After the ravages of time, the golden dead city of Alamanda had long since lost its former glory. Though the ruins still gleamed brilliantly, broken walls and shattered remains filled the entire city. Few buildings remained intact; only the most important and exceptionally sturdy structures had survived.
The key facility known as the Tower of Advancement was one of them.
It was a towering pentagonal structure with a base a hundred meters across and a massive overall scale. Aside from the gate at the bottom, there were no doors or windows anywhere on the pointed tower. The smooth, pale-gold outer walls bore only a few protrusions of unknown purpose and metal braces that resembled antennas. Relying on the vague, muddled memories in her mind, Anna led everyone to the tower's entrance. The gate had been shattered, torn outward in a radial pattern, as though something had forced its way out from inside and left behind this enormous breach.
Hao Ren took the lead. He was surprised to find that the windowless, doorless building was actually very bright inside. Numerous beams of light from unknown sources poured straight down from above, illuminating the hall on the tower's first floor as brightly as day. Thin dust clouds swirled around the beams, creating an indescribable sense of ethereal serenity. It was not hard to imagine what a sacred place this must once have been.
The tower's first floor had no complicated structure. It was simply a magnificent hall. Most astonishing of all, it had no pillars supporting it. Considering that the tower rose hundreds of meters high, this unsupported ground-floor hall forced them to marvel at the Tanans' advanced architectural technology and material science. A ring of golden devices could be seen around the hall. Each was a cylinder roughly a meter tall,