Page 170
There is permanent lighting in the underground of the ruins, making the king's glow stick meaningless.
But Wang still let the dragon head glow stick float beside him as a light source - in this way, if the light source of the ruins was suddenly interrupted, he would not be caught off guard.
He led the team into the ruins research department according to the map.
As soon as they entered the Relics Research Department, they saw a complete set of tea sets.
Elizabeth was amazed. "This is a complete set of Volmer tea sets, which can be used to drink Volmer Asarbon black tea. This is a rare commodity sent from the other side of the world mountain range. Our family occupied the end of the Shield Road, and we only got one set of this thing."
Wang went forward and picked up the cup from the tea set and studied it carefully. "It looks quite exquisite. Does the Relics Research Department usually do nothing but drink tea?"
Flint: "The prisoners say they haven't made any progress, maybe it's because of the tea."
Xiao Bai sniffed: "Wait a minute, it smells like cake!"
As he spoke, Xiaobai rushed to a cabinet and opened the door with a bang.
Sure enough, there was a cake inside.
Xiao Bai scooped a spoonful of cream from the cake and stuffed it into his mouth: "Mmm, fresh cream! This cake was just made this morning. We can share it!"
Wang: "Drinking tea and eating cake, especially in the morning when the enemy is about to attack, the Relic Research Department is having a good time."
Flint: "But...where are they?"
Everyone looked at each other.
Wang: "Malika, investigate this room for any signs of human activity."
Marika: "We have already checked. There were about ten people active here in the morning, but they all left soon. They joined other people at the door."
Wang: "We left because of the order to retreat... Let's look for research materials, especially cross-section or three-dimensional images of the ruins below."
The group started searching immediately, and soon Wang himself found a thick notebook.
He opened it and found it was a diary.
He recited silently:
"What a hell..."
**
It's really weird, this damn relic has its secret written all over its face, but we can't find a way to solve the puzzle.
This is the fifty-fifth time we have failed to open the central gate of the ruins. We have tried fifty-five methods and studied every pattern on the gate, but there is still no progress!
The only thing we are sure of is that this place should be the remains of the Cyclops Empire.
But what is strange is that in the first era of the existence of the Cyclops Empire, this place should have been a desert similar to Catalonia, but with climate change, it gradually turned into a river country full of swamps.
During the Second Age of the Human Empire, there were not so many swamps here, and the climate had just become milder.
This is where the strange thing comes in. When we were exploring the ruins, the plant fossils we found in the cracks of the stone walls were incompatible with the desert environment nearby at the time.
Combined with the rumors about the Cyclops Empire's various miraculous technologies, I naturally came up with a new idea: this was originally supposed to be a floating city. The Cyclops Empire liked to use floating cities as aerial fortresses with sufficient troops stationed on them.
In this way, once an incident occurs, the floating city can immediately go to the dispute area and send down troops to quell the incident.
The plants brought to the floating city were naturally the seeds brought there when the floating city was built. However, my idea was withheld by the research director.
He felt that if he sent a report on something as trivial as studying plant fossils to the headquarters, he would be scolded.
I have to admit that it is somewhat arbitrary to conclude that this ruins was originally a floating city based solely on plant specimens.
But once this idea was born, it stuck in my mind.
In the First Age, although everyone said that the Cyclops Empire had the technology to build floating cities, and although the Union of Arcane Law still preserved the knowledge of the "mountain cutting technique" used by the Cyclops Empire to build floating cities, but -
After all, there is no ruins in the world that can prove that the Cyclops does have a floating city.
Not even the wreckage was found.
According to the legend of the First Age, after the collapse of the Cyclops Empire, all the floating cities fell from the sky at once. If that was the case, then a lot of floating city wreckage should be found on the ground.
However, there is no such thing.
Like many of the Cyclops Empire's masterpieces, the floating city disappeared all at once and has never appeared in history since.
One can't help but wonder whether these things really existed, or whether they might just be legends fabricated by later generations.
However, I am very sure that we are now living in a floating city of the Cyclops Empire - it turns out that those floating cities did not fall, but landed on the ground and became ruins on the ground.
No wonder everyone couldn't find the wreckage no matter how hard they looked.
This discovery will surely shock the Explorers Association——
**
Wang read this and suddenly stopped: "Wait a minute!"
Everyone who had gathered around to listen to him read cast doubtful looks at him.
Wang: "It mentions shocking the Explorers Association... Could it be that the person who wrote this diary is a dwarf?"
Elizabeth asked in confusion, "Why do you think the Explorers' Association is a dwarf? At the beginning of our journey, didn't the emperor also make up a lie that the Explorers' Association was looking for a ring?"
Wang: "That's a lie. The envoys sent by the emperor did not include dwarves. This is very abnormal. The main body of the Explorers' Association is dwarves. Dwarves regard satisfying curiosity as the meaning of life. If a dwarf loses curiosity, his skin will gradually lose color and he will gradually die.
"That's why 80% of explorers in this world are dwarfs."
After Wang Gang finished speaking, the dwarf took out a wooden box for use as a footstool from under the laboratory table.
"The owner of the diary is indeed a dwarf." The dwarf said as he stood on the box and looked across the table at the king. "Look, this footrest is too high for me, but for the dwarf, its shoulders are just above the table top."
"Wait a minute!" Marika interrupted everyone, "Rather than worrying about whether the person who wrote this is a dwarf, isn't the more important information that this place could be a floating city of the Cyclops?"
Wang spread his hands and said, "Even the person who wrote this thought it might be his own conjecture. It's not easy to find a floating city nowadays."
Chapter 175 "Carrying Six People"
Wang: "According to this diary, the key point should be the main door in the center of the second underground floor, which leads to the third floor below. Let's look for other more detailed research records."
"I found one here." Elizabeth held up what looked like a sketchbook in her hand. "This one has images of the gate from various angles, and also records the carvings and text on the gate in the form of rubbings."
Wang took it immediately and flipped through it quickly, saying as he flipped through it, "The characters copied here are undoubtedly the characters of the Cyclops Empire. Although the Cyclops Empire's characters look like hieroglyphics, they are actually a kind of phonetic writing. They have to be put together to form words to make sense.
"Apparently none of the researchers in the Order understand the One-Eyed Empire's writing. Why?"
Flint: "No, no, no, I think not understanding the One-Eyed Empire's language is the norm, and you are the abnormal one."
Wang: "Really? Our Mage Tower..."
"Your Mage Tower is not normal either!" Flint interrupted the king. "How can a Mage Tower with a bunch of planeswalkers be normal? I have lived for hundreds of years and have never met a single planeswalker! You are half a planeswalker apprentice!"
Wang: "I am actually the apprentice of three planeswalkers, but I obviously cannot be considered a planeswalker, but it should be at least infinitely close to 1, so I'd say 0.9."
Flint: "Does it matter? Put away your inexplicable obsession with numbers!"
At this time, Xiao Bai said: "I found the instant noodles and broken noodles that Dacongming wanted... uh, how did you say it?"
Wang: “Cross-section.”
"Yes, that's it." Xiao Bai ran to Wang with the rolled-up picture and held it high up: "Here! Am I awesome?"
Wang patted Xiaobai's head and said, "That's amazing! You are the best."
After saying this, he put down the picture album and diary in his hands, picked up the cross-section diagram and unfolded it.
"Inverted triangle." He muttered, "And this thin hole here should be a sampling well opened by the researchers of the cult to study the soil around the ruins. This dotted line should be the boundary of the soil... The dwarf who just wrote the diary should be the chief researcher here. His research method is very much in the style of the Gnome Explorers Association."
The dwarf ran over and pulled the king's arm, tilting the king's unfolded cross-section.
This way Flint can see what is on the picture.
Xiao Bai: "If you were a girl, this action just now could be called cute."
Marika teased, "I think this is cute too."
Flint said angrily, "Shut up, Dark Elf!"
Nini: "I think so too... it's a pity to have a beard."
"Shut up, white elf!" Flint probably didn't want to be teased by the two tall elves, so he forced the topic to turn to the cross-section diagram. "The boundary line of this soil is very consistent with the underground structure of the ruins. They are all inverted triangles."
Wang: "Yes, and... look at the markings here. The surface of the ruins is only soil, and one meter underground is granite. No wonder the dwarf researchers think this is the floating city of the Cyclops Empire. Damn, now I think this is a floating city too."
Elizabeth: "But...if this is the floating city of the Cyclops, then the statues should be the gods of the Cyclops, right? But I'm sure that the statues all have two eyes."
King: “The Cyclops believe that the fewer eyes one has, the nobler one is. They despise creatures with two eyes and enslave them as slaves, using magic to drain their vitality from time to time to extend their own lifespan.
"And the Cyclops believes that gods greater than themselves have no eyes. The Cyclops priests will blind their own eyes to get as close to the gods as possible.
"So a possible speculation was born. These statues originally had no eyes, and later the species that occupied the ruins added eyes. The River Kingdoms were the economic center of the human empire in the Second Age. It is possible that the humans who occupied this place did this."
At this time, Nini said, "By the way, I found a list of objects unearthed here, and there are also sketches of the objects on it, take a look."
Wang put down the cross-sectional drawing, took the thick book from his apprentice and opened it.
"Oh, here is the analysis of the unearthed items by the Relics Research Department of the Order: 'The pottery is made with very poor craftsmanship and should be the creation of early human civilization.' This confirms my previous guess."
Elizabeth tried to summarize: "This was originally the floating city of the Cyclops Empire. The Cyclops Empire collapsed in the First Era, and humans occupied this place in the Second Era and rebuilt the Cyclops architecture... But that's not right. I learned in class that humans rely heavily on water transportation, so most of their big cities are next to rivers.
“There is no river here.”
Wang put down the list of unearthed objects, picked up the surface plan of the ruins, looked at it and said, "Indeed, there are no bridges or other buildings that would be found in a waterside city on the surface of the ruins. Could it be that this was an explorer's paradise in the Second Age? But the underground maze is only two floors, and although the area is large...
"Could it be that there were many dangerous monsters living underground at that time?"
Flint: "In the Second Age, adventurers killed all the monsters underground and looted all the magic items. So when the cult came here to use it as a base, they didn't find anything valuable. This speculation is reasonable, isn't it?"
Wang: "That makes sense. We have read most of the information. Let's go to the door and see what the Cyclops left on it."
**
The "central gate" that has been repeatedly mentioned in the research materials of the cult is on the second floor of the ruins. From the structural diagram, this gate and the square space behind it are the center of the entire second floor.
At the same time, there is also an inaccessible square space in the center of the first floor of the ruins.
Further up is the most conspicuous huge statue on the surface of the ruins.
Now the rescue team has arrived in front of this gate.
The magical light sources on both sides of the gate are brighter than those in other places in the ruins, but this has no effect on the king because there is a dragon head glowing stick floating beside him.
Wang: “Let me see…”