76: Chapter 76 Twilight Heart

At the end of the spiral stone staircase was an underground palace.

Shen Ye stood on the last step of the stone staircase, the glow of his twilight longsword illuminating the ground beneath his feet.

It was not stone slabs reinforced by laws, but a solid piece of dark golden metal, its surface engraved with dense Twilight Civilization text that stretched from beneath his feet into the darkness beyond his line of sight.

Each engraving glowed faintly, like countless ultra-fine filaments lit up simultaneously, shrouding the entire underground palace in a very faint twilight halo.

"These characters."

Jiang Yue's voice came through the communicator, carrying an irrepressible tremor.

Although she could not enter the frontline in person, she was receiving the Twilight energy fluctuation data transmitted back by Shen Ye's detector in real-time through Gu Qinghan's encrypted channel.

"The entire floor of this underground palace is a complete chronicle of the Twilight Civilization—it predates the Sea of Thousand Realms Mist fragments by more than an era."

She paused, her breathing becoming rapid over the communicator, "And the very first line of the inscription is engraved with the four words 'Heart of Twilight'. This ruin is not an ordinary building—it is, in itself, an ancient sacred object."

Qin Sese stepped onto the metal floor, gripping her stone spear; the tip of the spear tapped lightly against the Twilight text on the ground, emitting a very crisp hum.

"These engravings weren't corroded. They were melted on with high heat."

"Twilight flame."

Shen Ye plunged his twilight longsword in front of the altar in the center of the underground palace.

The altar was a solid, uncarved piece of dark golden crystal, and inside the crystal, a tiny twilight flame was slowly flickering—that flame was the Heart of Twilight, the final legacy left behind by the Twilight Civilization after exhausting an entire era.

The color of the flame was exactly the same as the one produced when Chen and Ye fused in the Twilight Spirit Spring, only purer, and closer to the humming frequency of the sword spirit in Ye Qiu's sword box when it resonated outside the giant tower.

The sword spirit was trembling violently in the sword box, not because it sensed its existence, but like a long-lost friend finally reuniting in the depths of the ruins.

Shen Ye placed his palm against the surface of the altar.

Jiang Yue's voice came through the communicator again, this time every word sounding as if it had been frozen for ten million years: "The ancient Twilight shattered, turning into four keys, suppressed at the four poles. When the Heart of Twilight beats again, this underground palace will return to its true name—this giant tower is itself the place of origin for the 'light and darkness return to origin' prophecy; it needs someone who can make it beat again."

Chen and Ye simultaneously pressed their hands onto the altar, the angel's holy light and the succubus's abyss flowing along the law patterns inside the altar into that weak twilight flame.

The flame suddenly expanded several times over, and the dark golden crystal was illuminated from within by the twilight glow, becoming completely translucent.

The Twilight text throughout the underground palace lit up simultaneously, and a huge pillar of twilight light shot up from the top of the giant tower, piercing through the thick fog of the Sea of Thousand Realms Mist and intersecting with the light pillars of the four towers in the sky.

Immediately after, a secret compartment opened at the bottom of the altar—four twilight crystal fragments lay quietly inside, which were the four missing core pieces of the Heart of Twilight, and also the true form of the four keys.

They had been divided into four keys by the last guardians of the Twilight Civilization and hidden in the tops of the four towers; now, they finally returned to the altar, embedding themselves into the missing grooves of the Heart of Twilight.

The moment the last fragment was embedded, a tiny twilight flame mark appeared in the center of the altar—no, it didn't appear.

The shape of that mark was identical to the pattern that naturally formed on his sword every time Shen Ye condensed a twilight longsword, only older, like the source of all twilight flames.

"The person awaited in the prophecy is none other than you."

Jiang Yue's voice rang out in the encrypted channel, carrying a faint trace of choked emotion, but more of the calm of a decipherer who, after a long search, had finally personally vindicated an ancient relic, "Every time you condensed twilight in the Land of Gods and Demons, the flame mark here sensed it. The reason it remained silent back then was not because no one could activate it—quite the contrary, it was because it knew someone had already lit the same flame."

Shen Ye stared at that mark for a long time.

Then he injected all the twilight energy from the Land of Gods and Demons into the altar, and the flame of the Heart of Twilight began to flicker joyfully—not a resurrection, but a reunion.

Qin Sese suddenly gripped her stone spear, knelt on one knee, and laid the spear shaft across her knees.

This was the highest etiquette of the Wild Ancient Land.

"My father said that warriors of the Wild Ancient Land only kneel to two kinds of people—comrades who died on the battlefield, and those who extinguish the flames of war. This kneel is on behalf of the defense line he once guarded."

Behind her, Gu Changfeng's wind-thunder twin spears struck the ground simultaneously, and Ye Qiu's sword box emitted a long, drawn-out sword hum.

Shen Ye reached out and helped her up.

He did not speak, simply placing his palm back against the altar, his consciousness sinking into the Land of Gods and Demons.

Chen and Ye stood on either side of the Twilight Spirit Spring, the Angel Legion and the Succubus Legion having already finished forming their ranks.

The base of the Twilight Altar was slowly forming at the bottom of the spring—the prerequisites for building this altar, the Temple of Holy Light and the Abyss Throne, had already successfully broken through to the Legendary level during the preparation period.

He projected the flame of the Heart of Twilight into the Land of Gods and Demons, and Chen and Ye simultaneously injected their Holy Light faith and Abyssal faith into the altar base.

The first Twilight Apostle was born from the intersection of light and darkness.

It was not an angel, not a succubus, but a brand-new existence formed after the fusion of light and darkness.

Its form fluctuated between golden holy light and dark purple abyss, with no fixed appearance, only a pair of eyes—the left eye golden, the right eye purple.

Following that came the second, the third, and more and more Twilight Apostles walked out from the altar, lining up on both sides of the Twilight Spirit Spring.

The twilight glow welled up from the depths of the spring, dyeing the entire sky of the Land of Gods and Demons into a flowing twilight.

Shen Ye opened his eyes.

He sealed a portion of the Heart of Twilight's flame into a Rare-grade storage brocade box and carefully tucked it into the inner layer of his backpack.

Tie Chui needed its high-temperature laws to refine a purer spiral purification pill, and Yan Shan needed its ancient law reverberations to break through the final bottleneck of his Rock Pattern.

His comrades each had their own battles to fight, and the legacy in this underground palace would be the sharpest weapon he could bring them.

Qin Sese shouldered her stone spear and walked to the front of the altar, the tip of the spear reflecting a tiny stream of light from the flame of the Heart of Twilight.

"When that altar lit up just now, my stone spear felt a very ancient remnant of law—it wasn't the power of the Wild Ancient Land, but it was older than the power of the Wild Ancient Land."

"The Primordial Spear is the same."

Gu Changfeng looked down at his right wrist, the silver bracelet glowing faintly in the twilight, "The wind-thunder twin spears resonated with it for a moment. This kind of ancient law refinement effect is stronger than the bracelet my sister helped me customize after the Provincial Tournament. Perhaps I can find a new treatment approach for the old injury in my right hand."

Ye Qiu placed the sword box by the side of the altar, and the sword spirit inside the box emitted a long, drawn-out sword hum.

"My sword spirit wants to stay here and guard this giant tower."

He looked at Shen Ye, "He said he is a long-lost friend of the Twilight Civilization—that is, literally; he and I both just found out. When he left here back then, he was still an unformed sword embryo, and now he has finally returned home."

"His home, of course, should be guarded by him."

After Shen Ye finished speaking, he turned and walked toward the depths of the underground palace.

The coordinates of the Ash King core area marked by Second Lieutenant Meng Yan were not far ahead, and the charcoal pencil map left by Gu Yan had a tiny star mark hand-drawn on this route.

On the detector screen, the fluctuation curve of the twilight energy and the frequency of the Ash King's law reverberations were getting closer and closer; the two different energies intertwined in the depths of the ruins, like enemies who had forgotten each other for ten million years suddenly stopping their slaughter at some moment, together condensing into the most silent epitaph of these ruins.

Second Lieutenant Meng Yan stopped, bent down, and picked up a piece of meteorite iron fragment scorched by laws; the edges of the fragment were smooth—it was a shard of a standard bone blade used by human Pioneers.

He flipped the fragment over, and on the back, a line of scrawled text was engraved with the left hand: "The Long Night is endless, the twilight is undying."

It was Gu Yan's handwriting.

"He walked to this point, his bone blade reduced to only half, and his law resonator must have been broken long ago."

Second Lieutenant Meng Yan stood up and looked around at the ancient ruins illuminated by the twilight, "The entrance needs to be activated with a specific frequency of twilight energy; he couldn't get in, but he still left this line of text here."

"He couldn't get in, but he knew that those who came after him would."

Shen Ye took the half-fragment of the bone blade and placed it on the Twilight text on the altar base.

That line of scrawled left-handed handwriting on the fragment glowed slightly with a dark golden light under the illumination of the twilight, echoing the flame mark in the center of the altar from afar.

A series of very crisp sword hums came from above the giant tower—Ye Qiu's sword spirit hovered in front of the highest window at the top of the tower, and every rotation of its sword body scattered countless fine specks of twilight light; after the light specks fell into the tower, they converged around the altar.

It was saying goodbye in its own way, and also guarding.

Shen Ye walked out of the giant tower and stood for a moment on the edge of the ruins outside the tower gate.

The light pillars of the four towers were still intersecting in the sky, the flame of the Heart of Twilight was burning quietly in the depths of the Land of Gods and Demons, and Chen and Ye stood side by side in the twilight light pillar, watching the first Twilight Apostle walk out of the altar.

His comrades were still waiting for him.

He turned and pushed open the tower gate; the thick fog of the Sea of Thousand Realms Mist above his head was being slowly dispelled by the light pillars intersecting at the four towers.