Essence is not running water.

Although ordinary free essences are like moisture in the air, magic gems are like ice, and rare essence condensations are like rivers, essences and water are just like each other, and there is a fundamental difference between them.

So no one was surprised by the sudden disappearance of the essence condensation, except for the countess.

"Essences don't appear out of thin air, and they don't form such an aggregation for no reason. ”

"If we know why these essences are gone, we can know why they appeared," Magellan smiled helplessly, "Are you going to change your plan?"

"No...... Not necessarily. ”

The countess did not give up, and Magellan could see that she had only made other arrangements.

"As originally planned, we went to the next possible ruin. ”

"Hopefully this time we won't run into unfriendly locals. ”

......

"Language itself has a powerful magic, Professor Magellan. ”

Contrary to what Magellan said, the countess, despite his painstaking efforts to choose the ruins near a small town, failed to find enough excavators, and the locals even caused them a lot of trouble.

Even Magellan himself began to wonder if his words had led to some kind of law in the depths of the world that would cause such a thing to happen.

It was a much larger oasis with a lake, and because of its proximity to the other oases around it, it became a node on the trade route, thus forming a small city. Not only are there many residents living here, but also caravans passing by, whether it is a shortage of workers or supplies.

But they still couldn't find enough workers to help dig up the ruins.

"Their attitude is strange......"

The event itself was unusual, but Magellan smelled something more subtle in it, especially when he could see the eaglemen who controlled the desert in this small city, and their behavior was really unusual.

"It seems ......," the countess did not expect such a change, "they are more like they instinctively reject anything that might bring about change out of confusion and fear." ”

"Any ideas?"

The Countess is good at grasping people's hearts, at least for now, Magellan is at a loss for the troubles in front of them, while the Countess has the potential to change the situation.

"I can convince them that we're not going to be in trouble, but I can't convince them that we're not going to bring anything to the table, especially since you, Magellan the Explorer, are here. ”

So in the end, Magellan gave up the struggle and chose the most troublesome solution - to complete an archaeological excavation alone.

Fortunately, there was a Countess's magic items to help, and Magellan was not short of patience.

For a real archaeological excavation, the trouble begins with getting close to the target. When the first artifact is revealed from the soil, the rest of the work changes from digging to careful digging and even brushing.

This literally means that in order to prevent the destruction of artifacts that may be buried underground, the excavation will be slowed down to an exaggerated degree, and real archaeologists will even hold a brush to slowly clear the soil layer.

In comparison, in the early stage, such as using the Luoyang shovel to determine the location, relying on magic items to reach the depths of the underground is nothing at all.

Although Magellan moved quickly — most of the time, he could do the work of dozens of people alone — his strengths could not be exploited in this work, and even with his best efforts, the progress of the excavation was still very slow.

Fortunately, with the help of the countess's magic items, he didn't make mistakes in his work, so despite the slow progress, the harvest was not small.

The countess had been busy sorting through the artifacts that Magellan had excavated, and what she needed to do was not much easier than Magellan's.

For archaeology, the preservation of cultural relics is as important and troublesome as the study of cultural relics and the excavation of cultural objects. It's okay to study cultural relics, it's like solving a puzzle, looking for all kinds of possible clues from cultural relics, and deducing useful information, while preserving cultural relics is completely an incidental trouble, and there will be no gains if you do it well, and if you don't do it well, it will definitely bring losses.

Fortunately, this ruin has long been destroyed by natural forces, and the excavated cultural relics are not buried in the ground when they are in good condition, so there is no need for the highest standard of preservation.

Magellan has found a lot of artifacts, a wide variety of types, even chaotic, and varying degrees of preservation, and the countess has to find ways to find useful information while sorting through them, and her progress is not fast compared to Magellan's slow progress.

Time passed like this, and every time Magellan used the countess's magic items to see the ruins underneath, he would have a thought in his heart: maybe this simplest archaeological excavation would end up in a way that had nothing to do with archaeology.

......

"Was this temple really built by people at that time?"

Magellan found no evidence to support this suspicion, and the temple and the other buildings in the ruins belonged to the same city, were made of the same stone, and even had the same degree of erosion over time.

But he still felt that the temple did not belong to this ruin.

The worship of the gods out of reverence for nature was a common trait of ancient humans, all over the world, who built all kinds of buildings for the gods, from stone altars to tall statues.

"Yes," the countess did not find this a problem, for there was no evidence that the temples were not built by the inhabitants of the city, "and dating the ruins is the most basic study. ”

"I mean," Magellan said, glancing at the illusory figure of the Countess on the table, "don't these people feel that their spiritual life is too important when they live in such a city and have to build such a temple?"

The nomads made stone altars and sacrificed to the gods, slaves knelt on the ground, trusting that the stars could hear their prayers, and kings, in order to gain the favor of the gods, they devoted their efforts to building grand temples.

Anyone may believe in a god, but the way they express their faith is bound to vary.

The ruins are a very small city, which is still remarkable considering the era in which it was placed, but the town is shabby compared to the temple.

The temple made up half of all the stone buildings in the ruins, and in the city most of the houses were just earthen pits with tree branches, but inside the temple there was an elaborate mechanism driven by water.

The temple is out of step with the era in which it lived.

"The information we have at the moment is very clear, the temple was built along with the city. The countess thought for a moment, "but not without a reasonable explanation. ”