novelno Chapter 1276 The Hole of the Abyss
Chapter 1276 The Hole of the Abyss
Because the other party's behavior was too perverse, Lin Yi lowered his body slightly, shifted his center of gravity forward, and adopted a posture that allowed him to both attack and defend.
The figure noticed Lin Yi's reaction, but he didn't pay it any mind.
He stopped and stood in front of Lin Yi, his deep blue eyes fixed on Lin Yi's face, and the corners of his mouth slowly turned up into a smile.
That smile was so sincere that it didn't seem to have any malice, but Lin Yi still broke out in a cold sweat.
Xue also realized what was happening.
She floated to Lin Yi's side, grabbed his wrist, and pulled him away from the figure.
"What are you doing?" Xue's voice was a few decibels higher than usual, filled with obvious wariness and displeasure. "The doctor is my friend. You can't look at him like that. You're scaring him."
The figure's smile deepened as he looked at Xue's protective demeanor.
"Your friends? When did you have friends? Didn't you say before that you didn't need friends? You said you could live well on your own and didn't need anyone to accompany you."
Xue blushed slightly, a pink hue appearing on her translucent face.
"That was before, things are different now."
"What's different?"
"The doctor gave me a name. I'm called Xue now, not that ice sprite anymore."
The figure paused for a moment.
His gaze shifted from Xue to Lin Yi's face, a hint of surprise flashing in his deep blue eyes.
"You named her?"
Lin Yi looked at him, said nothing, and simply nodded.
The figure remained silent for a few seconds, then sighed softly.
He raised his hand and rubbed his temples, an indescribable expression appearing on his ashen face, like a bitter smile or a sigh.
“I’ve been here for so many years and seen countless ice sprites, but I’ve never thought of giving them names. In my eyes, they are all the same, aggregates of ice elements, beings of energy, and species that need protection. I don’t consider them… friends.”
He lowered his hand, looked at the snow, and a hint of guilt flashed in his deep blue eyes.
"sorry."
His gaze returned to Lin Yi, but this time he neither circled around nor moved closer.
"I never expected that of the three major plans from back then, one of them would actually succeed, besides myself."
Lin Yi frowned slightly.
Three major plans.
Looking at the person in front of him, Lin Yi already had a general idea in his mind.
The other party seems to regard his identity as a product of some kind of plan, most likely related to the abyssal power within him.
Lin Yi didn't know why the other party made such a judgment.
But he knew one thing—this person knew far more than he had imagined.
The figure noticed Lin Yi's gaze, and a hint of a smile flashed in his eyes.
"Don't be nervous, I mean you no harm."
He turned around and walked toward the temple gate.
After taking a few steps, he stopped, turned his head, and looked at Lin Yi.
"Come with me."
Xue was tilting her head and looking at him, her icy blue eyes full of confusion.
She floated to Lin Yi's side and reached out to tug at his sleeve.
"Doctor, should we go with him?"
Lin Yi was silent for a moment, then nodded.
He strode toward the passage, his boots crunching on the snow.
Snowflakes drifted beside him, his tattered skirt fluttered gently in the wind, and the ice crystals at the tips of his hair shimmered with tiny sparkles in the sunlight.
Five frost guards stood on either side of the tombstone, watching them walk toward the temple gate.
The guard in the very center lowered its head slightly, and the flame in its dark blue eyes flickered for a moment before gradually dimming.
Its body began to become transparent, starting from the edges and spreading little by little towards the center, like a piece of melting ice.
A few seconds later, it vanished completely into the air without leaving a trace.
The other four Frost Guardians also disappeared in the same way.
They are not dead, they have fallen into a deep sleep.
That man had the authority to control the Frost Guardians; Lin Yi had noticed this earlier.
After he appeared, the Frost Guardians stopped attacking and became less wary, retreating to either side of the tombstone as if they had received an order.
As Lin Yi stepped into the passage, the gate of a temple soon appeared before him.
The space inside the door was much larger than he had expected. The temple was a huge hall, covering an area of about a thousand square meters and a height of about fifty meters.
The dome is arched and made of gray-white stone with fine, flowing patterns on its surface, as if it were alive.
At the highest point of the dome is a circular skylight, through which sunlight shines and casts a huge circular spot of light in the center of the hall.
Dozens of thick stone pillars stand on both sides of the hall, each as thick as two people can hug, extending from the ground all the way to the dome.
The surface of the stone pillar was covered with complex runes, which shimmered with a pale blue light, like dark rivers frozen on the surface of the pillar.
The hall floor was paved with huge stone slabs, each one meter square, with a smooth, mirror-like surface that reflected people's images.
Lin Yi's gaze swept over the stone pillars and slabs, finally landing at the deepest part of the hall.
There is a throne there.
The throne is carved from grayish-white stone, with a backrest about five meters high and armrests on both sides carved with intricate vine patterns.
A fist-sized orb of light floated directly above the throne, its pale gold color radiating a soft glow that enveloped the entire throne in a warm halo.
But Lin Yi's attention was neither on the throne nor on the sphere of light.
He was on the wall behind the throne.
The wall was inlaid with dozens of ice-blue crystals, each about the size of a fist, in a polyhedral shape, with every facet smooth as a mirror, refracting tiny sparkles of light in the sunlight.
The interior of the crystal has fine, flowing lines, like underground rivers frozen beneath the ice.
Ice Sprite Cores. Lin Yi had seen this kind of energy fluctuation on Xue, but here there were not just one or two Ice Sprite Cores, but dozens, densely embedded in the wall, like an ice-blue starry sky.
The cores of those ice sprites emitted a pale blue light, a soft light, but the temperature was extremely low, so low that tiny ice crystals were condensing in the surrounding air.
The ice crystals drifted down from the core surface, spun a few times in the air, and then fell to the ground, spreading a thin layer of ice on the floor.
Lin Yi shifted his gaze from the ice sprite cores to the bottom of the wall.
There was a row of cores that had failed.
They are the same size and shape as the cores embedded in the wall, but different in color.
The failed core is grayish-white with no luster, and the internal texture has disappeared, like a piece of hollowed-out stone.
They were piled up at the base of the wall, some already broken, shattered into tiny fragments scattered on the floor, while others still retained their original shape, but would crumble into powder at the slightest touch.
The figure stood before the throne, turned around, and looked at Lin Yi with deep blue eyes.
"You should have felt it by now."
Lin Yi nodded.
From the moment he entered the temple, he sensed that faint but undeniably present power of the abyss.
It surged from the direction of the throne, impacting his senses wave after wave, like waves crashing against rocks—not violent, but never ceasing.
Lin Yi looked around and could see the pale blue light flowing slowly in the air, surging out from the core of the ice sprite and converging towards the throne, forming a huge energy vortex around the throne.
The center of the vortex was directly above the throne, where a fist-sized orb of light hovered, absorbing the pale blue light and transforming it into another kind of energy—a gentler, purer energy—that spread outwards.
The cores of those ice sprites emitted elemental power, forcibly washing away the abyssal power and preventing it from spreading out.
This is an ingenious system of balance.
The power of the abyss surged from a certain source, and the elemental power of the Ice Sprite's core washed away and neutralized it. The light sphere then transformed the neutralized energy into pure energy, which spread outwards.
Each link is closely connected, and each link is indispensable.
If any link in the chain fails, the entire system will collapse, the power of the abyss will spread, polluting this frigid land, killing all the ice spirits, and turning it into a dead zone.
Lin Yi's gaze fell on the row of malfunctioning cores, and he estimated their number in his mind.
At least twenty cores have already failed, and that's just at the bottom of the wall; there are likely many more that have been cleared away or shattered into powder.
There's a reason why Xue says she has fewer and fewer companions.
The figure followed Lin Yi's gaze to the row of malfunctioning cores, a complex light flashing in his eyes.
"As you can see, the cores of these elemental spirits are being consumed, and at an increasingly rapid rate. A core used to last for hundreds of years, but now it only lasts for a few decades. The elemental power is becoming increasingly polluted, the load on the cores is increasing, and the rate at which they fail is also accelerating. If nothing is done, in a few hundred years, all the cores here will fail, the power of the abyss will spread out, and this extremely cold land will become a dead zone."
He paused, his deep blue eyes fixed on Lin Yi.
"So I need someone who can solve this problem. And you are that person."
He turned and walked toward the throne.
After walking up to the throne, the man stopped, raised his hand, and pointed to the fist-sized orb of light directly above the throne.
“Look over there.”
Lin Yi looked in the direction he was pointing.
The sphere of light hovered about two meters directly above the throne, rotating slowly.
Its surface has a pale golden halo that slowly spreads through the air like ripples.
At the center of the sphere of light was a tiny black dot, so small that it was almost invisible unless you looked closely, but Lin Yi noticed it.
That's not a black dot, it's a hole.
A very small hole in the abyss.
Lin Yi's pupils contracted slightly.
The holes in the abyss are extremely dangerous things. Some of them are very large, big enough to swallow an entire city, while others are very small, as small as the tip of a needle.
But regardless of size, they all share a common characteristic—they are the connection points between the abyss and the real world, the channels through which the power of the abyss flows into the real world.
For any world, the appearance of a hole in the abyss is a crisis of annihilation.
In the void, countless worlds have been destroyed because of the Abyss Hole.
The people of this world actually used the core of the world to plug this hole.
Lin Yi could only describe the other party's plan as madness.
However, due to the unique nature of the World Core, there is indeed no more suitable material than this to seal the Abyss Hole.
The figure looked at the core of the world, a hint of emotion flashing in its eyes.
"This is the best solution I can think of: use the World Core to block the Abyss Hole, use the Ice Elf Core to flush away the dissipating Abyss Power, and use this temple as a barrier to isolate the Abyss Hole from the outside world. This system has been running for many years, and although it has been constantly depleting, at least it has not allowed the Abyss Power to spread out."
Looking at the person in front of him, Lin Yi couldn't help but feel a sense of respect. This person was a genius.
He is not the kind of genius who is hyped up, nor the kind of genius who is built on resources and background, but a real, genuine genius.
He used the power of an entire world to seal the rift from the abyss, built the most precise balancing system with the most primitive materials, and created the most impossible possibility with the most limited resources.
In the void, Lin Yi could count the number of people who could do this on one hand.
Lin Yi stared at the figure, remained silent for a few seconds, and then spoke.
"What's your name?"
The figure paused for a moment, then smiled.
There was something indescribable in that smile, like a bitter smile, or perhaps a self-deprecating one.
“Name? I haven’t used my name in a long time. I’ve been here for so many years, and no one has ever called me by my name. I’ve almost forgotten it myself.”
He paused, a flicker of reminiscence crossing his deep blue eyes.
“My name is… never mind, the name doesn’t matter. Just call me the gravedigger. I have been the gravedigger of this tomb for a very, very long time.”
The tomb keeper turned around and looked back at the core of the world.
"The Abyss Hole is expanding. It used to be only the size of a needle tip, but now it's the size of a grain of rice. The power of the World Core is being consumed, and the rate at which the Ice Sprite Core is being consumed is also accelerating. At this rate, in a few hundred years, the Abyss Hole will expand to a extent that even the World Core cannot control. At that time, the power of the Abyss will flood into this world in large quantities, turning this place into a dead land."
He paused, a resolute glint flashing in his deep blue eyes.
"So I need someone who can completely solve this problem, someone who can close the hole in the abyss. I thought I wouldn't be able to wait any longer, but you actually appeared."
The tomb keeper turned his head and looked at Lin Yi.
"Are you willing to save the world?" (End of Chapter)