bioinnovel Chapter 321 3 years ago!
Chapter 321 3 years ago!
Zhang Yan stared at the line of red text for three seconds.
"Read".
The system panel flashed briefly and then disappeared.
Instead, an image was directly implanted into his mind.
It's not a holographic projection, and it's not a video playback.
Xuanwu's memory core used a unique information encoding method of the Mohist school to directly write the last scene from 30,000 years ago into his visual cortex.
The image was blurry, as if viewed through a layer of murky water.
But it's clear enough.
That was a city.
No—it was a city suspended above the earth.
The bottom is covered with a dense array of gears and mechanisms, and steam pipes extend from the city's interior like blood vessels, connecting to dozens of towering energy towers on the ground.
Tiangong City.
The final form of Mohist civilization.
In the image, Zhang Yan saw four enormous figures—the White Tiger, the Vermilion Bird, the Azure Dragon, and the Black Tortoise beneath his feet—standing at the four corners of the city, like four pillars supporting the city's defensive formation.
The Heart of the Creator floats atop a tower in the very center of the city.
The complete heart of nature's craftsmanship.
It is not a fragment, not 92%, but a complete, perfect, and perfect golden disc.
Its light enveloped the entire Heavenly Craft City, forming a semi-transparent barrier visible to the naked eye.
Then, the sky split open.
It's not a metaphor.
The sky has truly cracked open.
A dark red crack stretching from the horizon to the dome tore through the atmosphere. What poured out of the crack was not light, nor matter—it was a presence that made Zhang Yan uncomfortable even with his 30,000-year-old photographic record.
Ruins.
It has no physical form.
Or rather, its shape is beyond the perception of human vision.
Zhang Yan only saw a blurry outline—enormous, immeasurable by any reference point.
That dark red eye.
He had seen it.
In the illusion of deep space, while destroying the nest's crystal pillars.
But that time it was just a projection, an afterimage.
The thing in the image is the real thing.
The four spirits fired simultaneously.
The White Tiger's electromagnetic railgun, the Vermilion Bird's plasma dimensional reduction attack, the Azure Dragon's space folding module, and the Black Tortoise's—Zhang Yan saw the Black Tortoise's weapon.
A ring of energy was released simultaneously from all the runes on the surface of the tortoise shell.
It's not an attack, it's a seal.
Golden energy wove into a large net, enveloping the projection of the Ruins.
The heart of nature shone with unparalleled brilliance.
The attacks of the Four Spirits and the energy of the Heavenly Craftsman converged into a single point in front of the Ruins. That point exploded, forming a dimensional rift.
It works on the same principle as the Azure Dragon's spatial folding module, but on a scale ten thousand times larger.
The crack sucked the ruins in.
seal.
That's how the 30,000-year seal came about.
But the price was—Zhang Yan saw it in the last frame of the video.
Tiangong City is falling.
The four spirits ran out of energy and shut down one after another.
The Heart of Heavenly Craftsmanship detached from the top of the tower and shattered into several pieces during its fall, scattering in all directions.
In the city, people dressed in Mo family-style clothing were running, shouting, and being crushed by falling buildings.
The video cuts out here.
Zhang Yan pulled himself out of his memories.
He was still lying under Xuanwu's belly, his back pressed against the cold metal floor.
Before me lay the base of a forty-ton tortoise shell.
It's very quiet.
Only the Xuanwu core power furnace hummed steadily.
Zhang Yan closed his eyes briefly.
Thirty thousand years ago, the Mohists exhausted the power of an entire civilization to seal the Ruins once.
The price is civilization itself.
The Heavenly Craft City collapsed, the Four Spirits lost their powers, and the Heart of Heavenly Craft shattered.
Even 30,000 years wouldn't be enough to repair the damage, so the seal gradually weakened.
What he needs to do now is to use the fragments he picked up and the four spirits he reassembled to start all over again.
A person.
Zhang Yan let out a breath.
He sat up from the ground, nearly hitting his head on the tortoise shell.
As it emerged from under Xuanwu's belly, bending over, the forty-meter-long mechanical giant tortoise slightly tilted its head, its large bronze eyes following its movement.
"Don't move." Zhang Yan patted Xuanwu's forelimbs.
The gears at the joint rotated smoothly, as if in response.
The system panel pops up.
"The basic information of the Mo Family's Four Symbols - Xuanwu has been synchronized to the host terminal."
Zhang Yan leaned against Xuanwu's forelimbs and pulled up Xuanwu's detailed parameters.
It is 41 meters long and 26 meters wide at its maximum width (including the shell).
Weighing 130 tons.
The four-limb hydraulic load-bearing system can support a maximum external pressure of 600 tons.
The armor's defense level is SSS, and it is made of "Mysterious Iron Heavy Armor" forged using ancient Mohist techniques. The surface rune array can naturally suppress the energy of the Void.
There is only one core weapon – "Township".
All the runes on the Xuanwu tortoise shell were activated simultaneously, releasing a spherical sealing force field.
The force field has a maximum radius of 300 meters. All the energy within the range is frozen, compressed, and forcibly converted into an inert state. With the help of the Heavenly Craftsman's Heart, energy recovery can be completed directly.
Zhang Yan finished reading the description.
This is the piece of the puzzle he's always been missing.
The White Tiger is responsible for precise hunting, the Tyrannosaurus Rex is responsible for crushing, the Vermilion Bird controls air superiority, and the Azure Dragon creates dimensional rifts.
But when it comes to sealing the true form of the Ruins, someone needs to lock its energy to prevent it from exploding before it's pushed into the crack.
Only Xuanwu can do this job.
He glanced down at the Heart of Heavenly Craftsmanship.
The disc's light was dimmer than before; the purification had consumed a lot of energy, but its 93% integrity remained stable.
He looked up at Xuanwu.
The giant tortoise was also watching him.
His bronze eyes were calm and quiet, completely different from the cold and fierce look of the white tiger.
Thirty thousand years have etched themselves into these eyes, making them seem less like weapons and more like a watchman still awake.
"Can we walk?" Zhang Yan asked.
Xuanwu slowly pushed himself up with his limbs, and his whole body stood up from a semi-curled state.
The weight of 130 tons pressed down on the metal floor, producing a deep, muffled thud.
The gear set resumed its normal operating rhythm.
"System Assessment: Xuanwu currently has 41% energy reserves, 97% structural integrity, and all subsystems are online. It can execute movement and basic defense commands."
Forty percent of the energy is enough.
Zhang Yan thought for a moment.
The next question is—how to get a 41-meter-long, 130-ton mechanical giant turtle out of the underwater ruins.
The white tiger is five meters long and can be stored in the storage space.
The Tyrannosaurus Rex is twelve meters long, and it can be stored away immediately after use.
However, the Xuanwu was more than ten times larger than the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
He opened the storage compartment panel to check the capacity.
[Storage space capacity assessment: The volume of the Black Tortoise exceeds the current space compression limit.]
[Suggested solution: After establishing a master-slave protocol, Xuanwu can bind its spatial coordinates through the Four Spirits Resonance Network, and automatically teleport from its current location when summoned by the host.]
[Teleportation cooldown: 72 hours.]
It means that Xuanwu doesn't need to be put in a pocket; it can come over by itself.
There is only a three-day interval between each summon.
acceptable.
"Then you stay here for now."
Zhang Yan said to Xuanwu, "The entrance to the ruins is synchronized with your heartbeat. If you don't move, the entrance will remain stable."
"I'll go out now and call you again in three days."
Xuanwu lowered its tortoise head, and its huge mechanical head stopped less than two meters in front of Zhang Yan.
The bronze eyes reflected the golden light of the craftsman's heart.
Then, it closed its eyes.
The hum of the core power furnace decreased by one level, and Xuanwu's limbs retracted back to the edge of its shell, entering a low-power standby mode.
It is not hibernation.
It is waiting.
Waiting to be summoned.
Zhang Yan put the Heart of Heavenly Craft back into his pocket and turned to walk towards the Devouring Shark that was parked on the outer edge of the core area.
The white tiger was already waiting next to the mechanical shark. When it saw Zhang Yan approaching, its electronic eyes switched from warm yellow to cold blue, and it let out a short, low growl.
"Let's go back." Zhang Yan jumped onto the tiger's back, patted its neck armor, and the white tiger silently trotted to carry him through the passage and back to the Devouring Shark.
He put the white tiger into his storage space and climbed into the cockpit.
As I closed the hatch, I glanced back into the depths of the ruins.
A few of the remaining star crystals on the dome lit up again.
Not much, but brighter than when I arrived.
The ruins are still alive.
The monstrous shark started its engine and changed direction.
The pulsation at the vortex entrance was stable and orderly—perfectly synchronized with the heartbeat frequency of Xuanwu.
The mechanical shark plunged into the whirlpool and was tossed about by the violent current for twelve seconds.
Then everything returned to silence.
deep sea.
Normal deep sea.
Zhang Yan glanced at the depth gauge. 840 meters.
Rise to the surface.