Free Web NovelChapter 220: Chapter 213: Fable
The surroundings gradually quieted down, and the sound of snoring began to rise and fall.
Li Yao suddenly leaned closer, pulling something out from the innermost part of his tunic.
It was a palm-sized metal plate, its edges heavily corroded with rust.
The surface was pitted and uneven, but some raised and indented patterns were still visible.
Unlike Ian’s piece, this plate wasn’t engraved with the trajectories of stars.
Instead, it had a few crooked lines, like a child’s scribbles, along with several lines of blurry, ancient text.
"Mom and Dad stuffed this into my hands before they left."
Li Yao’s voice was hushed, almost swallowed by the wind.
"They said... if one day the stars can no longer be seen, I should take this and go to the place sung about in our family’s ballad."
He handed the metal plate to Ian.
Ian took it, his fingers brushing over the rusted patterns.
It felt coarse and cold, but a faint energy resonance lingered in some of the indentations.
It shared the same origin as the Starfall Core, but it felt older, more... desolate.
"A ballad?" he asked.
Li Yao nodded, cleared his throat, and began to hum a tune in a barely audible whisper.
The melody was strange. It didn’t have much variation in pitch, but each note was drawn out, like the wail of wind through ruins.
He hummed a few fragmented lines, then stopped and softly recited the words he could remember.
"...City of Fallen Stars, eye of slumber...
The Watcher sleeps eternal here...
Until the stars return...
The key will open... the final door..."
After humming, the boy took a breath, his eyes shining startlingly bright in the firelight.
"Mom and Dad said our family... isn’t just some ordinary noble family.
The ’City of Fallen Stars’ from the ballad was supposedly a place from a long, long time ago, where a group of people dedicated themselves to observing the stars and guarding something.
Later, a cataclysm struck the world, and the city sank underground, but the descendants of the Watchers remained..."
He pointed at the metal plate. "What’s drawn on here might be the way to get there, but it’s too damaged. I can’t make sense of it."
Ian stared at the plate’s surface, his mind reeling.
He had the Starfall Core, and his younger brother had this strange metal plate.
’Looks like this identity is anything but ordinary.’
He momentarily set aside his chaotic thoughts and continued to study the metal plate.
Under the enhancement of his [Starlight Perception], the seemingly random lines gradually revealed a pattern.
They weren’t a map, but more like a... diagram of energy flow.
At the intersection of the lines were several small holes, etched with an extremely fine needlepoint.
Ian tried to inject a sliver of Starlight Energy into one of the holes.
VMMMM...
The plate’s surface vibrated gently.
The lines lit up in sequence with an incredibly faint silver light, like awakened blood vessels.
The light flowed, finally converging at the center of the plate.
There was a sunken, pentagram-shaped mark there.
In the center of the mark, a line of small words was engraved.
The inscription was mostly worn away, but Ian could barely make out a few syllables.
"...observatory... lowest level... Star Vein Anchor..."
Just then, the Starfall Core on his chest suddenly grew slightly warm.
A resonance, clearer than before, emanated from deep within the pendant.
It flowed through his veins to his fingertips, creating an extremely faint echo with the mark on the metal plate.
Ian looked up, following the sensation toward the southeast.
That was the direction of Maple City, and also the direction of the ancient observatory ruins.
"Big brother?" Li Yao called out softly.
Ian retracted his gaze and pushed the metal plate back into the boy’s hands.
"Keep this safe. Don’t let anyone see it."
"Mhm!" Li Yao nodded firmly, hiding the plate close to his body.
"So what do we... do now?"
Ian looked toward Chen Scarface’s large campfire in the distance.
The Scarface leader was whispering something to a few of his trusted men, occasionally glancing in their direction, his eyes flickering uncertainly in the firelight.
"For now, we follow the group to Blue Cave Mountain."
Ian said, "Along the way, we’ll find a chance to get some supplies and treat your wounds."
He paused, then added another sentence.
"Then, once it’s safe... we’ll go check out the place from the ballad."
Li Yao’s eyes lit up instantly. "Really?"
"Really." Ian patted his shoulder. "Get some sleep. We have a long road ahead of us tomorrow."
The boy curled up under the tattered blanket, and the sound of even breathing soon followed.
After being tense for a full day and night, he could finally relax for a moment.
But Ian lay with his eyes open, staring at the gray clouds above, which were stained by a deep red glow.
’City of Fallen Stars... descendant of a Watcher... Star Vein Anchor...’
’And that line from the metal plate, "The key will open the final door."’
’The key, does it refer to the Starfall Core?’
’And behind the door... what could there be?’
He touched the pendant on his chest, feeling that warm and ancient resonance.
The secret of this identity ran deeper than he had imagined.
But that was fine.
He had plenty of time to explore it slowly.
The night deepened.
Most people were already asleep, with only a few guards on night watch yawning by the campfire.
Ian closed his eyes, his consciousness sinking into his Sea of Spirit.
An extremely faint connection, one that spanned the endless Void, was pulsing gently with his breath.
Like a spider’s thread, it was almost too fine to see.
But it was definitely there.
Connecting this place to another world.
...
Wizard World, fifty meters beneath Shadow Moon Tower.
The Abyssal Altar stood silently in the center of the cavern, twenty-eight Void Anchor Stones emitting a silvery-gray halo.
The dark vortex in the center rotated slowly, like an eye that never closed.
Ian’s main body sat cross-legged three meters from the altar, his eyes shut tight, his breathing long and steady.
Suddenly, his eyelashes trembled.
His eyelids slowly opened, and a faint glint of gold flashed in the depths of his pupils, so fast it was like an illusion.
"I’m back..."
Ian murmured to himself, his voice creating a slight echo in the empty cavern.
His consciousness sank deep into his Sea of Spirit. Next to the Silver Crystal, an extremely faint "thread" was trembling gently.
That was the Soul connection established by the [Phase Soul Weaving Technique], passing through the Abyssal Altar’s channel to connect with "Li Xing" in the distant Otherworld.
At this moment, fragmented pieces of information were flowing along this thread.
It was blurry, like looking at something through a sheet of frosted glass.
But Ian could "read" it.
...Starlight... specks of light...
...corruption... deep red... viscous...
...City of Fallen Stars... Watcher... ballad...
...key... door...
There were also some more fragmented images.
A Wilderness with gray clouds pressing down, twisted Mutants, ancient patterns on a metal plate, the young Li Yao’s dirty but bright eyes...
Ian processed this information, his brow furrowing slightly.
’Starlight Energy... and the Star Force drawn by the [Starry Sky Festival] Meditation Method have a similarity of over seventy percent.’
He recalled the sensation from the [Starry Sky Festival] during his Meditation just now.
His consciousness had sunk into the Void, sensing the radiant energy cast down by distant stars—cold and pure.
But the "Starlight" in the Projection World was milder in nature.
It was more easily absorbed by a body of flesh and blood, but its essence... seemed to share the same origin.
’The Star Vein System... could it be related to some lost Astrology School from the Wizard World?’
This speculation made Ian’s heart skip a beat.
If that was true, then the Yalan Continent was more than just an "Incubator."
It might preserve ancient knowledge about the stars and the application of Gravity that he currently had no access to.
And that knowledge was precisely what could complete the final piece of his [Gravity Collapse Ball] Witchcraft puzzle.
As he was thinking, a subtle fluctuation suddenly came from another part of his Sea of Spirit.
It was the mark of the [Abyssal Soul Contract].
The brand hidden deep within his Soul, formed from Runes of Chaos, was now faintly hot.
And it was... resonating with the descriptions of "corruption" among the fragments of information.
It was weak, but it was there.
Like a beast that had caught the scent of its own kind, lifting its head in the darkness.
"The Abyss..." Ian’s eyelids drooped slightly.
The "corruption" and "Abyssal pollution" of the two worlds stemmed from the same source.
The only difference was that the Will of the Abyss in the Wizard World was a complete, terrifying, and indescribable great existence.
Whereas on the Yalan Continent, it might just be the lingering poison leaked from a "Tentacle" that the Abyss had inadvertently thrust into that world in the distant past.
But even so, it was still enough to destroy a civilization.
"Gaaah..."
In the silence, a long, drawn-out yawn came from above.
Ian looked up and saw Gaga sprawled out on a protruding stone at the edge of the altar.
It was lying belly-up with its wings spread out, sleeping like a puddle of black sludge.
As if sensing his gaze, Gaga’s ears twitched, and it cracked its eyes open a sliver.
"Mmm... Ian, you’re awake?"
It rolled over and rubbed its eyes with a small claw. "Done with your Meditation, gaga?"
"Mhm." Ian stood up, stretching his slightly stiff neck.
"Any news from up there?"
"Lots of news, gaga!"
Gaga perked up instantly, flapping its wings and flying to his shoulder.
"While you were down here, several groups of people came to the High Tower asking about you.
There was an old guy in a black robe, said he was a liaison from the Withered Council, wanted to ’invite’ you to be a ’guest’ over at their place."
It mimicked the man’s pompous tone, rolling its little eyes.
"Sister Alevia turned him away, said you were in seclusion.
But when that old guy left, he had a real sinister look in his eyes. You could tell he was up to no good, gaga!"
A cold glint appeared in Ian’s eyes.
Almost three months had passed since the Underground Palace incident. Although the bounties from Deep Red and the Withered Council weren’t public, their covetous gazes had never ceased from the shadows.
"What else?"
"Also, about the Magic Pharmacy, Kenna said this month’s profits are up another fifty percent. The [Rock Bear Potion] is selling like crazy, even caravans from the Silver Tower are coming to place orders."
Gaga counted on its claws.
"But we’re having trouble keeping up with materials. Robert has already made three trips to the Material Market and said the prices of some secondary ingredients have been driven up."
"That’s normal," Ian said faintly. "Someone’s getting jealous."
"Let ’em be jealous! It’s not like they can beat you, gaga!"
Gaga puffed out its small chest, then seemed to remember something and lowered its voice.
"Oh, right, I also heard Sister Alevia talking with another Black Robed Wizard, saying that things have been rough ’outside’ lately."
"’Outside?’"
"Over by the Endless Sea," Gaga said, tilting its head.
"Seems like some ruins are about to open up. Several big organizations are dispatching people, and even our Shadow Moon is preparing.
The Tower Master seems... to be sending a group of Level One and above Wizards over there."
Ian’s steps faltered. ’Ruins again?’
He was a bit sensitive to those words now. ’Have the people from Deep Red and the Withered Council recovered from their injuries?’
"The Endless Sea ruins..."
He remembered reading about it in a travelogue from the Star Library.
It was located deep within the Endless Sea to the East of the continent.
The ruins would periodically manifest, said to be a stretch of ancient rubble and the monument of a long-annihilated civilization.
’The great war between the Wizard World and the Abyss back then spread across numerous worlds. Who knows how many civilizations were wiped out because of it?’
