The whole nation: You're put to survive on a desolate planet, you'll be running an alien b

The moment the talismanic light spread, the beast-face pattern on the bronze door seemed to have been washed clean, the shadows receding into the depths of the patterns, revealing rings of fine, almost invisible engravings. The tomb keeper's wooden staff touched the center of the door, and the talismanic light traveled along the engravings, like combing the crevices of a sleeping beast.

Li Haotian stared at the engravings, then suddenly raised his hand to signal everyone to stop.

"Did you see it?" he asked Su Wan.

Su Wan didn't speak, but simply placed the portable case on the ground and unlocked it. The lid popped open with a soft click, which sounded particularly jarring in the tomb passage. She put on thin gloves, took out a scraper that looked like a scalpel, and then took out a transparent sampling tube.

In the lower left corner of the bronze door, there was a black line—as thin as a hair, yet not an oxidation mark on the bronze. It emerged from the edge of the rune, climbing upwards along a "regular" pattern of law, like a vine searching for a predetermined grid to cling to. When the rune light shone on it, the black line actually contracted slightly, as if it disliked the light.

"Don't burn it directly with the talisman," Su Wan whispered a reminder, "it will retract."

Qin Yue frowned: "Is it alive?"

"It's like it's alive, but not like a living organism." Su Wan held the scraper close to the outside of the black line, her hand steady. "It's more like... material driven by some kind of will."

With a gentle flick of the scraper, a section of the black thread was shaved off and fell into the sampling tube. The thin black filament curled up on the tube wall, like dust blown by the wind, before slowly unfurling and climbing along the inner wall of the tube.

Liu Hu felt a chill run down his spine: "This thing can even move."

Su Wan closed the sampling tube and inserted the palm-sized detector. The instrument lit up with a row of cold white lights, and curves and spectra appeared on the screen. She stared at it for a few seconds, her expression gradually darkening.

"We share the same origin," she said.

Li Haotian's eyes sharpened: "And the Evil Seal?"

Su Wan nodded: "The waveform, energy spectrum, and its affinity for the 'rule position' of the runes are all consistent with the evil seal fragments we recovered. It's not ordinary erosion, it's... 'anchor hyphae'."

"Mycelium?" Qin Yue repeated, as if unwilling to associate this word with the imperial tomb seal.

"It's just an analogy." Su Wan tapped the screen with her fingertip. "It spreads along the patterns of the laws, not randomly. It's looking for 'bearing positions,' specifically targeting the key nodes of the runes. Once it has devoured the nodes—the seal will still be there, but its function will change."

The gravedigger's gaze shifted from the black lines to the carvings on the door, his voice hoarse: "What will it become?"

Su Wan uttered four words: "Descent Passage".

There was a brief moment of silence in the tomb passage. The talismanic light still flowed across the bronze door, but the black line was like a needle piercing everyone's sight—small, hidden, yet deadly enough.

Liu Hu gritted his teeth: "So it's not a broken door, it's... a door that's been turned into someone else's door."

Li Haotian didn't speak, only twirling the token halfway through his palm. The heat from the bronze token intensified, as if resonating with the black line. He forcibly suppressed his discomfort and looked up at the tomb keeper: "You've been guarding it for so many years, haven't you noticed this thing is consuming the seal?"

The tomb keeper tightened his grip on his staff, the runes on it flashing intermittently: "We've found them before, but initially there were very few, like dust. They've only increased in recent decades. We thought it was the turbid energy of the earth's veins, until... you came with the evil seal."

Qin Yue's eyes turned cold: "You mean, the evil seal is growing both outside and inside the imperial tomb, nourishing each other?"

Su Wan continued, "It's not necessarily about feeding each other, but at least they're from the same system. The evil seal is like a 'seed,' and the black lines are like 'roots.' They're both looking for the same goal: the sealing law structure."

Li Haotian looked at the intersecting runes on the bronze door and suddenly asked, "What exactly is sealed inside?"

The tomb keeper remained silent for a long time, as if weighing the consequences of speaking. The mist in the tomb passage swirled around his ankles, and the dim light from the lamp illuminated the depths of his wrinkles, making his face appear even more like a stone sculpture.

"It's not a single evil entity," the tomb keeper finally spoke. "Our ancestors said that what's in the Imperial Mausoleum Town is a 'severed arbitrary authority'."

Liu Hu gasped, "Power? Isn't that... a divine position?"

"Don't try to apply your current terminology." The tomb keeper's eyes darkened. "Power isn't something that people can just sit on and use. It's 'part of the rules,' governing disasters, calamities, plagues... Once severed, it's immortal and indestructible, it can only be sealed away."

Su Wan felt a chill run down her spine, but couldn't help asking, "Severed...who severed it?"

The tomb keeper looked up at the beast-face pattern on the bronze door, as if looking at a piece of history that should not be directly seen: "He who can sever power must hold power himself. I cannot say anything more. If I do, it will invite 'looking back'."

Li Haotian swallowed those words, but his heart felt as if it had been hooked. Power—a top-tier resource. Even a fragment, as long as it could be understood and utilized, its value was immeasurable. The Nameless Cult wanted to ignite a flame, to create a god; their target was probably this very thing.

He knew he was falling for her.

I also know that falling in love is the beginning of a disaster.

Just then, a very soft "thump" came from the direction of the isolation chamber behind.

a bit.

Another one.

The heartbeat of the silver cocoon, penetrating the thick metal and the soundproofing of the rune array, remained as steady as a pendulum. But this time, there was something more to the rhythm—not urging, but like a "beat in time".

Su Wan suddenly turned around and looked at the modified truck carrying the silver cocoons. She unplugged the detector from the sampling tube, walked quickly to the side of the truck, and attached a thin patch sensor to the outer wall.

The patch lit up, and another set of spectra appeared on the screen. Su Wan stared at it, her brows furrowing deeper and deeper.

"Resonance," she said.

Li Haotian walked over: "What do you mean?"

Su Wan pointed to the screen: "The patterns on the surface of the silver cocoon are coinciding with the frequency band of the runes in the tomb. It's not being passively influenced; it's... matching."

Qin Yue's expression changed drastically: "You mean it's learning the seal here?"

Su Wan's voice was dry: "It's more like 'reading the rules.' Like... using a dictionary to learn grammar."

Liu Hu cursed, "If it learns that, then it can—"

"It can open the door," Li Haotian replied calmly. "It can also close the door. And it can be changed into another type of door."

Everyone fell silent. The chill of the tomb passage seemed to seep into their bones. A contained silver cocoon, a sealed calamity authority, and the anchor mycelium consuming the seal—the three together resembled some pre-written formula.

The tomb keeper said slowly, "The things you brought shouldn't be near here."

Li Haotian glanced at him: "Even if you don't get close, it will come looking for you. You said the black lines have increased over the decades—but the evil seals outside only started appearing in recent years. They're converging."

Su Wan added, "Moreover, the black lines grow along the patterns of the laws, indicating that it is not simply pollution; it is rewriting the structure. The longer it goes on, the more the seal resembles a 'channel template.'"

Qin Yue gripped the gun tightly, her knuckles turning white: "So what do we do now? Destroy these black lines?"

"It can't be destroyed." The tomb keeper shook his head. "The talisman can suppress it, but it can't stop it from eating away at you. It's like gnawing on wood; you burn a piece, and it grows back in a few days."

Li Haotian stared at the bronze door and suddenly said, "Open the door first."

Liu Hu was taken aback: "Open the door? Isn't that even more dangerous now?"

"If we don't open the door, we won't even know what's inside." Li Haotian's voice wasn't loud, but it commanded respect. "The Cleaners are here to mitigate risks, not to gamble. The black lines eating the seal means the seal is already leaking. We need to see with our own eyes how far it's leaking."

He paused, his gaze sweeping over Su Wan, Qin Yue, and Liu Hu before finally settling on the tomb keeper: "As for power—I'm tempted too. But I'm more afraid of things going wrong. Let's plug the holes that need plugging and cut the wires that need cutting first, before we talk about reaping the benefits."

Qin Yue looked at him, as if seeing the word "restraint" in him for the first time, and whispered, "I agree. Let's finish our duties first."

Su Wan put the sampling tube back into the box: "I also suggest locating the source of the black line first. Since it follows the pattern of the law, the source must be at some node—it may be at the core of the rune array in the tomb, or it may be... on the remnants of the evil seal you brought."

Li Haotian glanced at the carriage; Silver Cocoon's heart was still pounding—beat after beat—as if patiently listening to their discussion. The rhythm and the flowing light of the runes on the door became increasingly intertwined.

He reached out and pressed his hand against the outer wall of the carriage, suppressing the faint resonance through the metal, his voice so low that only a few people nearby could hear: "Little Black, don't try to imitate me. If you do, I'll smash you back into your cocoon."

There was no response from inside the carriage, only the two steady heartbeats, as if feigning innocence.

The tomb keeper raised his wooden staff, and the talismanic light spread across the bronze door once more, the intricate array of patterns lighting up layer by layer, like turning the invisible locks one by one. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his voice grew even hoarseer: "After opening the door, do not touch any of the engravings. The 'path' you see may not actually be a path."

Li Haotian raised his hand: "Everyone check your equipment. Su Wan, continue to monitor the activity and resonance frequency of the black line; Qin Yue, advance in three-three formation, use any 'sound' as bait; Liu Hu, guard the rear of the carriage, if the silver cocoon's heart rate increases abnormally, immediately move to the gravity array."

"Understood!" they all replied in unison.

The talismanic light converged into a single point at the center of the door, like a needle piercing bronze. Immediately afterward, a dull "click" came from inside the door, as if some ancient mechanism had finally acknowledged the presence of a human.

The bronze door trembled slowly, and the crack was pried open. A cold wind squeezed out from the crack, carrying an even stronger sense of death and an indescribable, sweet, rotten smell, like decaying flowers.

There was no light behind the door, only a deep, sticky darkness.

The black line trembled slightly as the crack in the door widened, as if it had heard a feeding bell, and "shrank" along the runes, as if making way for something.

Li Haotian's pupils constricted, and he whispered, "See? It's not afraid of light, it's... avoiding the impact of the door opening. It understands formations."

Su Wan gritted her teeth: "What's worse—understanding the formation means it's learning faster. The silver cocoon is also resonating. Both sides are reading the rules."

When the bronze door opened wide enough for two people to pass side by side, the tomb keeper's wooden staff paused, and Fu Guang barely managed to stabilize the patterns on the edge of the door frame, as if using his last bit of strength to keep the "door" as a door.

Li Haotian took a deep breath, took half a step forward, and the token in his hand was slightly warm. He didn't go in immediately, but only glanced back at the direction of the carriage.

The sound of Yin Ji's heartbeat suddenly synchronized perfectly with the flickering of the talismanic light on the door—

a bit.

Another one.

Like a confirmation completed by a certain control group.

Li Haotian swallowed the chill and waved his hand: "Go in. Remember—clear the way first, then settle accounts."