Detected: Eerie Inscription (Ancient)】
【A special type of inscription used for [?], capable of sealing and extracting [?].】
Lu Yuan looked at the fragmented information, his eyes filled with gravity.
This place exceeded the known understanding of the Bronze City.
Lake also sensed the anomaly at this moment. The worms that had been scattered forward to scout slowly contracted, all returning to cluster around his main body.
“This place is very strange,” Lake’s voice came from the mass of worms, his tone carrying a rare hint of discomfort. “It has a strong suppressive effect on my mutation transcendent abilities.”
Feeling the slight discomfort in his own body, Bolen didn't dally.
He took a sheet of rubbing paper from his bag, selected an area dense with inscriptions, and made a rubbing.
He stowed the paper and looked up at Lu Yuan.
“Should we go deeper?”
Lu Yuan glanced at the edge of his vision. No new warnings had appeared in the greyish-white text.
He was silent for a moment.
“Continue. If something feels wrong, we retreat immediately.”
The three of them crossed the boundary line.
Lake’s worms no longer extended forward to scout; they all retracted to within a three-to-four-meter radius of Lu Yuan and Bolen, forming a moving circle of protection.
The runes around them grew denser.
The space began to expand.
The air was frighteningly eerie.
A chill seeped up from the ground, and their breath condensed into white mist in the light of the march lamps.
Dense inscriptions covered every wall and every inch of the floor.
The air became unnervingly quiet.
Fortunately, the inscriptions showed no signs of activating; they just sat there, quietly engraved.
【Environmental Perception: Pollution source detected...】
The greyish-white text flickered a few times.
But the pollution didn't seem severe.
The light from the march lamps was beginning to prove insufficient.
The light source’s range was being compressed by some force here; light that should have reached over ten meters was now swallowed by the darkness after only five or six.
Lake paused.
Then, from somewhere—perhaps inside his worm-filled body—he produced four more march lamps.
Tentacles made of worms extended, each one holding a lamp.
The four tentacles spread out in different directions like an octopus, suspending the march lamps four or five meters away from Lu Yuan and Bolen.
As the light spread, the three of them finally saw it clearly.
Ahead, dense eerie inscriptions meandered up from the floor, converging toward a massive copper wall.
The copper wall was dozens of meters high.
No seams could be seen anywhere; it looked as if it had been cast as a single piece.
Judging by the inscriptions spreading down from the wall, the actual structure seemed much larger than what was visible, with more of the surface hidden beneath the ground.
Furthermore, the copper wall looked incredibly new.
So new it looked as if it had just been built.
The copper luster on the surface was dark but clean, without a single speck of rust.
The wall was covered in inscriptions.
Eerie inscriptions were mixed with symbols Lu Yuan didn't recognize at all, densely packed and extending from the base all the way to the heights beyond the reach of the lamplight.
The moment Lake saw this wall, his body reacted.
The tentacles holding the march lamps snapped back.
The four lamps retracted with them, the light suddenly tightening, and the copper wall vanished back into the darkness.
“Move faster.”
Lake’s voice came from the mass of worms, sounding clearly uncomfortable.
“The suppression here is too strong. I’m not handling it well.”
Lu Yuan glanced at Lake.
This rank 4 mutation transcendent hadn't said a word even when half his worms were killed during the battle with the Grey Covenant, causing his entire form to shrink.
Yet now, he was urging them to hurry.
This place might truly be the core of the Bronze City.
Bolen didn't waste time either, taking one of the march lamps Lake handed over.
“I’ll go up and take a look.”
Lu Yuan told Lake, “Wait here,” then took a lamp himself and followed Bolen toward the copper wall.
Lake nodded, his worm-body shrinking to its smallest state as he stood guard on the spot.
Lu Yuan and Bolen’s footsteps echoed in the vast space.
As they drew closer to the copper wall, the two of them finally saw it clearly.
This wall was indeed very new—unnaturally so for something that should be underground. The inscriptions engraved upon it didn't flicker or flow like those on the inner city walls; they just sat there silently.
What drew the eye most were the numerous vortex symbols appearing where the inscription branches connected.
The moment Lu Yuan’s gaze swept over those vortex symbols...
The world before him began to warp.
The wall was spinning, the light from the march lamps was spinning, and even his own hands were twisting out of shape.
It was a hallucination.
An extremely powerful hallucination.
Lu Yuan violently averted his gaze and looked down.
The hallucination faded.
But Bolen didn't have his quick reflexes.
The moment the old man saw the vortex symbols, his entire body swayed visibly.
Then he suddenly bowed his head, his face deathly pale, and he dry-heaved several times.
Nothing came up, but he was clearly suffering.
“Eerie inscriptions... they really are terrifying...”
Bolen spoke while shakily straightening his body.
His eyes had learned their lesson; he didn't dare look directly at those vortices again.
“Just a couple of glances nearly drained my Sanity dry.”
He stood as straight as his trembling frame allowed, keeping his eyes away from the vortex symbols.
Bolen took the remaining two sheets of rubbing paper from his bag.
He was very cautious this time, choosing areas away from the vortex symbols. He pressed his hand against the copper wall’s surface and quickly made rubbings of two inscription structures.
He stowed the papers.
Then he turned to look at Lu Yuan.
His expression was very solemn.
“I’m going to use my own abilities to probe it. Stay back.”
“If you notice something wrong with me, knock me out and carry me away immediately.”
He paused.
“Whatever is sealed beneath these eerie inscriptions is one hundred percent related to the eerie. Since this is the core of the Bronze City, I suspect something might really be hidden inside.”
“Understood.”
Lu Yuan stepped back several paces.
His consciousness had already sunk into his chest, connecting with the Timekeeper, prepared to flee at a moment's notice.
Moreover, he did his best not to look directly at the copper wall, because the moment he had approached it:
【Environmental Perception: Detected ????... Please stay away immediately!!】
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