Soon, Gawain was led by Byron to the frontier of exploration of the ruins of the Dark Mountains.

It was already located near the middle level of the ruins, the result of several days of hard work by Byron's expeditionary team, and it was connected to the upper level by a large staircase, with a wider space and a high roof—it was not easy to build such a large space in the mountain, and the size of the area chosen by its builders only meant that the area needed such a large amount of space.

All hallways are elevated, as are all doors and rooms.

Gawain picked up a map and looked at the route by the light of the magic hedron held by Hetty next to him - the Byron knight dutifully mapped the area along the way, and many straight corridors and rooms could be clearly seen on it, some of which were marked with special markings to indicate that there were unidentified objects or suspicious forks in the corridors. Obviously, even after several days of exploration, the Byron Knight and his party have not been able to figure out the scale of this staggering ruin.

How crazy is the scale of this thing?

Now that Gawain, Hetty, Amber, Byron, and a large group of soldiers had arrived at that special room, Byron pointed to the door and control mechanism that had been cleared out in front of him: "My lord, what we found was purely a fluke, this door was originally sealed, but it was probably due to a gap in disrepair that we found the airflow. The control next to it should be broken, its recognition function is no longer available, and anyone can activate it. ”

"Isn't the creation of the Gondor Empire worth a thousand years......" Gawain sighed softly, "I'll show you through." ”

Byron nodded, took off his gloves and stepped forward, placing his hand on the metal device, and a distorted voice came from the device: "Detection...... Sample tester...... Stable period...... Permission to pass. Isolation door opening ......"

Amid the creaking sound of machinery, the ancient isolation door embedded in the wall slowly opened.

"As long as this is the case, the door will open, and then the door will close itself within 5 minutes, regardless of whether anyone is in or out, or slap this pillar twice in a row, and the door will also close. The same device is also available on the other side of the passage. Byron explained in detail.

Two more soldiers stepped forward, and a similar sound sounded from the device, indicating that the isolation door had been opened.

It appears to identify anyone who touches the device as a so-called stable sample tester, and authentication is a null and void.

But Gawain couldn't help but frown: he was deeply concerned about the words "sample tester" in the device.

"This thing can even talk!" Amber became interested in the device itself, and as she ran over and put her hand on the top of the metal pillar, she said with great interest, "I've heard that elves and wizards also make a kind of talking puppet, but I haven't ...... it yet."

"Testing...... Warning, Qualification Dismatch, Non-Identifiable Target, Channel Closed, Alarm Activated. ”

With this stiff and cold sound, the isolation door quickly closed again in a loud noise, leaving only a masked amber standing next to the device: "Hey...... I didn't do anything?! ”

Gao Wen put his hand on the hilt of the Pioneer Sword the moment the so-called alarm activation words sounded, but after waiting for half a minute and not hearing anything else, he was a little relieved: it seems that most of the functions in this facility have been suspended, and the door in front of him is probably operating independently, and it will not really raise any alarms.

Byron, Hetty and the others were also taken aback by this sudden change, and one by one they drew their weapons and set up their postures, until they confirmed that there were no ancient traps activated, and Hetty let out a sigh of relief, and looked at the metal device in amazement: "What's going on?" Why can't you touch amber? ”

"Leave this alone," Gawain stepped forward and pulled Amber aside, placing his hand on the metal pillar, "Let's see if this thing can be used." ”

As a result, in the next second, the old access control device heard the sound of identity verification again, and the isolation door creaked and opened again.

“…… This door still needs to be faced! Amber jumped up and down suddenly, "Why is it okay for anyone to touch it, just if I touch the door and it closes?!" ”

"I can probably guess what's going on......" Gawain frowned, and from the several reactions of the access control, he boldly deduced some facts, "I'm afraid this verification device is not broken." ”

Amber looked incredulous: "It's not bad? It's not bad, why can anyone open it? ”

"The security of this door may not be as high as I thought at first, its role is only to ensure that it is a 'normal person' who passes through the door," Gawain said with a frown, "Remember what Nicholas Egg once said?" This facility has been studied with suspected human experiments, so the 'sample tester' mentioned by the access control refers to a living person, and the so-called 'stable period'...... Most of the time it means that there is no out-of-control situation such as mutation. In other words, as long as it is a normal ordinary person, it can pass through this door. ”

"Then why can't I?" Amber glared, "I'm normal! ”

Gawain looked this guy up and down: "Are you a normal ordinary human?" Don't say normal and ordinary, are you human? ”

Amber's pointed ears twitched: "...... Well, that makes sense. ”

The others also nodded thoughtfully, and it seemed that Gawain's explanation was approved by everyone, but Gawain himself fell into deep confusion after finishing speaking.

Is it really that simple? Is this door just to prevent runaway test specimens from escaping? Could it have any other filtering mechanism?

For some reason, after hearing the stiff and cold voice of the access control system, he involuntarily felt a very faint but tangible sense of disgust and resistance in his heart, but he searched his memory, but he couldn't find the source of this negative emotion at all.

But whatever was behind this door, he had to get in.

After confirming that Amber just couldn't use the doorway's verification device, and that she wouldn't trigger any alarm if she followed someone else into the door, Gawain led the team into the space behind the door.

They walked through a corridor made of unknown metal, lined with metal pillars that reminded Gawain of sterilization or antistatic devices, and at the end of the corridor was another open isolation door, opposite which was a circular hall.

The hall was made of man-made materials, and the white wall paint, though dusty and peeling, still reminded of how bright and wide the space was in the past, and around the hall you can see a large number of ancient magical devices arranged along the walls, connected by pipes or metal columns, and another part of the pipe extending from these devices converges in the center of the hall: there are a dozen strangely shaped objects standing there.

They have a metal pedestal, and on the pedestal is a transparent tubular structure that resembles a biological culture tank, and a heavy top lid can be seen at the top of the tubular structure, which is engraved with runes and magic circles, but all the runes have been extinguished.

Gawain was in a slight trance at the scene in front of him, which he couldn't tell if it was magic or science fiction, but the scenes of the glory days of Galwin Cecil's memories of the glory days of the Gondor Empire quickly weakened his sense of disobedience.

Looking at the neatly arranged devices in front of him, Gawain could almost imagine the scene when these containers were once filled with biomass solvents, soaked in test subjects - and around these containers, there were Imperial Magus who were busy walking around, recording the various parameters of the samples in the containers, and occasionally using spells to stimulate the samples inside, and treating the "test subjects" of the same race as them in the containers with an almost inhuman and cold attitude.

Human trials were not uncommon in the Gondor Empire back then, and even less so in today's Ansu Kingdom.

"It's incredible...... Hetty looked at the mysterious ancient magic devices with an almost enchanted expression, the neatly arranged runes and the delicate metal structure made her marvel, "such a complex combination of runes...... Such a seamlessly assembled ...... Such a neat and uniform part...... How did they do it?! ”

"These runes are piled up with the help of the endless energy of the Deep Blue Well, regardless of the consumption of experimental data, and these parts ......" Gawain looked at the magical devices that already had the prototype of a certain industrial product, and sighed softly, "They require thousands of skilled craftsmen, more than twenty basic workshops, a complete set of complex production processes and thousands of standard parameters, and the technical system supported by the entire empire." ”

Hetty was a little distracted for a while: "...... How could we have left behind such advanced technology...... They really couldn't be preserved back then? ”

Gao Wen sighed: "At that time, the first generation of pioneers in Ansu tried hard to restore these things in their lifetimes, but the data we rescued was not enough to restore half of them, the industrial chain was broken, and it was difficult for a group of semi-literate people who ran out of the border to study the drawings for ten years, not to mention that the conditions at that time did not allow anyone to take off production to engage in research - the first generation had to devote 90% of their energy to production work in order to ensure that the number of people who starved to death did not exceed the number of new births...... ”

Speaking of this, he shook his head: "But more important than these, the reason is that we have lost the Deep Blue Well - the huge pure energy provided by the Deep Blue Well has greatly reduced the operation requirements of many magic devices, and the same device may not work at all if it is placed in other magical environments. The most basic and simple things are easy to say, but the more complex and advanced they are, the more completely they will be scrapped after leaving the Deep Blue Well. ”

Amber listened to Gawain's words, and suddenly felt a little touched: "That's why you value versatility and applicability so much?" ”

"The magic industrialization supported by the Deep Blue Well is not real industrialization," Gawain said casually something that everyone present probably didn't understand, and then looked around with a smile, "Compared to this, let's first see how many surprises this ancient testing ground has left us." ”

His gaze swept over the thousand-year-old cultivation vessels, consoles, magic bases, and sensors, and finally landed on a nearby wall, his eyes frozen.

There is a huge line of writing in the lingua franca of ancient mankind:

Humanity will live forever – even if they disobey the gods.