Chapter 1176: A Single Time Ray
"Nothing." The Magician was also quite frank. "Since entering the game, I've been following in the footsteps of that predecessor. But there are many others who take him as their goal just like me, so I'm nothing special."
"Aside from that, I have no connection with him, nor any deep-seated grudge or reason."
The playing card pinched between Xu Huo's fingertips flew toward him. The Magician reached out to catch it, saying with surprise, "You agree to the exchange?"
"Since 'The Magician's Gift' is so important to you, two A-grade items would put me at a bit of a loss. How about this," Xu Huo said casually, as if speaking offhand. "In the future, when you obtain the Magician's legacy, just help me out with a small favor."
The Magician frowned. "A verbal promise cannot be trusted."
"As long as you don't go back on your word, it's fine." Xu Huo seemed genuinely unconcerned about the card.
But the more he acted this way, the more uneasy the Magician felt. After pondering for a moment, he took out a contract. "This is a performance ticket I had crafted in imitation of that A-grade Magician. As long as we agree on a performance time, and provided we are at the same level of wormhole point, after you sign the time, I will be able to know your location at the fastest speed. As long as neither of us is inside an instance, this performance ticket can be redeemed without issue."
As he spoke, he had already written his player nickname: Moth Art.
The performance ticket flew through the spiritual realm and landed in front of Xu Huo. He reached out and took it, slightly curious about the nickname, so he asked an extra question.
"I greatly admire the spirit of the moth. A person should live like that—charging forward even in death." After explaining, the Magician asked, "I know your real name. What is your player nickname? If this performance ticket ever falls into someone else's hands, I won't honor the promise."
"Passerby A." Xu Huo answered just as readily.
The Magician paused again, subtly. "Why?"
"I also greatly admire the profession of Passerby A." Xu Huo said half-truthfully.
The Magician's expression grew even more peculiar. "There's actually such a profession?"
"Three hundred and sixty trades, every trade has its work." Xu Huo waved his hand and steered the conversation back to this ruined space. "Do you know what this place is?"
"It's probably the battle remnants of a high-level player," the Magician said. "Judging by the current degree of spatial overlap and repetition, it should still retain the power of a high-level player. Such places are hard to come by. Perhaps someone can gain an opportunity for super evolution from it."
Xu Huo had already withdrawn his spiritual power and was once again surveying the ruined world outside. "You have no interest in this place?"
"I do, but..." The Magician was clearly more concerned about another matter.
"It won't take that long, will it?" Xu Huo beckoned. "A ready-made good place."
Hearing this, the Magician no longer rushed to leave. He also closed off his spiritual realm and instead used spatial power to touch this world.
His spatial evolution was deeper than Xu Huo's, already reaching the level of remotely controlling heavy objects and directly creating spatial barriers. Therefore, watching his control process from the side was also an opportunity for Xu Huo.
The Magician, with a mind to reciprocate, demonstrated the entire process of object control in a detailed and slow manner, and used spatial rays to interfere with the boundaries of the ruined space—the ruined space he saw with his eyes was different from what Xu Huo saw.
What Xu Huo could see was only the part expanded with the help of the cube space, which was essentially a very small portion of the ruined space. The Magician's range was larger, allowing him to see things that could not be glimpsed through a single tube.
The buildings and stone pathways floating in space were actually fixed in the air by a kind of line different from spatial rays.
Unlike the chaotic spatial rays, the ray bearing the weight of the buildings was only a single one.
It pierced through the objects, extending up and down to the very ends of this space.
Similarly, whenever the ruined space repeated, such a ray would also appear, but it came horizontally, also a single one.
"Could it be a time ray?" The Magician reacted first. "The gravity in this space is normal, yet the buildings can remain suspended. It's very likely that time has been frozen. If you destroy the object itself or break the time ray, this state can no longer be maintained."
As he spoke, he crushed a floating stone slab in front of him.
Sure enough, with the slab's shattering, the time ray that pierced through it also disappeared. Then, the stone slabs before and after it, including the distant floating buildings, followed suit.
"Can a time ray maintain such a stable state within a space for such a long time?" Xu Huo was slightly surprised.
"Both time and space rays can," the Magician said. "As long as you are strong enough, even spiritual power can detach from the player and remain for a long time."
"This place might even be the battle site of a super player."
He began to move very actively through the ruined space, searching for time rays within the repeating spaces.
Xu Huo followed closely. During this time, they also discussed the writing and totems on the buildings.
"I've seen the writing before, but not the totems." The Magician took out an old book and handed it to him. "This is a dictionary of writing from a D-grade wormhole point. It contains this kind of writing. But the totems are very ancient, perhaps from a partition that has completely disappeared, wandering between different dimensions and just happened to arrive at Zone 014."
Xu Huo flipped to the corresponding writing, made a simple comparison, and then said, "Did people once worship xenomorphs here?"
"Many did. Many still do." The Magician was brief, as if unwilling to dwell on the topic.
"Reaching this scale should be rare," Xu Huo said.
First of all, worshiping xenomorphs couldn't happen in a civilized and developed partition. But the scale here was large enough, clearly not something made with limited manpower and resources by some backward partitions. With these two conditions, the creation of this worship site became particularly special.
The Magician wasn't interested in such bizarre things happening in the game, but Xu Huo quickly convinced him. "Suppose this place was highly autocratic, controlled by a faction of individual players. The threat of xenomorphs could have been one of their means of rule."
"Being destroyed so thoroughly could be due to internal conflict, or some other factor. But finding the central area of this ruin might provide some clues."
"Your hypothesis is that this battle started from the center of the worship site," the Magician said. "The premise is that this battle really is related to the worship."
"But if it really was a super player, destroying one or two partitions wouldn't even require a reason."
"Have you found other clues?" Xu Huo asked lightly in return.
"Then let's search." The Magician was good at listening to others' opinions.
So the two began to compare the writing on the buildings.
Although the content of the writing was largely the same, the style of writing differed slightly from place to place. By comparing it with the Magician's dictionary, it wasn't difficult to find a direction.
They no longer blindly moved back and forth between different ruined spaces but instead traveled on foot toward the central area of this ruin.
(Chapter End)