The Bottomless Rift

The two took the elevator platform down slowly.

Meng Chao noticed that the platform was built entirely with mechanical structures. Aside from a Spiritual Energy-powered system resembling a winch, it also had a manual control system using cranks and pedals.

The entire machine looked stupidly big, crude, and black, yet extraordinarily sturdy, ensuring the greatest possible safety and stability in an environment with severe Spiritual Energy interference and matter that could deform at any moment.

Nearly all the buildings and facilities at the bottom of the underground space followed this style—clumsy, massive, heavy, solid, with countless gears, chains, and crisscrossing pipes exposed outside. When many of the pipes let out piercing shrieks, streams of multicolored spiritual mist would gush forth, immersing the entire space in a dazzling haze.

Apart from the slightly different architectural style, this place resembled a combination of the university district where the Five School Alliance was located and the military base in Dragon City's Jiangnan District.

Rows of hard-topped tents with silver shells stood in formation. Outside many of them hung signs bearing lightning bolts, blazing flames, or crossed skulls, representing "extreme danger, entry strictly forbidden." From within came all manner of strange sounds—mechanical malfunctions, artillery roars, monster howls...

Beside these silver tents, Meng Chao also saw many strange and bizarre objects excavated from underground.

One stretch of ruins resembled the legendary "sword grave," densely packed with hundreds of oddly shaped blades and swords.

Though these swords and sabers were covered in rust and even twisted out of shape, their edges long gone and the runes engraved upon their surfaces blurred beyond recognition, beams of killing intent still shot into the sky, like countless aggrieved souls lingering within the weapons, trying to break through the seal of rust and descend upon present-day Dragon City.

Judging from