End of the Magic Era

Sky Steel Rock, known as the least valuable, yet most valuable stone. This kind of stone had natural resistance towards mana, and it was said that elements couldn’t pass through it easily, making it completely immune to spells.

That thing was extremely hard, and since it was immune to the power of elements, no swordsman under the Heaven Rank could dream of destroying that thing. Only those with enough pure destructive power could destroy Sky Steel Rock.

It was very rare, only gatherable in small quantities, and difficult to extract. It was the best material for constructing city walls or forts, and there wasn’t much of it in Noscent. During the 3rd Dynasty, only the city walls of the imperial city used bricks made of Sky Steel Rock.

Such a large amount of Sky Steel Rock must have been mined by Bill George’s puppet army.

There was no need to test it; Lin Yun knew that apart from Xiuban, with his pure physical power, no one could hope to scratch that Sky Steel Rock. The others didn’t even have the qualifications to leave a mark on it.

“The path has already been sealed. Regardless of who our enemy is, he doesn’t want us to escape. That huge piece of Sky Steel Rock is blocking the way out, and we have no chance of getting through it. We can only move on and find the mechanism.”

A flash of inspiration sparked in his mind, and his pupils shrank. He quickly crouched on the ground and started observing the array that was slowly waning.

As he looked at the runes and patterns slowly dissipating on the ground, Lin Yun took a deep breath as he recalled a previous encounter.

This was far too similar to what happened on the Intrepid.

Back then, it had felt as if all their actions had been monitored, and they’d been unable to discover how. Ultimately, they came to the conclusion that the monster was controlling the Intrepid itself.

And ever since they entered these ruins, everything seemed to have been working against them. Even the mechanical arms used to polish puppet components had suddenly attacked them.

Hundreds of sharp spikes suddenly shooting out of walls without Lin Yun even noticing anything, as well as the ambush at the intersection…

There was only one possibility!

Lin Yun could only think of one thing!

He finally understood why he hadn’t been able to figure out how they were being spied upon. An observation method that could escape Lin Yun’s notice could only have been accomplished by a powerhouse at the Heaven Rank, yet the sudden attacks weren’t that overpowering.

It was because the monitoring method was all around them. The floor, the walls, the ceiling, everything was watching every single one of their moves, because the entire base was monitoring them!

This was why they couldn’t track it down, why every trap came without warning, and why Lin Yun was unable to find traces of any mechanisms.

The entire base was a puppet!

Lin Yun took a deep breath, a trace of shock in his eyes.

“If I’m not wrong, the entire base itself is a huge alchemy puppet!”

Lin Yun’s words stunned everyone.

“Merlin, are… you joking?” Enderfa almost stuttered.

Wagner’s face was deathly pale as he managed to say, “Sir Merlin, this… This joke isn’t very funny…”

Lin Yun wasn’t smiling as he solemnly nodded. “The skill of the owner of this place can be described as unprecedented. It’s not an exaggeration to say that in Noscent’s history, from the previous Dynasties until now, those who were able to discuss with this person can be counted on one hand.

“Turning the entire base into an alchemy puppet isn’t impossible with that kind of power. In fact, this is the most logical explanation.”

Since they were inside the alchemy puppet, the puppet would know their every move. That would explain all the strangeness, like the apparently omniscient monitoring and the ability to perfectly prepare an ambush.

Lin Yun couldn’t think of another possible explanation.

Not to mention Wagner, even Enderfa’s three faces were in disbelief.

Lin Yun knew that this was really possible, and although he hadn’t personally seen such a huge puppet during the end of the Magic Era, he had seen records of one in the decaying library.

During Noscent’s development to its peak, there had been a force called Puppet City that specialized in alchemy puppets. That huge fort had been a huge puppet, and with that puppet fort and their puppet army, they swept through countless planes. They even attacked the Undead Plane once.

It ended up with their puppet fort being lost in the Undead Plane, destroyed when more than half of the Undead Plane had been conquered.

Bill George had stayed in the Raging Flame Plane for so long, and in fact, he might have even stayed in the Radiant Fort all along.

It was understandable that the creation of such a huge puppet base was a masterpiece.

A true Puppet Greatmaster. No wonder so many people were looking for Bill George’s ruins during the peak of Noscent.

Ultimately, Bill George’s real ruins weren’t found, but they were mentioned in the decaying library.

And what made Lin Yun even more certain was that puzzling question he’d had at the very beginning.

When they first entered, the assembly line, all the machinery, and the puppets were unexpectedly out of power. It even looked like they had been out of power for a very long time.

Yet the puppets that were standing guard had enough energy, so where did the rest of the energy go?

After all, the amount of energy that the Radiant Fort’s array was drawing from the Abyss was enormous. Even if only a small part was poured into the ground, it would still be an astronomical amount.

Even with so much power, the energy supply of those puppets couldn’t be guaranteed… So where did most of the power go?

Now, he had an explanation.

That overwhelming amount of energy was used to supply the entire base, or it might be better to say, that huge puppet!

All of the energy was prioritized for the large puppet, keeping the base constantly running. The main reason behind the assembly line stopping should have been a lack of raw materials.

No one had come for a very long time, and since the base couldn’t keep making puppets without materials, it could only stop the assembly line.

“Be careful and don’t wander off. We are now facing an entire base, and danger can appear anytime.” Lin Yun gave everyone a serious warning before waving his hands to summon a few Rock Puppets to search ahead again.

“Merlin, why not choose the left or the right path?” Enderfa asked with some doubt.

Lin Yun looked at the pitch-black passage and said, “Our only hope of leaving this place is to find the core of the base. The entire base is a puppet that will never run out of energy, so if we aren’t able to find its core, we could spend a few hundred years here without seeing the light of the sun. Do you think we can forcibly cut a path out of the masterpiece of a Peak Heaven Mage at the apex of the puppeteering field?”

Lin Yun’s words silenced Wagner, who had also wanted to say something.

A Peak Heaven Mage proficient in the field of puppets… This was the same as saying that they needed to have the power of a Heaven Rank powerhouse to forcibly break out of here.

Wagner greatly regretted following along. If he did something bad, he would die. The only path left for him was to follow Mafa Merlin. He didn’t even dare to retort because he might really be killed.

Lin Yun led the others into a passage, and just as they took a few steps in, a loud rumble echoed above their heads.

Several-meter-thick blocks of Sky Steel Rock suddenly appeared, tightly fitted to both walls, not leaving the slightest gap between them and the walls. Each piece weighed ten to fifteen tons. Even Xiuban wouldn’t be able to endure such weight falling on him, not to mention the others. This was tyrannical!

Lin Yun’s expression slightly changed. His Magic Array instantly calculated and found fifteen such blocks of Sky Steel Rock. In other words, they had to rush over a hundred and thirty meters.

And these Sky Steel Rocks wouldn’t take more than two seconds to fall to the ground!

Lin Yun unhesitantly used Fire Elemental Incarnation while summoning the huge wheel shadow behind him and causing it to spew out boundless flames to form a path ahead.

After flashing three times, Lin Yun came out at the end of the fire path, exactly a hundred and thirty meters forward.

Just as he appeared, Lin Yun turned and started casting towards the passage. Four yellow vortexes appeared, and within the vortexes, several Rock Giants appeared. These giants raised their arms and fiercely tried to stop the falling Sky Steel Rocks.

In an instant, half of the Rock Giants exploded on impact, but even more Rock Giants were coming out, and they managed to somewhat slow the fall of the Sky Steel Rocks.

In the passage, Xiuban’s feet hit the ground quite hard before he shot out like a cannonball. Reina glanced at Lin Yun before opening her mouth, spitting out a waterfall of ice waterfall and using three Frost Flashes.

Enderfa and the puppet used the exact same method: They instantly cast powerful spells behind them, using the force of the spells to propel themselves across that distance.

It only took over a second for the few of them to escape, but Wagner was the slowest. He imitated Lin Yun and used Fire Elemental Incarnation before taking advantage of the path created by Lin Yun to flee with Flame Flashes.

But his Fire Elemental Incarnation wasn’t as robust as Lin Yun’s. He only moved about ten meters with a Flame Flash, and after two seconds, he’d only managed to cover a bit over seventy meters… Only half the distance.