Chapter 3527

Even though the area at the corner of the stairs was not large and they could pass through almost instantly, the danger was still pressing in on them. On the 30th floor, the sudden increase in gravity almost made Xia De unable to lift his legs, and Miss Novare was even pressed directly to the ground.

This level of gravity was enough to turn an ordinary person into a mixture of flesh and bone. There must have been a monster that controlled gravity in the corridor of this floor. But fortunately, the monster did not show itself, and they passed through that area with difficulty.

When they arrived at the 33rd floor, the light of the candle and the candlestick disappeared completely in an instant. In that darkness, the deadly feeling and the pain in his left arm holding the candle made Xia De subconsciously block to the side with the long sword in his right hand, and then he was sent flying back into the stairs below under a massive impact.

The long sword clattered onto the stairs. As the candle in Xia De's hand lit up again, Miss Novare's scream came from the darkness. Xia De reached his hand back into the darkness based on memory and pulled her back to the stairs below. At this time, the vampire girl's left arm and shoulder bones were shattered, but fortunately, the vampire's recovery speed was astonishing:

"What is in the darkness?"

This was the first time they had encountered a situation where the light of matches was unusable, but fortunately, Xia De lit ten matches at once, and the light of the many matches finally illuminated the darkness. They crossed the 33rd floor during the short burning period of the matches. After the matches went out, the vampire girl still looked back at the darkness below with lingering fear:

"I can feel that the gaze watching us was full of tyranny and anger, and it only hurt us just now instead of killing us directly. What exactly was that?"

On the 37th floor, an unknown monster used an illusion, almost causing them to deviate from their forward direction and truly enter the corridor from the stairs. The subsequent 38th floor had spatial anomalies, and Xia De's 【Enhanced Spatial Perception】 was restricted here, so he couldn't be sure where he would end up if he took a step out.

In the end, he chose the direction to step by tossing the gold coin the god had given him just now to try his luck, and only then did he take Miss Novare across the 38th floor.

But strangely, the corridor on the 39th floor actually looked completely normal; it looked quite similar to the corridors ten floors below. Returning downstairs along the path they came was impossible, as the danger from before might still be waiting for them to go back, so they had better choose a floor near the 40th floor to enter and take the elevator back.

Since the 37th and 38th floors were extremely dangerous, the 39th floor seemed to be the most suitable choice for taking the elevator. While passing through the 39th floor, Xia De, holding the elevator key, felt around; the elevator room was the first one on the left side of the stairs.

But they did not stay on the 39th floor and continued upward. Because climbing the stairs required rest, healing, and thinking of ways to solve difficulties, ten minutes had already passed since they set off from the 25th floor.

"The god said that some kind of power makes the 40th floor no longer connected to other floors. What do you guess the situation of the 40th floor is now? Completely disappeared? Or forbidden to go up and down in a spatial sense?"

Xia De asked while holding the candle and standing at the corner between the two floors looking up. Miss Novare didn't answer with a serious expression and also looked up.

Both of them were prepared for the light to reveal danger, but what was illuminated above was just a layer of purple barrier.

"Hmm?"

At the highest step where the stairs connected to the 40th floor, a purple barrier completely blocked the passage into the corridor. Xia De threw a pebble upward and tried to approach a few steps further, and only after confirming that the barrier would not actively attack did he continue to step forward with Miss Novare.

They stopped at a position five steps away from the barrier, but even at such a distance, they still couldn't see the situation behind the barrier.

The light of the purple barrier was not particularly strong, but dense runes were swimming on it. All the runes revolved around the core "Ouroboros" symbol. Xia De could see that this was a rune lock, but with his level of knowledge, he could not unlock this level of rune lock:

"Miss Novare, since you have been in contact with the power of the sun, is it possible that you happen to be an expert in the field of rune locks as well?"

"Is there a connection between the two? I'm sorry, I don't know much about rune lock knowledge either."

Xia De then continued upward until he reached a distance sufficient to activate the 【Key of the Gate】 before using the spell, and then he knew that his strange arts could not open such a complex rune lock either. He had opened older rune locks before, but this time it didn't work because the person who set the rune lock should be on the 40th floor and was still maintaining this barrier.

This greatly increased the difficulty of picking the lock.

Not only Miss Novare, but Miss Corns and Ms. Gerd were also not masters of rune locks. Although the latter was knowledgeable, she was mainly engaged in research in the fields of potions and medicine.

Thus, the problem of the 40th floor was placed in front of the two so simply. This was not eerie or bizarre, nor did it require courage or perseverance to face. What they needed was just some knowledge and wisdom, but unfortunately, no one had such ability.

Although he didn't know how to crack the rune lock, Xia De, who had won the "Feilianna Medal," at least knew how to observe the characteristics of the rune lock and record its key structure.

"Since we can't solve it, then after I leave this time, I will find a professional to solve the problem. I actually attend a very famous school, and I can ask the professors to help."

The records of the 【Moon Library】 could not yet target information with too high a degree of mystery, and this rune lock obviously also had the characteristic of being forbidden from being recorded by similar strange arts. Therefore, Xia De could only record it manually, and recording the characteristics of the rune lock and the dense rune information on it took him nearly twenty minutes, exactly twice the time it took to climb the stairs.

Even so, Xia De felt that what he had recorded was still not enough. A rune lock is a very complex thing; even with enough time, a day and a night would not be enough for him to record all the details of the entire rune lock.

But time was already running out; 100 minutes seemed long but was not infinite. He calculated the time, closed his notebook, took one last look at the runes flowing in the purple barrier, and then walked downward with Miss Novare.

The 39th floor seemed to be really fine. Xia De had originally prepared to be attacked immediately once he truly walked out of the stair area, but until the elevator returned to the 10th floor with a rumbling sound, no abnormalities occurred around them.

They had been out for a long time this time, and Ms. Gerd was truly relieved to see them return safely. But the good news was that during this half-hour outing, Miss Corns had actually woken up.

This witch hunter lady had not fully recovered, but was only waking up from a coma intermittently. She spoke a few words to Xia De and Miss Novare quite weakly. After learning from Xia De that the demon had been sealed on the 25th floor, she burst into tears and then fainted again while crying.

"She can't handle such a big emotional fluctuation right now. Even if she leaves here, she will need to rest for a long time to recover."

Although the demon was sealed, the problem of the 40th floor still could not be solved. Ms. Gerd admitted that she was not a master of rune locks either. It seemed that this problem could only be solved by Xia De after returning to the Sixth Era.

There was less than ten minutes left, and Xia De, who was calculating carefully, didn't intend to waste it:

"I will return to the stairs in a moment to ask the god about the eye my friend left for me. But before that, I want to go into her dream to take a look."

He sat in front of the fireplace and pointed to the still-unconscious black-haired witch. The latter was lying flat on the soft mattress, and watching the firelight illuminate her profile, Xia De suddenly felt that the profile looked somewhat familiar.

But among all the black-haired girls he knew, there shouldn't be anyone who looked like this.

"I'm not in good condition right now, so I won't enter the dream with you. I can only cast spells to assist you."

Miss Novare, who was also sitting in front of the fireplace, said, with the bottle of blood brew beside her. Regarding the discussion about her just now, the two tacitly did not share it with their companions.

"No problem, I'm just entering the dream briefly to see what the situation is. After I fall asleep, you count to 200. If I haven't woken up yet, you force me to wake up."

Ms. Gerd's potion had been prepared. Xia De did not rest, drank the potion, and lay down beside the strange witch. Miss Novare bit her left index finger and pressed blood seals on the foreheads of Xia De and the black-haired witch respectively.

Amidst the sound of her softly chanting a spell, Xia De's tense consciousness relaxed until he fell into the dream.

When the feeling of falling disappeared, Xia De looked around and found himself in an endless ice field. The cold wind blew with snowflakes, and the visibility all around was extremely poor.

Even with the double protection of the potion and the vampire witch, he still felt a chilling cold.

The sky appeared gloomy, but fortunately, there were no traces of large-scale demonic corruption around.

Xia De then went to search for the owner of the dream, that is, the witch's trail, but he looked around and did not see her figure in the wind and snow:

"That's strange, shouldn't I appear directly beside the owner of the dream?"

But this was a dream of a demon-possessed person after all, so it was normal for strange things to happen. However, the constraints of this ice field dream on Xia De were almost non-existent, so he took off directly in the wind and snow, wanting to overlook the surroundings from a higher position.

It was just that the higher he flew, the worse the visibility became. At a position 100 meters above the ground, he couldn't even see the surrounding terrain clearly, and could only vaguely see a golden light in the distance.

So Xia De flew over in the air. When landing near the golden light, he noticed that the golden light came from one of two huge hills standing close together.

After landing on the side of the hill, he saw that the light came from under the ice layer. Standing on the ice, a huge circular golden ritual could be vaguely seen shining under the ice layer, and it possessed powerful miracle elements.