314: Chapter 312 Discontinuous Path

Shen Nian and Lu Qing stood in front of that arched gate, looking toward the vague outline deep within Heluo.

The cyan mist flowed slowly in the distance, as if looking at something through an extremely thin layer of water; the outline was indistinct, yet not completely clear.

"Disciple wants to go over and take a look," Shen Nian said.

Lu Qing did not object, merely putting the neatly organized rubbing scrolls into her storage ring: "Disciple will go with Senior."

The two did not cross the ruins in a straight line, but instead followed the direction of those scattered structures, bypassing one semi-buried arc-shaped boundary after another, trying their best to maintain consistency with the previously recorded arc directions.

Those grayish-brown fragments were scattered around their feet; some were embedded in the dried-up energy veins, while others lay upon other fault lines, looking as though they had been moved and then hastily set aside.

After walking for about half an hour, that vague outline began to become clear.

It was indeed an arched gate, almost identical in shape to the one behind them, only slightly smaller in size.

It was about eighteen feet high, and the color of the stone was lighter, as if it had undergone a much longer period of weathering, with the textures on its surface almost completely worn smooth.

There were also scratches on the inside of the doorway, but they were shallower and sparser, as if the strength used by the person who carved them was gradually weakening.

Lu Qing approached the doorway and pressed the recording talisman against the wall surface.

The threads of light spread for a moment before retracting, bringing back even sparser information than the first arched gate, leaving only some extremely scattered and intermittent rhythms that lacked any sequence.

"This gate looks as if it was hastily carved by someone," Lu Qing withdrew the recording talisman and carefully examined the captured information. "The depth of those scratches is uneven; some places were carved with heavy force, while other places were only lightly brushed across.

It's as if they were rushing against time, or suddenly lost the strength required to finish it at a certain node."

Shen Nian walked into the doorway and stood inside for a moment.

The temperature inside the arched gate had no obvious difference from the outside, but he did capture an extremely subtle aura, as if someone had stayed here for a long time—so long that the air itself had left behind traces of him.

He raised his head and looked straight ahead of the arched gate.

In the distance, the cyan mist became even denser, but unlike the surrounding Chaos—the boundary of that patch of mist was extremely neat, like a giant, invisible wall revealing a corner of its outline within the mist.

"There is still something ahead," Shen Nian walked out of the doorway, his gaze falling upon that neat boundary.

The two continued to walk forward, passing several even more scattered ruins, some of which were no longer recognizable in shape, leaving only a shallow depression, as if some extremely lightweight component had been placed here a long time ago and taken away even longer ago.

When Shen Nian walked up close to that neat boundary, he stopped in his tracks.

That was a gigantic wall made of some translucent material, like a piece of polished dark glass, with an extremely smooth surface, without any scratches or patterns, as if deliberately preserved into pure emptiness.

The edges of the wall were embedded within the Chaos, making it impossible to determine where it extended.

Lu Qing walked up to the wall and raised her hand to touch it gently.

The moment her fingertips touched the surface, the wall trembled slightly and then returned to calm.

There was no light, no sound, only an extremely brief and subtle vibration that was almost imperceptible, as if someone had lightly tapped on the other side of the wall.

"There is something behind this wall," Lu Qing withdrew her hand, her gaze never leaving that wall.

Shen Nian walked to her side and likewise pressed his hand against the wall.

His Sixteen-Color Power encountered no resistance when it contacted the wall—it was like passing through an extremely thin membrane and then entering a vast, empty space.

That space was extremely quiet—so quiet that he could hardly perceive any boundaries, like a place completely devoid of any sound source.

He withdrew his hand and remained silent for a moment: "Disciple wants to walk along this wall for a distance to see if it forms a complete edge. If it is closed, then it might enclose a certain region."

Lu Qing nodded, following by his side.

The two slowly advanced along the direction of the wall.

That wall extended for an extremely long distance within the Chaos, without any bends or corners, looking like an extremely long-drawn line.

After walking for about the time it takes to burn a stick of incense, the direction of the wall began to change—not a sudden turn, but an extremely slow arc, as if gradually transitioning from a straight line into an arc segment.

The direction of the arc was consistent with those arcs they had previously recorded.

Shen Nian stopped, his gaze falling upon the direction in which the arc of the wall extended: "If this wall is complete, it should form a gigantic circle, enclosing a region in the center."

Lu Qing looked along his gaze: "If it is a circle, then its center should be at—"

She did not finish, but Shen Nian knew what she wanted to say.

That arc segment extended from the arched gate of Heluo, passed through the depressions at the edge of the dark zone, bypassed the nests, stairs, and rings, and finally merged into this gigantic translucent wall.

If it truly was a circle, then all these ruins—the rings, nests, stairs, nodes, arched gates, and walls—were merely markers on the edge of that circle, distributed along the circumference like scale marks.

And the center of the circle was located right at the position they all surrounded.

There was nothing there; it was a blank void.

Nothing was marked, nothing was recorded, as if the core part of a map had been cut away.

Shen Nian stood there, watching the arc of the wall extend into the distance, his gaze falling upon that unmarked position.

Lu Qing stood beside him, also not speaking.

There was silence between the two for a moment, and then Shen Nian recorded the position and direction of the wall, turning around to retrace their steps.

He did not walk fast. Every few steps, he would stop, glance at the direction of the wall's arc, reconfirm its position within the overall outline, and continue walking back to the Heluo Ruins scattered with arched gates and gravel.

When they returned to the Heart of Tiangong, the brilliance of The Artisan was still suspended in the core space.

Shen Nian walked up to the crystal core and added the wall's position and the arc's direction into the arcs of that outline map.

When the final line fell, the entire pattern finally presented a relatively complete form—a nearly closed circle with multiple markers distributed along its edge, and a blank space at the center.

Shen Nian looked at that blank space, raised his hand a moment later, and gently tapped the center of the circle.

At the spot where his fingertips fell, an extremely faint speck of light lit up slightly, like ink drifting for an instant when dropping into water, only to be reclaimed into its shape by the forgotten blankness.