317: Chapter 315 Hollow Echo

Shen Nian sat on the edge of that depression for a long time.

A faint coolness still lingered on his palm, as if space itself had left a very light mark after he touched it, slowly dissipating.

The outline of the depression was more complete than any he had touched before—the cracks of the ring were broken, the branches of the nest were twisted, and the melody of the stairs was cut off.

But the depression here was as if a complete shape had been taken away as a whole, leaving only a precise mold, and even the arc of the edge maintained a uniform continuation.

He stood up and slowly walked a circle along the edge of the depression.

When his footsteps fell on the ground, the touch was extremely consistent, without undulations or changes, like a stone surface that had been repeatedly polished, with any protrusions carefully smoothed out.

After walking a circle, he stopped at the due north side of the depression, squatted down, and pressed the recording talisman against the edge.

The thread of light slowly spread along the inner wall of the depression, like a probe needle passing through a thin, nearly transparent membrane, silently stretching into the depths.

Shen Nian waited, his gaze falling on the direction where the thread of light extended.

That thread of light crossed a distance, and then, as if slowly caught by some force, its transmission speed began to slow down until it touched some extremely weak echo.

It was not a sound or a vibration, but a very faint difference in texture—making him think of reaching out underwater and encountering a temperature layer different from the surroundings, extremely thin, yet clearly perceptible in its existence.

The thread of light paused there for a moment, and then slowly retracted.

Shen Nian picked up the recording talisman and carefully checked the information brought back by the thread of light.

The data interface of the recording talisman was blank, as if the thread of light had not brought back any substantive data at all.

But at the end of the thread of light, there was a small, extremely dim trace, as if something faint had gently brushed past, leaving an almost invisible indentation.

He frowned, took the fine crystal out from his bosom, placed it beside the recording talisman, and gently pressed it against the interface on the side of the recording talisman, allowing the surfaces of the two crystals to briefly contact.

The thread of light of the recording talisman brightened slightly, as if regaining some guidance.

Lu Qing walked over and squatted beside Shen Nian: "Senior, just now when the recording talisman was retracted, Disciple's scabbard knot trembled slightly."

She lowered her head to look at the dark knot on the scabbard, her fingers gently brushing over the texture of the knot: "Very light, like someone turning a page of a book not far away."

Shen Nian separated the recording talisman from the fine crystal and re-examined the trace at the end of the thread of light.

That extremely faint indentation, with the assistance of the fine crystal, became a bit clearer—like an extremely weak residual rhythm, with an extremely slow frequency, resembling some system whose last heartbeat had completely dissipated after countless cycles.

He put down the recording talisman, his gaze falling on the center of the depression: "That wall surface is like an extremely thin Seal. There might indeed be something on its back side, it's just impossible to confirm whether it is space, structure, or a residual consciousness."

Lu Qing stood up: "Disciple wants to walk another circle along the inner wall of the depression to see if there are any other nodes that can perceive things."

Shen Nian nodded.

Lu Qing began to move slowly along the inner wall of the depression, walking very slowly with every step, sometimes stopping to bend down and observe the traces under her feet, sometimes stretching out her fingertips to gently trace the surface of the ground, like touching a riverbed about to dry up, or waiting for that weak indentation to re-emerge.

Shen Nian stood in place, watching her back.

That fine crystal transmitted a gentle warmth from the inside of his lapel, like some silent confirmation.

He recalled the touch when he touched that depression within the archway, recalled how that residual consciousness left the signal "still here" in the star map, and recalled the gaps between the broken lines in those carvings—those gaps seemed to be intentionally left, as if allowing later contactors to connect them with their own understanding, piecing the scattered parts back into a complete picture.

Lu Qing finished walking a circle, returned to Shen Nian's side, and shook her head with a solemn expression: "No second abnormal point was found. There is only one, which is the position where the recording talisman just captured a weak response."

Shen Nian was silent for a moment, putting away the recording talisman and the fine crystal: "Perhaps there is only that one interface. The remaining parts have completely closed."

Lu Qing's gaze fell on the center of the depression: "If it closed so thoroughly, then after it was removed, it was indeed intentionally filled in. Not even the smallest trace was left."

Shen Nian looked toward the center of the depression again.

That fine crystal transmitted a continuous warmth through the clothing, like a faint lamp guiding him all the way from the Heluo Ruins to here.

Its heat was uniform and stable, not like a signal, but more like a confirmation—confirming that he was already standing on the boundary of this vacancy, identifying an imprint that was about to be washed away by the years.

He stood there for a while, then sat cross-legged, closed his eyes, and extended the Sixteen-Color Power into the interior of the depression in the form of extremely thin threads.

This time, he did not rush to touch that weak echo, but let the threads stay near that boundary, like letting a boat hover underwater, neither docking nor leaving.

He waited for a long time.

An extremely weak sense of tide came from the ends of the threads, as if a distant and extremely faint breath was slowly moving in and out, like the breathing of some existence.

That breath had no specific content, no intention, no direction, and existed only extremely slowly, as if it had spent too much time waiting, to the point that it had become a natural attribute of a piece of space.

Shen Nian did not open his eyes.

He let the threads continue to stay there, maintaining a silent contact, like pressing his hand against a tightly closed door, feeling the weak temperature coming from the other side.

He thought of the gray space of the Eternal Forbidden Zone, the huge crack in the World Behind the Door, and the spots of light before the core of the tree of civilization.

Those places were all waiting, but their waiting was different from here—they were waiting for a specific action, a rescuer, an end.

And the waiting here seemed to have stopped. Just due to inertia, that state was still continuing, like someone who pulled away a chair forgetting to remove the indentation left on the ground by the chair legs.

He withdrew his power and opened his eyes.

The sky could not be perceived in the ruins, but in his heart, it felt like a long journey had been completed.

He stood up, took that fine crystal from his lapel, and gently placed it on a relatively flat spot on the edge of the depression.

The moment the crystal touched the ground, a very faint micro-light emerged on its surface, as if it had finally found a place to settle itself, like an echo passed down for a long time, finally falling back to its origin.

Shen Nian looked at it, and after a while, he spoke, his voice echoing gently in the empty center of the circle.

"Disciple will bring the location here back."

Lu Qing stood behind him, looking at the center of the depression, her voice very light: "If those who left the carvings wanted to convey something, then Disciple feels they have already conveyed it very clearly."

Shen Nian's gaze fell on the point where the crystal's micro-light was: "What they want to say may no longer be in any specific marker. They just preserved the state of the entire area as it is now, as if saying—look at this blank space, and then decide for yourself what should be filled in it."

The two stayed at the edge of the depression for a long time.

Then Shen Nian bent down, picked up the fine crystal, and put it back into his bosom.

He turned around and walked toward the direction he came from.

Lu Qing followed behind him, her pace quiet and steady.

The depression behind them still maintained its complete outline, like a marker that had been carefully measured but never written into any blueprint, quietly staying in place, waiting for someone one day to be willing to use their own understanding to reconnect it.