Sword of Dawn

As a result, in the next second, the old access control device heard the sound of identity verification again, and the isolation door creaked and opened again.

"...Don't you have to be ashamed of this door!" Hu Po jumped up and down immediately, "Why is it okay for anyone to touch it, but I just touch the door and it will be closed?!"

"I probably guessed what's going on..." Gao Wen frowned, and boldly deduced some facts from the guard's several reactions, "I'm afraid the verification device isn't broken."

Amber looked disbelieving: "It's not broken? Why can anyone open it if it's not broken?"

"The security setting of this door may not be as high as I imagined at first, and its function is to ensure that the people who pass through the door are 'normal people'," Gao Wen said with a frown, "Remember what Nicholas Dan once said What? This facility has conducted research on suspected human experiments, so the "sample testers" mentioned by the access control are likely to be living people, and the so-called "stable period"... probably means no mutations. It means out of control situation. In other words, as long as it is a normal ordinary person, it can pass through this door."

"Then why can't I?" Amber stared, "I'm quite normal!"

Gao Wen looked this guy up and down: "Are you a normal, ordinary human? Let alone normal, are you a human?"

Amber's pointed ears twitched: "...well, it makes sense."

The others also nodded thoughtfully. It seemed that Gao Wen's explanation was approved by everyone, but Gao Wen himself fell into deep doubts after he finished speaking.

Is the situation really that simple?Is this door just to prevent out-of-control test subjects from escaping?Will it have some other filtering mechanism?

For some reason, after hearing the blunt and cold voice of the access control system, he couldn't help feeling a very faint but real sense of disgust and resistance, but he couldn't find such a feeling when he searched his memory. source of negativity.

But no matter what was behind this door, he had to go in.

After confirming that Amber just couldn't use the verification device at the door, and that she would not trigger any alarm when she entered the door after others, Gao Wen led the team into the space behind the door.

They passed through a corridor made of unknown metal materials. The metal pillars lined up on both sides of the corridor reminded Gawain of sterilization or static electricity removal devices. At the end of the corridor was another open isolation door. The door, opposite the isolation door, is a circular hall as a whole.

The hall is built with man-made materials, the white wall paint is dusty and peeling, but it still reminds people how bright and spacious the whole space was in the past, and around the hall, you can see a large number of Ancient magical devices that are arranged and connected by pipes or metal columns, and another part of the pipes extending from these devices all converge into the center of the hall: there are more than a dozen strange objects standing there.

They have a metal base, and on the base is a transparent tubular structure like a biological culture tank. On the top of the tubular structure, a heavy top cover can be seen. The top cover is engraved with runes and magic circles, but all The runes have all been extinguished.

The inexplicable scene in front of him, whether it was a magical or sci-fi scene, made Gawain a little dazed, but the scenes in Gawain Cecil's memory about the glorious period of the Gondor Empire quickly weakened the sense of disobedience in his heart.

Looking at the neatly arranged devices in front of him, Gawain could almost imagine the scene when these containers were once filled with biomass solvent, soaking individual test subjects—and around these containers, people were busy walking around. The imperial magisters recorded various parameters of the samples in the container, stimulated the samples with spells from time to time, and treated the "test subjects" of the same race as them in the container with an almost inhuman cold attitude.

Human experiments were not uncommon in the Gondor Empire back then, and even less so in the Anzu Kingdom today.

"It's incredible..." Hetty looked at those mysterious ancient magic devices with an almost fascinated expression. Those neatly arranged runes and fine metal structures made her extremely amazed, "Such a complex combination of runes... Such a neat assembly... such neat parts... how did they do it?!"

"These runes are made with the help of the endless energy of the Deep Blue Well, regardless of the consumption of hard piles of experimental data, and these parts..." Gawain looked at the magic devices that already had a certain prototype of industrial products, and sighed softly, " They require thousands of skilled craftsmen, more than twenty types of basic workshops, a complete set of complex production techniques and thousands of standard parameters, as well as the technical system supported by the entire empire."

Hetty was a little distracted for a moment: "...have we lost such advanced technologies...were we really unable to preserve them back then?"

Gao Wen sighed: "The first generation of Ansu pioneers tried hard to restore these things in their lifetime, but the materials we rescued were not enough to restore half of them. The industrial chain was broken, and a group of people who ran out from the border land It is difficult for a semi-literate person to study blueprints for ten years to make up for one of the links, not to mention that the conditions at that time did not allow anyone to do research out of production - the first generation had to devote 90.00% of their energy to production work in order to ensure that they were hungry in the past. The number of dead does not exceed the number of new births..."

Speaking of this, he shook his head: "But compared to these, the more important reason is that we lost the Deep Blue Well - the huge pure energy provided by the Deep Blue Well has greatly reduced the operating requirements of many magical devices, and the same device If it is placed in other magical environments, it may not work at all. The most basic and simple things are okay, but the more complex and advanced things are, the more completely they will be scrapped after leaving the Deep Blue Well. "

Listening to Gao Wen's words, Amber was suddenly touched: "That's why you value versatility and applicability so much?"

"Magical industrialization supported by the Deep Blue Well is not a real industrialization," Gao Wen casually said something that everyone present may not understand, and then looked around with a smile, "Compared with this, let's look at this one first." How many surprises this ancient test site has left for us."

His gaze swept across the thousand-year-old culture containers, consoles, magic bases, and sensors, and finally landed on a nearby wall, his eyes could not help but concentrate.

There is a huge line of text written in the ancient human lingua franca:

Mankind must live forever—even if it rebels against the gods.

Chapter 0146 Still Alive

Noticing Gawain's gaze, Hetty also looked over curiously, and then struggled to identify the ancient writing on the wall—but before she finished deciphering it, Gawain took the initiative to explain the meaning of that sentence.

Everyone at the scene was stunned.

"What do you mean by this sentence?" Amber stared blankly at the line of words that seemed to be a declaration, and said in disbelief, "Under normal circumstances, no one would say such a thing... and it is still Write it in a place like this!"

Hetty had an association: "Only by disobeying the gods can human beings survive forever... Could it be that the gods want human beings to perish?"

"Things related to God are often full of symbols and metaphors, which cannot be seen from the superficial meaning of a sentence." Gao Wen said absent-mindedly, but what popped up in his mind was the relationship between the past and eternity. The sensational truths heard when the shards of the slate were connected.

Then he turned to Byron: "You mentioned that the remaining manuscript materials were found here?"

Byron nodded: "Yes, here. But they are quite fragile, and we didn't dare to touch them after we found them."

Those remaining manuscripts were not sealed, but scattered messily on the table not far away. It seems that for some reason, the personnel here did not take this batch of materials with them when they evacuated.The material of the manuscript is the magic-infused parchment commonly used by magicians in the Gondor Empire to make records. It is precisely because of this special material that these manuscripts have survived thousands of years after being exposed to the air. erosion of time.

But although the manuscript itself is not decayed, many of the words on it have faded and weathered beyond recognition. After a cursory glance, Gao Wen judged that at least half of them were already unreadable.

Fortunately, there are still half left.

Hetty had already made preparations. She brought a newly enchanted scroll and a ceremonial quill. After seeing those precious ancient manuscripts, she immediately unfolded the scroll and let it float in mid-air beside her. , and then held the quill in one hand, and placed the other hand on top of the already fragile ancient parchment. Following the obscure and difficult incantations, the power of magic surged around her, and the quill suddenly fell out of her fingers , and flew to the scroll to start writing quickly.

The characters on the parchment were faithfully restored and rubbed by the magic power, whether it was the clearly identifiable part or the incomplete and unreadable part, and every time a piece of paper was "scanned", Hetty took a breath and took the processed The original ancient manuscripts were carefully picked up and put into a small box that had been prepared.

Although the contents of the manuscript were preserved, these antique originals are still quite valuable, and it is of course better if they are preserved.

Gawain stood next to Hetty, sighing slightly at the convenience of magic power, while concentrating on the content presented on the scroll.

He read slowly because he had to extract readable useful information from a mass of missing and deformed characters, but even so, some disturbing sentences gradually pieced together: This does not seem to be a research note, or even a In the diary, after composing those words into sentences, Gao Wen only felt that they were the nonsense of a lunatic, and they were full of terrible assumptions and metaphors:

"...Looking at it, it is looking at me from those festering flesh...it is in my body, and I want to go to it...

"None will survive, the end is near... Blasphemy will not keep us alive...

"...Drink it up, eat it up, I ate the flesh and blood of the gods again, and lived a new century here. They didn't come, they still didn't come, but I don't need them to come again. The outside world has collapsed, it has collapsed ..."

This was followed by a large period of chaotic graffiti, the text turned into unrecognizable lines and symbols, not because the handwriting on the original manuscript was blurred and distorted, but the person who wrote them seemed to have gone crazy, but in several manuscripts Afterwards, these crazy doodles turned into readable text:

"He sleeps deep in the earth, he sleeps deep in the sea, he sleeps deep in the sky, he is calling my name, that whisper...

"I saw him, the face of the gods, and he smiled at me in the light... I took steps, and I was going to his kingdom. Ah, that is the greatest gift, the gods gave us flesh and blood for us to share, it turns out For this day..."

After that, there are big crazy lines, and even the occasional few words pop out of those graffiti, it seems illogical and grammatical, not so much written words, but rather a chaotic brain It would be more appropriate for the occasional ramblings that do not form a sentence to appear in the text: these manuscripts can no longer be read.

Hetty also noticed this. She rubbed several pages of such "garbled codes" in a row, and finally stopped, turning the manuscripts with her evocation hands, and stopped herself after confirming that there was nothing of value underneath. spell.

"What does it say?" Amber leaned over, looked at the rubbing scroll floating in the air and asked curiously, "It's like a ghost drawing..."

"A lunatic's raving," Gawain frowned. The words on the scroll made him deeply disturbed, but he still roughly explained what was on it, "...sounds like an abandoned People here, left behind in the process of gradually going mad."

After hearing the meaning of those words, everyone at the scene couldn't help but feel a strange sense of creepiness. Although those words were just crazy words, for some reason, there seemed to be a special power in those words. There was a frightening breath.

"I... I don't like these things anymore..." Amber had goosebumps all over her body, and couldn't help hiding behind Gao Wen, "This place gives me a very, very bad feeling..."

Gao Wen was about to express a similar opinion, but before he could speak, a very slight grunt suddenly came from behind.

Then there was another series of grunting noises.

Everyone immediately drew out their weapons and turned to the direction of the sound, and under the eyes of everyone, one of the cylindrical containers in the center of the hall suddenly changed!

The originally empty transparent tubular culture tank was filled with liquid out of thin air. Large clusters of bubbles quickly emerged from the surging liquid, and a distorted and weird shadow emerged from the bubbles. It was still an illusion just a second ago. The shadow of the next second has already condensed into a solid body——

It has a blood-red color, a giant-like body, and looks like an extraordinarily strong deformed body, but it has a face that resembles a human. The eyes are closed tightly, but the face is full of pain and madness!

This monster, which seemed to be a mixture of aberrations and humans, condensed out of thin air, and then struggled to break through the sealed transparent container. An unbelievable scene appeared: the container that was supposed to be completely sealed suddenly became When it became illusory, the monster's body also became illusory. The two quickly merged and infiltrated each other, and the monster's body was forced out of the container like this!

Gawain drew out his long sword: "Kill it!"

At this moment, the monster also regained its physical form. Immediately after it was released from the bondage, it rushed towards the soldier closest to it, and while pounced on it, it let out a chaotic growl: "Hungry...hungry!" what!!"

Several long swords blocked the monster's path from all directions, and then the scorching blades, poisoned daggers and a series of arcane missiles smashed towards the monster's head and face - except for the arcane missiles, they all hit the ground Other than that, all other attacks landed solidly on the twisted creature.

However, its vitality is frighteningly strong. Even if its limbs were chopped off, its tendons were broken and its bones were broken, and even its back weakness as a deformed body was hit by Gao Wen's sword, it still did not die. It still struggled to get up, and rushed It turned to Amber, who happened to be in its line of sight.

After the first stabbing, Amber immediately backed away and prepared to touch the fish. She never thought that she would become the target of the monster, but she screamed in fright, and the next second she shrank into the shadow, escaping. into the shadows.

The monster jumped in the air, and when the foothold was not stable, Knight Byron seized the opportunity, stepped forward and stabbed the enemy through with a sword.

The monster that seemed to be a mixture of humans and aberrations fell heavily on the ground, but it didn't start to dissipate like normal aberrations. Instead, it wriggled and gradually recovered, and showed signs of getting up again!

"It's not dead yet?!" Gawain was startled by this abnormal situation, and immediately held the sword in his hand and was about to go forward to make up the knife, but before he could take any action, Hu Po, who had just hid in the shadow world, suddenly jumped out of thin air He came out and grabbed his arm with a look of horror: "Gao Wen! Dark...there is something in the Shadow Realm!!"

Gawain had never seen such a terrified look on the face of this fearless half-elf—different from the exaggerated expression of surprise in the past, Amber looked really terrified at this time , Gao Wen even felt that if this place was a little more eerie, this girl would even cry on the spot!

Glancing at the monster that was already in a stalemate with Byron and his party again, and confirming that the monster would not suppress Byron and the others except for its strong vitality, Gawain immediately grabbed Amber's arm: "Take me in to have a look! "

Amber hesitated for a moment: "But in the Shadow Realm..."

"There is me!"

Amber gritted her teeth and pulled Gawain's arm vigorously: "Okay!"

That strange sense of imbalance came again, and the sounds and perceptions of the real world quickly faded away. Gawain's eyes blurred, and he was pulled into the Shadow Realm by Amber.

This world that exists parallel to the real time and space seems to always maintain the same brightness, neither dark nor bright. Whether it is on the surface or in a cave in a deep mountain, it always maintains a dim and dark situation that does not affect the line of sight.

Gawain's first glance after entering the Shadow Realm was to look around: Just like other places in the Shadow Realm, this place also maps real time and space in a chaotic way. The rotunda is pale in color, surrounded by a A circle of dark clumps surging like smog - that is the place where magic devices are piled up in the real world, and in the center of the hall is the "thing" that Amber mentioned.

The original metal base and transparent tubular container were gone, replaced by a pool of black mist surging in the center of the room, and blood-like red mud constantly spreading from the black mist.

And along with the mud, there were countless chaotic whispers that suddenly filled his mind!

Chapter 0147

In the black and white world of shadows, the blood-colored mud constantly gushing out of the black mist rolled like living creatures. They flowed out of the mist continuously, but they never spread to the outside world as if they were constantly disappearing. Farther away from the black mist, they looked like some kind of disgusting, creepy mollusk, and they kept making disturbing muddy noises as they rolled.At first Gawain thought that the sound was the normal sound of mud churning, but soon he heard whispers from the gurgling voice as if someone was whispering in sleep. Hearing any logical information in the Internet, they can only bring fear, restlessness, imagination and restlessness.

Not only Gao Wen, but even Amber had never seen such a weird thing in the Shadow Realm. It clearly corresponded to the original location of the cultivation containers, but these blood-colored muds were the "reflection" of the current world in the Shadow Realm. The rule is quite different, it is obviously something more distorted and should not be there, not so much that it "reflects" here, but rather that it occupies something that is there because of it.

Gawain looked at the mud pouring out of the black mist with instinctive disgust, and then looked back at Amber: "What the hell is this... Is it these things that scare you?"

He felt a little strange, although the blood-colored mud gave people a very bad feeling, and the constant whispers were also disturbing, and some kind of strange power was still trying to put terror in Gawain's mind. Slideshows, but these things did not touch Gawain at all except for a little bit of the excitement of staying up late watching horror movies in his previous life-and Amber is a master who is not afraid of anything. She was a fierce digger in the graves of the ancients. It is possible that she was startled by the mud, but it is not right to be scared out of place.

Amber also looked a little strange, she glanced at the mud with a little fear: "Yes... yes... But just now I just looked at these things and felt as if my mind was going to explode, and even thinking about its appearance I will have hallucinations one after another, but now I don’t know what’s going on... Although these things are still disgusting, they don’t seem to have the feeling of being attacked by a spirit.”

"Really?" Gawain looked at Amber, then looked at the mud with a frown, then he clenched the Pioneer Sword and walked cautiously towards the source of the mud.

Some kind of intuition told him that the "distorted hybrid" monster with strong vitality outside was probably related to this mud in the Shadow Realm. If the mud was not resolved, the investigation here would never be able to proceed smoothly. .

Amber watched Gao Wen move forward, and also sweated nervously. In the face of such a foreign body that surpassed common sense, her combat power seemed unreliable—but the next second, her eyes widened in astonishment.

Because as Gao Wen moved forward step by step, the bloody mud that was constantly surging was retreating a little bit!

It wasn't very obvious at first, but after Gao Wen took a few steps, the mud spreading in all directions was sunken into a large area, which was so obvious that anyone could notice it.

Gao Wen himself was taken aback by this situation. He took another step forward, and the mud took another step back. He simply stopped, and the mud also stayed in place, slowly wriggling on the spot.

"What's going on?" Amber's surprised voice came from behind, "These things seem to be... afraid of you?"

"It's not so much fear, it's better to say it's some kind of conditioned reflex that is very similar to biological instinct," Gawain frowned. He couldn't figure out why the mud retreated in front of him for a while, but this didn't stop him from continuing. Walking forward, "Alright, it saved me a lot of effort."

The mud in front of Gawain finally retreated completely into the black mist, and as Gawain continued to move forward, even the black mist finally began to shrink and deform, and it finally revealed a gap through which, Gawain saw the runes neatly arranged on the ground and the magic spar that still had some shimmering light at a glance.

Magic circle?Not a magic circle mapped from the real world to the shadow world, but a magic circle built directly in the shadow world? !

Was it the handwriting of those Gondor magisters back then?

Gawain was a little surprised for a while, but after thinking about it, he felt that it was not too unbelievable: the magic technology of the Gondor Empire far surpassed the contemporary ones. At that time, human beings failed to understand what the essence of the Shadow Realm was, but this did not affect the ability of the more powerful magisters at that time to enter the Shadow Realm.

Amber stood far away from the blood-colored mud, seeing that Gao Wen hadn't moved for a long time, she waved her hands vigorously and shouted: "What did you find?"

"The magic circle was built on 'this side'," Gawain replied without raising his head. "It seems that this experimental facility was built in two parts. The equipment in the present world is only one part, and the other part is built." In the Shadowlands..."

Amber looked very surprised: "Wow! The people of that era were very powerful, and they can also enter the Shadow Realm?"

"The power of people in that era is beyond your imagination." Gao Wen said casually, and then stepped into the black mist area, looking for the core formation of the magic circle in the mist churning against the ground, and As the black mist continued to recede, this complex and huge magic circle was gradually pieced together in Gao Wen's sight.

Relying on his fairly good theoretical knowledge, Gao Wen quickly judged that this magic circle was very different from regular magic circles. Only part of it belonged to "magic", which were regular spell runes or elemental runes, but Other parts are carved with special symbols called "sacred symbols" or "sacred runes".

Those symbols are not part of the magic system at all, but the imprints commonly used by religious people. They are said to come from the Eternal Stone, and their function is to communicate and channel the power of the gods. The "magic circle" drawn with such symbols cannot be called "Magic circle", but should be a magic circle.

In Gao Wen's common sense, the magic circle and the magic circle are two completely different things, but this... is the product of the fusion of the magic circle and the magic circle!

Moreover, the function of this mixed magic circle seems to be extraordinarily complicated. From what he has seen so far, Gao Wen discovered as many as twenty control rune groups, as well as a large number of runes similar to the charging structure... This kind of The charging structure is not common in the magic circles of the Gondor era. After all, the magic devices in those days were basically maintained by the magic power from the Deep Blue Well. There were few "low-efficiency" operations such as absorbing free energy from the environment. But this magic circle set in the Shadow Realm has a complex and huge charging structure...

But no matter how weird the magic circle is, its size is only that big. As the black mist recedes in front of Gao Wen, its core area is finally fully exposed. The moment Gawain saw the core of the magic circle, Gao Wen His eyes froze.

Rebelling against the gods... devouring the flesh and blood of the gods... feasting on it...

As these crazy words came to mind, Gawain's eyes also fell on that thing and did not move for a long time.

It was a man-made crystal that was only one foot square, and in the center of the crystal was a piece of extremely weird biological tissue sealed.

Gao Wen could only use "weird biological tissue" to describe what he saw, because he couldn't identify what kind of creature the flesh-like thing came from. It was dark red in color and didn't have any structures like blood vessels or tendons. But something like blood is constantly circulating around it out of thin air. It may have been sealed in the crystal for thousands of years, but it is still slowly shrinking and wriggling...

Like an immortal heart.

The truth was almost coming out, but Gao Wen couldn't believe the bold association he had made, but if the words on the wall of the test hall were true, if those crazy and absurd manuscript records were true, then what's in this crystal There is no doubt about what a thing is.

In the end, Gawain decided to trust his own judgment, because he remembered the "battle field communications" recorded in the fragments of the Eternal Slate.

God is dead, and it is not unimaginable for flesh and blood to fall into the world.

If a devout believer is here, or any local people with normal three views are here, they will probably lose the ability to speak and move due to shock and fear immediately after realizing what is in the crystal, but Gao Wen is a different kind of person. , he was just a little worried about whether this group of "gods and flesh" would suddenly jump up and face his aunt. After all, such weird things often mean great danger, but look at the surrounding bloody mud and black mist. Bi's appearance seems to be that this mass of flesh and blood is more afraid of himself...

Gao Wen carefully poked the crystal with the Pioneer Sword. The biological tissue in the crystal seemed to tremble a little, but upon closer inspection, there was no change.