Chapter 263: Ruins Exploration

The bright yellow flames illuminated the long corridor, and they continued to move forward with heavy footsteps. Two soldiers and Jiang Liu explored forward with weapons in hand. If they died, they would be recalled, but if the local natives died, it would be irreversible.

He would not let valuable people walk in front of him and take risks for him.

The first exploration team could only be composed of soldiers from the territory. They formed a team of three and covered each other inward, holding burning torches and moving inward.

The rune lamp was embedded in the bulkhead, and it was troublesome for them to take it down. They quickly made several torches for temporary lighting with local materials. The exploration team holding torches, spears and explosive packs continued to explore deeper along the cold and endless passage.

It was very quiet, so quiet that it seemed that except for the friction of clothes beside them, the sound of footsteps and breathing, it was difficult to hear other sounds. Only the light source behind him was gradually moving away.

This feeling made Jiang Liu quite uncomfortable.

Even if the passage was not narrow, it could accommodate five people side by side to move forward together.

He soon realized the source of his discomfort. There was no other external device except for a thick layer of dust that had accumulated on the ground at some point.

Without lighting, they were greeted by choking, slightly chilly air... At least the three people in the team had not shown obvious symptoms of falling down, and the environment had little impact on them.

The firelight brushed over the wall, the edge of the wall was as smooth as ink, and a faint stream of light flashed like a living thing.

Too clean.

There were no extra equipment, no corpses, and no debris.

This should be a relic, but it was as clean as a tomb that had been tidied up and waiting for people to explore. The civilization that built this building even cleaned it up before leaving and took away what they should take away.

Jiang Liu couldn't help but have this strange idea.

He couldn't stop his wild thoughts in this low-temperature environment.

Stop.

A door that was the same as the outside blocked them, and it was still made of the same material as the wall, cold and heavy.

It was intact and still kept itself closed.

Jiang Liu stretched out his hand and pressed it against the wall, wanting to release his essence to penetrate it for a simple exploration. Concentrate your consciousness and let them move forward like a wave, and then feed back all the information to yourself.

It is not as accurate and extensive as Aina's geological exploration spell, but they can use it without mastering any casting skills.

The essence gave him feedback, and they touched a hard object in front of them. The next second, a blue light swept across the entire door and the concave lines began to unfold.

The essence he used to detect seemed to touch something, which made the stone door react accordingly as if it was touched by a switch... Jiang Liu remembered that when he used rune equipment, it would also cause them to react in the same way.

It's just that this stone door is much larger than all the rune devices he has touched.

Jiang Liu took two steps back, staring at the stone door and began to move along the two sides. The soldiers raised their muskets and aimed at the depths to warn of danger.

The energy was exhausted and the lines disappeared.

"Click--"

The stone door stopped as if the energy was exhausted, and it was stuck in the slide rail, and there was no sound anymore.

The gap it opened was enough for a person to pass sideways.

After a soldier threw the torch in his hand over the door, the fallen torch suddenly lit up on the ground, illuminating a long downward staircase.

The torch kept rolling while falling until its kinetic energy was exhausted and stopped in front of a certain step.

"Let's keep moving forward."

Jiang Liu hesitated for a moment. It was a miracle that this facility, which had been abandoned for who knows how long, still had some facilities working stably... Maybe there was something more worthy of their exploration in the depths.

As quiet as ever, as if they were moving in a cold tomb, and the surrounding temperature dropped as they continued to go down.

The ruins were on the west side, and this passage led to the east side.

They were constantly approaching the center of the empty island, Jiang Liu thought so, and tightened his clothes. The torch was still providing a little warmth for their three-person team, illuminating the surrounding environment.

He counted his steps in his mind, calculating how many steps he had walked down, and then used this to determine the distance he had moved down. After going deep underground, even the occasional sound of the wind disappeared, and the sound of each of their clothes rubbing against each other with their footsteps became clearer.

A big door blocked their way.

The energy storage of this door was much better than that of the one above. Jiang Liu watched the door slowly open, and no joint was stuck and could not turn.

Behind the door remained dark. This was two hundred meters deep vertically below the ground, and there was no light source.

As usual, a torch was thrown in.

The swaying torch illuminated an extremely large room, causing everyone in the exploration team to scream in shock.

"Oh my..."

A spacious hall, in the center of the hall, a spherical crystal object reflecting light under the firelight was suspended in the air, and a large number of stone tables and chairs that could not be used were placed in rows.

Everything was very clean, leaving them no information to view and no objects to investigate. It seemed that the staff who were originally here had calmly packed up and sorted out the items, and then left.

It was too clean to look like a relic - they had even checked the entire hall and nothing had jumped out to attack them, nor were there any parts they could take away.

Then there is only the suspended spherical crystal in the center of the hall.

Only this is left.

Jiang Liu reached out and injected energy into the suspended spherical crystal by imitating the method of opening the door before. A line of characters that he could not recognize was projected by the crystal, and then translated by the system into text that he could understand.

"The orbital program is running stably, and the trajectory of this node is running in the established direction."

"The self-circulating system is running stably, and all subsystems are offline."

"If you need to adjust the trajectory, please enter the corresponding coordinates, if you need to offline the orbital system, please enter the command, and if you need to adjust the trajectory, please inject energy into the core."

He was stunned, as if the blood flowing in his body was about to be frozen along with the temperature.

How much of this sky island world is truly natural, and how much is mixed with unnatural elements.

————

"You came out?"

Aina looked at the three team members holding torches and walking out from the depths of the passage. She couldn't hold back her curiosity and stood up to ask him a question.

Jiang Liu nodded, a little hesitant about whether to explain to Aina what he found deep in the entrance of the ruins... His lord must be very interested in his discovery.

In the center of the sky island, there is a control center that controls the path of the sky island.

Its movement is unnatural. It runs along a predetermined trajectory, and of course a predetermined moving position can be predicted - think about it carefully, the sky island is not a planet that will be locked by gravity, how can it move along a predetermined trajectory...

Although he didn't know what the purpose of the person who built this facility was, Jiang Liu soon realized another very important problem.

Since each sky island can be planned and predicted to have a predetermined moving path - does it mean that each sky island has a control core like this that can control its path movement.

This information may be more important than the cargo they are carrying on the ship.

Much more important.

All his attempts to control the movement of the sky island ended in failure, and the core ruthlessly reminded him that the energy supply was insufficient and the subsystem was damaged. The territory may have a solution to this kind of thing, and perhaps these sky islands can be reactivated...

"Hmm..."

Jiang Liu thought for a long time but couldn't come up with an excuse to fool Aina, so he could only hesitantly tell her his discovery.

Then he took a deep breath and adjusted his mentality.

Jiang Liu looked at Aina standing in front of him and Hackett who came to eavesdrop, and felt a headache.

The other party would definitely not be able to escape, so he could only reluctantly let them stay in the territory for a while longer.

In any case, he must return to the territory with this message and the seeds on the ship as soon as possible, which would take about seven days. It only takes three days to order the soldiers to commit suicide to pass the message back to the territory... They don't lack these four days.

"Let's take a break, I'll go re-plan the shortest route."

Jiang Liu looked at the soldier next to him, pressed his shoulder and asked.

"How much explosives are left? Blow up this exit, or at least let the stone cover it."