332: Chapter 330 Intersection and Echo

After leaving that silver ground, Shen Nian and Lu Qing continued moving forward in a north-northwest direction.

The passage had disappeared, and they entered a space Shen Nian had never experienced before.

There was no surging Chaos, no grayish-white mist, only an extremely uniform silence, as if the entire region had been carefully calibrated, and even the energy flow had been adjusted to the same frequency.

Shen Nian walked in front, and the Sixteen-Color Power extended forward in the form of extremely fine threads.

Those threads traveled through the silent space without encountering any resistance and without detecting any density changes, like walking down a repeatedly cleaned corridor whose walls on both sides were already too distant to perceive.

Lu Qing followed behind him, holding the recording talisman in her hand.

She would stop at intervals to confirm the direction, then record the readings on the scroll she carried with her.

"The direction has not deviated."

She said after a pause, "It is completely consistent with the extension direction of that contour line on the index disk."

Shen Nian nodded and continued walking forward.

He did not know how long he had been walking.

In this space, the passage of time became blurred, like evenly diluted water flow, neither too fast nor too slow, just flowing continuously.

Then he perceived that echo.

It did not come suddenly, but rather felt like a gradually emerging sense of presence, like a sound coming from far away, leaving only the most basic syllables after a long attenuation.

He stopped in his tracks and tilted his head to listen—that echo was not a sound, but a rhythm.

Extremely slow, extremely uniform, like some ancient vibration still retaining every detail from its initial initiation during a long transmission.

"Did you hear it?"

He asked softly.

Lu Qing stood behind him and also stopped: "Disciple sensed it. It is like an extremely slow pulse."

Shen Nian continued walking forward.

That echo gradually became clearer during his advancement, slowly transitioning from a blurry outline into a specific form.

He could feel that it came from a fixed position ahead, not a scattering fluctuation, but having a clear source point.

He walked for about the time it takes to burn an incense stick, and the space ahead began to show some subtle changes.

The silence became less uniform, as if slightly disturbed by something, leaving behind extremely faint traces.

Those traces were not visual, but a difference on a spatial level.

Just like walking through a slightly cold air, one could feel the temperature change on the skin, and certain locations in this space had a similar feeling.

Shen Nian stopped at a place with relatively obvious traces and extended his palm forward.

When that space contacted his palm, it provided an extremely slight resistance—not being blocked, but rather as if gently intercepted by an extremely thin membrane.

He took a step forward.

That resistance briefly increased for an instant as he passed through, and then disappeared.

He found himself standing in a new space, and the surrounding environment presented a texture completely different from before.

The skylight here was more concentrated, as if an invisible lamp hung overhead, illuminating the entire region brightly.

The ground was covered with a layer of transparent crystal, like a frozen ice surface, but extremely solid.

In the center of the space floated an irregular crystal structure.

Its size was about equivalent to a small hut, and its shape was asymmetric, presenting a polyhedron form.

The angle of each face was slightly different, as if carefully cut, but without pursuing complete geometric symmetry.

That echo emanated precisely from its interior.

Shen Nian stopped in front of the crystal structure, did not immediately approach, but stood in place and observed for a moment.

That structure did not glow under the light, but just floated quietly, with no markings or patterns on its surface, like a carefully polished stone slowly rotating.

But Shen Nian could feel that something was indeed flowing inside it.

He reached out and hovered his palm about an inch above the surface of the crystal structure.

That echo became clearer in his perception.

Its rhythm was extremely uniform, without pauses in the middle, as if someone were reading a long text at an extremely stable speed, with every syllable maintaining the same length.

He did not rush to touch the crystal surface, but just let his palm stay there, feeling the rhythm and frequency of that echo.

After a moment, he withdrew his hand and turned to Lu Qing: "There is a flowing pulse inside this structure. Its rhythm is very stable, like a repeatedly calibrated metronome."

Lu Qing stepped forward and also stayed by the side of the crystal structure for a moment: "Disciple's recording talisman captured the same information. The frequency of this pulse is related to the cumulative turning direction of the contour line on the index disk, as if measuring with the same scale."

Shen Nian cast his gaze back to that structure.

It was still rotating slowly, and that echo continued to emanate, as if executing a program that had run for countless years, without undergoing any changes due to his appearance.

He sat cross-legged in front of that structure, closed his eyes, condensed the Sixteen-Color Power into a fine thread, and let it slowly seep in from the surface of the structure, clinging closely to that invisible boundary, adhering to it like flowing water, and traveling slowly.

At first, what he perceived was only a uniform silence.

But as time passed, that energy began to flow along fixed paths.

Those paths were not random, but carefully planned, like fixed routes pre-stored inside the structure.

Shen Nian began to identify the direction of those paths one by one.

They were not isolated, but connected to each other, forming a delicate network, like an extremely miniature starmap folded and stored into this structure.

His consciousness moved slowly along those paths, like traveling through narrow passages.

When he passed through the seventh path, a new stream of information poured into his Sea of Consciousness.

That was an audio record.

Not language, not text, but an extremely clear signal.

Its structure was very simple, like some kind of engineering confirmation signal.

The sender used it to establish a connection with the receiver, and then sent more complete content.

Shen Nian did not rush to decipher that signal, but first let it play completely in his perception.

That signal was extremely short, lasting less than three breaths.

After playing, it stopped automatically without repeating, as if it had completed its mission.

Shen Nian opened his eyes and stood up.

He took two steps back and re-examined that structure.

"This structure is an anchor point."

He turned to Lu Qing: "It is not an independent building, but a part of the entire System. Its role is to maintain the terminal position of a passage."

"A passage? Leading to where?"

"Disciple has not fully confirmed it yet."

Shen Nian's gaze fell on the surface of that structure: "But Disciple perceived an extremely stable directional guidance inside it, as if continuously pointing to a fixed direction, and there are multiple recognizable nodes along the way."

He paused for a moment, as if walking through the path of that signal again in his mind: "After that signal finished playing, the direction pointed by its end is completely consistent with the disconnected contour line on the index disk. It is as if the same road is recorded in two different media."

Lu Qing recorded this discovery on the scroll: "If this signal and the index disk belong to the same System, then the previously recorded contour line may only be the first half drawn on paper, while what is stored in this structure is its complete version."

Shen Nian did not respond immediately.

He walked toward that structure again and pressed his palm on its surface.

This time, he did not penetrate its interior, but just let his palm stay on the surface, feeling the rhythm of that echo.

After lasting for a long time, that echo began to gradually weaken, like a pulse that had completed a cycle period, waiting for the receiving end to give a confirmation signal.

Shen Nian condensed power into an extremely short pulse and released it in reverse along the frequency of that signal.

He could confirm whether that confirmation signal actually reached the expected receiving position, nor did he know how it would be processed.

He waited quietly for a moment.

After he released the pulse, the rhythm of that echo showed an extremely subtle change—not a change in frequency, but a slight increase in amplitude.

It was like the structure, after confirming that the received signal belonged to the correct System, slightly increased some output power.

Shen Nian withdrew his hand and took a step back.

"It is responding."

He said softly.

Lu Qing stepped forward, likewise pressed her hand on the surface of the structure, stayed for a moment, and then withdrew: "Disciple's recording talisman captured the same response. This is a very clear engineering confirmation. The signal you sent matched its underlying benchmark."

Shen Nian stood in front of that structure for a while without moving his gaze away.

He recalled all the journeys he had walked through in this Land of Origin—from the initial ring, to the nest, the stairs, the Heluo Arch, the wall arc, the Gray Path, then to the twelve vacant positions, and finally to the index disk.

Every step was guiding him toward a more distant place.

And this structure, like a boundary marker of a hidden gate, silently marked the first step leading to an even more distant direction.

Shen Nian took out the fine crystal from his embrace and gently placed it on a relatively flat position on the surface of the structure.

The moment the crystal touched the surface, those spiral patterns that were originally flowing slowly inside it began to continue extending toward the end, like ink slowly soaking along the texture of paper.

Shen Nian looked at Lu Qing: "The passage is here, and the map matches. We should continue on."