"You have a function like that?"
Now that Brother Ball had spoken, Ji Jue and Xiao An lay flat against Little Niuma, inching sneakily toward the bell tower. Fortunately, the dense cluster of surrounding buildings kept them from drawing attention for the moment, and the massive bell tower blocked many lines of sight, leaving them just enough room to slip closer in secret.
[Well, obviously! Were you expecting me to haul my creaky old limbs out there and fight that brute for you?] The puzzle ball spun with smug satisfaction. [Your granddaddy Ball is an instrument of technical finesse, got it?]
With that, the sphere gave a slight tremor. A faint blue glow emerged, shrouding the pair and instantly absorbing every sweep of spiritus ripples passing overhead.
[Hurry it up, chop-chop! I've already scrambled every detection array in the bell tower for you and slapped on a temporary camouflage.] The puzzle ball let out a remarkably human whistle. [Invisibility hack, kid!]
Ji Jue could not help but scratch his head.
He couldn't take this anymore. Why did every target touched by his ability start talking with more and more sass, constantly trying to take advantage of him?
Ji Jue rubbed his chin, seized by sudden horror: Had he really developed schizophrenia?
[Is there any chance...]
The puzzle ball countered with utter exasperation, [...that, as a piece of Celestial Craft, your grandpa actually has a mind of his own?]
"Then how come you're so unnervingly good at lockpicking and breaking and entering?"
Question marks practically sprouted from Ji Jue's forehead. "Why on earth would Professor Ye build such petty, thieving features into—*ohhhhhh!*"
Before he even finished the sentence, enlightenment struck, and he hastily pretended he had never asked in the first place.
Petty thieving? What petty thieving?
This was called an ingenious bypass of obstacles!
This was the true bearing of a grandmaster, the elevated perspective of a professor!
*If the mountain will not come to me, I shall go to the mountain!*
Looking back, it seemed even Professor Ye had her younger days of drawing on diverse strengths, pooling wisdom, and gathering collective efforts!
How could such an exceptional heritage and fine lineage tradition fail to be carried forward through him?
And so, like soldiers biting sticks and wrapping their horses' hooves, they crept forward. Even Little Niuma muffled its engine to the barest hum. After a long, cautious detour to ensure no prying eyes were watching, they gently leaned up against the outer wall.
The puzzle ball bounded from Ji Jue's hand. The moment it brushed across the masonry, a tiny opening split open. Once Little Niuma slipped through, the gap instantly sealed behind them without leaving a trace.
Not even a speck of plaster fell.
Ji Jue was now inside the bell tower!
He could barely hold back a series of sharp gasps...
The moment he lifted his eyes, he saw several colossal automatons identical to the Guardian outside, standing silently amidst the thick dust—at least four more of those terrifying monstrosities!
Unfortunately, after an eternity without maintenance, these Guardians were riddled with gaps and fractures, on the verge of falling to pieces and completely beyond operation.
Yet the moment they sensed an intruder, two of them raised their gem-like eyes beneath cracked visors. A beam of red light shot forth, sweeping over the group.
All it registered, however, was the forged recognition circuit projected by the puzzle ball.
[Lower your weapons. Friendlies.]
"Phew..."
Ji Jue finally breathed a sigh of relief, feeling cold sweat almost soaking through his back. He exchanged a glance with Xiao An, who shook his head slightly. "Nothing living here."
Though the bell tower occupied an enormous footprint, the interior was simple to the point of cavernous. The entire ground floor was piled high with miscellaneous clutter: rot-eaten, entirely unusable tables, chairs, benches, and everyday tools. There was even a rather antique manual lawnmower, a rocking horse with peeling paint, an exquisite miniature slide, little dolls loved by young girls now covered in mildew, and child-sized armor scarred all over with scratches...
It was practically an entire children's playground.
"Did we come to the wrong place?"
[Upstairs.]
The puzzle ball suddenly felt a twinge of regret that it had never been engineered with the capacity to roll its eyes.
Ji Jue looked up toward the spiral staircase winding along the tower wall, then glanced back and waved at Little Niuma. He vaulted onto the seat and pointed upward...
Little Niuma went silent for a long time—a silence thick with sheer profanity. Had Ji Jue not forbidden all noise, it would have loved nothing more than to blast two thoroughly grating honks of its horn.
And so, chugging and shuddering along, it hauled the two of them rapidly upward.
At long last, right before its chassis gave out from exhaustion, they reached the doorway.
Yet the sight of the ordinary door, merely left ajar...
Ji Jue's heart sank instantly.
*This trip is probably coming up empty!*
After all, a place with zero seals at the entrance, where the door hadn't even been shut, looked nothing like Quicksilver's workshop, no matter how one sliced it.
Cautiously brandishing a rod, he pushed open the door that hadn't moved in who knew how many years.
A harsh screech of friction was followed by a dull thud.
The door slab toppled straight inward, the draft kicking up mounds of settled dust. When visitors arrived once more across a gulf of centuries, all that greeted them was utter devastation.
Bookshelves had collapsed; scrolls lay scattered in rot and decay, their writing swallowed by mildew until nothing could be deciphered. All around, spiritus circuits were shattered, runes smudged, and Sovereign Virtue totems dissolved away.
Cauldrons had cracked, instruments were rusted through, and furnaces lay dead...
Ji Jue let out a soundless sigh, the last thread of hope snapping in his chest.
Blue sky and white clouds... a total wreck of a pull!
This was indeed Quicksilver's workshop, but it was completely ruined. He could even tell that the damage had not simply accumulated over the past four hundred years—it had been abandoned more than four centuries ago.
Whatever could be carried off had probably been taken long ago, and whatever was left behind had decayed into complete uselessness after so long without upkeep.
As for Quicksilver's creations and accomplishments, not a scrap remained.
To say nothing of a matrix.
He sighed and opened his mouth to speak, only to feel a sudden tug on his sleeve. A pale-faced Xiao An shrank trembling behind him. "Brother Ji Jue, something's wrong."
Xiao An lowered his voice: "A ghost!"
"A what?"
Baffled, Ji Jue followed the direction of Xiao An's finger. Then his blood ran cold, and he nearly blurted out a choice Haizhou curse: "Holy—"
There really was a ghost!
Xiao An was pointing toward the massive stained-glass window behind the bell tower's clock face, right before a rotting half-frame.
Beneath the blazing sunlight, a faint, blurry silhouette emerged.
It resembled the silhouette of a woman seen from behind.
She wore a pure white gown that seemed to drift on an unseen breeze, her long hair draping nearly to the floor. The vague profile of her cheek was delicate, enchanting, and exquisite, staring absentmindedly into the distance.
It left Ji Jue almost unable to breathe.
Quicksilver!
—Sage Quicksilver!
Yet there was no cold, backward glance, nor a flick of a finger to reduce the two intruders and their motorcycle into ash. There was simply no reaction at all.
No matter how politely Ji Jue greeted or probed, she remained entirely unmoved from beginning to end.
Like an apparition.
To be precise, she was no different from one.
It was a residual imprint left behind by a Sage's will, etched into the fabric of time. Even if it captured only a single fleeting instant, it could never be erased throughout eternity.
Mustering his courage, Ji Jue stepped closer and followed her gaze into the distance... and there, at the horizon of the sky, stood a colossal pillar soaring in solemn majesty, propping up heaven and earth.
The world's axis was anchored right there, the pillar planted dead center between heaven and earth.
Merely gazing upon it stirred an inexplicable sense of awe and suffocating pressure, flooding him with the urge to bow his head or even prostrate himself in worship.
Yet when Ji Jue looked closer, he realized her gaze did not rest upon the great pillar at all, but downward, toward the other side of the bell tower.
Toward a gorgeously adorned cathedral.
Ignoring the continuous booms and tremors rolling across the plaza, Ji Jue could faintly hear the intermittent strains of music. A bustling orchestra played a joyful melody, while amid the streaming traffic, smiling people stepped inside bearing bouquets and blessings.
If the so-called historical experts hadn't lied to him, judging from the fluttering white veils and the flocking birds... it was a wedding.
A horn sounded once, witnessed by all the guests.
A horn sounded a second time, as an elder officiated the ceremony.
When the horn sounded a third time, the couple would become husband and wife amid applause and blessings.
Yet... the third horn would never blow.
Because sweeping across the entire Border Realm came the reverberating roar of heaven and earth collapsing. The earth quaked, the sky shattered, mountains heaved, and the city trembled... and in that very instant, Ji Jue saw it once more—
Upon that colossal pillar anchoring heaven and earth, a harrowing fracture split open!
A magnificent seal manifested high upon the tower, fleeting yet intricate and austere, as though blanketing and encompassing all things—a Sovereign Virtue crest thousands of times greater than anything in Ji Jue's comprehension!
—[Tianyuan]!
Now, Tianyuan had shattered.
A grand destruction and collapse began as the colossal pillar fractured to pieces, severed clean at its midpoint!
Yet it did not crash to the ground. Countless fragments hovered suspended midair, flaring with a terrifying brilliance that flooded the entire Border Realm, surging, detonating!
And so, the stars once again lost their orbits, the blazing sun dimmed into gloom, and an endless rain of fire plummeted from the heavens, crashing down to unleash tides of ruin.
Cries of anguish rose from the once peaceful, serene city.
They echoed one after another.
The cathedral collapsed, crumbling into ruin. For the uncounted-th time, the guests fled in every direction. Amidst the swirling dust, Ji Jue seemed to catch a glimpse of a slender figure abandoned where she stood.
A woman in bridal attire knelt amidst the dust and rubble, weeping in helpless agony, crying out for help.
Yet no one answered.
In her arms, the man whose lower half was pinned beneath the debris struggled feebly, as though trying to tell her something, pushing her away with all his might.
A final farewell.
Amidst the thunderous roar, everything was buried beneath the rubble.
Only the dust-streaked bride staggered out from the ruins, tears streaming down her face, washing through the grime and cosmetics to carve indelible scars across her skin.
Clutching the bloodstained front of her dress with both hands, she screamed and wailed toward the ruins again and again, until despair consumed her entirely.
Just like that, she was swallowed whole by the flames.
Nothing more could be seen, save for faint sobs echoing in the wind, enveloping everything.
Throughout the city and upon the streets, the collapse of the pillar plunged all into pandemonium. The sound of fracturing rang out once more, and the aberrant mutation began.
Having lost their fragile human shells, the frantic automatons twisted back into grotesque monsters, tearing into one another, destroying everything within arm's reach before scattering into the distance.
From paradise to purgatory seemed to take only a single instant.
Ji Jue nearly forgot how to breathe.
An illusory gleam fell beside him, like a teardrop.
When Ji Jue slowly turned his head, he finally saw the Sage's eyes, hollow as the void itself.
She watched.
She watched the disaster that had unfolded in the past, watching it replay time and time again within the Border Realm.
A silent vigil, waiting until a miracle—or true annihilation—finally arrived.
For a fleeting moment, Ji Jue felt as if he understood. Perhaps this was the very reason this Border Realm had fallen to such a state: "Brother Ball, what was that... what did we just see?"
The puzzle ball fell silent for a moment before answering:
[Didn't you see it with your own eyes?
—The Fall of the Heavenly Pillar.]
Chapter 68