147: At the summit of Mercury, Lu Chen reigns supreme!
The white mist exhaled by Ignis condensed into frost flowers on the glass, only to be baked back into water vapor by the Holy Light drifting from behind.
Shelley and Morning Dew watched the playful Ignis, glancing at each other.
Both smiled helplessly.
Ignis was two years older than them.
But in truth, her Heart-Nature was that of a little girl who had yet to grow up.
Morning Dew walked to one side to help the staff calibrate the spectrometer, her holy codex floating above the console. "Brother Chen, signs of heavenly dao contamination have been detected in the shaded area; it's the Bronze Resonance Waves we're familiar with. Could the Heavenly Dao Incarnation be here?"
From Shelley's position, countless drones were released from the starship in the next moment. These Little Phoenix Drones were all coated with Shelley's ice crystal magic; the ice crystal Phoenixes poured out like the Milky Way, blooming in the vacuum like hexagonal frost flowers.
When the first probe touched Mercury's surface, the holographic projection suddenly twisted into a vortex. Ning Xiwei's bone puppets collectively turned toward the northwest: "The book of the dead senses... sorrow."
The starship slowly landed on the edge of a crater. Sun Feifei was the first to manifest a protective Qi shield and leap to the ground, planting the five elements flags into the scorching rock layer.
The Yin and Yang fish on her Daoist robe swam into the Trigram Compass in her hand.
The young girl softly chanted an incantation and performed a divination.
A copper coin on the Zhen position!
"Li within Kan... it seems there is no danger here... Wait, there's the aura of a living being below!"
Following Sun Feifei's report,
Everyone on the starship felt a bit strange.
There are actually living things here?
Is there life?
Lu Chen ordered:
"Get ready. We disembark in thirty minutes."
"Yes!" a chorus of responses rang out from the bridge.
Everyone was filled with curiosity about this new planet... The moment they stepped into the shadow zone, the temperature inside their helmets plummeted to minus 173 degrees.
Ignis's Balrog Armor automatically covered her body. She raised her hand, and a ball of lava light illuminated the area a thousand meters ahead.
A massive Bronze Stele stood tall in front of them.
The surface of the stele was covered in inscriptions from different eras, and at the very top was Lu Chen's name.
This was indeed something from a hundred thousand years ago.
Looking at this scene, Lu Chen felt somewhat emotional.
It had been a hundred thousand years, and he had come again.
Yet it felt both strange and familiar.
In his recovering memories, why was this piece missing?
Memories of conquering the heavens?
"This is impossible..." Morning Dew's surprised voice rang out as she scanned the inscriptions with Holy Light. The newest line was clearly less than a hundred thousand years old. "Brother Lu, look at this passage: [Earth Calendar, July 14, 2055. Fenrir Ignis, during the Path of Conquering the Heavens, awakened here as a King-rank Balrog Monarch]... The date is only a little over thirty thousand years from our current time."
"Fenrir Ignis?" Ignis exclaimed. "Oh, he's my grandfather's grandfather's grandfather!"
Thump!
Lu Chen lightly chopped Ignis's head with his hand. "Just say your ancestor!"
"Ouch! (ｷ｀ﾟДﾟ´)!! I get it, he's my ancestor."
Shelley used ice crystal magic to cling to the entire stele, searching for the power within. Before long, cracks appeared in the ice crystals, and silver-white sand seeped out from them.
Shelley closed her eyes and sensed it gently.
She recognized this thing.
Shelley said to everyone:
"This is the sand of time, a medium for time recorded in the ancient texts of our Arctic Realm. Recording things with this ensures they won't be destroyed even after ages. The experts of the Arctic Realm also came here back then; the first batch should have been a hundred thousand years ago."
Shelley's fingertip lightly touched a grain of sand. The ice crystal grew in reverse into a blooming sapling, only to turn into dust within five seconds.
Like a dream or an illusion—a world in a flower.
Lu Chen touched the base of the stele with his tianwen sword, and the massive bronze monument emitted a chime like a set of bells.
It seemed to be responding to Lu Chen.
Too many stories were buried here.
Countless experts had continuously stepped onto the same path over these hundred thousand years, starting from a hundred thousand years ago.
Every hundred thousand years came a Great Extinction, and during this time, countless beings resisted.
This world did not know how many Great Extinctions it had endured.
How many times it had been destroyed.
Civilizations created by different races were wiped out, only for new groups to be born and give rise to new civilizations.
But what remained unchanged was—the struggle!
The constant resistance!
Even if the road is difficult and full of hardships, one must forge ahead with determination.
With a wave of his hand, Lu Chen summoned the golden compass to hover in the air.
Three hundred and sixty copper coins disassembled and shot out, forming the Luoshu Formation directly on the stele.
When the ninth copper coin clicked into place, the entire stele suddenly projected a vast star map. Betelgeuse in Orion was flashing violently.
The map appeared!
An "Age of Discovery" map for interstellar navigation!
Just then.
"Ah!"
A cry of pain rang out.
Ignis suddenly clutched her temples. The lava patterns on her armor detached from her skin and condensed into Crimson-Gold Chains in the vacuum!
Scenes from a hundred thousand years ago flooded into her mind:
Her Balrog ancestors were piloting Bronze Warships through the sea of stars, and at the bow were her three Emperor-rank ancestors!
The Three Great Balrog Kings of Hell!
They were all following a powerhouse from the East.
The Imperial Preceptor of the First Emperor of Huaxia.
An existence even more ancient than the Great Qin Immortal Dynasty—the Lord of the Primordial Underworld, Lu Chen!
At the very end of these images, Ignis saw the far side of a moon orbiting a certain gas giant, which also bore the same star map as the stele.
That was a backup plan left by the ancestors!
Once this place was destroyed,
To find the exact location of the Vertical Pupil, one of the Heavenly Dao Incarnations,
One would have to seek that even more secretive stele!
They had thought of everything except surrender.
Just like the King they followed!
Just like the Lord of the Primordial Underworld!
—Never surrender!
"Watch out!" Morning Dew instantly expanded the Holy Light Barrier.
Under the bath of Holy Light, Ignis's spirit stabilized.
However, she was gasping for breath and began to stammer as she described everything she had just seen.
The enlightenment from the ancestors on this stone monument,
The information left by the ancestors,
She had received it!
At that moment, the chains transformed into a Solar Prominence three meters thick, charging straight through Mercury's atmosphere and enveloping everyone in a five-million-degree plasma.
"Absolute Zero—!"
Shelley flew above everyone.
She deployed an Ice Crystal Barrier to protect them!
Ignis donned her Balrog Armor, creating a strange resonance with the stone monument left by the ancestors here.
She also radiated a brand-new spirit!
She raised her sword and charged into the sky.
Her whole body was erupting with flames.
Like a fire maiden wreathed in blazing flames.
Her True Body of the Flame Demon was fully revealed!
Absolute Zero and stellar fire interlaced into a rainbow vortex.
Ning Xiwei's bone army was summoned like scattering beans to turn into soldiers, but under that violent atmosphere, they instantly turned to ash.
This made her somewhat displeased.
Dealing with such natural forces of heaven and earth,
Was not what a Necromancer like her excelled at!
"I won't be a burden!" Ning Xiwei refused to back down, holding her powerful Necromantic Magic Book in one hand, forcing it to flip to the last page as she softly chanted, "—Death Domain!"