Chapter 725: More Ruins, Mysterious Existences

A moment later, a series of hurried footsteps approached from afar. Xia Duo put away his notebook and looked at the newcomers; it was indeed the father-son pair, Jiabasi and Boke.

"Lord! Jiabasi is late!"

"Not late, you've come just in time!" Xia Duo did not mind their tardiness. He pointed to the raised hand of the scaled creature on the statue and said to Jiabasi—

"I ask you, when you were excavating, did you find anything in this statue's hand?"

"No!"

Jiabasi said with great certainty, "Lord, as for the things excavated from the ruins so far, apart from some fragile clay tablets that are inconvenient to move, everything else is here!"

"Just this statue?"

"Yes!"

Jiabasi's answer left Xia Duo somewhat silent. These ruins were truly different from what he had imagined. Could it really have turned into academic archaeology?

After thinking for a moment, Xia Duo asked again:

"Based on your experience, roughly how large is the scope of these ruins?"

"This—"

Jiabasi suddenly looked up at Xia Duo, appearing somewhat hesitant. Seeing this, Xia Duo couldn't help but laugh, "Jiabasi, feel free to speak, don't have any psychological burden. How could I possibly blame you for something like this!"

"Lord, it is all my fault, I shouldn't have speculated about you like that!" Jiabasi suddenly became fearful again.

For a veteran Adventurer, even if he shows fear, how much of it could be real? Xia Duo didn't want to go around in circles, "Alright, don't I know you by now! Hurry up and tell me about the situation of the ruins!"

"Yes, yes!"

Jiabasi nodded hurriedly, "Lord, judging from the current excavation, these ruins have a range of at most about a hundred meters. However, based on my experience, there should be other ruins nearby!"

"Oh?"

Finally, there was some substantial information. Looking at the unremarkable Jiabasi, Xia Duo nodded silently in his heart and continued to ask, "How did you figure that out?"

"Lord, I discovered traces of a walkway deep in the ruins, but this area seems to have undergone severe geological changes in the past. One end of the walkway goes straight into the ground, while the other end twists and slants toward the southeast."

While explaining, Jiabasi used his Dagger to draw a hypothetical map of the ruins on the ground. He pointed to the line leading southeast and gave a relatively conservative speculation—

"The ruins going underground might not be found, but if nothing goes wrong, another ruin should be found to the southeast. As for what can be discovered in those ruins, I am not sure."

Is that so!

Xia Duo was somewhat hesitant about whether to continue excavating the ruins. Clearly, these ruins were much older than the Elf, so calling them ancient ruins was no exaggeration.

However, would one necessarily find treasures in ancient ruins?

Let alone treasures, one might not even find anything of value. Currently, this ruin only had one statue that could be considered of some value; the rest were just the clay tablets Jiabasi mentioned earlier.

Xia Duo had previously obtained a few pieces in the Demon Nest. Apart from some long-lost text, they only contained some simple Arcane Geometry Diagrams.

If those unknown texts were explaining those Arcane Geometry Diagrams, it could almost be said that those clay tablets had no value at all.

After all, if one wanted to find information on Arcane Geometry, the Tower of Time Library had ready-made materials, which were far more profound than those on the clay tablets.

If they were not, then they actually didn't have much value either; the truly valuable thing should be that unknown text.

If one could decipher that text, perhaps in the future, one could find more records of that unknown text, thereby translating some content that might be very Advanced compared to the present.

But Xia Duo was not good at deciphering text; this could only count as a form of accumulation, and perhaps a suitable decipherer could be found in the future.

After weighing it all, Xia Duo found that these so-called ancient ruins were somewhat of a chicken rib. Now, it all depended on whether this statue could make him change his mind.

Thinking this, Xia Duo made a decision:

"First, clear out these ruins completely. As for the southeast direction, there is no need to excavate for now, but you can conduct some basic exploration. Wait for my orders!"

"Yes!"

……

After the father and son left, Xia Duo circled the statue a few more times, then gritted his teeth and placed his hand on the surface of the statue.

Almost without warning, the statue, which was a full three meters tall, instantly disappeared from where it stood, and only then did Xia Duo heave a sigh of relief.

Even knowing that Bishop Anbulier could undo Petrification, and that Jiabasi had no aftereffects after being un-petrified, Xia Duo still did not want to personally experience the feeling of being petrified.

The next step was to return to the Tower of Time and put down the statue for further research, but at this moment, Xia Duo could not escape his own footsteps!

The Personal Space existed within his consciousness; in other words, any change in the Personal Space could not escape his consciousness.

Originally, objects within the space required a slight focus of attention to be perceived, but after this statue was placed into the Personal Space, it immediately triggered an expansion of the Personal Space!

If Xia Duo couldn't even notice such a change, then his consciousness would be too dull!

In fact, Xia Duo not only discovered that the space was expanding, but he also knew what was causing the space to expand!

It was not the statue itself, but a mysterious existence hidden within the statue. Even with Xia Duo's home-field advantage, he could not detect what that thing actually was.

He only knew it was an intangible and formless thing. Xia Duo could only perceive its existence but could not make further judgments, or perhaps there was no time to make further judgments.

After that existence flew out of the statue, it instantly exploded—literally—exploding into a Micro-Plane Prototype, and then it instantly annihilated.

At the same time, the Personal Space expanded continuously, expanding to about 35 cubic meters. Compared to before, it had almost expanded by half in one go!

At this moment, the expression on Xia Duo's face was extremely brilliant. On one hand, he had witnessed the process of Plane Creation and annihilation. Even though the time was very short, in the future, it might play a very important role in his research on Planes.

On the other hand, regarding the expansion of the Personal Space, up until now, the only thing Xia Duo had discovered that could expand the Personal Space was the Arcane Crystal.

If there were one more thing, wouldn't it be even more convenient!

The most critical point was that the latter cost almost nothing; one just had to keep digging. Perhaps one day he would dig into a large ruin with hundreds or thousands of statues standing there, just waiting for him to collect them!

Thinking this, Xia Duo couldn't care about the fact that he had just let Jiabasi leave. He directly cast Flight and intercepted him just as Jiabasi was about to reach the Demonstration Field:

"Jiabasi, new order. After the existing ruins are cleared, continue to excavate toward the southeast. If you don't have enough manpower, just tell Jiefu, I will have him set aside people for you!"

"Yes, Lord!"

Although he did not understand why the Lord had suddenly become so urgent, Jiabasi had been an Adventurer all his life and naturally knew what should be asked and what should not.