In the end, Lin Mu could only push it to later for now. He had neither the time nor the luxury to ponder on it as of now, and there were more pushing matters to attend to instead. The situation with the ruins had not been solved yet, and they were all in danger.
"I should check the final room and get to that… eerie thing." Lin Mu muttered before leaving the underground room.
He flew up and came to stand in front of the last room. This room had a door as well, but it was different from all the others he had seen until now. It was certainly not made of the same stone that the rest were made of.
In addition to stone, there were also metal fittings and inlays embedded into the stone, which reinforced it. Lin Mu could even see the fine engravings on the metal parts which showed that these doors were once strengthened further with formations.
Though they had now all but faded away to the annals of time.
~pat~pat~
Lin Mu placed his hands on the two doors and pushed them.
~DENG~
~CREAK~
At first, the sound of something getting struck was heard. It was like metal hitting an edge, but it soon turned into a creaking sound. One thing Lin Mu could tell from this was that the door had been used recently.
"This one was smoother than the others… did Kushao set up the teleportation array in here?" Lin Mu wondered.
A couple of seconds later, the doors were open and Lin Mu could observe the dark insides.
~spark~
Creating another ball of fire, Lin Mu illuminated the area.
The moment that happened, he could see a marvelous scene.
"WHOA!" Lin Mu said out loud.
In front of him was something that was no less than an art piece. Dense and intricate runes carved whichever from the floor to the roof. They were directly engraved into the stone before being filled with special ink to solidify their properties.
~shua~
Lin Mu felt bad stepping on them, so he simply hovered in the air. He lightly touched the wall and the runes came alive.
~HONG~
Some of the runes turned out to be part of an illuminating formation and provided proper lighting in the room. This allowed Lin Mu to see the beauty of the runes properly. It left him speechless, and he could easily say that it was one of the best rune work he had seen till now.
At least if one considered direct engravings and carvings. There were many more intricate ones that were simply built using spirit sense and other materials.
Lin Mu felt a little lost in the carvings and didn't know where to start and where to end it. It had no apparent beginning point and neither was there an end point. As if an unending loop had been formed, one would be helpless to find the center.
"Is this really the teleportation array?" Lin Mu couldn't help but question.
He had seen the teleportation array in the Kong Plane's Nexus and while it was rather complex too, it didn't have as many runes on it. Most of its formations had been directly melded into the structure of the nexus and thus were hard to understand.
"It is indeed a Teleportation array. A very tedious and complex one, but a functional one regardless." Xukong confirmed.
"It's different from the one in Kong Plane." Lin Mu said while looking around.
"Well, there is a difference in the distance needed to cover, not to mention this one does not transport you between different worlds and planes. It simply moves you within a single world.
Theoretically speaking, it is of a lower grade than the one you saw in the Kong Plane, but practically this is not something that will be easy to make. In fact, there would be far more efficient methods of doing this.
Whoever made this certainly had a limited number of options." Xukong said.
Lin Mu's eyes glimmered as he looked at the formation array. But about a minute later, his gaze turned cold.
"We need to get rid of it… if the Northern Tribes really decided to come, they would be taking this array, won't they?" Lin Mu stated.
"Yes, you do need to destroy it. But first, I reckon you should record it in a slip. It will come in handy for you. Some of the runes used in them can help you in spatial manipulation further on." Xukong suggested.
"Alright senior." Lin Mu said before he took out a jade slip.
It was one of the common jade slips that was used to store things like documents, notes, and pictures. One could both record, write and send information if they had the need to do so. Lin Mu had kept several different jade slips of various capacities so that he could make benefit from them whenever it was needed.
Lin Mu had often recorded the books and documents he had come across in the jade slips. He had several small ones that had long since been filled, and now this formation array was perfect for a new jade slip.
Lin Mu spent about an hour doing this before finally taking a breath of relief.
~phew~
'Even if nothing has happened till now, it felt like everything would disappear like a dream if I blinked.' Lin Mu thought to himself.
With the teleportation formation array successfully recorded, Lin Mu decided to destroy it. But the moment he raised his hand, the formation reacted as well.
~HUMM~
A triple layered barrier appeared around the walls and the runes protecting them from being so much as scratched. At least before Lin Mu could touch the walls, but now his hands were restricted from going any further.
This made him surprised and prompted him to find the cause of this first. After a few minutes of nothing through, an idea appeared in his mind.
"Hang on… the source of spirit Qi… it needs to be removed. Without it, the formation array would perish." Xukong chimed in as well.
