Translator: AnubisTL
The moment Artorius's true body stepped into this time tributary, the tide turned.
The grand will that had seemed omnipotent before Jieming instantly displayed a completely different "emotion" when faced with the eighth-tier wizard.
A wave of intense shock, tinged with an irrepressible hint of panic, surged through it.
Without a moment's hesitation, the will acted with astonishing decisiveness. All its tendrils, which had been spread throughout this Timeline Gap World, retracted with unprecedented speed, like a startled octopus.
The force field enveloping the world collapsed rapidly, converging toward the blue energy sphere on the temple's central altar. It was clearly severing its connection to this "temporary cage" to flee back to its true hiding place.
However, Wizard Artorius had gone to great lengths to weave this massive "Variable Overload" web. How could he let it escape so easily?
From the very first instant his true body set foot here, Artorius's eyes—calm as the starry sky—had already reflected countless torrents of data beyond ordinary comprehension.
He was calculating.
With the terrifying processing speed of an eighth-tier wizard, he analyzed the structure of this temporary Gap World, traced the source path of the will's retraction, and reverse-engineered the "coordinate parameters" of the timeline where its true body resided.
With a clear "clue" now in hand, the enemy's hiding place was doomed to be exposed.
It all happened too fast.
Jieming felt the will that had nearly erased him ebb away like a receding tide, the pressure vanishing instantly. By the time he looked up, the will had already withdrawn most of its power.
Just as the receding will was about to fully detach from the energy sphere and slip into a deeper timeline...
A faint smile touched Artorius's lips.
"Heh... Got you."
Before the words had even faded, he raised his hand again and tore at the void before him.
Rrip—
A pitch-black rift, far more stable than the one that had brought Jieming here, was brutally torn from the very "structure" of this world, its edges flowing with dense starlight.
The aura emanating from the other side of the rift was fundamentally different from this temporary Timeline Gap World. It was "heavier," more "real," yet carried a faint, lingering resonance with this tributary world.
Without a moment's hesitation, Artorius stepped into the rift, his figure instantly swallowed by the darkness.
Jieming reacted instantly.
He knew that staying here might mean survival, but if any accident occurred, he could easily be lost along with this entire Time Crack World.
By comparison, following the Starforger offered a better chance of survival—and the only opportunity to uncover the final mystery.
Without hesitation, he plunged into the Starlight Crack.
After a brief, disorienting sensation of weightlessness and distortion as he crossed between dimensional layers, his feet found solid ground.
The moment Jieming steadied himself, he sensed a fundamental difference.
The surroundings were still the same roughly hewn temple, with its stone pillars, dome, and altar. But the stone here wasn't the lifeless, ashen gray of the previous place; it glowed with a warm, subdued energy.
An ancient, solemn aura permeated the air. The temple itself seemed steeped in age and a certain profound "significance," radiating a truly grand and divine majesty. It was worlds apart from the previous "replica" with its artificial, sterile chill.
Without a doubt, this is the real thing!
This was the Core Timeline World, the one truly constructed and long inhabited by the being behind the scenes!
The sight at the temple's center confirmed it.
Hovering above the altar was no longer a simple blue energy sphere.
Instead, it was a massive metal orb, over five meters in diameter, a masterpiece of mechanical beauty.
Its surface was far from smooth, covered in a dense, precise grid of intersecting vertical energy conduits. Within these conduits flowed highly condensed streams of gold and silver energy, emitting a low, steady hum.
The entire sphere appeared to be a masterpiece combining top-tier engineering aesthetics.
At this moment, the energy conduits on its surface were flashing and extinguishing with unprecedented frequency, clearly operating under overload as they processed massive amounts of energy and information to counter the sudden intrusion crisis.
Jieming's gaze swept across the area, but he found no sign of Wizard Artorius, who had entered first.
But just as doubt crossed his mind, the spiritual mark imprinted on the surface of his soul was triggered.
Strands of mental power suddenly materialized from the surrounding environment.
Jieming immediately recognized them as Wizard Artorius's mental power.
Upon sensing the mark from Wizard Artorius on Jieming, this mental power autonomously converged and surged toward him.
At the same time, the "message" carried within the mental power was also received by Jieming.
It was information left behind by Artorius in advance, now automatically released:
"There are differences in the flow of time between different timeline worlds, so you will likely not see me after you enter. I will do my best to lock onto its core defense mechanism and suppress and restrain it. Its main body's active defense capabilities have been greatly weakened, but its internal data firewall and information countermeasure procedures are still running."
"If you enter, immediately use the time I'm pinning down its protection mechanism to approach the sphere, and try to crack the information and establish a connection from the external interface or weak points. I will do my utmost to maintain the suppression."
The message was concise and clear, specifying Jieming's current mission.
Jieming didn't hesitate in the slightest.
In a gamble at this level, it was foolish to doubt the judgment and arrangements of an eighth-tier wizard.
If there were defenses that even a Starforger couldn't overcome, his own meager strength would be completely useless.
Conversely, if Artorius had created an opportunity, he had to seize it!
His figure blurred into a streak of light as he charged straight toward the massive mechanical sphere.
The sphere had clearly sensed Jieming's approach.
The energy conduits on its surface flashed even more violently, and the entire sphere emitted a low, angry tremor.
However, just as Artorius had stated in his message, its "active defense"—the will-based attacks that could directly erase existence, time turbulence, and space blockades—seemed to be held down by a more powerful force, unable to be deployed.
The sphere's current state was more like a central computer that had been stripped of most of its weapon systems, able only to sound alarms and put up limited internal resistance.
As Jieming rapidly closed in, the sphere's remaining defense mechanisms were fully activated.
A torrent of will, though much weaker than before but still vast and chaotic, surged toward Jieming's consciousness. It was a deluge of massive, disordered, and contradictory information, like a burst dam of sewage, crashing against his mind!
This was the most primitive form of mental pollution and information overload, designed to shatter Jieming's sanity, obstruct his thoughts, and reduce him to a mindless husk or a state of conscious fragmentation.
Against an ordinary fourth- or fifth-tier creature, or even some sixth-tier existences lacking mental defenses, this attack might have been effective.
Unfortunately, in the eyes of a wizard, such a method was simply too "crude."
Moreover, Jieming was not just a wizard, but a cultivator with a Divine Transformation Realm primordial spirit!
His soul essence had been tempered twice over, making it far more stable than that of any being of his level.
"A mere parlor trick!" Jieming snorted coldly.
His primordial spirit was as clear as a mirror. The Five Aggregates Rainbow Transformation Mirror glowed with light as his mental power formed an indestructible dam. Simultaneously, he activated the Mind-Clearing Spirit-Soothing method recorded in the Great Dao Library Pavilion.
The surging tide of chaotic will and informational garbage crashed against his mental defenses. Most of it was deflected and bounced off. The small portion that managed to seep through was quickly decomposed and isolated by the Five Aggregates Rainbow Transformation Mirror, unable to affect his core thoughts or actions.
Bracing himself against the "mudslide" of spirit and information, Jieming landed steadily beside the colossal mechanical sphere.
Up close, he could feel the creature's precision and antiquity even more keenly. The energy conduits flowed with more than just power; they seemed to be compiling incredibly complex information codes.
With no time to admire it, Jieming immediately activated his Universal Eye at full power.
Deep within his pupils, intricate runes and spiritual light intertwined, pushing his vision and perception to their absolute limit. The massive metal sphere before him was rapidly decompiled in his "Eye" into countless flowing data streams, energy paths, rune structures, interface definitions, and information keys...
A sea of highly encrypted data, bearing the hallmarks of an unknown technological tree, washed over his consciousness.
Jieming focused his entire mind, rapidly filtering and comparing the data, searching for patterns and a breakthrough. His goal was clear: find an interactable "interface," a "centralized area" for information storage, or a "logical vulnerability" in its defenses.
Time slipped away in the intense decryption process. The sphere's resistance grew weaker, yet the complexity of its internal data streams was beyond imagination.
Finally, at a certain moment, Jieming's Universal Eye captured a peculiar "data stream."
This stream was unlike any other, which were merely responsible for energy transmission, system maintenance, or defensive feedback. It was more "complex," more "ordered," and its path flowed toward a core region within the sphere, protected by multiple layers of encryption.
After repeated confirmation, Jieming identified its encoding as the "archival" and "recording" type.
"An information storage facility... or... an access channel to the core database?" Jieming's eyes lit up.
While still processing the massive influx of information, he immediately detached a portion of his consciousness—a tendril imbued with his soul imprint and decryption runes—and cautiously "probed" toward the area indicated by the special data stream.
The instant his consciousness tendril made contact, a torrent of data, far more vast than the previous flood, surged toward him.
But this time, it wasn't an attack. It was simply the unbridled release of a colossal amount of recorded information.
In an instant, Jieming's consciousness was swept into a bottomless data abyss woven from memory and time.
(End of the Chapter)
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