306: Chapter 304 The Twisted Nest

Shen Nian continued moving forward along the light stream of The Artisan.

The ring was left behind him, gradually sinking into the depths of the grey-white Chaos.

That almost dim crystal core was still beating slowly, but the beat was already so faint that it was like the lingering echo of something forgotten, swallowed bit by bit by the silence of the Ruins and the rifts of memory.

Shen Nian did not look back—he simply walked along the light stream towards the deeper ruins.

The color of Chaos was changing.

The grey-white gradually transitioned into a dark ink-blue, as if the color of the deep sea had been pressed into the Void Realm.

The mist became thicker, almost like a semi-liquid substance, flowing slowly around Shen Nian.

Every step he took, he could feel the Chaos beneath his feet trembling slightly, as if something was breathing in the depths.

After walking for another hour or so, the end of the light stream appeared ahead.

That was a lair.

No, it did not look like a lair.

It looked more like an inverted giant tree.

The roots stretched upward, piercing deep into the Chaos, as if trying to grasp something invisible; the branches hung downward, overlapping layer upon layer, twisting and intersecting to form a huge, enclosed structure.

Its form was extremely irregular, with not a single straight line and not a single symmetrical plane.

The angles between the branches were some sharp as knives, others blunt as eggs, as if repeatedly bent, twisted, and shaped by some force, finally fixing into this posture.

Shen Nian stopped in front of that structure.

He could feel an extremely faint aura slowly overflowing from the interior of the structure.

That aura was very faint, so faint that it was almost indistinguishable, but it truly existed—like an abandoned house, after being uninhabited for many years, still retaining traces of someone having lived there.

"Was this created by the Tiangong Clan?" Shen Nian asked.

The light of The Artisan condensed beside him, and its voice was low: "Yes.

This was an early attempt of ours.

We tried to create a structure capable of self-extension, without external intervention, relying solely on its own growth logic to expand its form."

"So," Shen Nian's voice was very soft, "it used to be alive."

"It once tried to survive." The voice of The Artisan carried an indescribable pause, as if chewing on the weight of the word itself.

Shen Nian slowly approached the lair.

The closer he got, the clearer the details of those branches became.

They were not smooth, and their surfaces were covered with fine cracks and knots, as if they had undergone countless stretches and contractions.

Some branches presented an unnatural arc, as if they had been propped open from the inside by something, and then forcibly twisted back to their original position.

He reached out to touch the nearest branch.

The touch was rough, and the surface had a texture similar to bark, dry and hard, but under his fingertips, there was an extremely faint depression, as if it had once been soft.

Those cracks were deep, as if having experienced repeated alternating dry and wet conditions, changes in cold and heat, and the erosion of time.

Shen Nian slowly moved forward along the direction of the branches.

He noticed that the cracks on the branches were not random, but presented a certain pattern—as if distributed along a hidden vein, intermittently extending toward the interior of the structure.

It was as if something had once flowed along these branches, leaving behind traces, and then stopped.

When he walked to the side of the structure, he saw a fracture.

A thick branch was truncated from the middle, and the fracture presented a torn form—not chopped off by a Sharp Weapon, but rather like being split open from the inside by some force and then pulled outward.

There was a thin layer of dark sediment on the edge of the fracture, like traces left after a certain liquid dried up.

Shen Nian observed for a moment, then turned around and walked toward the interior of the structure along the gaps between the branches.

The interior was dimmer than he expected.

The branches intertwined more densely here, light could hardly penetrate, and only the faint light emitted by the Sixteen-Color Power within his body illuminated the surrounding area of about a zhang.

The ground beneath his feet was a layer of intertwined branches, and stepping on it gave a slightly sunken tactile sensation, as if something was still empty below.

He walked very slowly, observing the wall surfaces on both sides as he walked.

The inner sides of those branches also had some patterns, more delicate than the external cracks, resembling the residual veins of certain blood vessels.

They had also once been alive, flowing with a certain energy, until one day, that vein completely stopped at the last node.

After walking for about a quarter of an hour, Shen Nian came to the center of the structure.

There was a small space here, with a diameter of about five zhang.

In the center of the space stood a thick main trunk, extending all the way from the top of the structure to the ground, like the axis of the entire lair.

The surface of the main trunk had cracks similar to the outside, but denser, as if it had undergone more pulling and struggling.

Below the main trunk, there was a shallow depression on the ground.

It was as if something had once lain here, leaving behind a mark.

The shape of the depression was not complete, and the edges were blurred, making it impossible to determine what kind of thing it was—but that aura of having 'existed' was exceptionally clear in this dead silence.

Shen Nian squatted down and reached out to gently touch the edge of that mark.

The moment his fingertips touched the mark, an extremely fragmented piece of information flooded into his Sea of Consciousness—not a complete memory, but more like the lingering echo left by a certain struggle.

A vague consciousness repeated a sentence in extreme exhaustion.

"Not enough here. Still not enough."

That information seemed to be crushed into pieces, and also seemed to be stuck in the rifts of time.

He could faintly feel the emotion within it—that was not anger, but rather confusion and exhaustion, like a person pushing a door for a long time, yet never managing to push it open.

Shen Nian withdrew his hand and sat beside that mark.

He sat in that dimness for a long time.

The surrounding branches silently surrounded him, like those branches that once tried to grow, which after their last stretch were forever fixed here, and even the places they wanted to go dissipated along with that aura.

"They stopped here." He looked toward the light of The Artisan, "After the last growth."

The voice of The Artisan was very soft: "Yes.

When we discovered it on the outer periphery, it was already like this.

It seemed to have been interrupted by something—not destroyed by external force, but having lost the reason to continue growing."

Shen Zhao's Origin mark in the qinglian sword beat slightly, as if responding to the word "lost the reason".

Shen Nian reached out to press the sword hilt, feeling that warm pulsation. In his mind emerged the Disciples practicing sword techniques in the Martial Arts Arena of the Guardian Academy—they repeated standard movements over and over again, yet their gazes grew increasingly vacant, as if they were trying their best to guard a target that was blurring, yet even they themselves were not sure whether that target was still there.

"When some things stop," Shen Nian began, his voice softly echoing in the dimness, "it is not because they have run out of strength.

Rather, it is because the direction they wanted to go has vanished."

The light of The Artisan dimmed slightly: "We think so too.

But we cannot confirm it.

We do not know what they wanted to become before stopping."

Shen Nian stood up, his gaze sweeping across those twisted branches, broken patterns, and dried veins.

They had indeed once tried to survive, even striving more than once, but one day they stopped because the direction pointing toward the future was severed, and they did not know where else to go.

"This Disciple wants to record this ruin," Shen Nian said, "not only its form, but also which path it might have walked before stopping.

If there are other similar ruins afterwards, this Disciple wants to put them together to look at them."

A pale golden mark emerged from the light of The Artisan, floating toward Shen Nian: "This is the recording talisman of the Tiangong Clan.

Place it on the structure, and it will capture the form and energy remnants.

We need these records to understand the process of our loss, even if just to see clearly at which intersection we lost ourselves."

Shen Nian took the recording talisman and gently pressed it onto the surface of the main trunk.

The talisman rune lit up, and fine threads of light spread in all directions, flowing slowly along those dried patterns, like a slowly awakening river.

It touched every corner of this lair inch by inch, recording those broken veins, those stopped nodes, and the traces left behind after the last struggle.

Shen Nian stood beside the main trunk, watching those threads of light extend, like watching a speechless valley finally being listened to again, finally having someone say a sentence—not to conclude it, but to catch that sigh that had been stuck in the throat for too long.

The recording lasted for a long time.

When the threads of light finally all retracted back into the recording talisman, he raised his hand to take down the talisman seal and tucked it into his bosom.

"Senior, may this Disciple ask a question?"

"Ask."

"Before those creations stopped, did they try to tell you anything?"

The Artisan did not answer immediately.

That light hovered in the dimness, as if also recalling that fragmentary memory, waiting for the memory to float up by itself.

"No." The Artisan finally spoke, "They just stopped.

It was like a person speaking, just as the last word was about to settle, suddenly forgetting what they wanted to say, lingering on that syllable for so long."

Shen Nian did not ask anymore.

He turned around and walked outward along the way he came, passing through those twisted branches, through those dried patterns, through those traces that once strove to grow and were forever fixed after the last breath.

When walking out of the lair, the Chaos ahead was still rolling slowly.

The light stream was still extending, pointing toward a more distant direction.

He glanced back.

That structure was still standing in place, the branches still maintaining their twisted form, like all things that were stuck, neither disappearing nor continuing.

It just stopped there, lingering for a long time on the last unfinished syllable.

Shen Nian watched for a moment, turned back around, and continued walking forward along the light stream.

He wanted to bring these records back to the Heart of Tiangong and put them together with the records of the previous ring.

If they had commonalities, perhaps he could find the starting point where the Tiangong Clan got lost.