61: Chapter 61 Arrival in Vientiane

As the flying ship pierced through the clouds, Shen Ye was leaning against the porthole, resting with his eyes closed.

His consciousness was still submerged in his Divine Kingdom, watching Tie Chui and Yan Shan argue over what heat level should be used for the Spiral Body-Refining Pill.

Tie Chui argued that too much heat would burn the Rock Pattern texture, while Yan Shan claimed that too little heat would halve the body-refining effect. Neither could convince the other, so they finally brought the experimental sample to Daoist Quan, asking the old man to test it using the law fluctuations of the spiral water current.

The slight vibration of the flying ship touching down pulled Shen Ye back to reality.

He opened his eyes. Outside the porthole was a vast complex of buildings—no, not a complex, the entire city itself was a university.

Wanxiang University had no walls.

This top-tier institution named "Wanxiang" occupied the entire Lake Heart Island in the core area of the Eastern Divine Realm.

Emerging from the air harbor, the first thing that caught the four's eyes was a vast inland lake. The lake water was deep blue, nearly black, and its surface reflected that deep blue giant tower soaring into the sky.

The tower's body was covered in dense, ancient scripts that flowed slowly from top to bottom like living creatures.

The person who came to meet them was a girl in a deep blue school uniform, with short hair, a round face, and two dimples when she smiled.

"Welcome to Wanxiang University! I am your guide for the duration of the National Competition; you can just call me Xiao Luo."

She handed everyone a copy of the "Wanxiang University National Competition Participant Handbook" and a temporary student ID card printed with their personal information, then led the four of them toward the depths of Lake Heart Island.

The campus was too big.

Xiao Luo called an automatic campus flying ship, which drove slowly along the lakeside road, introducing things as they went.

To the right was the Divine Kingdom theory teaching area, where several gray-white stone buildings were scattered artistically across the gentle slope by the lake. The buildings were connected by aerial corridors, and the sides of the corridors were planted with various spiritual plants, some of which were rare varieties Shen Ye had seen in Su Wanqing's chamber of commerce catalog but had never seen as living plants. On the left, on the lake surface, was the actual combat training area—the battle platforms were built directly above the lake, with transparent platforms reinforced by laws suspended in mid-air, looking like a row of crystal chessboards floating on the water from the shore.

She pointed to the four giant towers in the distance surrounding Lake Heart Island: the one with the golden spire was Shenyu University, the silver-white one was Cangqiong University, the dark green one was Eternal University, and the deep blue one was Wanxiang University.

The four towers occupied the four directions of Lake Heart Island, together forming the main venue for the National Competition.

"There are aerial corridor bridges connecting the four towers, and these bridges are open to contestants during the competition. You can move freely between the recruitment points of the four universities to learn about the training programs of different schools."

Xiao Luo said, blinking, "However, every university will take the opportunity to woo the contestants they have their eyes on—you might receive quite a few 'unexpected invitations'."

The flying ship delivered the four to the accommodation area.

Wanxiang University had arranged an independent student dormitory for each of them. The room was not big but fully equipped, with floor-to-ceiling windows facing the lake, from which one could see the reflection of the Wanxiang Giant Tower in the distance gently swaying in the water ripples.

Shen Ye put down his backpack, first sorted and packed the Ash King's bone blade fragments and several new rubbings of Twilight Civilization fragments, then opened the map of Wanxiang University and drew a circle at the location of the Ancient Books Library.

Jiang Yue had already arrived.

She had set off a day earlier than Shen Ye and should be flipping through documents in the Ancient Books Library right now.

The rubbings of the fragments brought back from the Sea of Thousand Realms Mist required her to conduct cross-comparisons, and the Ancient Civilization section of the Wanxiang University Ancient Books Library was the perfect place for it.

Shen Ye changed into clean clothes, reported to Qin Shu, and then went out toward the Ancient Books Library.

The Ancient Books Library at Wanxiang University was an independent dome building. Its outer walls were made of dark gray law-reinforced stone, with extremely fine sensor vines embedded in the stone crevices—they belonged to the same category as the sentry vines on the city walls of the Sea of Thousand Realms Mist outpost, but the vines here were more docile, quietly sensing the spiritual power fluctuations of every visitor and silently letting them pass after identifying their identity.

Shen Ye swiped his temporary student ID card, the access control lit up with a pale green light, and the heavy stone door under the dome slid open slowly.

The interior of the Ancient Books Library was much quieter than he had expected.

The dome was extremely high, and law-based light poured down from the center of the dome, illuminating the entire circular reading room as bright as day.

Circular bookshelves extended from the floor to the dome, and every layer was embedded with ancient books wrapped in spiritual silk.

The air was filled with the smell of old books and aged spiritual ink—exactly the same as the City Association library, just many times larger in scale.

Jiang Yue was sitting in a workstation in the furthest corner of the Ancient Civilization section.

The table was spread with rubbings, ancient script comparison tables, and several metal fragments brought back from the Sea of Thousand Realms Mist.

She heard footsteps and looked up, her glasses sliding to the tip of her nose.

Seeing it was Shen Ye, she didn't exchange pleasantries, just pushed her glasses back to the bridge of her nose and picked up a fragment from the table.

"You came just in time. The Twilight Civilization scripts on this batch of fragments from the Sea of Thousand Realms Mist belong to the same system as the black stele I deciphered before, but the script structure is more ancient—at least an epoch earlier."

She placed the fragment under a law-based magnifying glass and adjusted the focus. The Twilight Civilization carvings on the surface of the fragment were magnified dozens of times under the lens, and those subtle textures that were difficult to distinguish with the naked eye clearly appeared.

"Look here—'When the four keys gather, light and darkness return to their origin'. The 'four keys' in this sentence on the stele have been broken down into four independent symbols in these fragments, with a miniature pattern of a tower carved next to each symbol."

Shen Ye leaned closer to the magnifying glass.

Four symbols, each corresponding to four types of towers—one had a golden halo on its spire, one had silver-white lightning wrapped around its tower body, one had a dark green crystal floating above its roof, and one deep blue tower was covered with dense scripts, identical to the patterns on the dome of this Ancient Books Library at Wanxiang University.

"The golden one is Shenyu University, the silver-white one is Cangqiong University, the dark green one is Eternal University, and the deep blue one is Wanxiang University."

Jiang Yue used her finger to point sequentially on the paper map of Wanxiang University, her fingertip finally stopping at the location of the deep blue giant tower in the very center of the Lake Heart. "The four keys are hidden somewhere in the four top universities. I am still deciphering the entrance location of the Twilight Shelter, but judging from the currently known fragment inscriptions, it is very likely deep in the law-disordered zone of the Sea of Thousand Realms Mist core area—the target of the Ash King's invasion back then was very likely this shelter itself. If the four keys really correspond to a token each of the four universities keeps, then we first need to find out what they specifically correspond to. I found a few library archives in the uncatalogued list of the Wanxiang University Ancient Books Library that are suspected to be related, but several volumes marked as 'Myth and Legend' require special borrowing permissions—especially the unique copies related to ancient ruins and the Twilight Civilization."

Shen Ye took the reading list Jiang Yue handed over.

The list contained a few volumes of ancient books written in delicate handwriting, and the library collection number suffixes were all marked with an asterisk—the asterisk represented "restricted borrowing" in the Wanxiang University library system, which required at least core student level authority to access.

His current identity was a National Competition contestant, and his temporary student ID card only had enough authority to enter the general reading area of the Ancient Books Library; he couldn't enter the core collection area at all.

"I'll figure out the authority issue."

He folded the reading list and put it into his pocket.

Jiang Yue didn't ask more, just encrypted the rubbing data of the several fragments and sent it to Shen Ye's communicator, then buried her head back into that pile of ancient script comparison tables.

Twilight was rising from the lake surface when he walked out of the Ancient Books Library.

Shen Ye walked back along the lakeside path, the reflection of the Wanxiang Giant Tower gently swaying in the deep blue lake water, and those ancient scripts on the tower body glimmered with a very faint dark golden light in the twilight.

He looked up at the top of the tower—up there, perhaps, was hidden the clue to the first key Jiang Yue needed.

During the National Competition, he had to obtain the authority for the core collection area.

And the fastest way was to win.