Chapter 203: Abyss Echoes and the Ancient Corridor

The darkness at the bottom of the pit was thick as substance; cold, damp air carried the heavy smell of metallic rust and dust, pressing on everyone's nerves. The light of stardust filtered down sparingly through the enormous breach overhead, barely enough to outline the jagged, twisted metal walls nearby and the rubble piled on the ground—the sediment of countless years.

"Airflow confirmed, oxygen content slightly elevated but still below standard. Radiation index has dropped within safe threshold." Zero's console emitted a soft, pale-blue glow, like a lighthouse in the darkness, driving back the gloom in a small radius while providing vital environmental data. Her scanning beam carefully probed the surroundings. "Structural stability assessment in progress… no recent collapse risk detected. A regular passage detected ahead, suspected to lead into the Ark's interior."

This was good news. They had temporarily escaped the harsh surface environment and the direct threat of the Boss scout craft, and found a possible shelter.

Lin Mo drew from his bosom that already-dimmed stardust core fragment, no larger than a fingernail—a remnant of his earlier power surge. Now carefully controlled by him, it radiated a warmer, brighter milky-white glow than Zero's console, like a miniature star, illuminating the surroundings a little more clearly.

Where the light reached, one could see they were inside an extremely vast space, like a section of a colossal ruptured pipe. Beneath their feet lay thick dust and debris, soft and yielding to the tread. The surrounding walls were of some dark, neither-metal-nor-stone material, covered in incomprehensible geometric patterns and the traces of long-dried energy conduits, with many places blanketed in thick, peculiar fungal colonies like black cotton.

Sister Ai Li carefully laid Priestess Liyana flat on a relatively even, dry metal plate and swiftly checked her condition. Priestess Liyana was still unconscious, her breathing faint but steady; the dark-purple crystals on her brow and chest were utterly silent, as if the earlier eruption had drained all her strength and temporarily suppressed those vicious annihilation spores. But Sister Ai Li's own shadow-erosion wounds on her ribs and shoulder looked even more grotesque in the dim light—that blackness, as if possessed of life, writhed faintly beneath her pale skin, bringing waves of cold, stabbing pain. Her brows knit tight; she took the last of the high-concentration energy gel from the small pouch she still had, gritted her teeth, and applied it once more along the wound's edge, trying to slow that eerie erosion. The searing pain made the veins at her temple bulge, but she stubbornly held her tongue.

Xiang Lingna sat leaning against the icy wall, gasping violently; every breath came with a burning pain in her chest. The fissures on her right arm showed up even more clearly in the stardust light, with occasional extremely faint streams of chaotic light darting through inside, bringing a prickling ache. She could not help raising her left hand, gently stroking those fissures; the cold and roughness transmitted by her fingertips weighed heavy on her heart. This arm was both power and a tremendous burden and hidden danger. She could not help glancing again toward the pit wall that had drawn her resonance earlier, though she could no longer see it now. That vague electronic voice..."Key"... was it calling her?

"We must find a safer place as soon as possible, and…" Lin Mo's gaze swept over Sister Ai Li's blackened wounds and Xiang Lingna's fissure-riddled arm, his voice low, "find a way to treat you. Zero, prioritize scanning for medical units or areas with anomalous energy reactions."

"Command confirmed. Constructing preliminary environmental map…" Zero's console projected a blurry holographic image; starting from their position, a clear passage extended forward, but farther places remained shrouded in darkness and the unknown. "The passage forks after extending roughly a hundred and fifty meters. The left branch shows faint energy reactions; the right branch detects…periodic pulsed energy signals, source unknown."

Periodic pulses? That stood out as especially jarring amid this dead, silent ruin.

"Go right." Lin Mo made the decision. Where there were energy fluctuations, there might be equipment still operating—dangerous perhaps, but better than groping blindly in utter dead silence.

After a brief rest, the group moved out again. Lin Mo walked at the front with the stardust light in hand, Zero hovered at his side scanning and guiding, Sister Ai Li once more shouldered Priestess Liyana, and Xiang Lingna followed close behind. The passage was far wider than imagined, wide enough for several to walk abreast, but the ground was choked with obstacles—collapsed metal supports, severed cables, and certain massive, unidentifiable machine wrecks blocked the way, forcing them to constantly detour or climb.

The smell of ozone and rust in the air grew stronger. The geometric patterns on the walls also grew more intricate; occasionally one could see crystal panels embedded in the walls, already dim and lightless, apparently once some kind of display or operating device.

"These patterns…seem to contain a complete energy-guidance system, with similarities to the underlying logic of elven spell runes, but more…mechanized." Lin Mo observed the walls as he walked, a glint of thought in his eyes. His stardust power seemed to have a natural affinity for this environment; the long-dormant patterns on the surrounding walls, under the illumination of his light, would occasionally flash with an extremely faint, almost imperceptible answering flow of light.

Xiang Lingna also noticed that the deeper they went, the more active those few emerald veins inside the crystal of her right arm became, darting gently like faint currents, producing some extremely subtle resonance with the surroundings. That feeling of being called surfaced again faintly, but no longer as a clear phrase—rather as fragments of emotion, ancient sorrow and waiting, drifting in the air.

Suddenly, Zero's console flickered: "Detected fifty meters ahead, pulsed energy source intensity rising. Simultaneously…multiple faint life signals detected, matching the characteristics of the silicon-based lifeforms encountered on the surface. They…seem to be gathered near the pulse source."

More crystal-cluster creatures? And gathered around the energy source? What were they doing?

The group immediately slowed their pace, growing more cautious. Lin Mo restrained the stardust radiance on his body, maintaining only the minimum illumination. Zero also shut off the scanning beam, relying solely on optical sensors to observe in the darkness.

The passage began sloping downward here, and there appeared a stairway hewn by hand. The stairs too were badly damaged, with many sections already collapsed. They moved downward carefully; from ahead came rhythmic, low "humm…humm…" sounds—precisely the pulsed energy source Zero had detected. At the same time, there were also faint, dense "clack-clack" sounds, evidently from those crystal-cluster creatures.

Turning a corner, the sight before them made everyone involuntarily hold their breath.

At the foot of the stairs was a vast circular hall. The hall's dome had partially collapsed, exposing the jagged rock and metal structure above, but most of the area remained intact. At the center of the hall stood a colossal, intricate device composed of countless precision metal rings nested layer upon layer; most of its structure was damaged, with twisted, severed conduits and scorched components scattered everywhere, but at its very core, a milky-white rhomboid crystal roughly the height of a person, half-embedded in the ground, was pulsing with a soft, rhythmic glow in time with that low "humm"—on, and on, and on!

Each time the pulsed light flared, it illuminated the entire hall for an instant. One could see hundreds upon hundreds of crystal-cluster creatures gathered around that massive crystal! They were no longer aggressive as on the surface, but quietly ringed it; the halos on their bodies brightened and dimmed in sync with the pulse's rhythm, and their short crystalline forelimbs would occasionally lightly touch the ground or one another, emitting fine clacking sounds. The scene was, astonishingly, like some ancient ritual being performed—or perhaps…they were drawing energy from the crystal?

The pulsed light illuminated the hall's walls, where there were no longer simple geometric patterns, but large murals, already faded and peeling! The content of the murals could still be faintly made out: countless tiny points of light (stardust) gathered into rivers, flowing through the boundless darkness; an Ark of unimaginable size, graceful as a new moon, sailing within the stardust river; inside the Ark, a lush ecological world perfectly fused with precision machinery; and some slender, sharp-eared elven figures, somewhat resembling Priestess Liyana, operating various instruments, or living in harmony with certain peculiar creatures (among them silhouettes resembling these crystal-cluster creatures)…

"This is…" Lin Mo's gaze was deeply drawn to the mural, "a navigation record of the Stardust Ark? They used stardust energy for interplanar voyages, and…these crystal-cluster creatures seem to be the Ark's original symbiotic creatures?"

Zero's console quietly ran its scan: "Central crystal energy analysis: highly pure stardust crystallization, purity second only to the core Lord Lin Mo previously absorbed. But its energy is slowly and irreversibly draining. The pulsing phenomenon stems from periodic energy dissipation caused by damage to the internal stabilizing structure. These silicon-based lifeforms are absorbing the dissipated energy to sustain their own existence."

Just then—perhaps the group's arrival had upset some balance, perhaps the more refined stardust power contained within Lin Mo had attracted them—the crystal-cluster creatures gathered around the pulsing crystal nearly simultaneously ceased that synchronized "ritual" of brightening and dimming; the halos atop their bodies swiveled in unison toward Lin Mo's party at the passage entrance!

Hundreds of halos flickered at once, in the intermittent darkness between pulses, like countless cold eyes snapping open!

"Clack! Clack-clack-clack!" That earlier high-frequency scraping noise, full of wariness and hostility, rang out again—and this time it was hundreds of voices converging into a sound wave that made one's scalp crawl!

The dozens of crystal-cluster creatures nearest them had already whirled around, their short limbs driving hard, launching themselves toward the group like projectiles! The chisel-like crystalline tips of their forelimbs glinted coldly—clearly no mere warning this time!

"Fall back!" Lin Mo barked low, and the stardust radiance flared once more as he prepared to meet the charge.

However, at this knife-edge moment—

Humm——!!!

The pulsing crystal at the center of the hall, as if stimulated by the sudden eruption of refined stardust power from Lin Mo, blazed up with a milky-white radiance far surpassing any previous pulse—abnormally dazzling!

This intense light swept across the entire hall like a ripple! Every crystal-cluster creature the light passed over froze mid-motion; the halos on their bodies flickered wildly, and the noise they emitted shifted from sharp hostility to a…hesitant, broken ticking, full of confusion and uncertainty.

The intense light also illuminated the deepest wall of the hall. That wall was relatively intact, carved all over with even more complex and ancient elven script and runes. And at the center of the encircling text was a distinct rhomboid depression pattern, faintly matching the shape of the crystal on Xiang Lingna's right arm! At the center of the pattern was an extremely tiny, sprout-like emerald engraving, radiating a faint life aura of the same origin as the veins inside the crystal on Xiang Lingna's right arm!

Xiang Lingna's right arm jolted violently! The emerald veins inside the crystal blazed to an unprecedented brightness, burning hot, pointing madly toward that rhomboid depression! That vague electronic voice sounded again in her mind, countless times clearer than before!

【High-level authorized stardust energy detected…and…World Tree sapling resonance…】

【Backup energy control unit…authorization verified…】

【Welcome back…Guardian of…'New Oasis'…】