The Spacetime Compass suddenly shone brighter, like a lampwick flaring with searing light in its final moments.
Fang Chen crouched and slowly ran his fingers along the edge. It felt heavy and cold, like a stubborn piece of iron buried for hundreds of millions of years. A thick layer of gray sediment covered its surface, fused to the seal like petrified armor.
Fang Chen gripped the edge and slowly lifted.
The thing was far heavier than he had expected. It took a third of his strength to pull it free of the rubble.
The moment the sediment flaked away, a dark-gold luster seeped from the seal's surface, casting a warm, weighty glow beneath the silver-white light of the Time Bell.
It was a broken grand seal. Even damaged, it still conveyed the blazing majesty it must have possessed when whole.
Its top was flat, engraved with fine lines. They resembled the oldest star chart in the heavens branded into a space no wider than a hand. Winding and interlacing, they looked like rivers of stars whose flow had lain frozen on the dark-gold surface for hundreds of millions of years.
Its edges were straight as knife cuts. Even after endless ages of erosion, they remained almost perfectly straight.
But clear fractures ran along its sides. The jagged breaks looked as though some terrifying force had smashed it apart through the middle, leaving barely a fifth of the whole seal.
The seal's sides bore the same relief patterns as the stone pillars in the Heavenly Ruins. Time had weathered them until they were somewhat blurred, yet their exquisite craftsmanship remained apparent. They looked like a masterpiece into which an unrivaled artisan had poured his heart hundreds of millions of years ago.
Fang Chen slowly turned the seal over, exposing its underside.