Return to the Ruins (Extra Chapter for Suifeng)

When the judges were deciding whether to issue Luo Yan a ' Special Pilot License '.

Luo Yan is in class.

This morning was another General Knowledge Class.

The instructor was Xiao Shi.

The young teacher, holding a piece of chalk, quickly wrote two large characters on the blackboard: Guixu!

Luo Yan and the other students all looked towards the blackboard.

Then Xiao Shi smiled and said, "Guixu, I'm sure everyone is familiar with it."

"Return means to return to the original place."

"Ruins" refers to abandoned or abandoned structures.

"But these two words together refer to the end and destination of things."

It is recorded in the "Liezi: Tang Wen".

"East of the Bohai Sea, countless miles away, lies a great chasm, truly a bottomless valley, its depths unfathomable, named Guixu. All the waters of the eight directions and nine fields, the flow of the Milky Way, pour into it, yet it neither increases nor decreases."

"This is also mentioned in the chapter 'Heaven and Earth' of the Zhuangzi."

"When Zhunmang was heading east to the great ravine, he happened to meet Yuanfeng on the shore of the East Sea. Yuanfeng asked, 'Where are you going?' He replied, 'I am going to the great ravine.' Yuanfeng asked, 'What are you going to do there?' He replied, 'The great ravine is such that when you pour into it, it is never full; when you drink from it, it is never exhausted. I will wander there!'"

"It's not hard to tell from the descriptions in the ancient texts."

"The Guixu is a bottomless abyss."

"All the water in the world eventually flows into this bottomless pit."

"But the water in the Guixu does not increase or decrease in the slightest as a result."

One student asked curiously, "Teacher, does all the water flow to the Earth's core?"

Xiao Shi smiled and said, "That's possible, but there was another saying that was popular in the past."

"This theory suggests that Guixu might be a wormhole, and the water flowing into it goes to another dimension."

"Of course, there is no substantial evidence to support this claim."

He pointed to the two words on the blackboard with his pointer.

"But the ' Guixu ' that I'm talking about today is a real place."

"Do you remember what I told you in the first lesson of the semester?"

"Half a century ago, an archaeological team discovered the giant beast 'Zero' in the polar regions. Did they unearth another 'world' while digging downwards?"

Li Zi nodded. "The Visualization Technique we are currently practicing, the Combat Skill we are learning, and the Mystic Art, etc."

"They were all discovered in that 'world'."

Xiao Shi said with delight, "That's right, that 'world' is called ' Guixu '!"

The classroom fell silent.

A moment later.

Li Bohang raised his hand and asked, "Teacher, did the experts name it that way?"

Xiao Shi did not answer, but instead projected a photograph onto the blackboard.

The lighting in the photo doesn't seem very good.

Judging from the surrounding scenery, it should be inside a cave.

There is a stone door in front of the cave.

The stone gate felt heavy, with two stone door knockers, making it look like the gate of an ancient courtyard.

Above that double stone door is a stone plaque.

There are two words written on it.

These two characters appear to be pictographs.

The students in the classroom had no knowledge of graphic characters and couldn't discern anything from them.

Xiao Shi pointed at the photograph with his pointer and said, "The name of this 'world' wasn't given by experts."

"But that's what it was originally called."

These are two hieroglyphs.

"Return to the ruins!"

"As for this stone gate..."

"It is the gateway to another world."

Next, several other photos were projected onto the blackboard.

In the photo.

There are people and vehicles.

They are conducting research in front of the stone gate.

But those figures and vehicles appeared so insignificant before the stone gate.

A collective gasp filled the classroom.

When the first photo was taken, because there was no reference point, everyone subconsciously imagined the stone gate as an ordinary gate.

At most, it's about the size of City Gate.

But now it seems that this stone gate is even taller and larger than the armored gate in Guangling City.

It looks like the mechs could simply walk right in.

If this door is meant for 'people' to pass through.

So, how tall and imposing must the 'person' who built this stone gate have been?

He must be a giant who's eighty or ninety meters tall, right?

The young faces were filled with astonishment.

Luo Yan was no exception.

This stone door is truly breathtaking.

No wonder Xiao Shi said that this is the gateway to another world.

On the podium.

Xiao Shi continued, "Our current exploration of ' Guixu ' is, in a sense, just the tip of the iceberg."

"Even though many countries have invested a lot of human and material resources here."

"And every moment, countless discoveries are made, and new things are discovered."

"But even the most advanced equipment..."

"It cannot be detected either."

How deep is the Guixu?

The photos on the blackboard were gone.

A floor plan appeared.

As can be seen on the floor plan, there is a channel that slopes downwards.

Above this passage.

A horizontal line was drawn at regular intervals.

Each of those horizontal lines is marked with a set of numbers.

Xiao Shi pointed at the diagram with his pointer and said, "The Guixu are not straight downwards, but tilted, at approximately a 45-degree angle."

"Leading all the way to the depths of the earth's core."

"Currently, the deepest point our equipment can explore is 15,000 meters below the surface."

15,000 meters!

Another soft gasp rippled through the classroom.

The Guixu is 15,000 meters deep, and that's not even its limit.

Rather, it represents the limits of exploration for existing equipment.

If we say...

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

How big must that ' Guixu ' be?

That must be about the size of a planet, right?

No wonder Teacher Xiao Shi used the word 'world' to describe ' Guixu '.

It is as vast and boundless as the Earth's surface.

Xiao Shi coughed twice, drawing everyone's attention back to him.

"Furthermore, besides depth, the width of the Guixu increases the further down you go."

"We have now discovered a city at a depth of approximately 5,000 meters underground."

"There are also vast tracts of petrified primeval forest."

"Before this, we had discovered countless villages."

"As for petrified forests, canyons, mountains, and lakes, they have it all."

"That underground world has nothing but the sun, moon, stars, and sky."

"It's not that different from the surface world we live in."

"We have reason to believe."

"Before the age of dinosaurs."

"An underground civilization once existed on this planet."

"A vast world lies beneath this planet!"

bell--

The bell rang, signaling the end of get out of class.

Xiao Shi turned off the projector and smiled, "Alright, that concludes today's lesson."

"The matter of ' Guixu ' must be kept strictly confidential."

"You must not reveal this to anyone outside the Academy, not even your closest relatives."

"If this is violated, severe penalties will be imposed upon discovery."

"Get out of class dismissed!"

I left the classroom.

Luo Yan still felt a sense of unreality.

Beneath the polar regions lies the entrance to another world.

Were the construction of these Underground City inspired by the concept of ' Guixu)?

Luo Yan's thoughts were wandering.

He was suddenly stopped by Wei Fenghua.

"Let's talk in private," the Director of Studies said with a somewhat serious expression.