On one side of the circular hall was a separate room.
It wasn't large, about ten paces wide. The ceiling was low, forming a sharp contrast with the thirty-meter vault of the circular hall, making it feel more like a secret chamber tucked into the walls.
Copper pipes lined the four walls, extending from the floor to the ceiling and intersecting at the corners like a dense network of veins.
Inscriptions were carved dimly onto the surfaces of the pipes, not yet activated; only the faintest bronze shimmer flowed along the metal walls.
In the center of the room stood a humanoid sarcophagus.
It was slightly taller than a normal person, with an iron-colored casing covered in rivets.
Its overall shape resembled a standing human—the outlines of the head, shoulders, torso, and legs were distinct. On either side of the shoulders were palm-shaped grooves, and inside the grooves, metal teeth were faintly visible.
Calvin walked to the front of the sarcophagus and reached out to open the hatch at eye level.
The hatch was only the size of a palm and was secured with copper hinges.
Through the narrow observation window revealed by the hatch, a face could be seen.
It was a girl, her face so pale it was almost transparent, her lips devoid of color. Her eyes were tightly shut, and her expression was nearly blank.
Looking further down, countless silver-glowing needles extended from the inner walls of the sarcophagus, sinking into her body—shoulders, ribs, forearms. Each needle was as thin as a strand of hair, but the points where they entered her skin glowed faintly, like stars scattered across her pale flesh.
While the students on the external frames were at least breathing on their own, this girl's chest showed no movement.
If it weren't for the continuous glow where the needle tips touched her, Calvin would have pronounced her dead already.
He stared at that face for a few seconds.
His brow furrowed slightly, a flicker of an unreadable emotion crossing his eyes, but it was quickly masked as he closed the hatch.
He turned to look at Selena Winter behind him. She was standing at the doorway, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, already waiting.
“Are you ready?” Calvin asked.
Selena nodded. “Yes.”
Calvin reached into his robes and pulled out a tome. The cover was made of dark bronze hard-leather. He flipped it open; the pages inside were entirely blank, without a single word.
“I hope this batch of students can hold out a little longer.”
Calvin's gaze fell on the blank pages of the tome as he spoke.
Selena walked over from the doorway and stood on the other side of the sarcophagus. “With the Nightwatchers present this time, their Sanity should be enough to sustain them for a while.”
“Let us begin.”
The tome rose from Calvin's hands, hovering directly above the head of the sarcophagus. The pages began to flip on their own without any wind, moving at high speed, turning one blank page after another as if waiting to be filled.
Calvin and Selena raised their hands simultaneously, pressing their right palms into the grooves on either side of the sarcophagus's shoulders.
The moment they made contact, countless metal teeth sprang from the inner edges of the grooves, piercing through their palms.
The tips of the needles protruding from the backs of their hands emitted the same silver glow as those inside the sarcophagus.
Neither of them flinched.
Blood flowed down the inner walls of the grooves and was absorbed by the pipe inscriptions.
The inscriptions on the floor lit up from beneath the sarcophagus. At first, it was just a single ring, then it rippled outward circle by circle. The light followed the pipes through the walls and merged into the main array of the circular hall.
Inscriptions surged from the walls of the sarcophagus room, spreading across the floor of the circular hall like a tide.
The inscription circuits beneath the Nightwatchers' feet lit up, and the Church's peripheral blessing circle entered its load phase.
High above the vault, the river of light began to pour back.
The dreamlike river of colors cascaded from the heavens, surging into the entrance of the branch channel at the center of the circular hall. The entire hall was flooded with colorful light, and everyone's shadows twisted and lengthened across the floor.
At the exact moment the Polymath Tower activated, at a certain high point far from the tower but with a clear view of the skyline—
A figure looked up slightly, watching the glow of the light river pouring into the Polymath Tower.
“Lu Yuan, oh Lu Yuan. I hope you can survive this mission and prove your value.”
Then, the figure faded into the darkness as if they had never appeared.
At the top of the Polymath Tower's main tower, the wind was fierce, whipping the hem of Kame's robes.
He watched the river of light surging with increasing speed, his hands gripping the stone railing.
“May it be successful.”
From deep within the darkness behind the main tower, as if from a great distance, came a voice with a resonant echo.
“It will be.”
Kame did not look back.
...
After the students vanished into the depths of the river, the entire conscious space grew silent.
Within the pale void and the waterfall-like river, Lu Yuan and the ten Nightwatchers stood at the barrier, like eleven nails driven into the emptiness.
Time grew blurred in such an environment.
Then, light specks began to emerge from the depths of the river.
At first, there were only a few—scattered and faint, like the dimmest stars in the night sky. They rose from the depths of the river, drawn by some force toward the inner ring.
Then, there were more.
Countless light specks surged from the depths like a swarm of fireflies, traveling between the river and the barrier.
This was the harvest—fragmented knowledge, the product filtered and condensed by the students' brains and sent back along the inscription channels.
Most of the fragments were a mere flash as they flew past Lu Yuan, but occasionally a fragment would pass too close. When one brushed through the gaps in the barrier, the information residue on its surface would be captured by his Knowledge Seeker passive perception.
The first residue was an incomplete fragment of the Imperial Language.
The grammatical structure was ancient, like something written hundreds of years ago.
“...Beneath the copper, the will of the sealer...” The latter half was blurred, and nothing could be seen clearly.
The second residue was a formula. It wasn't an alchemical formula or an inscription structure; Lu Yuan studied it for a moment without understanding before the fragment flew away.
The third fragment was a sequence of images.
In the vision, a person was writing on parchment. Halfway through, the ink suddenly turned into blood. The writer did not stop. Then, a faint chanting came from the vision, as if a sacrifice was being made, before the image shattered.
Lu Yuan remained silent for a few seconds.
The Sea of Knowledge held more than just knowledge; it contained the traces left by those who had once explored it.
The treasures hidden here were far beyond imagination.
【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +0.3... 43.3/100】
Lu Yuan restrained his curiosity.
Passively receiving residues and actively extending one's perception to “read” the fragments were two different things. The latter would expose his connection to the Sea of Knowledge and consume Sanity.
Thus, Lu Yuan focused his mind and continued to maintain the barrier.
But as the minutes passed, the flow of fragments continued to increase.
What had started as a swarm of fireflies now looked more like a rain of light. Fragments erupted from the depths of the river with increasing density and speed.
The pressure on the barrier was gradually mounting. Lu Yuan felt the copper surface beneath his palm growing hot. Sanity was being steadily drawn through the array, and the consumption rate of the shared pool shifted from “slow” to “stable.”
【Sanity: -2... 58/140】
The acceleration of the fragments was within expectations. The more the students harvested in the depths, the denser the returning fragments would be. This indicated that the harvesting was proceeding normally.
Nonetheless, Lu Yuan glanced to either side.
“Watch the fragments. Do not let them touch your body directly. Dodge if you can.”
His voice wasn't loud, but it reached the ears of the nearest Nightwatchers.
The trajectories of the fragments were not uniform. Most flew toward the inner ring along the inscription channels, but some fragments—especially the large, high-density ones—would deviate from the path, flying wildly through the conscious space like stray bullets.
The square-faced Nightwatcher's marker happened to be on the side of the channel where the fragments were most dense.
A massive fragment with extremely high density—several times larger and much brighter than the others—deflected slightly as it passed through the barrier and brushed against the square-faced Nightwatcher's shoulder.
It was only a brush; the contact lasted less than half a second.
But half a second was enough. The information residue carried by that fragment forced its way into his mental space, like someone shoving the contents of an entire book into his brain.
The square-faced Nightwatcher froze completely.
Then, he began to murmur under his breath.
His voice was very soft and his speech very fast. What he spoke was not the Imperial Language, nor was it any language Lu Yuan had ever heard. It was a completely foreign set of syllables, a mix of guttural and aspirated sounds that sounded like some ancient incantation.
The Nightwatcher beside him instinctively turned to look, startled by the sounds.
“Is he contaminated?”
“Ignore it! Don't listen!” another Nightwatcher barked in a low voice.
Lu Yuan had already assessed the situation.
The knowledge within the fragment was eroding the square-faced Nightwatcher's consciousness. If it wasn't cut off, his consciousness would be dragged into the knowledge fragment—not into the Sea of Knowledge itself, but into the time and space where that knowledge once existed.
He would be completely lost in someone else's memory.
Lu Yuan did not leave his marker. Instead, he decisively utilized the Sanity Ring.
Through the shared Sanity circuit, Lu Yuan located the square-faced Nightwatcher's node and temporarily isolated it. During this time, Lu Yuan took on the impact meant for two people by himself.
Simultaneously, he channeled his Knowledge Seeker perception.
Lu Yuan probed the square-faced Nightwatcher's mental boundaries. Using the natural sensitivity of a Knowledge Seeker toward knowledge structures, he located the information shards that had been forced in and began peeling them away one by one.
It was like using tweezers to pluck shards of glass out of flesh.
In the process, Lu Yuan inevitably came into contact with the content of those fragments himself—
Images that did not belong to him flashed through his mind.
A person stood amidst endless colors, looking down at his own hand. One, two... he was counting his fingers, counting them quietly. He stopped when he reached the tenth.
Then, he extended an eleventh finger.
A finger that grew out of his palm, one that should not exist.
He smiled.
The smile of someone who had finally understood something.
The vision shattered.
【Sanity: -6... 52/140】
The square-faced Nightwatcher's murmuring stopped. His body jolted violently as he took a sharp, gasping breath, like someone being pulled from underwater. He was drenched in sweat, his uniform soaked through.
A few seconds later, he regained his senses and looked toward Lu Yuan.
“Thank you,” he rasped.
Lu Yuan nodded. “Be ready to dodge knowledge fragments at any moment. I might not be as fast next time.”
The square-faced Nightwatcher nodded vigorously.
The flow of fragments did not stop.
After the incident with the square-faced Nightwatcher, Lu Yuan heightened his vigilance, constantly tracking the trajectories of the fragments. But there were more and more of them, and it was impossible to dodge them all.
Meanwhile, the pulse of the symbiotic link was intensifying.
It was almost exuberant.
The Knowledge Worm had awakened.
Previously, it had curled into a tiny point in the depths of his left eye, but now things were different. After the circular hall's inscriptions were fully activated, the aura from the Sea of Knowledge branch flooded the entire space, completely drowning out the foulness of the knowledge-derived insects.
It had caught the scent of home.
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