352: Chapter 354 A Telescope from Three Hundred Years Ago and "Old Debts"

On the seventeenth day after Lin Jiang woke up, she finally walked out of the small room that had been assigned to her.

That morning, Wang Wu, who was responsible for registering new residents, was the first to notice—he was in the habit of getting up early and was on his way to the council to organize the day's agenda when he ran straight into Lin Jiang, who was standing in the center of the town's main street, looking up at the sky.

"Lin, Fellow Daoist Lin?" Wang Wu subconsciously used the old term from the Tianyuan Realm, "You are..."

"Looking at the stars," Lin Jiang said. "The starry sky of New Homeland is different from that of the Creation Heavenly Court."

Wang Wu also looked up. The sky in the early morning was already turning a pale, fish-belly white, and most of the stars had faded, leaving only a few particularly bright ones hanging in the sky. He really couldn't see what was different.

Lin Jiang didn't seem to expect him to understand. She withdrew her gaze and asked, "Where is Wen Youyi?"

"The Speaker should be at the testing ground right now. Senior Blood Fiend Old Demon is verifying the upgrade modules for the memory protection field today..."

"Take me there."

Wang Wu did not dare to delay and led her through the town. On the way, they met several people who had gotten up early to work, all of whom looked curiously at this new face that was rarely seen. Lin Jiang did not look aside, her pace steady and unhurried; she didn't look at all like someone who had only woken up seventeen days ago.

The testing ground was in an open area to the east of the town, and Blood Fiend Old Demon was standing in front of a huge, translucent energy shield, gesturing and directing Senior Brother Zhang's team.

"Wrong, wrong! The second layer frequency is off by 0.3 Hertz! You young people, you value data more than your lives, but you lack the intuition that I've honed through real combat!"

Senior Brother Zhang pushed up his glasses, and a stream of data flashed across the lenses: "Senior, the 'intuition' you speak of is, from a data perspective, a frequency deviation of 0.3 Hertz. I have already adjusted it."

"..."

Blood Fiend Old Demon was momentarily speechless. Just as he was about to flare up, he caught a glimpse of Wen Youyi and Wang Wu walking over, along with the strange young woman behind them.

"Who are you?" He narrowed his eyes; the instinct of a blood path Cultivator made him sense an unusual aura.

Lin Jiang glanced at him calmly: "A dead person."

Blood Fiend Old Demon was stunned, then laughed loudly: "Interesting! I am also a dead person—I've been dead for seven hundred years, and even the King of Hell doesn't dare to claim me!"

Lin Jiang didn't laugh. She turned to Wen Youyi, her tone still flat, but the content made everyone present stop what they were doing:

"The technical path you are researching for the memory protection field to counter the Creation Heavenly Court is in the right direction, but there are seventeen hidden vulnerabilities. Three hundred years ago, I participated in stress tests for the Heavenly Court's defense System and know exactly where they are best at breaking through."

The whole place went silent.

Senior Brother Zhang's hand froze in mid-air, and the data stream solidified on his lenses. Blood Fiend Old Demon's smile stiffened on his face. Even the "eyes" of Silver Thorn (which had turned into a hexagonal silver disc hovering over the test bench today) flickered rapidly a few times.

Wen Youyi put down the data pad in his hand and looked at her: "Can you help us plug these vulnerabilities?"

"I can," Lin Jiang said, "but I need you to answer a question for me first."

"Speak."

Lin Jiang raised her head and looked at the sky again. It was now broad daylight, and the stars were completely invisible, leaving only a clear, azure blue.

"From here, looking in the direction of the Creation Heavenly Court, what can you see?"

"Nothing," Aila walked over; she had just received communication and rushed over. "The distance is too great, and conventional observation methods cannot capture any signals."

"Then what about using unconventional methods?" Lin Jiang asked. "Have you tried observing the fluctuations of the 'heavenly dao law layer'?"

Wen Youyi's heart stirred. The heavenly dao law layer—that was the root of the Creation Heavenly Court's power, and also the level that Profound Mechanism Master had mentioned before, which could only be reached by power of the same Rank.

"We have the legacy of the Star People," he said, weighing his words, "but we don't know how to use it."

Lin Jiang was silent for a few seconds, then said:

"Three hundred years ago, before I 'died', my mentor told me a coordinate. He said that an... 'inverse observation device' was hidden there. It is not something from the Creation Heavenly Court, but something left behind by a more ancient civilization. Using it, one can see the energy flow of the heavenly dao law layer, and even predict the precursors to large-scale military mobilizations by the Heavenly Court."

She paused: "My mentor said that he found it when he was young in the ruins of a destroyed civilization. He hid it there, intending to wait for a suitable person to use it. But later he was executed, and no one else knew about that device."

The whole place went quiet again.

Wen Youyi stared at Lin Jiang, trying to read more information from her calm face.

"Why are you telling us only now?"

"Because I wasn't sure before if you were worthy of trust," Lin Jiang said frankly. "These past seventeen days, I have looked at your contribution System, education System, council records, and that... Little Girl. Then I became certain."

"Certain of what?"

"Certain that you won't use that device to create new tools of slaughter," Lin Jiang said. "My mentor hesitated for so long back then precisely because he was afraid of handing the key to the wrong person. Three hundred years ago, I didn't have the ability, and three hundred years later... I don't want to wait anymore."

She paused, her voice finally showing a hint of fluctuation:

"Just consider it fulfilling his last wish for him."

That afternoon, the core team held an emergency closed-door meeting.

The coordinates provided by Lin Jiang were located on an asteroid at the edge of the New Homeland star System—it was an irregular rock with a diameter of only thirty kilometers, about forty light-minutes away from the main star, covered in ice all year round, and almost indistinguishable from an ordinary asteroid under conventional scanning.

"According to Lin Jiang's description, that device is called an 'echo telescope'," Senior Brother Zhang marked the coordinates on the star map. "It is not a traditional optical or energy observation instrument, but a device capable of capturing 'Karma remnants'. Simply put, any intervention in the heavenly dao law layer will leave subtle 'wrinkles' in the spacetime structure. This telescope can magnify those wrinkles and restore them into a visualized image."

"It sounds like using a microscope to look at the shadows of history," Wen Youyi tried to understand using a programmer's mindset. "Very metaphysical."

"It's not metaphysics, it's high-dimensional physics," Senior Brother Zhang pushed up his glasses, his eyes shining with fanatical light. "It's feasible in principle, but the technical difficulty is extremely high—the civilization that hid it is at least on the same level as the Star People."

"Is it still there?" Zhao Iron Pillar asked. "It's been three hundred years; could it have frozen and broken? Or been smashed by a passing meteorite?"

"We'll know when we go take a look," Wen Youyi made the decision. "But we can only send a small team; the smaller the disturbance, the better."

"I'll go." Lin Jiang stood up.

"Your body hasn't fully recovered yet..."

"This is the legacy left to me by my mentor," Lin Jiang's tone was unquestionable. "I must go personally."

Wen Youyi looked at her and finally nodded: "Fine, but someone must go with you. Aila, Silver Thorn, you accompany Lin Jiang on this trip. The Hidden Dragon will be deployed; maintain stealth throughout the entire journey. Iron Pillar, you are responsible for equipment support."

"Understood!" Zhao Iron Pillar stood at attention.

"Also," Wen Youyi turned to Lin Jiang, "regardless of whether we can find that telescope, you have done your best. You have already fulfilled your mentor's last wish—the person who told him was you, not anyone three hundred years later."

Lin Jiang glanced at him, didn't speak, but nodded slightly.

Three hours later, the Hidden Dragon lifted off from New Homeland and flew toward the nameless asteroid at the edge of the star System.

The round trip would take six days. During these six days, Wen Youyi tried his best to keep himself in a normal working state, but he couldn't help but think about that telescope from three hundred years ago.

Could it still be used? What could it see? Had the movements of the Creation Heavenly Court over these three years already been recorded by it?

On the evening of the sixth day, the Hidden Dragon returned.

On the landing pad, the first thing Wen Youyi saw was Aila—she was holding an object about half a meter square, wrapped tightly in a silver thermal blanket.

"Found it," Aila said, with a strange gleam in her indigo eyes. "And... it works."

The thermal blanket was unfolded, revealing the "echo telescope" inside.

The thing was nothing like what everyone had imagined. It wasn't the huge dome structure of an observatory, nor was it the streamlined telescope tube from science fiction works. It looked like... an old tripod with a brass-colored, scratched-up box mounted on it. The front of the box had concentric circular patterns, and in the center was embedded a dark green lens, as murky as the bottom of an old wine bottle.

"This thing can see through the Heavenly Dao Laws?" Zhao Iron Pillar was incredulous. "The local temple in my hometown is more impressive than this."

"Its energy core is in the inner layer," Lin Jiang caressed the patterns on the surface of the box, her voice carrying a rare gentleness. "The outer shell is a disguise, and also protection. For three hundred years, it has been waiting."

Silver Thorn's scan report was soon produced: "The internal structure is intact, the energy core is in hibernation, but can be awakened. Method of awakening: requires consciousness resonance at a specific frequency—according to analysis, this frequency perfectly matches Lin Jiang's mental fluctuations."

Lin Jiang didn't speak, just gently placed her hand on the box.

A few seconds later, a faint light lit up deep within the dark green lens. The light slowly spread, like a sleeping eye slowly opening.

Senior Brother Zhang held his breath and pushed a display screen in front of the lens.

The light became brighter and brighter, and more and more stable. Images began to appear on the screen—not the real-time starry sky, but countless flowing, broken, interwoven energy lines.

"Is this... the energy flow map of the heavenly dao law layer?" Senior Brother Zhang's voice trembled.

In the center of the image, a mass of dark golden, dense, spiderweb-like complex structures was slowly pulsating. That was the power core of the Creation Heavenly Court. And around it, countless finer lines extended in all directions, some pointing to distant star Systems, while others were dim and broken.

Lin Jiang stared at the screen, her pupils slightly constricted.

"There," she pointed to an unusually bright line at the edge of the screen, "this line... is the expedition fleet sent by the Heavenly Court three hundred years ago to suppress the 'ideologically impure'. My mentor was executed during that operation."

Her voice was still calm, but the knuckles of the finger pressing on the box turned white.

Wen Youyi looked at that old scar from three hundred years ago, then looked at Lin Jiang.

He finally understood why this woman had to go get this telescope herself.

It wasn't to help New Homeland.

It was to give her three hundred years of waiting some closure.

Late at night, Wen Youyi sat alone on a small hillside, with the echo telescope that had been moved out beside him.

Lin Jiang walked over at some unknown moment and sat down beside him.

"Can't sleep?" She asked.

"Yeah," Wen Youyi looked at the starry sky, "thinking about your mentor."

Lin Jiang was silent for a while, then said: "His name was Qi Wangzhi. He was the last Master of the 'Star Observation Pavilion' of the Creation Heavenly Court. Three hundred years ago, he was sixty-seven years old—in the Heavenly Court System, that counts as young."

She paused: "The first lesson he taught me was not how to observe energy, but 'never believe in any set of order that claims to be the only correct one'. He said that order is a tool, not the truth."

Wen Youyi turned his head to look at her. In the moonlight, Lin Jiang's face appeared exceptionally calm, as if she were telling someone else's story.

"He had long known he would die," she continued. "When he sent me into 'fake death' three hundred years ago, he didn't say anything, just handed me the coordinates of the echo telescope and told me to wait. I asked him what to wait for, and he said, 'Wait for someone worthy of your trust'."

"How long did you wait?"

"Three hundred years," Lin Jiang said softly. "Actually, I had chances to wake up in between—the hibernation pod's self-check System would wake me up every few decades. But I didn't know where to go or what to do. My mentor was dead, I couldn't return to the Heavenly Court, and the Ranch World made me feel suffocated. So I just kept sleeping."

She turned to look at Wen Youyi: "Until you pulled me out of the hibernation pod and told me: the spirit net System of the Creation Heavenly Court has been destroyed, and someone named Wen Youyi did it."

Wen Youyi didn't know what to say, and finally only managed to choke out: "Sorry to have made you wait so long."

Lin Jiang shook her head, and for once, a very faint smile appeared:

"It's not blame. It's... thank you."

She stood up and brushed the grass off her body:

"The echo telescope is yours to use. My mentor said back then that this thing can see the 'cracks in order'. You should study it; perhaps you can use it to find the fatal weakness of the Creation Heavenly Court."

She paused, her voice as light as the night wind:

"Just consider it the last little bit of compensation he... left for this world."

Lin Jiang left.

Wen Youyi sat alone in front of that old telescope from three hundred years ago for a long time.

In the night sky, the two satellites of New Homeland slowly rose, spilling silvery-white light all over the hillside.

He placed his hand on the cold surface of the box, and deep within the dark green lens, that little light was still quietly shining.

Like a waiting that never extinguished.

(End of chapter)