End of the Magic Era

Lin Yun didn’t further provoke Enderfa after the latter agreed to the two conditions.

Because Lin Yun felt that this Enderfa was the most evil Incarnation among Incarnations. It was for the best if they could peacefully coexist, which would be the best conclusion. It didn’t feel as if he was gaining much, but if he pushed Enderfa too far, they would end up in a life and death struggle, and that wouldn’t benefit anyone…

“Oh, right, Lord Enderfa, you just said that I was stupid?”

“That… That was just a joke, hahahaha…”

Enderfa’s laughter dragged on for a while, but after a few moments he found out that the other side remained silent, and thus his laugh slowly petered out.

Lin Yun also did not press him and waited for Enderfa to be done laughing. “Explain…”

“Fuck…” Enderfa cursed before talking unwillingly. “I said you were stupid because you think that the creator of this puppet was Vaughn…”

“Ah?” Lin Yun’s eyes shone when he heard that. “So you mean to say that someone else created this puppet?”

“Well, there is no harm in telling you, you would learn of this sooner or later…” After sighing, Enderfa helplessly said, “I believe you should know the reason for Vaughn’s rapid rise. It was because he obtained the inheritance of a formidable alchemist…”

“You are talking about the Dark Sage?”

“Indeed, the Dark Sage. But Vaughn only obtained a small part of the Dark Sage’s legacy. To be more precise, it was three Heaven Rank puppets…”

“Sure enough…” Hearing this, Lin Yun nodded in understanding.

In fact, many people during the 3rd Dynasty had conjectured that Vaughn had obtained the Dark Sage’s three Heaven Rank puppets, but the conjectures on the subject were only baseless theories. There had been no evidence, even after Vaughn’s death. Those three Heaven Rank puppets never appeared during his life.

Up until now, when Enderfa affirmed that conjecture.

“Later, Vaughn discovered some secret in the Four Seasons Canyon, and don’t even ask what that secret was, because even I am not too sure about it. I only know that after Vaughn found that secret, he set up a large array around the Four Seasons Canyon and built an alchemy laboratory here. Once he was done, Vaughn left the Four Seasons Canyon and only returned once, years later…”

“When exactly?”

“Around ten years before his self-exile…”

“Eh…”

Lin Yun worked out the time frame. Vaughn’s self-exile to Crystal Island was twenty years before his death. In other words, he had returned to this laboratory thirty years before he died. At that time, Vaughn already stood at the peak of Noscent as the Imperial Chief Alchemist, the glorious last Artisan.

“When Vaughn came back, he brought back the three Heaven Rank Puppets and handed over the control of the laboratory to them, and ten years later he left again. He went to Crystal Island and spent the last twenty years of his life there.”

“What then?”

“And then… Haha, then these three puppets followed Vaughn’s will and took charge of the laboratory, keeping it operating. Up until one night, five hundred years ago, when one Heaven Rank puppet suddenly lost control and started crazily destroying everything in the laboratory…”

“It went crazy?”

“Yes, it did, you would never imagine how frightening an uncontrolled puppet could be. The entire laboratory was almost destroyed by that puppet, and what you see now are only the ruins left behind after the disaster. The laboratory during its peak far surpassed what you could imagine…”

“How could the puppet go out of control like that…” Lin Yun pondered over it but couldn’t understand. Puppets strictly followed the orders from their control runes, so how could that one go crazy out of the blue?

“How could I know? My body at the time was only a Spiritual Magic Tool Set, I couldn’t even run when faced with that Heaven Rank disaster, so how could I still have the courage to search for the truth? In any case, when that Heaven Rank puppet went crazy and destroyed everything, it also climbed to the highest floor of the stone tower. It met the other two Heaven Rank Puppets and a battle ensued, leaving the top floor of the stone tower in ruins. You simply can’t imagine how scary that battle was…”

“Eh?”

“You went to the top floor, you should remember that very long path with empty cages on the sides, right? Well the truth is that those cages held magic beasts from various planes. The weakest was around level 28, while some of the stronger ones reached level 38, and they were far more numerous than you could have ever guessed. I can still remember the dark tide when the two Heaven Rank Puppets released them. At that time, they almost all died in that world-shaking fight, and less than one in a thousand might have managed to escape.”

“I see…” Lin Yun understood when he heard this.

Those empty cages had been left behind after those magic beasts…

Everything actually made sense. The magic beasts that the joint exploration team encountered were most likely part of the survivors or the descendants they left behind.

Lin Yun couldn’t help sweating profusely.

Just that fragment of the initial number of magic beasts released back then nearly wiped out the exploration team. Their group wouldn’t even have had the chance to put up a fight if they’d been there when all the magic beasts had just been released.

“In the end, that crazy Heaven Rank puppet lost. All its systems were dismantled by its companions before being thrown to the discarded storehouse down there.”

“But what does it have to do with me being stupid?”

“After the two puppets dismantled the crazed one, they also sank into madness and started attacking each other. They each controlled one part of the laboratory and frantically made their own armies to engage the other in a fierce melee. The Shadow Assassin in front of you was made by one of them…”

“No way..” Lin Yun couldn’t help feeling stunned when he heard this. The two Heaven Rank Puppets had a large amount of Vaughn’s resources at their disposal and produced a steady flow of puppets as they kept fighting each other and sending their armies into the fray.

This solved some of the questions on Lin Yun’s mind…

Such as why there were so many things in this laboratory that didn’t seem to have been made by Vaughn, or the Void Python Maze, or those few Mage Breakers patrolling the botanical garden, or those flying puppets guarding the stone tower. It turned out that these had all been created by the two crazy puppets.

As he thought of this, Lin Yun curiously asked, “What happened afterwards?”

“They fought for two or three centuries before the resources were exhausted. They both entered the top floor and have never been seen since…”

“Never been seen since…” Hearing this, Lin Yun’s expression changed. “Don’t tell me… In that mountain range…”

“I’m not too sure about this…” After saying this, Enderfa’s voice filled with impatience. “Okay, okay, I already explained, now you should hurry up and dismantle that Shadow Assassin and take the Latour Gold Essence. Let me know when you make that Magic Tool…”

This was followed by silence. No matter how much Lin Yun called out to him, no voice echoed in his mind.

‘Okay, let’s pack everything and return…’ After getting no response, Lin Yun could only scratch his head before dismantling the Shadow Assassin and taking the essence from within.

To Lin Yun’s surprise, the piece of Latour Gold Essence was the size of a fist…

“Such a waste…” Lin Yun was dumbstruck. A fist-sized piece of Latour Gold Essence had been used for the mechanical system of a mere Shadow Assassin… Few people could be more wasteful than these two Heaven Rank Puppets.

Let alone a fist-sized piece…

Just a thumb-sized piece of Latour Gold Essence would have its price measured in spirit mana crystals… Yet these two Heaven Rank Puppets used it for creating Shadow Assassins…

But it could be explained. The war between the two Heaven Rank Puppets was fierce, and it reached a point where the resources within the laboratory were nearly exhausted, forcing them to use materials like Latour Gold Essence on Shadow Assassins. It must have reached a desperate level then.

If the joint exploration team had entered the laboratory a few hundred years ago, their harvest would have been a hundred times better.

Naturally, that was with the premise that they weren’t drawn into the fight with the Heaven Rank Puppets.

The allocation of magic materials was already finishing when Lin Yun was done extracting the Latour Gold Essence. This time, every force that took part in the joint exploration team had had a satisfying harvest, including Suyass and Fran.

Naturally, the Gilded Rose was the one with the greatest harvest.

Loot priority was truly too great.

Besides the Latour Gold Essence and the numerous rare magic materials, the rest of the magic materials allocated to the Gilded Rose could be used to support their business for a few years.

Moreover, Lin Yun still had something planned.

The major forces had gotten their hands on so many magic materials, but no more than three of them could actually use these.

Discussing a good deal with them would be for the best.