Wizard: Starting With Synthesized Gems

Chapter 653: Suspicious Points About the Mortal Age and Constructing a Small Abyssal Ecological Community

A dark sun had already appeared at the very center of the city, and the entire city was about to follow that dark sun into an alternate dimension.Locke looked up toward that alternate dimension and saw that it was a world of complete and utter darkness. Within the darkness, tentacles as massive as celestial bodies seemed to be moving.

An angel descended from the sky. After she landed, the sacred golden angel disappeared, and Witch Shirley stepped out from within. She swept a glance over Locke. "Hm? Locke, what are you doing? Let's go."

"This city is about to fall into that strange space."

Locke had also been planning to leave, but he stood in place, looking at the mausoleum of the princess's bedchamber, a contemplative expression crossing his face. "Wait a moment, Senior Sister. Actually, I've had a question nagging at me for a while."

Witch Shirley paused. "A question? Have you made some new discovery? But there's no time left. This city is almost about to fall into that dangerous space. The two black wizards have already used the Summoning of the Styx Ferryman to leave."

"If we don't leave now, we may very well fall into that space along with this city."

Locke looked at the statue of the princess inside the mausoleum, his brow furrowing.

If he remembered correctly, this bedchamber was the central location of the city. It was the Loom Princess's place of eternal rest and the site where her echo was stored.

Locke walked to the very center of the bedchamber, which was where the princess's coffin was placed. It was a sarcophagus as tall as a person.

Locke placed his palm on the sarcophagus, and in an instant, this coffin, which was itself a Second Circle soul artifact, despite having undergone seventy thousand years of historical change, had retained its basic functions because it had remained within this well-preserved burial chamber all along.

It was simply far less capable than it once had been.

Even so, unless he used brute force to open it, it was absolutely beyond Locke's ability to unseal.

Locke tried placing it into his astral ring, but to his surprise, the sarcophagus was connected to the city's foundation and simply could not be taken away.

The foundation of this mausoleum city was most likely all connected as a single piece.

Witch Shirley looked at Locke and said, "Junior Brother, what on earth is going on?"

Locke said, "I feel like something is off. The logic doesn't hold."

Witch Shirley glanced at Locke's left wrist. Because they had been in an extremely dangerous situation earlier, Locke had long since removed the Angel's Tear bracelet from his wrist.

Witch Shirley turned her head back to look at the dark sun within the city, bit her lip, and said, "Although this is our first time meeting, I felt an instant connection with you. I trust every judgment the Throne Lord has made about you, so from the very beginning, I have been quite confident in your abilities."

"All right. I trust you."

"As an archaeologist, whenever you discover any suspicious point at a site, you must get to the bottom of it. Far too many archaeologists, by failing to dig deeper into their suspicions, have gone completely astray in their research direction and wasted the better part of their lives on a wrong path."

Witch Shirley took a magical key from her astral ring. The key was roughly the size of a broomstick.

"This is the Key of Hector, a Second Circle soul artifact. It can only be used three times, but it can open every magical lock in this world at the Second Circle level and below. At present, there is one use remaining."

"I'll spend it for you."

"Using this soul artifact is the only way we'll have enough time."

Locke said, "Senior Sister?"

Witch Shirley said, "You possess super intuition, so I should trust your instincts. Most importantly, what does your archaeology grimoire tell you? My grimoire states that the first principle of archaeology is to learn to ask questions and to never overlook any suspicious detail."

"There was once an archaeologist who, upon discovering an oversized skull, misidentified the race of an entire civilization. It was later found that the skull had only belonged to a giant slave population within that race."

"There was also an archaeologist who, after discovering a wizard ruin, failed to conduct a detailed stratigraphic survey, and as a result did not discover another wizard ruin lying beneath it, leading them to incorrectly assign the ruin to the wrong era."

"If the direction is wrong, it could very likely send our archaeological research over the next fifty years astray. Once something like that happens, our archaeology field is effectively ruined."

Witch Shirley said with a note of caution, "Junior Brother, as your senior, I must tell you that archaeology is different from botany and potion mastery. Because excavations cannot be repeated and the verification cycle in archaeology is long, the direction of archaeological research must be established with great care."

"In other fields, at most a few years are wasted, and a wrong research direction is discovered relatively quickly."

"But in archaeological research, once the initial direction is wrong, it leads to thirty to fifty years of misdirected study. Especially since this ruin is about to disappear, the comprehensive paper we produce on this ruin becomes even more critical."

"I don't want our negligence to result in a problem that was already discovered going uninvestigated, only to mislead us and every related wizard who comes after us."

Witch Shirley placed the key on the sarcophagus, and in an instant, the faint sounds of magical locks disengaging came from within.

"There. It's open. You don't need to pay me. It's a joint excavation after all."

Locke said to her, "Senior Sister, thank you for trusting me."

He hadn't even expected it himself. He had only expressed a doubt, and yet Witch Shirley had directly spent the last remaining use of a Second Circle soul artifact to help him verify the idea.

Perhaps it was simply the rigor she carried as an archaeologist.

Locke pushed open the sarcophagus lid and looked inside, immediately freezing for a moment.

It was completely empty.

Locke immediately suspected this was a decoy chamber. "This is a false burial chamber?"

Witch Shirley gave a slight shake of her head. "The Era of Stars spans a vast stretch of time, and it contained a great many magical kingdoms."

"Customs and systems may have been completely different."

"But, based on the Era of Stars ruins that have been excavated so far, this should be the true main burial chamber. Look at the front of the sarcophagus, that dehydrated and carbonized magical plant. That is a cornflower wreath."

"It was used to protect the main coffin."

"This type of magical plant is extremely rare. During the Era of Stars, the ability of magical kingdoms to mobilize resources was not like that of the major wizard academies today, so by all logic, this should be the true coffin."

"And look here, there are magical traces of an echo inside it. This indicates that the echo which previously erupted from the center of the city originated from within this very sarcophagus."

Locke's expression turned serious. "If this is the Loom Princess's true coffin, then why is it empty?"

"Where is the princess?"

"Where is the princess's echo?"

"Would that Historical Milestone Curse have consumed the princess's echo entirely?"

Witch Shirley furrowed her brow, seeming to hold back her words. "Given the founding ancestor's attitude toward the princess, it seems unlikely that he would have done so at the cost of fully consuming her echo. But a First Circle wizard's echo could not possibly have survived for so many years on its own, so it must have been given special treatment to persist for seventy thousand years."

"Therefore, I am more inclined to think that some kind of special arrangement was made."

"Junior Brother? What are you doing?"

Locke had jumped directly into the sarcophagus. He furrowed his brow, crouched down, and ran his fingers over the inner surface of the coffin. "Perhaps there was never an echo inside here to begin with. There is a possibility that this echo was fabricated."

Locke used his hand to move aside a half-rotted magical cloth that had been draped over the interior of the sarcophagus, and in that instant, both he and Witch Shirley's pupils contracted.

Because beneath the cloth, a line of text had been left behind: "Ezra Clarkson, everything you did in this mausoleum, I have seen it all. Wizard Maxwell leaves his great name here!"

Witch Shirley saw the two unfamiliar names and was immediately baffled. "Maxwell? Ezra Clarkson? Who are these people? Isn't this supposed to be the Loom Princess's mausoleum? Why is it that at the princess's eternal resting place, there is no princess, and instead two strange names appear alongside a baffling statement?"

Locke said, "Look, there's also a pig's head drawing he sketched here."

Witch Shirley, who had always carried a consistently serious demeanor under Witch Yekaterina's tutelage, now wore a peculiar expression, because there was indeed a wizard who had carved a laughing pig's head onto the sarcophagus.

It had to be said, the pig's head was actually quite adorable.

Moreover, judging by the traces, it did not appear to be magical craftsmanship from this era. It seemed to have some years to it as well.

This was also an antique of sorts.

Only it did not match the historical period of this mausoleum. It clearly belonged to two different eras.

Witch Shirley immediately began examining the remaining contents and layout inside the sarcophagus, but found nothing further. "Based on the clues we have encountered along the way, a Second Circle wizard cannot enter this city. Only First Circle wizards can enter."

"And yet our group of four archaeology professors working together still found it incredibly dangerous to enter, leaving behind quite a few traces along the way. Could someone have entered this mausoleum without a trace and taken the princess away?"

"No, that's not right."

Locke said, "The princess very likely was never inside here to begin with. Wizard Maxwell must have entered this mausoleum during a different era and witnessed, or obtained, some kind of secret, and therefore left this message here, declaring that he had seen through Ezra Clarkson's scheme."

"Ezra Clarkson is a wizard of the Black Sun Tower. That lines up. My suspicion is not wrong. The Expungement Curse targeting King Otto had already become quite weak, otherwise it would not have been broken by the four of us, and his name and legacy would have become known to us."

"If the Expungement Curse still wanted to erase him completely, it would need to eliminate the four of us archaeology wizards entirely. Otherwise, once we get out, we would quickly restore the missing piece of history from the Era of Stars."

"We would vindicate the nameless king and fill in the lost past of the wizard world."

"Yet this Expungement Curse did not move against the four of us at all. Instead, it moved against this city."

"And that Expungement Curse is far more powerful than the ones we fought multiple times within the Historical Milestone Curse space," Locke said.

Witch Shirley swallowed. "You mean..."

Locke said, "I suspect that there are actually two Expungement Curses within this mausoleum. One Expungement Curse targets King Otto, and the other targets the Loom Princess."

"I finally understand where the sense of wrongness is coming from. Let me ask you: we have come to know King Otto's name, his surname, and his family. But have we come to know the Loom Princess's surname and family?"

Witch Shirley was stunned, and she shook her head. "But we clearly used the princess's echo. We learned so many names from within the princess's echo, and yet the one name we never learned was hers!"

Locke nodded. "And what of the princess's accomplishments? What did the princess actually do? Within the historical echo, the princess was nothing more than an appendage to King Otto. She appeared to be nothing but an ordinary person. And that makes things even more suspicious."

"Could an ordinary person serve as the financial backer for the founding ancestor of us archaeology wizards? Could an ordinary person have laid plans across seventy thousand years and ultimately triumphed over the Black Sun Tower?"

"Then there is only one answer."

"The princess was also struck by an Expungement Curse!"

"And the Black Sun Tower's curse on the princess surpassed its curse on King Otto."

Witch Shirley was practically being driven mad by Locke's line of reasoning.

They had not come here to seek treasure but to conduct academic exploration, and so she now found her mind going completely blank. "The Black Sun Tower's curse on the princess surpassed its curse on King Otto? But in the inscriptions the princess left behind in various places, she clearly stated that the Black Sun Tower looked down on her!"

Locke said, "The Black Sun Tower's mortal representative, Ezra Clarkson, entered this mausoleum and tampered with things here. Everything we have seen within this place has been altered by him. If the Black Sun Tower truly looked down on her, why would Ezra Clarkson go to such lengths to enter this mausoleum, using King Otto's secrets to conceal the princess's secrets?"

Witch Shirley shook her head and said, "If that's the case, why wouldn't the founding ancestor mention it?"

"Locke, everything you're saying is pure speculation. There is no direct evidence whatsoever to support your view. Even the name of this so-called Wizard Maxwell may not actually be his name. Perhaps he was nothing more than a grave robber, or just another archaeology wizard."

Locke's tone softened slightly. "Senior Sister, this is only a hypothesis on my part."

"But the existence of two Expungement Curses is real. And the fact that the Expungement Curse targeting the princess was harsher than the one targeting the nameless king is also real."

"As for why the founding ancestor didn't say anything... perhaps he didn't dare to, or perhaps he was unable to." Locke recalled the young wizard's words and conduct. "His greatest hope for this entire matter was simply that I would obtain King Otto's inheritance."

A pleased expression lit up Witch Shirley's face. "An inheritance? Good, good. When we tell our teacher, she will surely be very happy."

"With your help, our teacher might even be able to establish another archaeology research group, with her name as a nominal head."

Locke said, "Senior Sister, the key point is that I believe, in the eyes of the Black Sun Tower, the Loom Princess posed a greater threat than King Otto!"

"I've always found the emergence of King Otto's Mortal Age to be strange."

"King Otto merely grew up living under the rule of an undead lich, and then had to defeat, as a young man, an ancestor who had lived through four lifetimes. What I mean to say is that in his early days, King Otto should have received assistance from the Black Sun Tower."

"And he should have had a partner by his side. That partner may very well have been the princess. Which makes the frail and useless princess we saw in the Historical Reconstruction quite suspicious. If the princess was capable of triumphing over the Black Sun Tower, then within the echo, she should not have done nothing at all."

"King Otto persistently wanted to separate power from authority, but why did he suddenly conceive of an Mortal Age? Why would he come to trust in the power of mortals?" Locke fell into thought. "If he simply didn't trust the wizards who would transform him into a lich, why would he completely abandon wizards and throw his lot entirely with mortals?"

"There is a logical leap here, one that cannot be explained because the truth has been distorted. And beyond that, the Black Sun Tower's reaction was far too extreme."

Locke found even more logical gaps. "The Heliothos Imperial Court at that time had already been torn apart from within. Even if they did nothing at all, the fragmentation of the Heliothos Imperial Court was only a matter of time."

"There was no need for the Black Sun Tower to intervene."

Witch Shirley thought aloud, "Indeed, if the Black Sun Tower was opposed to the arrival of the Mortal Age, then King Otto's Mortal Age ending in failure sooner would have been in their interest. They personally intervened because they feared a self-collapsing Mortal Age?"

"Though it's also possible that the Black Sun Tower simply had a habit of intervening directly."

Locke said, "But against King Otto's ancestor, that undead lich king, the Black Sun Tower did not intervene directly. Instead, they used King Otto. By the same logic, one of the four great problems of that era, the immortal ruler, was addressed by the Black Sun Tower propping up King Otto and having him lead troops to eliminate them."

"That was the content of the first half of the Historical Reconstruction, but that logic suddenly changed in the second half. The Black Sun Tower began directly interfering in the world with great frequency, as though they had been driven into a corner. Yet based on the historical content we know, it should have been completely impossible for the Mortal Age and the Heliothos Imperial Court to drive the Black Sun Tower to such a state."

Locke sank into deep thought. "To take this further and compare the evidence in order to arrive at the truth, we would need to obtain more information about the relationship between the Black Sun Tower and the Era of Stars, and the specific way the Black Sun Tower ruled over the Era of Stars."

"Based on the clues available at this point, I believe the princess, during the Era of Stars, may have come into contact with something far beyond what King Otto encountered, something that the Black Sun Tower found completely unacceptable."

"That thing very likely relates to the way the Black Sun Tower ruled the Era of Stars. It may also be connected to the reason the Black Sun Tower has currently vanished."

Witch Shirley suddenly looked up toward the outside of the bedchamber and urged, "We really must go now. I just finished copying everything here using the Historical Projection spell model. The general layout of the entire city has also been copied by me. Combined with the historical projection copies the two black wizards have on hand, it should be possible to piece together a rough composite replica."

"Let's leave here first and then study the remaining questions. If the two of us fall into that dark sun, even if we discover the truth, we would have no way to publish a paper and tell the world!"

Locke gave a nod, but furrowed his brow. "If I can't work through the key questions while I'm still inside this mausoleum, it will be even harder to think things through clearly after I've left."

"The princess was a person of great ambition and talent. She could not have been a mediocre figure."

"Otherwise, she would have been unable to defeat the Black Sun Tower. If she had already anticipated that the Black Sun Tower would enter her mausoleum, would she have done something in response? What could she have done to ensure that the information passed on to future generations could not be tampered with?"

"Let's take a gamble."

Locke summoned the Abyssal Devourer Body Sea Gold Sand. The Sea Gold Sand transformed into a Tyrant Fern Spear and then jabbed it toward the statue of the princess inside the bedchamber.

Thud.

The statue immediately crumbled to dust.

Witch Shirley was startled. "Junior Brother? Have you lost your mind? What are you doing destroying a cultural artifact?"

Locke said, "I can't worry about that right now!"

"Nothing there?"

Locke jabbed toward the sarcophagus beside him, and in an instant, a large hole was punched through it. Although it was a Second Circle soul artifact, the passage of time had long since rendered it unstable.

The reason he had avoided using brute force to damage it before was simply to avoid harming the ancient object.

Locke continued thrusting with the Flowing Gold Fern Spear, breaking apart the sarcophagus repeatedly. Feeling like it still wasn't fast enough, he tossed ten Diamond Succulents inside and used the Golden Eye Grass to protect himself and Witch Shirley.

In the next moment, the sarcophagus finally split open down the middle, and a parchment made from a magical creature's hide came fluttering out.

Locke swiftly caught the parchment, and at the same time looked at the text written on the magical creature hide and read it aloud quickly, "The four great problems of the Era of Stars: immortal rulers, the eternal wars between kingdoms, the reduction of all resources brought on by a small ice age..."

"But behind these four problems, a true problem lies hidden. I have discovered that the true problem resides with the Black Sun Tower. A warning to all magical kingdoms of later generations: do not trust the Black Sun Tower. I shall forge a new era..."

In the next moment, black flames ignited across the entire magical creature hide parchment, and in an instant, the parchment was consumed entirely.

Locke had only managed to read through one tenth of the content.

Locke and Witch Shirley looked at each other. For a brief moment, neither of them said a word.

Only at this moment did they realize how vastly they had underestimated the secrets contained within this mausoleum city.

Those secrets had been subjected to layer upon layer of restriction and concealment.

They were secrets that the two of them, as First Circle wizards, were currently unable to access.

Locke grabbed Witch Shirley and flew upward into the sky. "Let's leave first. For now, this is as far as we can go. As archaeology wizards, we at least did not betray our duty. We discovered that this entire mausoleum had been tampered with."

Locke carried her up into the sky, and at the same time, his pupils transformed into golden vertical slits. The bloodline power within him resonated with the dark sun below his feet.

At the same time, the dark sun, which had previously paid them no attention at all, now began to exert a pull on the two of them.

It would not let them leave.

"Damn it, is it trying to eliminate us as well?" Locke gritted his teeth and activated the Porcelain Moon Growth. In an instant, a moon rose into the sky, casting its light across past and present alike.

Every single magical plant in the entire city erupted into chaos in that moment.

The magical power generated from this became a propulsive force that pushed both Locke and Witch Shirley outward.

The dark sun swallowed the entire city. A demon dragon seemed to crawl out from within the dark sun, glanced at Locke, then crawled back inside.

Locke gritted his teeth and simultaneously chanted the ritual magic he had been preparing since just before they flew away. Drawing on the planar power of the Jade Dream, he summoned a torrent of spirit souls along with the magnification power of the dream's plants.

Two Abyssal Devourer Body Sea Gold Sand plants appeared above his head, and under the magnification power, they transformed into something as large as a mountain.

Locke found that using the Porcelain Moon Growth to resonate with the power of the Jade Dream seemed to grant him access to a greater share of the Jade Dream's power, so even the ordinary magnification effect was now enhanced.

Witch Shirley looked at Locke, puzzled.

Locke chanted the incantation, and the two Flowing Gold Fern Spears combined into one, transforming into a radiant fern spear as enormous as a small mountain.

The terrifying magic pressure fell like a meteorite toward the dark sun below.

Locke poured every last bit of his magic pressure into the radiant fern spear. "Whatever secret the Black Sun Tower is trying to hide, I will eventually unearth it. Let me leave a natural mark on this city."

The radiant fern spear plunged into the Expungement Curse and entered the dark sun, landing within the city, and together with that mausoleum city, it passed into the mysterious space.

The roots at the grip end of the radiant fern spear rapidly spread outward in all directions, absorbing the surrounding energy to sustain itself.

The radiant fern spear was composed of the Abyssal Devourer Body and could survive by absorbing abyssal energy.

Therefore, Locke simultaneously submerged his Porcelain Moon Growth into the Abyssal River, then sent that porcelain moon into that world, hanging it in the sky above the city, where it transformed into a moon and shone its light upon the radiant fern spear, ensuring that the fern spear would not be destroyed.

Locke said to Witch Shirley, "This way, it gives me a possibility of locating this city again through my radiant fern spear once I become a high-Circle wizard."

Witch Shirley gave a nod. "I never expected your botany to be so powerful that you could accomplish something like this."

Locke gave a slight nod.

It was primarily because the Abyssal Sea Gold Sand possessed a special self-sustaining organ capable of absorbing abyssal energy to survive, much like a plant growing beneath sunlight.

And this place was the Abyssal River, while his Porcelain Moon Growth could store and reflect abyssal energy.

With all these conditions satisfied, Locke had been able to use this combination to plant his radiant fern spear into that mausoleum city.

Moreover, looking down from above, Locke could faintly make out that a small abyssal ecosystem had formed around the radiant fern spear, which had transformed into a small mountain and was now planted into the city.

Because when the Porcelain Moon Growth had entered the Abyssal River and drawn in river water, it had also drawn in many primordial worms. Those primordial worms then followed the moonlight into his radiant fern spear, using it as their habitat.

In an extremely brief span of time, a small abyssal ecological community had formed.

"I suppose this is fighting poison with poison," Locke thought. "Within that special space created by the Black Sun Tower, the only ecology with any chance of maintaining its existence and eventually forming a connection with me in the future would be an abyssal ecology."

Witch Shirley said, "It's just a pity that you put so much thought and so many resources into that porcelain moon. Now you've left it behind in the city, and you don't even seem to mind."

Locke and Witch Shirley were now flying above the Abyssal River.

Locke smiled and said, "It is a little regrettable. But looking at the Porcelain Moon Growth from my current perspective, it has too many flaws. I have a better idea now."

"So it needs to be rebuilt from scratch. Sending it in there is not something I'll grieve over too much."

"Besides, through the experiment just now, I suddenly realized that my Lunar Mirror system may already be ready to attempt constructing a unique ecosystem."