Chapter 880: Chapter 880

Accompanied by the train racing into the void, He Ao looked up at the ceiling.

The angel hadn’t followed him in, suggesting the things inside the High Tower were indeed dangerous.

Ordinary B-level monsters and Transcendents couldn’t detect it, but the A-level Angels seemed to acutely sense the difference.

He Ao shifted his gaze, looking ahead of him.

At this moment, he was standing in front of a closed metal door. Opening this door would lead to the High Tower’s core control room.

Dried, splattered blood covered the area around the door, a small part of which appeared to be human—likely remnants from the battle during He Ao’s last visit. The majority seemed to come from a large monster, probably left by the B-level Great Octopus that had been pursuing him.

Last time he was here, he had used the strength of the B-level Great Octopus to drive away the monster that had "deceived" him into coming, disguised as "Liu Nan."

At the same time, he had used the metal door to cut off several of the Great Octopus’s tentacles that had been chasing him, and this blood was likely left over from that time.

The Great Octopus couldn’t sense the threat of the High Tower, but it was too large to fit inside, so until He Ao had left the High Tower through a secret passage last time, the Great Octopus was still guarding the entrance.

According to the time conversion, it had been almost a year since He Ao had left the relic. He wondered if the Great Octopus was still guarding the entrance of the High Tower.

However, this time when He Ao entered, he didn’t encounter the monster that could disguise itself – he wondered where it had run off to. Considering the ferocity of the Great Octopus, the monster would have had to pay a hefty price to escape from it.

Turning his attention back in front of him, He Ao’s eyes moved past the closed metal door to the metal podium beside it, which was the door’s validation switch.

The interior of the High Tower was different from its outer space, as if some sort of higher-dimensional force was continuously affecting the inner space of the High Tower, rendering the entire inner space in a "semi-locked" state.

To the perception of the Velora, the entire inner space of the High Tower appeared "jelly-like," becoming more difficult to penetrate the deeper one went.

The Velora had exerted all its strength and could only send him to the corridor outside the core control room’s door.

Considering the situations in Newland City-State and the recent skirmish with the unnamed Angel, blocking such a vast space would require at least the power of an Angelic Tier Higher Being.

In other words, the entire interior of the High Tower might be filled with some kind of extensive high-level space-locking ability, and it might have been in place for at least several hundred years.

Perhaps this space-locking was just a sort of "peripheral extension" of that locking ability.

And such a lock may be related to the being below the High Tower.

He Ao approached the metal podium beside the metal door.

The entity beneath the High Tower had always remained faithfully within, and it’s highly improbable that it was due to a lack of desire to come out.

He placed his hand on the screen of the metal podium.

"Validating visitor identity."

"Soul validation complete, Commander, welcome back."

Accompanied by a burst of radiance, lines of text from the Second Federal District appeared on the screen, and the metal door slowly began to open.

The system hadn’t recognized He Ao previously, but then he had used the "Tomb Guardian’s" Commander chip along with the forged palm print and iris to reset the program, then he used Soul Binding to re-enter his identity into the validation system.

Because of the uniqueness of Soul Binding, he was now the system’s sole "Commander."

Scattered light illuminated the core control room behind the door.

It still bore the vestiges from when He Ao had left last time: chairs strewn about, the central computer dismantled, and the charcoal ash from the barbecued meat he had cooked.

While He Ao observed the remnants of the control room, a hint of orange-gray light was gradually surfacing in the depths of his eyes.

He stepped into the core control room once more and closed the metal door behind him.

Almost at the moment he entered the control room, a strong pulse arose from the bottom of his heart.

He instinctively looked up, towards the corner of the control room.

There, a metal door was embedded with a circular steering wheel-like turntable.

A surging attraction flooded into He Ao’s mind almost instantaneously, rushing into his brain and beckoning him to slowly approach the metal door.

He gazed at the metal turntable in front of the door.

The last time he was here, he tried to open the turntable but failed to turn it.

However, back then, he truly only had D-Rank strength, and now, his Super Memory had reached B-level, which suggested there might not be a complete lack of hope to open this door.

He slowly extended his hand towards the circular turntable.

Just then, a roar like a massive explosion blasted in He Ao’s head, halting the movement of his hand, and his whole body froze in place.

Tears of blood nearly instantly burst from the corners of his eyes, blood permeating his skin spread all over him, and in the depths of those deep pupils, two nested orange-gray rings momentarily glowed.

The enormous orange-gray eye rapidly sketched itself out in the sky behind He Ao’s brain, and what was usually a semi-vaporized eye had now completely solidified, casting a downward gaze, fixedly staring at the metal door in front of He Ao.

At this moment, the entire world ’unfolded’ in He Ao’s vision, with countless twisted lines and reflections in his pupils.

His eyes were fixed on the metal door in front of him.

From within those distorted gaps that made up the entire world, it seemed as if invisible purple filaments were extending from behind that tightly shut door, like weeping willows dancing around him, coiling towards his body, his soul.

Time appeared to stand still at that moment.

These filaments, as if sensing He Ao’s ’gaze,’ swayed and gathered, abruptly retreating behind the metal door.

The world once more fell into silence, as if the previous events had never occurred, and those filaments had never appeared.

He Ao turned his body to the side and leaned back against the metal wall beside him, gasping for breath.

Blood and sweat had already seeped through his back, and he could even hear the rapid thumping of his heart within his chest cavity.

He looked down at the new blood stains on his hand and took a deep breath.

The eye behind him was gradually disappearing, and the light seeping from his pupils was slowly fading.

He hadn’t even noticed that he had been influenced just now, everything seemed so ’natural,’ as if he should naturally open that door.

Even though he already had a ’premonition’ that something exceedingly dangerous lay beneath the high tower, he was still influenced without any defense.

What was it like the first time he came here?

All of his thoughts flashed rapidly through He Ao’s mind.

The first time he came here, he was attracted and tried to open the door, but couldn’t due to insufficient strength.

And that injury-free experience had already planted a ’seed’ called ’it’s very safe to do so’ in his mind, making him subconsciously feel that trying wouldn’t hurt.

He was probably influenced back then already.

But at that time, his strength was too weak to feel that invisible influence.

If it wasn’t for the Eye of Truth which was strongly bound to him and triggered by those invisible filaments, he might have already reached out and opened the door.

He did not know what lay behind the door.

But given such careful enticement for him to open it, it was highly probable that it wasn’t some beautiful heaven.

However, whatever was behind the door was likely much stronger than the nameless angel outside possessing some kind of ’Monarch’ power.

The angel certainly didn’t have the ability to force the Eye of Truth to reveal itself just by some outflow of power.

He Ao took a deep breath and began to review all of his impressions of the door from the beginning.

The first time he came into contact with this door, he felt the same kind of attraction he had felt with Dancing Girl. In fact, it was precisely because of this attraction that he had made his way to the High Tower.

It must have been a kind of Attraction from a higher Being to a lower one.

At the time, he deduced that the thing behind the door should be related to the promotion of Super Memory at a high level.

Was this judgment correct?

He Ao looked at the tightly closed metal door again.

The invisible Attraction was still there, urging him to open the door.

He began to slowly settle his mind, peeling away the superficial feeling of Attraction, trying to analyze its components.

He had felt this familiar and natural Attraction both with Dancing Girl and with the Orator.

But when he had felt a similar attraction before, it hadn’t been with such an intense, rationality overriding ’desire’ to have it.

The Attraction was fine, it had just been ’twisted and amplified.’

He Ao recalled the invisible ’dotted lines’ he had just seen, which themselves glowed with a purple light.

His cognition and feelings might be affected, but the power of the Eye of Truth should still be stable.

The power of Super Memory is also purple, and abilities of the same color seem to be close to each other on the Talent Sequences periodic table as well.

So it seemed very likely that the thing inside did have to do with Super Memory, and it was highly probable that it was an Angel-grade Item of the same path as Super Memory.

At that moment, He Ao thought of the ’monster’ that had disguised itself as Liu Nan to bring him here. The creature seemed to be a B-level of a path adjacent to Super Memory.

He Ao had previously felt a very faint sense of attraction from it, so could it be that the thing behind the door also had a pull on that monster?

That is, the monster might have been ’attracted’ here by the thing behind the door as well?

And the monster had kept deceiving other life forms into crashing through the gates of the High Tower, trying every means to get into the Core Control Room—was it also here for the thing behind the door?

And in the end, the monster had brought ’He Ao’ over, and then the entity behind the door had also planted a seed of Attraction in He Ao’s heart.

Just like playing chess, placing each piece where it should be, and attempting to ’open the door’ over and over again.

Hmm, it had the flavor of the Super Memory path.

He Ao took his gaze away from the metal door, took a deep breath, and raised his hand.

Clearly, he was not in a position to deal with what was behind the door right now, as the Eye of Truth couldn’t even be activated for long.

But this was also within his plans. His visit this time was not for the thing behind the door. He was just checking in.

He hadn’t expected the opponent’s power to be so bizarrely strong.

But this also reminded him and allowed him to estimate much higher the strength of the existence behind the door. The things he needed to prepare had increased as well.

However, the stronger the existence behind the door, the closer the distance should be between the Relic of the Bygone Days at the High Tower and the true relics of Mysticism.

The larger the likelihood that the passage opened here could support He Ao’s journey there.

He Ao opened his hand and looked at the Echo of the Bygone Days, which hovered between paper and ashes in his palm.

Time to get down to business.

Relic of the Bygone Days

"Is that a book store?"

Goya, walking in the front, pushed through the crowd, lifted up her magic wand, and looked up at the building in front of her with its façade mainly decorated with tea-colored glass, which scattered bright colors under the sunlight.

"It’s quite pretty, like a museum."

Li Cheng also looked up at the building.

"In a highly data-driven era, there are few people who actually read books,"

He Ao looked up at the building in front of him and slowly walked towards the glass door, "Books themselves have become an embodiment similar to ’knowledge,’ a luxury item that can be used for photographs to show off.

"So, the operation of book stores has shifted from selling books to becoming ’tourist attractions.’ These book stores don’t rely primarily on book sales but rather make a profit selling cultural and creative products, branded merchandise, and also through drinks like coffee and milk tea."

Book stores in the Copy World were .

In fact, because of the luxury status of books, book stores in the Copy World were generally located in the most bustling areas of the city, merging with the surrounding entertainment venues.

Goya nodded her head.

Li Cheng also nodded lightly on the side. He had not been paying much attention to these things as his focus was on research about the Transcendent.

The trio quickly entered the book store.

This book store was large, spanning three floors, with a huge paper 3D map placed at the entrance.

But the map was marked with First District script, and the symbols for different categories were unclear, making it impossible for someone to understand at first glance what each area was for.

Nor could one immediately know where to find a map of the relics.

Straggling crowds passed by the trio.

"We should split up and look around."

He Ao glanced over the map in front of him, "Li Cheng, you take the first floor, Goya the second, I’ll head to the third."

The two next to him nodded simultaneously.

In that instant, He Ao’s soul marked the moment, pulling back the marking he had on Lin Chichi and then placing one each on Li Cheng and Goya.

The three looked at each other and immediately parted ways.

Li Cheng directly entered the first floor, while He Ao and Goya turned to take the nearby escalator upwards.

Goya stopped on the second floor, while He Ao continued up to the third floor.

Soon after they had dispersed, a gaunt figure who had been sitting at the entrance of the first floor, engrossed in a book, raised his head and looked towards the back of the book store.

He Ao quickly reached the third floor.

Most of this area seemed to be reference books. He moved along the gaps between the bookshelves, his eyes swiftly scanning over each neatly arranged shelf.

He quickly passed books whose covers were clear about general knowledge science, walked past several decorative and refined drink and coffee areas, and after scanning most of the floor, his strides came to a halt.

One by one, thick books labeled with various languages entered his field of view.

He approached a bookshelf, stretched out his hand, fingers touching the spines of book after book, eventually resting on a ’dictionary’ labeled in both First and Second District languages.