I can see experience bars after being transported to another world.

The runes on the wall were still flickering faintly when I last visited.

It's mostly dark now, only occasionally turning on.

The group followed their entourage through the corridor and headed towards the main tower.

The entrance to the main tower is a huge bronze door, more than ten meters high, covered with runes.

When I last came here, the runes emitted a faint blue light, like some kind of ancient seal. The runes flowed slowly, as if they were alive.

The Bronze Gate is now open, but the runes on it are much dimmer than I remember. Only a few lines are still faintly flowing, and the rest are not clearly visible.

Is the Tower of Knowledge destroying its own defenses? Is it doing this on purpose?

Upon seeing this, Lu Yuan's brows furrowed slightly, his face hidden in the darkness.

The procession passed by the bronze gate but did not go in; instead, they continued forward along the corridor surrounding the main tower.

The church's maintenance route does not pass through the interior of the main tower, which is the administrative center and the principal's office, and is not within the purification area.

But it's just a few steps past the bronze gate.

Grayish-white text emerged.

[Environmental Awareness: Debris detected... Extreme danger... Please immediately... Maintain distance]

[He who should have fallen into nothingness seems to be reviving... You seem to have the ability to observe...]

[Sanity: -1...91/120]

When Lu Yuan saw the gray and white text, his pupils contracted for a moment.

It was another completely invisible black block.

The clue I saw in Grimm last time involved the existence of 'forbidden' things, so why is it appearing in the Tower of Knowledge this time?

Hasn't the empire repeatedly issued orders forbidding unauthorized contact with such beings?

I thought it was already outrageous to go to the Sea of ​​Knowledge and try to retrieve something without permission, but I never expected that the hint I saw in the Tower of Knowledge was actually the very essence of the 'forbidden' existence.

Why not just tell them directly this time that they're already recovering?

Lu Yuan felt somewhat weary.

"Trying to run away."

But now that he's already inside the Tower of Knowledge, it's too late for him to escape.

Helpless, Lu Yuan could only force himself to calm down; now was not the time to think about these things.

Keep your pace steady, and keep your gaze fixed on the nun's heels in front of you, without shifting your gaze.

The group quickly passed through the main tower corridor and entered the first tower.

The corridor of the rune system was inlaid with large-scale alchemical rune matrices on both sides, with precise lines and nested layers, which lit up slightly for a moment when the holy light approached.

The team stopped at the first purification node.

Agnes and the two nuns stood at the node—a bronze disc about a meter in diameter on the floor, its surface covered with intricate inscriptions.

The three of them simultaneously extended their right hands, palms down, hovering about half a foot above the disc.

A pale golden holy light shone from his palm, slowly spreading across the surface of the inscription.

The inscription on the disc lit up, becoming clearer from its dim state, and the deep blue flowing in the lines gradually became purer.

The light lasted for about two minutes before the nuns withdrew their hands and the holy light dissipated.

The inscription is a little brighter than before, but only a little brighter.

It was like adding a little oil to a lamp that was about to burn out.

[Environmental Sensing: Trace amounts of knowledge contamination detected and purified...]

Lu Yuan stood at the back of the group, imitating the other nuns, with his hands tucked into his sleeves and his head bowed in quiet waiting.

The other nuns in the group seemed oblivious to anything, simply going about their own business in silence.

The accompanying person stood at the other end of the corridor, glancing at him occasionally, but spending most of the time flipping through the booklet in his hand.

He seemed impatient; he'd probably done this routine of maintenance many times before.

The team moves to the next node.

The same process.

She stood still, extended her hand, holy light spread out, and a glimmer of light flashed from the inscription. The nun then withdrew her hand and left.

The first tower has four nodes, taking approximately fifteen minutes.

As you walk through the connecting corridor leading to the second tower, the air carries a hint of medicinal herbs.

Clearly, we've arrived at the Potion Tower. The corridors of the Potion Department are wider than those of the first tower, with doors on both sides.

Most of them were closed, and some doors had brass signs with classroom numbers engraved on them.

As Lu Yuan passed through a half-open door, he caught a glimpse inside. The desks and chairs were still there, the blackboard was still hanging on the wall, and half of an alchemy equation remained on it.

After the tower was sealed, the students disappeared.

The second tower has three nodes, which take about ten minutes.

The group continued forward.

As Lu Yuan stepped onto the connecting corridor leading to the third tower, the smell of medicinal herbs in his nostrils suddenly disappeared.

There was a dry smell in the air, like the acrid smell of old paper being baked, but not strong.

The connecting corridor has large glass windows on both sides, set in stone window frames.

He remembered those windows.

Last time I came, the gold-plated patterns on the windows refracted a rainbow of colors in the sunlight, like stained glass windows in a church.

That's the most beautiful section of the road leading to the Pagoda of Learning.

The glass is still there, but some sections of the pattern are no longer bright, leaving only the remaining sections emitting a faint glow.

Lu Yuan looked down at the ground.

Most of the runes are still on the stone floor of the corridor.

However, in several places, the lines of the runes showed obvious breaks.

Moreover, there were no signs of repair at the break.

Just leave it like that.

[Environmental perception: Residual knowledge-derived traces detected...at extremely low concentration...]

It seems that the Tower of Knowledge's exploration of the ocean of knowledge has not stopped.

The group continued on its way, with accompanying personnel occasionally glancing back.

Lu Yuan lowered his gaze back to the ground and continued walking, following the nun's steps.

After entering the third tower, the accompanying staff led the group to the public area on the ground floor.

The architectural style of the alchemy tower is distinctly different from the previous two towers.

The walls were inlaid with various metal pipes and rune arrays. Something should have been flowing through the pipes, but now they had all stopped.

A layer of dark green oxidized material settled on the copper pipe wall, and a faint sulfurous smell permeated the air—a unique aroma of alchemy.

The purification nodes here are more densely packed than those in the previous two towers.

After all, alchemy experiments are the most frequent, resulting in a greater accumulation of various inexplicable substances.

The two sides of the ground floor corridor used to display students' research results, including rubbings of various alchemical diagrams, material analysis tables, and even several hand-drawn element reaction flowcharts.

The display case is still there, but everything on it has been removed.

Nails and tacks remained on the wooden board, and in some places the board was pitted and uneven from the tacks.

A white notice board was posted at the corner of the corridor, bearing the official announcement from the Tower of Learning:

"During the tower closure, all experimental data have been collected and stored in the archives. Once normal operation resumes, each department can apply to retrieve them according to the established procedures."

The two bottom nodes are purified as usual, and then the team goes upstairs.

And so we made our way to the third floor.

Agnes stopped and turned to her companions.

"The purification node on the top floor had a lot of residue from the last maintenance, so we need to leave someone else to handle it separately this time. I'll take the rest of the team and continue towards the fourth tower, then pick them up on the way back."

The person accompanying the scholar frowned.

"There's no one on duty up there right now."

"Normal procedure." Agnes' tone remained completely unchanged.

"It was mentioned in the last maintenance log; you can check it."

The accompanying person hesitated for a moment, probably because they didn't want to check the records for such a thing.

"Okay. Don't stray from the node area."

"certainly."

Agnes tilted her head slightly in Lu Yuan's direction, a very small movement that her companions wouldn't notice.

But Lu Yuan saw it.

He silently stepped half a step back from the group.

The nuns continued following Agnes toward the other end of the stairs, their footsteps fading into the distance. The accompanying staff followed behind, without looking back.

Lu Yuan stood at the corner of the third-floor corridor and waited for a while until the footsteps completely disappeared.

He turned and walked toward the stairs leading to the top floor.

The staircase was narrow, and there were no lights on the walls. The only source of light was a narrow window every half floor, through which the night poured in from outside, barely illuminating the steps beneath our feet.

The faint glow of the city wall runes wafted from afar, casting a pale, almost invisible blue light through the window.

Lu Yuan walked up the steps one by one, the hem of his robe dragging on the steps, making a slight rubbing sound.

There is only one door at the end of the top-floor corridor.

The old wooden door has a line of small characters engraved above the door frame: "Alchemy System Third Laboratory".

Below, a line of handwritten text was added in a crooked charcoal pencil:

"Laurena's Laboratory, no outsiders allowed."

The handwriting is very neat.

She used the same style when writing at the Alchemy Workshop, always ending the stroke with a slight upward flick.

Lu Yuan reached out and pushed it; surprisingly, it wasn't locked.

There were no lights in the room.

The windows on the top floor are very large. Lu Yuan remembered that when he came here last time, the afternoon sun shone in from here, and he could see the outline of most of the Bronze City.

Night has fallen outside the window, and the faint glow of runes on the distant city wall shines through the glass, casting a pale gray-blue shadow on the floor.

But it was enough to see the things inside the room clearly.

Lu Yuan stood at the door, not going in immediately. He looked around the laboratory to make sure there was no danger before going in.

Rows of wooden cabinets stood against the wall, their doors half-open, some even completely open, and the inside empty.

The cabinet walls still bear traces of glue from torn labels, patches of which are lighter in color than the surrounding wood, revealing the unexposed wood beneath.

Some labels weren't completely torn off; only half of them remained.

Lu Yuan took a step closer and leaned in to take a look.

The label, in Laureina's handwriting, read: "Refined Stone Mother Ore (Batch No. 3) -" before being torn off.

Clearly, after Laurena left, someone ransacked the laboratory.

Judging from the traces at the scene, they probably didn't find anything important.

They simply emptied the place out of spite.

Besides these cabinets, all that remained at the scene was a small table by the window, probably too old to be worth moving.

A thin layer of dust had accumulated on the desktop.

Looking around, the entire laboratory was empty, and there seemed to be nothing left by Laurenna.

But Lu Yuan was stunned.

Because in Lu Yuan's sight, an aura that shouldn't be there was lingering around the small wooden table.

The aura kept changing color.

Lu Yuan knew what it was: the lingering aura of the Sea of ​​Knowledge.

After a moment's hesitation, the seeker's abilities were already activated.

The next moment, the screen filled the screen.