"Did you see it move?" the Fire Sanctuary Sorcerer asked bitterly.
Ten minutes ago, the sorcerers had gathered in an open clearing, and Black Crow had lifted a large stone ball—originally an ornamental road marker—with one hand and hurled it forward with all his might.
The stone ball flew forward a meter at a fierce speed before coming to a dead stop in midair, as though mocking the feeble pull of gravity.
Ten minutes later, the Sanctuary Sorcerers surrounding the sphere and casting all manner of scouting miracles upon it were finally forced to admit that they couldn't detect the slightest sign of movement.
Yet they had been observing it for a full ten minutes.
If one second had been slowed down to a minute, the stone ball should have traveled the distance of ten seconds' flight; if one second had been slowed down to an hour, it should have covered the distance of a sixth of a second.
"Could one second be slowed to a whole day?" The Wind Sanctuary Sorcerer tried his best to sound nonchalant. "Isn't the effect of the 'Shelter' a bit too terrifying?"
"About how long will the night last?" Yaxiu suddenly asked.
"At shortest, ten hours," Black Crow answered. "Which is thirty-six thousand seconds."
"If one second is slowed to a day, thirty-six thousand seconds becomes thirty-six thousand days—around ninety-eight years," Yaxiu said. "And the Dead City has two defining traits: most corpses show no obvious external changes, and no one has ever survived a night in the Dead City..."
"In other words, our bodies follow real time, neither aging nor feeling hunger; only our minds are affected by perceived time. But over a mere ninety-eight years, without any physical constraints, could really not a single person survive?"
The Fire Sanctuary Sorcerer's face darkened. "Perhaps there are other murder mechanisms later on."
"The greatest likelihood, however, is that no other mechanisms exist. The fact that you Senluo sorcerers haven't found any other mechanisms over the past two hundred years is proof enough that the Dead City's sole legacy is the 'Shelter,'" Igola said. "Everyone's perceived time was stretched by the 'Shelter' to an unbearable extreme, forcing their souls to live until they simply perished."
"So one second definitely isn't stretched to just a day. A ninety-eight-year night wouldn't be enough to kill off every single 'refugee' who entered the Dead City," Yaxiu said. "Generally speaking, for miracles related to time, the scale conversions are based on seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years."
"If one second is stretched to a month, the night becomes a three-thousand-year-long dark night." Yaxiu looked toward Igola. "Can a soul's lifespan endure that long?"
"Hard to say." Igola shook his head. "The soul and the body complement each other, two sides of the same coin. The aging of the body causes the soul to weaken alongside it, and if a sorcerer dies in the Void Realm and their soul suffers severe damage, it also impairs bodily functions."
"If our bodies truly don't age, it would be difficult for our souls to just wither away."
Yet the terrifying prospect of three thousand years was more than enough to shatter most people's psychological defenses. After all, the present year was only 1668—recorded history itself spanned a mere 1,668 years!
Scarcely half of three thousand years!
They would have to live through twice the length of known history here before they could leave the Dead City?!
And there was an even more horrifying possibility—
"What if one second is slowed to a year?"
Harvey was the only one who hadn't been observing the stone ball. Sitting atop his coffin lid and holding hands with Alice inside, he said calmly, "That would mean we'd have to live here for more than thirty thousand years before we can leave."
"Even the divine lords might not live as long as us." The necromancer actually chuckled.
Thirty thousand years!
No wonder time dilation no longer occurred when they fought; they were already under the highest tier of time dilation and the multiplier couldn't be increased any further.
No wonder their sorcery power wouldn't automatically recover. Sorcery power was drawn from the Void Realm, where time flowed normally! The recovery rate of sorcery power couldn't keep pace with their sensory perception!
No wonder they couldn't call upon their grand laws; the "Shelter" only affected people, not anything else—including Lalafells and grand laws.
Furthermore, invoking a grand law required casting time—typically one second. If he were lucky, Yaxiu might belatedly transform into the Transcend-Prison Frenzied Dragon Knight a month from now; if unlucky, he would have to wait for an anniversary year.
Strangely enough, sorcerers were supposed to be pursuers of immortality. The Square-Round Cicada and Mist White Thought sects were prime examples, with countless sorcerers throwing themselves forward wave after wave and draining their intellects dry for that illusory ideal. Yet when Yaxiu and the others realized they might have to live here for thirty thousand years, their hearts felt only endless panic and suffocation.
It was just like those wicked fairy tales: you attained eternal life, but turned into stone; you found the beautiful princess in her coffin, but she was a ravenous vampire who had slept for a hundred years; you gained boundless wealth, but were trapped under a cavern...
"Impossible!" The Fire Sanctuary Sorcerer gritted his teeth. "I won't be trapped here for thousands or tens of thousands of years! There must be a way out!"
"The effect of the 'Shelter' is absurd beyond reason." The Wind Sanctuary Sorcerer could no longer keep his cool either, touching the stone ball as he spoke. "Pulling multiple people into a realistic dream spanning tens of thousands of years... this is already the realm of divine miracles!"
"Besides, why can't our Sanctuaries block the effects of the 'Shelter'? Under normal circumstances, a Sanctuary should be able to neutralize all miracle distortions!"
Yaxiu was hardly surprised by this. "Black Robe Town's 'Kaleidoscope' and Blind Town's 'Blindsight' ignore Sanctuaries as well. A Sanctuary Sorcerer still turns into a kaleidoscope magical girl in Black Robe Town, and violating the rules in Blind Town still robs them of their vision. The 'Shelter' is absurd, but other places possess legacies just as absurd as this."
"None of you should find this strange," Igola said. "After all, most Grey Fox legacies share this trait: their activation priority is perpetually absolute, and neither Sanctuaries nor miracles can nullify them... But then again, even if the Grey Fox God Era was a great civilization, could they truly create so many phantasm creations rivaling divine miracles?"
Perhaps the natives of Senluo didn't feel it as keenly, but to outsiders like Yaxiu, the God Era legacies encountered along their journey had instilled deep bafflement—the generational gap between the Grey Fox God Era and other nations was simply staggering.
If sorcerers were used as a unit of productivity, the civilization tier of the Blood Moon Country roughly allowed everyone—ordinary citizens included—to wield productivity equivalent to a One-Wing Sorcerer; whereas the Gospel Country's tier allowed ordinary people to generate productive value approaching that of a Two-Wing Sorcerer.
As for the absurdity of the Senluo Country, it had consolidated the entire society's power to generate total productivity equivalent to millions of Legendary Sorcerers!
Don't dismiss this order of magnitude as hyperbole; comparing it to the Gospel System makes it clear. The operation of the Gospel System required not only a god, but also scores or hundreds of legendary and sanctuary sorcerers serving ceaselessly as energy batteries—and even so, it still had to rely on 'Gospel points' to relieve operational strain.
While Grey Fox legacies weren't ubiquitous nationwide like the Gospel System, the crux was that these legacies required no external energy supply whatsoever!
The Kaleidoscope, Blindsight, the Shelter, the Twin System... all had endured for over two centuries without maintenance, yet still produced effects on par with divine miracles!
Only recently had Yaxiu fully grasped it—the Twin System creating out of thin air a Fate Twin identical to him in every way, even replicating his sorcery power and sorcery spirits, was essentially no different from a divine miracle.
Creating life was fundamentally the domain of gods!
If Grey Fox sorcerers truly had sealed miracles into the Void Realm in advance to provide technical support for these legacies, then the Grey Fox God Era's societal productivity was equal to at least millions of Legendary Sorcerers—and likely far higher! After all, beyond the legacies Yaxiu's group had encountered, countless others had been destroyed in the 'Cataclysm'; who knew how many creations even greater than the 'Shelter' the Grey Fox sorcerers had forged!
"Wait, the Void Realm!" the Spear Sanctuary Sorcerer suddenly realized. "We can hide in the Void Realm to restore the normal flow of time!"
Everyone perked up, immediately attempting to open their Gates of Truth. Yaxiu blinked and silently opened Aurora's Sorcerer Handbook, selecting "Void Realm Exploration."
"It doesn't work."
The Spear Sanctuary Sorcerer went deathly pale. "My soul cannot pass through the Gate of Truth."
"I'm afraid it's for the same reason we can't leave the Dead City," the Wind Sanctuary Sorcerer murmured, looking down at his palm. "No wonder I kept sensing spatial confinement from the 'Shelter'... Once the time dilation effect is triggered, we are effectively locked inside the shelter, unable to enter normal time flow. That's why we can neither leave the Dead City nor enter the Void Realm!"
It was evident the Wind Sanctuary Sorcerer possessed no small mastery of the space faction; Yaxiu and the others hadn't sensed any trace of spatial confinement at all.
Yet this was hardly good news—they truly had no means of escaping the Dead City!
Except for one person.
Yaxiu looked at the "Team Formation" interface, where the roster listed "Observer of the End," "Sword Princess," "Black and White Witch," and "Yulanweise." Only his status read 'Ready'; the others were all 'Preparing.'
Once everyone was 'Ready,' they would naturally proceed into Void Realm exploration. But by their perceived perception, the scheduled login time was thousands or tens of thousands of years away—however, Yaxiu could forcibly pull them online. Upon unlocking Level 3 Bond with an operator, Yaxiu had gained additional administrative privileges, the most valuable of which was 'force-teaming and logging in without permission.'
Incidentally, Yulanweise's Bond had quietly reached Level 3 as well. Yaxiu figured it must have been an organic synergy between his own transcendent personal charm and Yulanweise's cultured, gentle disposition, which allowed their Bond level to rise swiftly even amidst tranquility.
As for whether Aurora's Sorcerer Handbook could also be nullified by the "Shelter," Yaxiu wasn't worried in the slightest—back in the Gospel Country, he had realized the handbook's priority surpassed even gods; not even the Gospel God could weave out the handbook's secrets.
Thus, Yaxiu could force his teammates online and enter the Void Realm at any moment to escape the time cage of the "Shelter."
Whether it was three thousand years or thirty thousand years, it was meaningless to him.
However...
Yaxiu glanced at the deceiver, the necromancer, and Black Crow beside him. He waved a hand to dismiss the handbook interface and said, "Let's find a way to break free from the Shelter's confinement."
"What way could there possibly be?" The Fire Sanctuary Sorcerer's tone grew increasingly hysterical. "We can't leave, we can't enter the Void Realm. Are we supposed to find the physical body of the 'Shelter'? Over the past two hundred years, countless people have already dug three feet into every inch of this ground!"
"There is a way."
Everyone turned to look at Gwen behind Igola, while Gwen looked at Igola. The deceiver raised an eyebrow and stepped in front of her to block the others' line of sight. Gwen then made a throat-slitting gesture, but placed her other hand in front of her neck.
Blocking death.
Igola immediately caught her drift, turning back to the group. "There really is a way, and it's the definitively valid, correct method."
"What way?"
"Escape the danger."
Igola said, "The mechanism of the 'Shelter' is that it triggers only when you encounter danger, and deactivates once you escape it. If I'm not mistaken, the rate of time dilation is also tied to the threat level of the danger we face: the more immense and imminent the danger, the greater the time dilation multiplier, giving us more ample time to resolve it."
"In other words, the reason we can't leave the 'Shelter' is because—" He looked around at everyone. "It believes that we have encountered a danger that will take thousands or tens of thousands of years to resolve."
Chapter 616