329: Chapter 327 Index Disk

When Shen Nian stepped into the core space of the Heart of Tiangong, the three-dimensional outline condensed from Sixteen-Color Power was still floating above the platform.

All twelve vertices had been marked with solid lines, evenly distributed on the circumference centered on the hollow center.

Next to each mark were detailed coordinate data — — the ring, the nest, the stairs, the Heluo Arch, the wall arc, the end of the Gray Path, the southeast shallow pit, the northwest rock surface, the northeast crystal pillar, the due north circular platform, the due south square well mouth, and the due west arched porch.

All twelve locations had been fully confirmed.

The distance error between each location and the hollow center was within one-thousandth.

The distance between each adjacent ruin maintained a completely consistent proportional relationship.

Lu Qing sat on the stone bench at the side of the platform, with three scrolls spread out side by side in front of her.

When she put down her pen, she raised her head, her gaze falling on the outline map and then turning to Shen Nian.

"All twelve vacant positions are fully confirmed. Disciple has already added the coordinate and morphological records of the last arched porch."

Shen Nian stood in front of the outline map and did not respond immediately.

His gaze slowly moved along the curved outline marked by the solid line.

Ring, nest, stairs, arch, wall, path, shallow pit, rock surface, crystal pillar, platform, well mouth, porch — — the shapes of each ruin were completely different; some were open, some were closed, some concave downwards, some convex upwards, some extending straight, and some curving around.

But they were all located on the same circumference.

It was as if the same ruler had been used repeatedly, leaving identical markings in twelve different positions.

He reached out, his fingertips not touching the map surface, but hovering just above the outline, feeling the direction in which those paths slowly extended in his consciousness.

Among those ruins of various shapes, he felt a subtle consistency, a synchronization that transcended differences in material, scale, and shape.

"Disciple is thinking," he spoke, his voice not loud, but clearly falling into the quiet cabin, "if we regard these twelve ruins as a whole — — not as independent remains, but as twelve parts of the same thing — — then the significance of their respective existence is not just themselves alone."

Their value might lie in the direction they 'pointed' to.

Lu Qing's pen paused for a moment.

She raised her head, looked at the outline map, and then looked at Shen Nian: "You mean these twelve ruins are not used to surround the hollow center, but to jointly aim at a certain direction?"

Like twelve mirrors, each reflecting toward the same focus?

Shen Nian put down his hand and turned around: "Disciple is not sure yet, but Disciple is recalling the feeling when experiencing each ruin."

The ring was in the southwest corner of the Land of Origin. When Shen Nian walked around it once, he noticed that the inner wall curvature indeed leaned slightly toward the northwest direction.

As for the branches of the nest at the edge of Heluo, the direction its tip pointed was not parallel to the inner wall of the ring, but converged on the same arc.

The melody of the stairs also pointed to the same intersection point when extending toward the edge of the dark zone.

It was as if their original intention was not within themselves, but in a direction outside themselves.

Lu Qing was silent for a moment, as if re-examining the orientations of those ruins in her mind.

Then she stood up, walked to the outline map, and stood side by side with Shen Nian.

"When organizing the coordinates of these twelve ruins, Disciple only calculated their distance relationship with the hollow center, and did not specifically record their respective facing directions."

If they are indeed directional, then Disciple needs to re-measure the axis direction of each ruin and incorporate them into the geometric calculation.

Shen Nian nodded: "How long will it take?"

Lu Qing estimated: "If we only take the existing boundary line and axis of symmetry data, preliminary axis calibration can be completed in about two to three days."

"Disciple will wait for you."

Shen Nian walked over to the Core of Tiangong and sat cross-legged on the platform.

That fine crystal had always been placed in the inner pocket of his robe, radiating a continuous temperature through the fabric, steady and even.

He took it out and placed it on the metal platform in front of him, without deliberately driving his power, simply letting it exist quietly there.

The texture on the surface of the crystal did not unfold, still maintaining a warm and smooth appearance.

But in the process of watching it, he could feel that something inside it was adjusting in an extremely slow manner, as if fine-tuning its own state along with the continuously flowing data in the surrounding environment.

Lu Qing spread out a new scroll on the stone table beside her.

She began to extract the trend of the axis of symmetry from the original records of the first ruin — — the ring, and projected the connecting line between it and the hollow center onto the floor plan, marking, comparing, and correcting them one by one.

This process was slower than mere coordinate verification, because the shape and preservation status of each ruin varied, and determining their "orientation" was not always direct and clear.

Some ruins had clear geometric boundaries, such as the inner wall arc of the ring, the central axis of the arch, the connection line between the center and the concave point of the platform; but some ruins — — such as the twisted branches in the nest, or the interrupted melody on the stairs — — their orientation needed to be indirectly inferred with the help of auxiliary references.

Shen Nian did not urge her.

He sat beside the crystal core, closed his eyes, and went through the positions and shapes of those twelve ruins in his mind one by one.

When he opened his eyes again, Lu Qing had completed the axis direction labeling of the first six ruins.

He picked up the fine crystal from the platform, held it in his palm to feel its temperature for a moment — — still stable, as if quietly waiting for a certain opportunity.

He got up and walked toward the light always floating at the edge of the core space. The light threads of The Artisan floated slowly above the Core of Tiangong, more solid than before, like a long-dormant river resuming its slow flow after injecting new water.

"Senior," Shen Nian spoke, "in the early archives of the Tiangong Clan, are there any records about the 'orientation' of these twelve ruins? Not just their positions, but also the directions they respectively point to."

The light of The Artisan brightened slightly, the light threads gathering and then slowly dispersing, as if searching through a memory sealed in dust for countless years.

After a moment, it responded: "Yes. But those records are extremely scattered, as if they were disassembled and stored in different locations separately. When later generations found them, they could no longer rearrange them into a complete sequence."

It paused and added: "However, this seat remembers a piece of information — — in the earliest construction logs, a sentence was recorded alone, without date and without signature."

That sentence was: "They look in the same direction."

"No other explanation?"

"No. After that sentence, records about the orientation of these twelve ruins never appeared again."

Shen Nian was silent for a while.

"They look in the same direction."

This sentence did not state where that direction was, nor did it state whether the ruins were looking at a certain point in the air or a mark in the distance.

It was just an isolated record, as if it had been placed there for too long, so long that the text beside it had dissipated.

He returned to the side of the platform and sat down opposite Lu Qing.

Lu Qing had completed the axis labeling of the seventh and eighth ruins, and was measuring the ninth one — — the orientation of the four walls of the square well mouth in the due south direction.

She did not look up: "Disciple noticed that among the eight ruins whose measurements have been completed, their axis directions are not completely identical, and there are even subtle deviations."

"Is there any pattern to the direction of the deviation?"

Lu Qing put down her pen and turned the labeled scroll toward Shen Nian: "Yes. Disciple's preliminary judgment is that the directions of these deviations are not random."

The directions they respectively point to, after passing through the hollow center, seem to converge near a certain point.

Shen Nian's gaze fell on the scroll.

Those axis directions presented faint extension lines in his eyes.

They indeed approached near a certain region, but they were still not accurate enough, as if they were a few steps away from the true intersection point.

He looked at the fine crystal lying quietly on the platform, its surface without any changes.

"If all the axes of the twelve ruins are calculated, can the position of that intersection point correspond to the coordinates recorded on the fine crystal?" Shen Nian asked.

Lu Qing picked up her pen again: "Disciple will calculate."

She spent about another day and a half.

On the evening of the second day, she filled in the last set of calculation data at the bottom of the scroll, then put down her pen and turned the complete axis distribution map toward Shen Nian.

"The extension lines of the axes of the twelve ruins, after passing through the hollow center, indeed converge near the same position. The error range is within one-thousandth, which is consistent with the distance accuracy between them and the hollow center."

Her finger fell on the convergence position on the map: "The intersection point is here. The distance from the hollow center is about... 1.7 times the radius of the dodecagon. The direction is on the north-northwest side of the hollow center."

Shen Nian looked at the convergence point.

It was not at the hollow center.

After passing through the hollow center, the axes of the twelve ruins did not stay there, but continued to extend, re-converging at a point outside the center.

That showed that the hollow center was not the end point.

It was merely a transfer point, a node for receiving and deflection.

The true target pointed to by those ruins was even further away.

He picked up the fine crystal from the platform once more, gently holding it in his palm.

The temperature on the surface of the crystal rose slightly for a moment under his fingertips, and then returned to stability.

"Disciple wants to try," he said, "projecting the axis data of the twelve ruins out through this crystal."

He walked in front of the Core of Tiangong, placed the fine crystal in a groove beside the core base, and made its surface cling tightly to the metal wall at the edge of the crystal core.

Then he guided the Sixteen-Color Power in the form of extremely fine threads, passing through the hollow center one by one along the axis directions of the twelve ruins, converging at the calculated intersection point.

When the power passed through the eighth axis, the surface of the fine crystal began to change.

An extremely subtle crack appeared on its surface, and then expanded at a constant speed, spreading in all directions, like a long-dried riverbed being re-soaked by the first wisp of water, slowly expanding along the contour of the crack.

But when the crack completed a full circle, it did not continue deeper, instead stopping on that circle of contour.

Shen Nian did not withdraw his power.

He continued to inject the remaining axis data one by one, letting the power pass through the intersection point sequentially along the paths of those twelve directions, and continue extending forward for an extremely short distance.

When the twelfth stream of power passed through, a layer of extremely faint warm light lit up inside the fine crystal.

It was not emitted from the surface, but slowly seeped up from the depths, as if a lamp had been lit, and the light was slowly passing through the inner wall of the crystal, spreading outward.

Those cracks expanding along the surface gradually became clear under the illumination of the warm light.

Shen Nian realized that the shapes of those cracks were not random; they were forming a slowly unfolding picture piece by piece.

He steadied his breathing, not rushing to interpret, but maintaining the current rhythm, letting those light threads gently slide across the crystal surface, walking their own journey along the outline of the cracks.

After a moment, that layer of warm light diffused inside the crystal, and an extremely faint projection slowly emerged in the air above the crystal.

Shen Nian stood up and walked in front of the projection.

That was a miniature map, more concise and clearer than the star map he had seen from the Core of Tiangong.

At a position slightly to the left of the center, there was a lit mark — — precisely the intersection point where the axes of the twelve ruins converged.

But around that mark, there were several extremely faint outline lines, like the residual edges of a larger map.

Their spacing was similar to the arrangement of the twelve ruins, and their distribution distance was even further.

Shen Nian looked at those outline lines.

They were very faint, so faint that they were like creases left on a map that had been repeatedly folded and unfolded, briefly manifesting for a moment under the light, and then retracting their own boundaries to return to a warm and smooth surface.

He was silent for a while, his gaze falling on that lit mark.

That mark still maintained a bright state, like a letter placed on a table after being read, not put away again.