bioinnovel Chapter 401 The Gatekeeper!
Chapter 401 The Gatekeeper!
Zhang Yan did not respond.
He glanced at the four people behind the old man.
The formation was a standard diamond guard formation; the weapons were not raised, but the fingers were near the trigger guards.
Well-trained.
The old man didn't notice Zhang Yan's silence.
He glanced at the indentation on the right side of the sphere and frowned.
"When I arrived three days ago, the dent was only half as deep as it is now."
Zhang Yan spoke. "Who are you?"
The old man took something out of his coat pocket.
Fist-sized, silver, spherical.
The surface was so smooth that there were no seams, but under the light of the Heart of the Celestial Craftsman, extremely fine lines could be faintly seen inside the silver sphere—the same type of runes as those on the inner wall of the spherical space.
"The gatekeeper," the old man said. "The seventeenth deacon. Code name 'Locksmith.'"
He held the silver sphere in his palm without handing it over.
"This is a 'lock.' It's paired with what you have in your hand."
Zhang Yan looked at the silver sphere.
The light of the Heavenly Craftsmanship Heart flickered slightly in his palm, its frequency changing in an extremely subtle way—not a repulsion, but more like a kind of response.
He looked away. "You've set up camp up there, with drilling equipment. What are you doing here?"
The locksmith put the silver sphere back into his pocket. "Execute the locking protocol."
"What do you mean?"
"Temporarily lock the door in its current state to prevent the shielding efficiency from further decreasing."
"For how long?"
"It depends on the pressure from outside the door. At the current rate of pressure..." the locksmith said, looking at the dent, "about forty minutes."
Forty minutes.
Zhang Yan quickly calculated in his mind.
The Heavenly Craftsman's Heart, when injected with energy alone, will increase the shielding efficiency from 26% to over 35%, which, according to system estimates, will take approximately twenty-five minutes.
If the locking protocol can freeze the door's state for those twenty-five minutes, allowing him to inject while simultaneously resisting the pressure from outside—
It will be much more efficient.
But he did not answer immediately.
"You said you'd wait for me for three days. How did you know I'd come?"
The locksmith's expression remained unchanged. "You fixed the first door. We detected the linkage signals generated by the door's mesh during the repair process."
"So you know someone's fixing the door."
"We know someone has the key and is fixing the door. There's only one key. It's only a matter of time before the key holder comes to the sixth door."
The logic was sound. Zhang Yan didn't dwell on it any further.
"How long have you been on guard?"
"From 1943 to the present." The locksmith's voice was flat. "Before that was the previous generation. I haven't seen all the records of earlier generational transitions, but the history of the gatekeepers goes back at least six hundred years."
Six hundred years. Longer than the three hundred years of Guantiange.
"Why don't you contact me first?"
The locksmith was silent for two seconds.
"The rule for gatekeepers is not to proactively contact the key holder. We guard the gate, but we don't interfere with the use of the key."
"Who made the rules?"
"The first generation of deacons."
Zhang Yan stared at him. "Now that you're standing here talking to me, doesn't that count as interference?"
The locksmith's lips twitched slightly.
It wasn't exactly a laugh; it was more like a bitter admission.
"Calculate."
He turned to look at the sphere. The indentation had deepened a little more, visibly so.
"But the rules are no longer sufficient," the locksmith's voice trailed off. "This isn't ordinary oppression. Three days ago, what's outside changed tactics."
Zhang Yan waited.
"Before, it applied pressure evenly, like a tide, from all directions. Each of the seven doors bore a portion of the pressure, sharing it with each other." The locksmith pointed to the indentation. "Starting three days ago, it concentrated its power on a single point. Right here. The sixth door. The one with the least effective shielding."
Zhang Yan already knew. But he needed to confirm how much the locksmith knew.
"Can you tell what's outside the door?"
The locksmith shook his head. "A lock can only sense the magnitude and direction of pressure, not the nature of its source. That kind of information—" He glanced at Zhang Yan, "should be the function of the key."
The division of labor is clear: lock tube defense, key tube diagnosis and repair.
Zhang Yan made a decision.
"cooperate."
The locksmith did not show any surprise.
"You activate the locking protocol to stabilize the door's current state. I'll inject energy using the Heart of Heaven to bring the shielding efficiency back above the safety threshold."
What is the safety line?
"35%."
The locksmith did a quick mental calculation. "Using a collaborative approach, it should be completed within twenty minutes."
He paused for a moment.
"There is one condition."
Zhang Yan looked at him.
"I want to see the workings of the Heavenly Craftsmanship with my own eyes."
"no."
Zhang Yan refused decisively. The operating mechanism of the Heavenly Craftsman's Heart was the core trump card of all his combat power. He had shown it to the Heavenly Observation Pavilion because the Star Observation Pavilion had exchanged three hundred years of intelligence and trust for it. This old man in front of him, no matter how many years he had guarded the gate, was meeting him for the first time.
The locksmith stared at Zhang Yan for a few seconds.
Then he nodded. "Please hurry. The lockout only lasts forty minutes. My end-of-life is also quite high."
He did not persist.
This reaction raised Zhang Yan's assessment of him by one level. He knew when to advance and when to retreat. He didn't get bogged down in non-core issues.
The two walked towards the sphere respectively.
The locksmith stood directly opposite the recess and took the silver sphere from his pocket. He held it in his hands and closed his eyes.
Zhang Yan walked to the other side of the sphere. The Heart of Heavenly Craftsmanship lit up completely in his palm, its light illuminating the runes within a three-meter radius.
"Begin," said the locksmith.
The silver sphere lit up.
It wasn't the explosive brilliance Zhang Yan had anticipated.
It is an extremely calm, silvery-white glow that permeates from the inside out.
The light spread, covering the entire surface of the black sphere.
The deformation at the dent has stopped.
It didn't disappear, it froze. Like pressing the pause button. The surface churning stopped, and the liquid metal solidified into still ripples.
The pushing from outside the door was still there, but it was blocked by the lockout protocol.
Zhang Yan wasted no time.
He affixed the Heart of Nature to the surface of the sphere.
Energy injection begins.
The system panel is fluctuating. Shielding efficiency: 26.4%...27.1%...28.3%...
It's faster than when he operates it alone.
The locking protocol froze the pressure from outside the door, eliminating the need for him to simultaneously charge energy and resist the pressure. All output was used to improve shielding efficiency.
29%. 31%. 33%.
It's the third minute.
A notification popped up in the system.
Gold lettering. He had never seen this format before.
"A compatibility verification request for the 'lock' protocol and the 'key' protocol has been detected. Allow?"
Zhang Yan's fingers paused slightly.
He looked at the locksmith. The old man had his eyes closed, his hands cradling the silver sphere, and fine beads of sweat glistened on his forehead.
He was clearly unaware that the system had displayed this message.
This was detected automatically by Tiangongzhixin.
For the first time, the key and the lock worked simultaneously in front of the same door.
The system is asking him if he wants to actually connect the two things.