75: Chapter 75 The Second Ruins of the Flame! Beneath the withered tree, two masks emerged from the darkness.

Under the ancient tree, two masks emerged from the darkness.

Section Chief Han Zheng's movements froze.

He looked at the bronze piece in Wang Hao's palm, which had returned to a dull state, then looked up at the silhouette of the Rose Ancient City in the twilight, his Adam's apple bobbing.

"You said... it lit up just now?"

"It did! Just for a second!"

Wang Hao's voice couldn't suppress his excitement.

"Golden light! Just like at the Star Observatory and the War Zone! Even though it was weak, I felt it, it was heating up!"

Section Chief Han Zheng's pupils constricted sharply.

He snatched the bronze piece from Wang Hao's hand and gripped it tightly.

Cold.

Hard.

No different from a piece of ordinary scrap metal.

"Everyone!"

He turned abruptly, his voice exploding across the empty Gobi, startling everyone in the tent to their feet.

"Check equipment! Re-enter the ancient city!"

Chen Yiming had just stuffed half a compressed biscuit into his mouth and nearly choked at the words.

"Section Chief Han... it's already dark, the mountain road is hard to walk at night, and besides..."

"Execute the order."

Section Chief Han Zheng's tone allowed no room for refusal.

Zhao Xiaohe crawled out of the tent, her face still dazed, but her hands had instinctively grabbed the survey logbook.

Professor Zhou was even more direct, reopening the notebook he had just closed, asking while putting on his headlamp:

"Which direction? Which direction is the bronze piece pointing?"

Wang Hao pointed to the continuous cliffs on the north side of the ancient city, his voice hoarse from the effort.

"That way! It came from that direction."

Section Chief Han Zheng did not hesitate at all, waving his hand.

"Move out!"

Seven people, seven beams of headlamp light, moved quickly towards the sandstone cliffs that shone with a cold gray luster under the moonlight.

A fire burned in everyone's chest.

The bronze piece had lit up.

That was enough.

"Brother Han,"

Wang Hao followed behind and to the side of Section Chief Han Zheng, lowering his voice.

"In the past, when the bronze piece lit up, it was either sensing a ruin or warning of an exotic beast. This time..."

"Regardless of which it is, we must go."

Section Chief Han Zheng's voice was taut in the night wind.

"If it's a ruin, we've found the way home. If it's an exotic beast... then we'll clear the path for those behind us."

Wang Hao didn't speak again, just gripped the bronze piece on his chest a little tighter.

The Rose Ancient City at night was even more deathly silent than during the day.

The wind passed through the canyons and the pillars of the temple, making a wailing sound, like the ghosts of two thousand three hundred years ago whispering.

Wang Hao held up the bronze piece, like a human detector, weaving through the maze-like underground passages and cliff caves.

Every time he reached a fork, he would stop, close his eyes, and carefully feel the faint guidance from the bronze piece.

"Left."

"No, it's this path below."

"Here... the sensing is strongest here!"

He finally stopped in front of an inconspicuous crack in the cliff.

They had passed this crack at least three times during the day; it was less than half a meter wide and mostly blocked by a huge boulder, looking like an ordinary rock fracture.

But at this moment, the bronze piece in Wang Hao's hand was flashing frantically at a frequency visible to the naked eye.

Golden light burst from the engravings, dyeing his entire palm gold.

The frequency became faster and brighter, eventually even emitting a slight "humming" sound.

Section Chief Han Zheng's pupils shrank to needlepoints.

He met Wang Hao's eyes, and both saw the same shock and ecstasy in each other.

"Found it!"

Zhao Xiaohe's voice was trembling, with a hint of a sob in the tail.

Chen Yiming opened his mouth, the recording equipment in his hand almost falling to the ground.

Professor Zhou rushed forward in two or three steps, his hands almost touching the crack, his lips trembling, unable to say a word.

The next second, the bronze piece flew out of his hand.

It turned into a stream of light, accurately shooting deep into the crack blocked by the boulder.

Boom!

Golden light exploded from the crack, illuminating the entire cliff as bright as day.

That massive boulder, weighing several tons, was ground into powder silently under the impact of the golden light.

An arched light gate, two meters high, bloomed on the original rock wall.

A flowing pale golden light curtain was embedded in the sandstone cliff, with fine ripples undulating on its surface.

"Quick! Record! Record everything!"

Professor Zhou seemed to have become twenty years younger in an instant, his voice loud enough to deafen.

"The regret from the Star Observatory must never happen a second time!"

He was the first to rush toward the light gate, as if what was behind it was not an unknown danger, but the holy land he had pursued all his life.

Chen Yiming and Zhao Xiaohe followed closely, one holding a camera, the other taking rubbing tools, their expressions a mix of fanaticism and awe.

Wang Hao stopped Section Chief Han Zheng, who wanted to intervene.

"Brother Han, let them go."

Wang Hao looked at the professor's back and said softly.

"Compared to danger, what they fear more is... not being able to bring these things out."

Section Chief Han Zheng fell silent.

He looked at the light gate, finally sighed, and gave the order.

"Protect the professor's records."

Passing through the light gate, the sensation underfoot changed from soft sandy soil to hard stone bricks.

A straight stone corridor appeared before their eyes.

The murals on both sides were completely different in style from the Star Observatory.

The Star Observatory's murals depicted Taoists summoning lightning and rune swords slaying demons, full of the Eastern spirit of battle.

The images here had no battle.

The lines were rough and realistic, the carving method clearly showing traces of Western Asian relief, but the content was completely different from the decorations in the surrounding Nabataean temples.

The first painting.

A desolate basin surrounded by mountains.

In the distance were continuous sandstone cliffs, the canyon entrance narrow enough to allow only one horse to pass.

Three cloaked figures stood on the ridge, the back of the cloak of the person in the middle clearly engraved with the totem of spark.

They were overlooking the bottom.

At the bottom of the valley, densely packed Nabataean craftsmen were carving the cliffs, the sound of hammering seemingly coming from deep within the stone walls.

Watching this royal city being born, isolated from the world within the embrace of the mountains.

Next to the mural was an inscription in ancient seal script, mostly weathered, but a few characters could still be identified — "Mountains lock the formation, natural barriers seal the entrance... a desperate land..."

Professor Zhou's steps stopped.

He squatted down, the beam of his headlamp nailed to the line of ancient seal script, his lips moving, silently reciting character by character.

"They didn't come to build a city."

The voice was extremely light.

"They came to choose a site."

The second painting.

The Nabataean royal city had already taken shape.

The columns of the giant temple protruded from the cliff, and craftsmen were carving Greek-style ornaments on the stone faces.

In the corner of the picture, those three cloaked figures were mixed in with the passing merchant caravans, their faces completely covered by hoods.

They held some long, thin objects in their hands — not tools, but more like some kind of instrument.

One of them placed the object against the rock face of the cliff, while another unfolded a parchment roll behind him, recording something rapidly.

The third person stood on the outermost perimeter, facing the trade route, with his back to his companions.

Left side — the heyday of the Nabataean royal city.

Caravans passing through, priests offering sacrifices, royalty drinking and feasting.

The bustling, everyday life of the human world.

Right side — this was an ancient tree.

Professor Zhou's knees went soft, and he knelt directly in front of the mural.

He didn't cry, but a kind of near-maniacal light burned in his dry eye sockets.

He reached out, hovering an inch above the mural, his fingertips trembling, but he dared not touch it.

"Record it! Every stroke, every mark, record it all! The history of Kindling! From the one-thousand-year-old Star Observatory to the two-thousand-year-old Petra! Human history will be rewritten because of Kindling!"

Passing through the long corridor, the view suddenly opened up.

A huge circular altar stood in the center, with ruined walls scattered around, the layout exactly the same as the Star Observatory.

Two huge stone tablets stood on either side of the altar, with eight large characters vaguely identifiable in ancient seal script —

"Civilization does not extinguish, Kindling burns forever."

Section Chief Han Zheng's gaze did not linger on the stone tablets for too long.

He looked around the entire space, his brows furrowing deeper and deeper.

"Not right."

Looking up, the dome was over ten meters high, and the diameter of the circular square was at least forty meters.

The altar, stone tablets, stone pillars, and ancient tree were all contained within, with large stretches of ruined walls extending to the edges.

This volume far exceeded any physical structure that the cliff crack they entered could accommodate.

"We are not in that mountain anymore."

Section Chief Han Zheng's voice was kept very low.

"This is an independently opened space."

Professor Zhou looked up abruptly.

His gaze swept from the altar to the stone tablets, from the stone tablets to the dome, and finally fell back to the direction of the mural.

"The mural records the surface layer. The real Torch Base... was never inside the mountain from the beginning!"

"Folded space! Something human theoretical physics has discussed for a hundred years, Kindling achieved two thousand three hundred years ago! This is not a ruin! This is a sealed... civilization sample!"

Everyone's gaze finally converged on the center of the altar.

A huge ancient tree stood there.

But it was already dead.

The bark was gray and dry, the knotted branches like a huge skeleton reaching toward the gray dome, without a trace of life.

Deathly silence.

A thorough, millennium-spanning deathly silence.

Section Chief Han Zheng stepped forward, squatted down, and picked up a bit of debris from the ancient tree.

The debris was crushed between his fingertips, dry enough to turn to powder at a pinch.

But his brain was spinning at high speed.

When Wang Hao first awakened the bronze piece, in the history of Kindling shown in the golden light curtain — every generation of Kindling members' oath scene had a huge ancient tree in the background.

In the Star Observatory ruins, that Kindling predecessor who sacrificed himself to become a seal, his array core was also a tree-shaped energy structure.

Tree.

In the Kindling system, the tree is not a decoration, it is the core.

It is some kind of carrier.

Section Chief Han Zheng stood up, his gaze falling back on the dead giant tree.

If a living tree is the energy hub of Kindling, then a dead tree — its residual structure, the reason it died, what it once carried...

This might be humanity's first chance to come into contact with the carrier of extraordinary energy at a material level.

"Sample it."

Section Chief Han Zheng made a decision.

"Bark, wood layer, root soil, take samples in three groups. Seal and preserve, send to the Chinese Academy of Sciences after returning home —"

He didn't finish his sentence.

Behind them, from the direction of the stone corridor, came a sudden, clear sound of footsteps.

Unrushed, step by step, treading on the stone bricks, the echo particularly clear in the empty altar square.

They were not their people.

Section Chief Han Zheng turned abruptly, his hand already on the handle of his gun at his waist, the muzzle instantly aimed at the exit of the corridor.

The five soldiers reacted even faster, raising their guns at almost the same time, the black muzzles locking onto the only entrance.

The footsteps grew closer and closer.

One old, one young, two figures slowly walked out from the shadows of the corridor.

On their faces, they both wore bronze half-face masks.

The ancient patterns, the mottled cracks, the verdigris color on the edges of the masks gleaming with a cold tone in the golden glimmer.

Exactly the same as that person.