330: Chapter 328 The Continuation of the Map

In the core space of the Heart of Tiangong, warm light flowed quietly.

Shen Nian stood before the miniature map projected by the fine crystal, his gaze falling upon the lit-up marker in the center.

The location of the marker was the intersection calculated by Lu Qing, where the axes of the twelve ruins converged after passing through the center of the hollow circle.

He temporarily called it "index disk".

There was no special basis for this name; it was simply the first word that surfaced in his mind when those axes converged into a complete outline within his consciousness.

It was like a catalog being flipped to the last page, with only a single line of text written on it: "More content is elsewhere."

The light and shadow of the fine crystal flowed slowly before him, resembling a scroll with one corner gently lifted, allowing him a glimpse of its barely visible contours.

The marker itself was not large, only the size of a fingernail, but it was extremely precise.

Precise enough to accommodate the twelve axes still converging within the same range after traversing a long distance.

And around that marker, there were several extremely faint outline lines.

Those outline lines were even more blurred than the marker itself, resembling creases left by the edges of paper that had been repeatedly folded. Under the illumination of light at a specific angle, they briefly manifested for a moment, and then withdrew their own boundaries, restoring themselves into a warm and smooth surface.

Shen Nian did not look away.

He stood before those outline lines for a long time, as if waiting for them to fully unfold.

But they did not.

They merely maintained that extremely faint state of existence, as if someone had drawn a few guide lines on paper with an extremely light brushstroke a long time ago, yet never dropped the final lines.

Lu Qing walked to his side, stood to the side of that light and shadow, and adjusted her angle slightly.

She scrutinized it for a moment, and then spoke: "Disciple measured along these outline lines, and the spacing between them and the base layer is somewhat inconsistent."

Shen Nian's gaze shifted slightly toward her: "What is the spacing?"

"The spacing is closer near the location of the marker." Lu Qing reached out and pointed to a certain section of the outline lines. "The further toward the edge one goes, the spacing gradually increases. This change is not random; it looks like it has undergone precise alignment, and more like a controlled buffer zone, simply to reserve space so that the upper-layer blueprints can be accurately overlaid."

Shen Nian fell silent for a moment.

He recalled the sentence previously mentioned by The Artisan — in the earliest construction logs, a single sentence was recorded alone, without a date or a signature.

"They are looking in the same direction."

At the time, he thought that sentence described the orientation of those ruins. But standing before the light and shadow projected by the fine crystal at this moment, he began to feel that sentence might have another layer of meaning.

"If this layer of blueprints is the upper layer of the index disk," he began, "then the direction it points to might not be the intersection we currently see."

Lu Qing's gaze also fell upon those outline lines: "They seem to have been marked out, but have not been completely drawn."

Shen Nian did not respond immediately.

He slowly probed his Sixteen-Color Power into the surface of the fine crystal in the form of extremely fine threads.

Those threads moved slowly along the trajectory of the outline lines, as if probing a riverbed that had accumulated for many years, searching for whether any recognizable traces still remained within it.

The ends of the threads stopped after traveling about half the distance along the arc of the outline lines.

They were not blocked, but naturally stopped there, as if there were no longer any structures available for detection ahead, leaving only a blank Chaos plane.

He withdrew his power and re-examined that outline line.

The position of the pause did not look like a fracture or a defect; it was more like a sentence stopping halfway through, leaving behind a blank space waiting to be continued.

"This line," Shen Nian pointed to the paused position of that outline line, "is like a pause in a sentence."

Lu Qing looked along his gaze: "Disciple noticed that its convergence method is very neat; it does not look like it was interrupted by external force, but rather intentionally cut off, as if the person who wrote it decided to stop here."

Shen Nian picked up the fine crystal from the platform.

The temperature on its surface had returned to stability, and the flowing light gradually faded as he took it out, returning to ordinary.

He walked over to the Core of Tiangong, stopped in front of the core pedestal, and gently placed the crystal into the slight depression on the side of the base, allowing it to maintain contact with the energy flow of the Core of Tiangong and stay in a readable state.

The light and shadow softened slightly for a moment with his action, those outline lines briefly disappeared, and then reappeared.

The light of The Artisan lit up slightly above the Core of Tiangong, as if sensing some change: "You saw something new on that map."

"Disciple saw that above the base layer, there is another layer of outlines, very faint, like a sketch that has not yet been filled in."

Shen Nian looked back at that light and shadow, his gaze falling upon the broken outline line, "Disciple is trying to judge which direction it originally intended to extend toward, but in its current state, its end does not point to any known marked point; it simply stops there."

The light threads of The Artisan gently contracted for a moment.

"In the early archives of the Tiangong Clan, records regarding "upper-layer blueprints" are extremely fragmented. They are not written together, but scattered across construction logs of different periods, sometimes only a sentence or two, sometimes just a sketch."

"But there is one piece of information that will be mentioned in all records where "upper-layer blueprints" appear."

Shen Nian turned his head slightly: "What information?"

"They appeared later. They were not there from the very beginning."

The voice of The Artisan was slower than usual, as if confirming whether every word he spoke was accurate, "In the earliest construction planning of the Land of Origin, the design of the index disk was complete, containing no upper-layer structures. The traces of those upper-layer blueprints were only added at a later period."

Shen Nian's gaze slightly tightened: "Who was the person that added them?"

The light of The Artisan fell silent for a brief moment.

"There is no signature in the records."

Shen Nian walked back toward that light and shadow.

Under his gaze, those outline lines still maintained an extremely faint state of existence, resembling paper that had been folded too many times, unable to completely smooth out the creases even when unfolded.

He reached out and hovered his palm over the broken end of that outline line.

His Sixteen-Color Power did not actively probe in; he simply let his palm stay there, feeling the temperature of that blank space within the Chaos.

To his surprise, its tactile sensation was different from the surrounding Chaos—not colder or hotter, but possessing an extremely slight resistance, like a half-closed door.

"This blank space is not empty." Lu Qing's voice came from behind him.

Shen Nian did not look back: "Disciple felt a slight resistance. It is still there, just not fully activated."

Lu Qing walked closer by a few steps and stopped at the edge of the light and shadow: "If that is not a blank space, but a marker waiting to be filled... then it might need some specific condition to complete activation. Perhaps it is the sequence order, perhaps it is the time interval, or perhaps it is some kind of signal that even we ourselves have not realized."

Shen Nian withdrew his hand and took a step back.

He stood before that light and shadow, not rushing to interpret the meaning of those outline lines, but first committing their forms and relative positions to heart.

Those outline lines might be a part of the map, or they might simply be unfinished sketches.

If they could support all the previously recorded data, they would form a complete sequence; if they deviated from each other, their weight within the entire System would need to be re-evaluated.

"Disciple wants to first completely record the trajectory of this layer of outline lines," he turned to Lu Qing, "without rushing to judge its meaning, only making a record."

Lu Qing nodded: "Disciple will organize it."

She took out a new blank scroll and began tracing the trajectories of those outline lines section by section.

Her movements were very slow; for each section, she had to repeatedly confirm the angle and curvature before putting pen to paper.

Shen Nian did not disturb her, merely walking to the edge of the core space and sitting down beside the wall surface.

That blade of grass created by him using Source Creation was still there.

Its stem was thicker than when last seen, and its leaves had also turned from the initial few into a dozen or so, their edges slightly curled, resembling the shape after being blown by the wind many times.

It took root in that extremely fine crack on the wall surface, and its root System seemed to have already pierced through the metal surface, finding deeper support.

Shen Nian did not reach out to touch it, just sitting beside it and watching it.

That blade of grass maintained a stable posture within his line of sight, its leaves occasionally swaying slightly with the extremely slow warm current in the core space.

He sat there for a while, then stood up and walked back beside the platform.

Lu Qing was still tracing those outline lines, the sound of the pen tip gliding across the paper surface clear and even in the quiet cabin.

Shen Nian sat down again in front of the Core of Tiangong, took that fine crystal off the pedestal, and gently held it in his palm.

That light and shadow briefly blurred for a moment under his action, and then stabilized again.

Those outline lines still maintained their extremely faint state of existence, and that broken end also remained in its original place, as if waiting for a certain condition to be met before it could continue to extend.

Holding that crystal, Shen Nian did not rush to urge it, merely letting it maintain energy contact with the Core of Tiangong, quietly existing there.

From the center of the hollow circle to the Heluo Arch, from the Gray Path to the twelve empty positions, from the convergence of axes to the index disk, and then to this upper-layer contour not yet fully filled in—every step was like pushing open a heavy door, behind which even more unknown spaces were concealed.

And those outline lines might simply be the first breakpoint he encountered after a long measurement process.

He closed his eyes, retracing the forms of those outline lines once more in the darkness.

That broken end maintained a clear outline in his consciousness, resembling a sentence that needed to be continued, waiting for a suitable continuation stroke.

A moment later, Shen Nian felt the Origin imprint of Shen Zhao within the qinglian sword pulse slightly, like a distant echo, or like a forgotten syllable, rushing over across a long distance toward this side.

He opened his eyes, his gaze falling upon the broken outline line on the surface of the fine crystal, pausing for a breath before looking away.