The ancient ruins are dormant in the darkness. Thousands of years have failed to eliminate the solid artificial building materials, but they have eliminated the human atmosphere that once existed here. A cold and humid air entrenched in the corridors and rooms that have experienced vicissitudes. There is neither life nor death in the air.

This atmosphere lasted for so long until it was broken by outsiders.

The light from the magic crystal illuminated the way forward. The fully armed Cecil combat soldiers walked deep in the corridor under the leadership of the Byron Knights. They were careful and focused, as if ready to deal with the monsters that pounced out of the darkness at any time. Although the largest creatures they saw were just a few mice.

Knight Byron walked in the front of the team, while a soldier behind him was carrying an oil lamp in his hand. When there were bright magic crystals, the lighting effect of the oil lamp was not too great. Its main function was to warn when there was a lack of oxygen around it, and to react when there were shadows and unclean things around it appeared.

According to the order issued by Gao Wen, they went deep into the ancient mountain ruins. Now it was the second day of their activities in the ruins. The things they saw along the way still did not change much. They were nothing more than neatly planned, as wide as amazing corridors and empty rooms. The architectural structure inside the mountain felt very complicated at first, but after exploring for a while, they could master the rules: this facility was obviously not designed for the purpose of making people get lost.

However, no matter how boring the things you saw along the way, Byron dutifully drew maps and marked rooms in various ways.

The light of the magic crystal shone into another deep room. Byron and others came to the end of the corridor temporarily marked as "third corridor". The soldiers advanced with a warning formation. After confirming that the room was safe, they set up a sentry at the door: they were going to have a rest here.

Exploring in the dark ancient ruins is a very exhausting thing. The physical exhaustion when walking is nothing, but groping in the darkness is quite a test of one's spirit. The soldiers brought this time are already experienced and extremely determined veterans, but they still need timely rest before they can continue.

After checking the risk factors, the soldiers camped in the open space in a corner of the room. They placed the magic crystals around to provide lighting, then took out their own dry food and drinking water, and seized the time to eat and replenish their energy. Byron sat next to a magic crystal and looked at the map in his hand under the light.

This hand-drawn map marks the areas that have been explored so far. Since the corridors and rooms are very regular, the map looks very concise and easy to understand. Although the three-dimensional facilities cause some trouble to draw maps, it is not a problem to draw the planes of each floor separately on paper.

Byron, who was a mercenary, was familiar with this.

"Sir, there seems to be nothing on this floor," said a veteran, "all useful things have been emptied."

"The valuable things are often deeper," Byron replied, pointing to a place on the map. "According to the previous rules, this should be a large staircase leading to the next level, and we'll go here later."

"yes."

Byron turned his attention back to the map and casually glanced at the oil lamp that had just been turned on. The bright flames were still burning well and trembling gently from the breeze.

Wait a moment...wind?

Where does the wind come from the completely blocked mountain ruins? The ventilation channel will not form such a large airflow, right?

The alertness cultivated during the mercenary period made Byron not let go of this detail. He immediately closed the map and wet his fingers with saliva and carefully sensed that it was indeed windy.

"There is airflow here," he reminded immediately, "light a few more lights and go searching separately. There should be more than one entrance and exit in this room."

The soldiers immediately took action and began to search for the secret doors and mechanisms in the room. Soon, they discovered something unusual.

At the end of the room, there is a clear rectangular depression on one wall, which looks like a gate, and beside the depression area is a pile of decayed debris, which are wood shelves and steel scraps after thousands of years of weathering.

The room was dim before, and similar wall depressions and piles of debris could be seen everywhere in the ruins. Most of them were traces left after the equipment was removed, so the soldiers did not pay attention to these things at all.

But there is an airflow blowing out in this place, which is obviously connected to the outside world.

Byron ordered the soldiers to remove the accumulated debris, and thus revealed a half-buried metal in the wall. It was a cylinder with a diameter of less than half a meter, perpendicular to the ground, half buried in the wall, and the exposed part was covered with complex patterns, and the upper part was still a downwardly slanted plane: obviously not to be used as a countertop for shelving items.

"What is this?" A soldier looked at the metal pillar curiously, with a nervous look on his face, "It's not a trap..."

"No," Byron shook his head, recalling some common sense that Gao Wen had told him, "According to the Duke, this kind of appearance is usually used in this way..."

As he said, he placed his hand on the sloping plane at the top of the metal object, but the latter did not respond.

Byron had no embarrassment on his face: "Of course, most of the things in it cannot be used, after all, they will become bad over time, which is common sense."

A soldier said carelessly: "Sir, have you taken off your gloves and tried it?"

Byron's old face was not red at all, and he glared at the big-headed soldier: "Then you try it!"

The opposite side was worthy of being a soldier brought by Byron. He was not polite at all. He took off his gloves and put his hands on the slope like Byron just now.

The next second, the complex patterns on the surface of the metal object became slightly brighter, and a slight vibration came from somewhere. While the soldier showed a look of astonishment on his face, Byron heard a somewhat distorted and extremely rigid voice coming from the metal object: "Detection...sample tester...stability period...is allowed to pass. The isolation door is being opened..."

Then, with the squeaking sound of the ancient mechanism, the sunken place on the wall actually shrank inward, revealing a passage that had been hidden before!

Everyone looked at each other and stared at each other.

"I...I did nothing," the soldier quickly took his hand back, looking nervous and helpless, "You all watched."

Byron took a look at the dark passage behind the door, suddenly took off his gloves and placed his hands on the metal slope.

The metal device also lit up, and soon the old-fashioned distortion sound came from it: "The tester...the sample tester...stable period...is allowed to pass, and the isolation door is already open."

"Can I do it too?" Byron was stunned, then frowned and casually called a soldier, "Come and try!"

The soldier put his hands on the device as if he were like this, and what happened afterwards was exactly the same: the metal device lighted up and a sound came from it, informing the message that it was allowed to pass.

It turns out that anyone who puts his hands on it can pass the test.

"It's probably broken..." After testing two more soldiers, Byron breathed a sigh of relief, "After all, it's such an old thing."

A soldier asked carefully: "Sir, we still..."

"Go in and take a look," Byron's face was still cautious, but his heart was already slightly excited. As a former mercenary who had been wandering all over the ruins of the south, he seemed to have smelled the smell of good things. "I finally found it after searching for so long!"

...

While Byron and his party continued to penetrate the ruins in the mountains, a new guest also set foot on the new territory of the Cecil family.

This is a graceful young woman, wearing a light gauze dress that is not like Ansu style, with long hair scattered behind her, a lilac veil covering her face, leaving only a pair of bright and lively eyes exposed outside, she walked into Cecil's territory openly, through the soldiers' sentry, through the camp's gate, and through the neat wooden houses.

Cecil's leaders were busy coming and going next to her, but everyone turned a blind eye to it.

The woman wearing a veil walked openly, observing the town with curiosity, theoretically only a few months old. Those orderly wooden houses can be regarded as qualified town buildings in other places. After all, in most places of this era, the living conditions of civilians are not even as good as such houses, but in fact, these wooden houses are still obvious "transitional buildings", because on both sides of the town's avenue, houses under demolition and reconstruction can be seen everywhere. The houses have solidified the foundation and built with bricks and tiles, which are obviously the next generation of houses in this town.

A strange noise came from not far away. The woman wearing a veil looked in the sound and found that the direction of the sound was a factory building with smoke and dust coming. She walked over curiously, pushed open the door openly, and was stunned after seeing the scene inside.

It turned out that this was the place to fire bricks and tiles, but there were two strange machines in the canopy in the center of the yard. One of them had a clear magical reaction. It rotated under the driving force of some kind of magic mechanism and used a powerful shaft to drive the other machine connected to it. The machine kept pressing the mixture of mud and sand as raw materials into regular porcelain bricks. These two machines were not only amazingly efficient, but also obviously did not require complicated control: there were only two civilians wearing coarse cloth clothes and pants watching next to the machine, and more people were busy loading the rapidly forming bricks onto the chariot and pushing them to the rows of kilns arranged neatly and several circles larger than ordinary brick kilns on the other side of the yard.

What are those two large magic devices...?

Magical mechanisms? But what about the mages who control them? Who is injecting magic into them? Who is adjusting their magic flow? Who is controlling their speed and start and stop?

Could it be those two ordinary people who have no magic reaction in their bodies?!

Speaking of which, it seems that magic reactions can be sensed everywhere in this place. This is really strange. Could it be that this territory is built on a magic focus?

The woman wearing a veil frowned with beautiful brows. She wanted to take apart the two machines, but if she had to do such an extraordinary move, no matter how clever sneaking or psychological suggestion was, she could not do it, so she could only shake her head regretfully, exit the yard and close the door.
Chapter completed!