Why are all your skill bars full of weird moves?

Early in the morning, Gauss got up very early to check the arrows he had stayed up all night to make in his backpack.

This arrow was a specially made arrow used at the river last time. Due to the time constraints, he only had time to make one.

After calling their teammates, the team hurriedly left the hotel without even having breakfast.

He first led the group around the area to make sure they had no followers before returning to the main road.

After walking for about thirty minutes, Gauss looked up and saw that the farmer was already waiting at the gate of the yard.

When the farmer saw Gauss arrive, he grabbed his wood-chopping knife without saying a word and led the group toward the mountain path north of the village.

The mountains north of Songshiling are not steep, but the vegetation is dense. The higher you go, the thicker the shrubs become. Eventually, there is no path at all, and farmers have to rely on their memory to find their way among the vines and pebbles.

After walking for about two hours, the farmer stopped in front of a mountain hollow and pointed with his wood-chopping knife at the rock wall covered with vines.

"It's right behind there."

Gauss nodded, took two silver coins from his waist and stuffed them into the farmer's hand.

"Go back, and don't tell anyone that you brought us here today."

The farmer clutched the silver coin tightly, nodded repeatedly, and turned to walk away along the path he had come from.

Gauss glanced back down the mountain, and after confirming that no one was around, he drew his shortbow, parted the vines, and approached the stone gate.

He leaned closer to examine it; the stone gate appeared to be more than two people tall and was entirely black.

In the very center of the stone gate, a dragon's body is curled up, its wings folded and pressed against its back, its head lowered, and its body is wrapped in dense chain patterns.

The dragon pattern is covered with crooked and distorted characters above and on both sides, which are completely different from the script of Odin's kingdom.

"Light spell!" Ula uttered softly, and a sphere emitting white light appeared above everyone.

Then she squeezed to the front, almost pressing her face against the stone surface.

"let me see."

Gauss noticed that Ura's fingers were slowly moving along the writing, and his expression changed from curiosity to focus, then from focus to shock, and finally his pupils contracted sharply.

"This is the language of Gubo."

"What do you mean?"

"The inscription language used by elves and dragons in ancient times was lost long ago." Ura's voice trembled slightly. "The mage tower's archives only contain fragments of less than five hundred word roots, and it took me two years to memorize them."

Her finger hovered over the first line of text above the dragon pattern.

"Wiltah... Ashmod... These sounds are names, the names of dragons. What follows is... 'The Crimson King, Wiltah, has fallen into a deep slumber in the underworld. The breath of the planes corroded his dragon body, negative energy assimilated the essence of magic, his scales became shadows, his blood congealed into darkness.'"

Ula stopped reading here, her fingers trembling slightly.

"Further down, this section is severely damaged, and I can only make out a few words... 'Sacrifice'... 'Lord of the Stars'... and finally, 'With the blood of the Shadow Dragon as the key, and in the name of the Watchers as the oath'."

Mia's cat ears stood up straight, her tail wagged, and she took two steps closer.

"Wertach... I vaguely remember that name."

Gauss turned his head, and Mia's expression was somewhat uncertain.

"The appendix to the Chronicle of Holy Light contains a record about the fall of the dragon race."

"It says that eight hundred years ago, a red dragon fled into the underworld while being hunted and got lost in a dimensional rift. Five hundred years later, it reappeared in the material world, but it was no longer a red dragon."

"The Vatican has given Vertach a new name, something like... Shadow Dragon,"

As soon as he finished speaking, Gauss's heart started racing, and he took a deep breath.

Shadow Dragon.

I asked the old mage and the elite adventurers in Maple Leaf City, but no one had ever heard of this dragon.

Unexpectedly, the clue was here?

It was such a coincidence that Gauss felt as if something was secretly pushing him forward.

But whether it's coincidence or fate, the door is in front of us, and we can't back down.

Gauss looked around and seemed to see a stone lever behind the vines, its surface severely weathered.

He walked to the lever, gripped it with both hands, and pulled hard.

Not moving.

"This kind of thing should be done by muscular soldiers!"

Balk gripped the lever with both hands and pressed down, baring his sharp teeth and contorting his face in a ferocious grin. His back arched into a bow shape, and his entire body swayed in mid-air, yet the stone lever remained firmly in place.

"There should be a locking mechanism," Ula said. "It probably requires disabling some kind of sequence before it can be activated."

"Hey, I've found something here."

Tilia's voice came from the left side of the stone gate.

Gauss walked over and found three conical stone pillars covered with thorns.

After everyone dealt with the thorns, a stone pillar as tall as Balk was revealed.

Gauss crouched down to examine it carefully.

The three sides of the first stone cone are engraved with: a snake biting a tail ring, a triple moon disc, and a winged snake.

The second one: a cracked eye, an inverted torch, and a six-pointed star.

The third one: Broken-winged Raven, Swirling Vortex, Skull Crown.

Gauss stood up and walked back to the stone gate.

Upon closer inspection under the light, it became clear that the dragon pattern was not only surrounded by text, but also contained nine circular grooves arranged in a three-row, three-column square formation.

Each groove is engraved with different symbols, some of which correspond to the patterns on the stone cone, while others are completely unfamiliar.

The nine grooves are connected by fine lines, forming a kind of mesh-like connection structure.

Starting from the upper left, the line meanders all the way to the center, and then the last line extends from the edge of the groove in the center, turns back to the upper left corner, and brings the whole pattern together into a tight closed loop.

"This must be a sequence puzzle." Ura walked to the stone door, staring at the grooves and connecting lines, lost in thought.

Tilia also came over and tilted her head to watch for a while.

"Each of these three stone cones can rotate to create three faces, corresponding to nine grooves..." Ula muttered to herself, "What symbol needs to be matched with each groove?"

She pointed to the original engravings in the three grooves at the top.

The engravings in the three grooves are a variant of the Scorpio emblem, the bow-shaped outline of Orion, and a spiral totem she doesn't recognize.

"Wait a minute." Ula suddenly looked up. "These aren't random symbols; they're astrological charts."

"Scorpio corresponds to the death house at the autumnal equinox, and Orion corresponds to the hunting house at the winter solstice... According to the ancient celestial sphere system, these nine positions represent the nine houses of the zodiac."

She spoke faster and faster, her fingers tracing patterns on the stone gate.

"The patterns on those stone cones are the guardian symbols of the palaces; the snake biting its tail ring is the symbol of the Eternal Palace; the triple moon disc belongs to the Palace of Change; and the winged serpent is..."

"No," Tilia interrupted her.

Ula frowned.

Tilia pointed to the Scorpio pattern.

"This symbol is recorded in The Secret History of the Vampires."

"Scorpio corresponds to the Moon of Peeping in the third dimension."

"Miss Tilia, although you are my mentor, I know far more about astrology than you do." Ura turned around, her tone unyielding. "This door is in the ancient language, not in the vampire's typography."

"The constellation arrangement in the ancient language is a completely different branch compared to our 'Secret History of the Vampires'!" Tilia retorted, not giving an inch.

The two began an academic argument, and Mia, watching from the sidelines, finally whispered a comment.

"Um... I've seen a similar arrangement in the Vatican's 'Starry Book'."

"In the Holy Light system, the skull crown corresponds to 'The End' and should be placed at the bottom center."

"Impossible," Ula shook her head, "The Vatican's theological framework has absolutely nothing to do with astrology!"

The three voices rose higher and higher.

Gauss stood silently to the side, his fingers tapping the edge of the quiver, his mind preoccupied with something else.

Three stone cones, each with three faces, theoretically have a total of 3 to the power of 3 possible combinations, resulting in a total of 27 combinations.

However, if we consider that the different rotation directions of the three stone cones on the base may produce different results, and that the three faces of each stone cone are not completely independent but are related to the lines connecting the adjacent grooves, the actual combinations may be far more than twenty-seven.

Even more critically, Gauss was unsure whether trial and error would trigger a penalty.

The mechanisms in these ancient ruins can range from spewing poisonous gas to causing a complete collapse.

Gauss turned to the stone pillar and activated the Eye of Destiny.

Ancient Ruins

Note: The stone pillar is covered by ancient magic and cannot be seen.

Okay, no more cheating.

Gauss faced the stone door again, his gaze slowly moving across the line connecting the nine grooves.

The three women each held their own opinions, and the core of their debate lay in which cultural system these symbols belonged to.

If that's the case, then wouldn't the mechanism be designed so that people can never open it?

Different civilizations and different calendars make it impossible for them to reach an agreement.

What if we try a different approach?

Gauss looked at the direction of the fine lines between the grooves.

Nine grooves, in three rows and three columns...

Hiss... Something's not right.

Isn't this the Hamiltonian circuit we learned about in college?