42: Chapter 42 He used his own life to plug a thousand-year-old crack.

The light in the corridor was wrong.

The stone walls were polished so smooth that the flashlight beams reflected human shadows.

But those shadows were incomplete—there was another kind of light between the gaps in the stone tiles, competing with the flashlights.

Golden, hair-thin lines were flowing slowly along the seams of the floor.

It wasn't being illuminated from the outside. It was glowing on its own.

The squad leader walking at the very front glanced at the floor from the corner of his eye, paused for 0.3 seconds, gritted his teeth, and continued walking.

His palms, gripping his gun, were drenched in sweat.

When the flashlight beam swept across the left wall, the image appeared.

A mural.

It wasn't carved. It was scorched.

High temperatures had burned carbonized marks onto the surface of the stone wall; the lines were rough and primitive, as if someone had drawn them directly onto the rock face using a red-hot iron rod.

Yet the composition was so precise it didn't look handmade—every stroke, turn, and pressure revealed a sense of control that transcended the limitations of the tools.

It had been a thousand years.

The carbonized layer hadn't flaked off, and the patterns were still clearly discernible.

On the mural: a person wearing a blue-grey Daoist robe stood on a mountain peak. Facing the sky, he formed a seal with his hands.

The sky had cracked open.

Something was squeezing out from the gap.

Its outline was blurred and twisted, like a crumpled ball of black paper trying to force its way out of a narrow slit.

The runes around the Daoist began to glow.

A ray of light shot from his palm and struck the crack.

Professor Zhou's feet were nailed to the spot.

His flashlight beam was fixed on the mural, the circle of light unmoving.

That star map on the dome of the front hall that he had studied for thirty years, that arrangement of constellations that didn't match any known ancient star charts, was not a constellation.

It was the coordinates of the crack.

This "Star Observatory" was never meant for observing stars.

It was meant to watch that crack in the sky.

"Professor?"

Zhao Xiaohe nudged his arm from behind.

Professor Zhou's hand was shaking.

The flashlight in his right hand and his white-gloved left hand were trembling, not with a wide range of motion, but with a rapid frequency.

He opened his mouth twice, and only on the third try did he manage to squeeze out a voice.

"Let's go. Keep moving inside."

At the end of the corridor, the space exploded outward.

An octagonal domed hall, three times larger than the front hall.

The ceiling was over fifteen meters high, and the flashlight beams could only reach halfway up; the rest was submerged in a golden glimmer that didn't belong to the flashlights.

All eight walls were covered in murals and inscriptions.

They were all about battles.

Daoists summoned lightning to strike demons, sword cultivators wielded blades to slay beasts, and priests erected barriers; the patterns on the barriers were of the same origin as the golden lines in the seams of the floor tiles.

The enemies in the images were all of the same kind—strange creatures emerging from the crack in the sky.

In the center of the hall stood a three-tiered stone platform.

It was carved from almost the exact same mold as the altar that Su Chen had manifested at the Torch Base.

Three stone steps, a circular platform, and embedded in the very center was a formation pattern: concentric circles, one inside the other, with a bowl-sized depression at the center.

The golden lines were flowing extremely faintly, at a frequency slow enough to be counted in seconds.

One pulse, pause for three seconds, then another.

Scattered around the stone platform were broken stone pillars.

Most of the inscriptions had weathered and blurred, but on the largest broken pillar, there was a line of text in ancient seal script, written vertically from top to bottom, still clearly legible.

A line of text was clearly discernible.

Professor Zhou walked to the broken pillar.

He shone his flashlight on it.

His proficiency in ancient texts allowed him to read the line in three seconds.

His lips moved, and his voice was a breathy whisper, leaking out from the cracks of his shattered perception:

"Gengzi Year... Demon chaos in Guanzhong... Kindling disciples... Suppress the demons here..."

He turned around.

The sixty-one-year-old veteran archaeologist let his gaze sweep over Section Chief Han Zheng, Wang Hao, the five soldiers, and the two graduate students.

"The Kindling you are looking for—is right here."

His voice was hoarse, bouncing off the eight stone walls.

Suddenly, the golden lines that had been dim for who knows how many years began to light up ring by ring from the center, ripples spreading out wave after wave.

The light spread to the edge of the stone platform, jumped onto the floor, and moved along the seams of the stone tiles toward the eight walls.

The murals came alive.

The carbonized lines began to glow.

They weren't being illuminated; the light was shining from within.

The outlines of the figures in the murals floated up vaguely, semi-transparent images layering over the murals like an old projector playing the last few frames of a film reel.

An image condensed above the stone platform.

A brightly lit hall.

Dozens of people moved to and fro, wearing various attires—Daoist robes, short tunics, armor.

One person stood on the stone platform, tall and upright, hands pressed onto the formation, mouth moving.

There was no sound.

The footage was too fragmented.

Then the ceiling cracked.

Black things poured down from the gap.

Everyone looked up.

The battle began.

Some fell.

Others rushed forward.

The person on the stone platform desperately maintained the operation of the formation, golden light pouring from his palm into the lines of the concentric circles.

One by one, they fell.

Finally, only one remained.

He knelt on one knee on the stone platform.

Covered in blood, his left arm hung limp, unable to move.

His right hand was pressed tightly against the center of the formation.

Golden light surged from his palm.

The crack in the ceiling stitched itself up inch by inch.

The moment the last wisp of black was pushed back—the person's body turned into points of light.

It scattered.

It merged into the formation.

The image cut off.

The hall returned to its dim golden glimmer, the formation still pulsing.

One pulse, then another.

It had been pulsing for a thousand years.

Wang Hao knelt before the stone platform.

The dull thud of his knees hitting the stone tiles echoed twice in the empty hall.

Tears streamed down his face, flowing into the stubble on his chin.

He didn't know what that person's name was.

But he knew what that person had done.

Professor Zhou took off his glasses.

There was a layer of fog on the lenses, and he couldn't see anything.

He didn't wipe them; he just held them up.

"He turned himself... into a part of the seal."

Zhao Xiaohe covered her mouth, her shoulders shaking.

Chen Yiming's mouth was open, two tear tracks hanging on his face; he didn't even know when they had fallen.

The five soldiers' eyes turned red.

No one made a sound; there was no need to.

One person, with his own life, had plugged the crack for a thousand years.

The ground shook.

It was completely different from the pulse of the formation.

The formation's pulse was gentle and orderly.

This vibration was chaotic, carrying a biological rhythm, as if something were forcefully slamming against the bottom of the seal.

Black spots appeared on the outermost golden lines of the formation.

They seeped up from the bottom of the formation, like ink dripping into clear water.

Section Chief Han Zheng's back stiffened.

He crouched down and placed his palm on the floor at the edge of the stone platform.

The vibration traveled from his fingertips to his wrist, getting heavier.

One.

One.

One.

"This formation isn't just for storing memories."

Section Chief Han Zheng's voice was hard.

"It's suppressing something."

The golden line on the outermost ring of the formation dimmed by a section.

The black erosion had swallowed one-tenth of it.

The speed was increasing.

"Everyone evacuate the hall!"

Section Chief Han Zheng stood up.

Countdown.

"Retreat to the corridor!"

The soldiers protected the archaeological team as they retreated quickly.

Professor Zhou was carried by two graduate students; he looked back every three steps at the murals, the stone platform, and the inscriptions on the broken pillar.

The archaeologist's instinct was screaming "Can't leave," while reason was screaming "Must leave."

Reason won.

It won very reluctantly.

The corridor.

Section Chief Han Zheng stood at the junction between the corridor and the hall, looking back.

The golden light of the formation was still struggling.

The black erosion had already swallowed one-fifth of the outer lines.

The ground changed from intermittent vibration to continuous vibration.

Dust fell from the dome, grit hitting his shoulders, the rustling sound like some kind of countdown.

"Section Chief Han."

Wang Hao stood beside him, his voice very low.

"Is this... what the Kindling seniors sealed underneath?"

Section Chief Han Zheng didn't answer.

Ten people, trapped in the belly of a thousand-year-old ruin, standing on top of an E-Rank Anomaly about to break the seal, their guns unable to pierce that layer of black mist.

Section Chief Han Zheng leaned against the stone wall and closed his eyes for a second.

He opened them.

"Professor, keep your people in the corridor and don't move."

He looked at the five soldiers.

"Check ammunition and equipment. Consolidate all usable supplies."

Then he looked at Wang Hao.

"You—"

"I'm not leaving."

Wang Hao clenched his fists.

His fingers, with only three fingernails left, tightened until his knuckles cracked.

Section Chief Han Zheng looked at him for two seconds longer.

He nodded.

The corridor fell silent.

The battle scenes on the murals flickered in the faint golden light.

Those figures from a thousand years ago who had rushed toward the crack were frozen on the stone walls, silently watching these ten living people.

In the depths of the hall in the distance, another dull thud came.

Heavier than the last one.

The golden line on the outermost ring of the formation dimmed by another section.