txolops Chapter 697 Underground Space! Primordial Water Source!
Chapter 697 Underground Space! Primordial Water Source!
Those patterns were not the array patterns or Gu patterns commonly used by any cultivation country on Tiannan Star, but a completely unfamiliar writing system. The strokes were strong and sharp, yet they carried an indescribable sense of vicissitude.
The patterns on the stone pillars have become blurred by the erosion of time, but the remaining parts still reveal their former grandeur.
Several half-collapsed stone halls were scattered across the platform. The halls were built with a dark golden stone that Chen Fan had never seen before. The surface of the stone had a faint starlight flowing around it, emitting a faint glow in this dark underground.
The stones were of extremely high quality. Chen Fan probed them with his divine sense and found that their internal spiritual energy structure was extremely special. The trajectory of the spiritual energy flowing within them was somewhat similar to the laws of space, as if these stones themselves contained some kind of spatial attribute.
He had never seen similar materials on Tiannanxing.
Some of the stone halls had their roofs completely collapsed, leaving only a few lonely stone pillars supporting the sky. Others were relatively well-preserved, with their doors tightly closed. Although the protective array patterns on the doors had faded and lost their luster, faint fluctuations of spiritual energy still emanated from them, indicating that they had not yet completely failed.
Several stone temples have huge cracks remaining on their walls, the edges of which are as smooth as mirrors, as if they were cleaved by some extremely sharp force rather than collapsing naturally.
A crack stretched from the roof of a stone temple all the way to the foundation, its edges as smooth as if cut with a knife into tofu.
This is definitely not a trace left by natural collapse, but rather caused by an extremely powerful strike.
To leave such a smooth cut on this dark gold stone, the person who made the cut must have a cultivation level of at least the Refinement stage.
The golden bowl did not remain in the ruins area.
As if drawn by something, it flew straight into the deeper underground space.
Chen Fan followed closely behind with his divine sense, passing through one ruin after another, crossing one dried-up culvert after another, and skimming over one collapsed tower after another.
The scale of this place far exceeded his imagination; the area he could perceive with his divine sense alone was no less than dozens of miles, and this was clearly just the tip of the iceberg of the entire ruins.
The style of the ruins along the way is also changing.
The outermost stone hall is still relatively well-maintained; although it is dilapidated, the original architectural layout can still be seen.
The deeper you go, the more bizarre the architecture becomes.
Some of the stone temples are shaped completely differently from conventional buildings, resembling some kind of giant mechanical device, with gear-like stone components and pipe-like holes covering their surfaces.
There was also a stone palace that was suspended in mid-air. Although it was tilted more than halfway, it was still supported by some residual spatial force and did not fall completely.
Dozens of pebbles of varying sizes surround the temple, also suspending in sync, creating a strange weightless zone.
Chen Fan suddenly sensed the aura of a cultivator.
Not one, but several.
These auras were extremely powerful, the weakest being at the late Nascent Soul stage, with one even reaching the Great Perfection of the Nascent Soul stage. They were scattered in various corners of the ruins, some digging for something, some meditating and regulating their breathing, and some carefully traversing spatial rifts.
Their clothing varied; some wore standard robes that Chen Fan had never seen before, while others wore ancient-style animal skin armor. None of them resembled the style of any cultivation kingdom on Tiannan Star.
Chen Fan remained silent and did not allow the golden bowl to approach the cultivators.
His goal for this trip was the innate water source, not to deal with these powerful figures of unknown origin. The golden bowl seemed to sense his intention, its flight path becoming more concealed, silently traversing the shadows of the ruins, and quickly bypassing the area where the cultivators were located.
As he passed a stone hall that had mostly collapsed, he saw faint flames flickering inside. Several figures were moving in the flames, working together to break through a barrier.
The spiritual energy emanating from that restriction was extremely ancient, far older than any cultivation kingdom on Tiannan Star.
The golden bowl flew for about half an hour before finally arriving at an extremely strange place.
Before us stretched an extremely wide riverbed.
The riverbed is about 100 zhang wide, and the stone walls on both sides are covered with dense ancient patterns. These patterns meander along the stone walls and eventually converge in the center of the riverbed.
The bottom of the riverbed is covered with a thick layer of dark golden sand. The sand grains shimmer under the eerie green light, like a frozen galaxy.
In the middle of the riverbed is a winding underground river.
The river water was a deep, dark green, many times thicker than ordinary seawater. When it flowed, it didn't make a rushing sound, but a low, muffled sound, like a heartbeat.
A thin layer of mist floated on the river surface. The mist condensed and lingered, rolling and surging about a foot above the river. Occasionally, it would condense into thin, hair-like water dragons, which would circle in the air several times before dispersing back into mist.
Each time the water mist condensed, the surrounding spiritual energy trembled slightly, as if it were worshipping something.
Natural water source.
The golden bowl trembled violently the moment it sensed the dark river, and all the runes on its surface lit up at the same time.
Among the five elemental runes of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth, the water rune, though not yet lit up, has already begun to frantically absorb the water elemental energy emanating from the dark river.
With a thought, Chen Fan emerged from the golden bowl.
He landed on a stone slab half-buried in the sand by the riverbed, feeling the slab sink slightly beneath his feet. A powerful and pure water elemental energy surged from all directions, enveloping him completely.
The purity of that water elemental power was several times stronger than the Breath Soil and Earth Core Fire Essence he absorbed in the sealed land back then.
He looked up and around, and even though he was usually calm and collected, he couldn't help but be slightly moved.
The riverbed was surrounded by numerous spatial cracks, densely packed and layered, like an invisible net enveloping the entire riverbed.
The density of those cracks was more than ten times higher than that of the outer edge of the chaotic sea. The smallest was only the size of a needle tip, while the largest was tens of feet wide, like streaks of black lightning frozen in mid-air.
They intertwine and overlap, forming an impenetrable spatial barrier that completely isolates the riverbed from the outside world.
If an ordinary Nascent Soul cultivator were to forcibly cross this barrier, they would probably be torn to pieces before even reaching halfway.
But what truly shocked Chen Fan were the ruins on both sides of the riverbed.
The ruins here are older and larger than those we've passed before.
The remaining stone pillars are hundreds of feet tall, and the patterns on the pillars are no longer simple characters, but extremely complex star maps.
Those star maps depicted star systems that Chen Fan had never seen before. The lines connecting the stars formed complex teleportation arrays, and some of the teleportation array structures on the star maps even resembled interdimensional teleportation arrays.