The Teleportation Array in the Basement

Yun Jingheng followed behind her, passing through the main room and entering a small room at the back.

The cabin was completely empty except for one bare wall.

The old woman walked to the wall, reached her hand into a barely visible crack in the wall, and pulled hard.

A door silently cracked open in the wall.

Yun Jingheng:...?

Behind the door was a narrow staircase leading down to the ground, just wide enough for one person to pass through. Several glowing stones were embedded in the walls on either side, emitting a cold white light that illuminated the entire passageway.

"Come on, let's go down."

The old lady was the first to walk down.

Yun Jingheng followed behind, the steps creaking heavily beneath his feet.

At the end of the steps was a basement.

It's not big, only about ten square meters.

But Yun Jingheng's gaze was immediately fixed on the thing on the ground.

A circular array was carved on the ground, about three meters in diameter. The array patterns were intricate and precise, with lines so smooth that they seemed to have been drawn in one stroke. Each arc was connected perfectly without any hesitation or pause.

The grooves of the array pattern were filled with silvery-white powder, which shimmered slightly under the cold white light, as if someone had filled the array's lines with liquid moonlight.

The outer edge of the formation was engraved with twelve runes. The runes were not any kind of script he recognized, but their structure was strikingly similar to that of the runes in the soul-guiding formation, like different dialects of the same language.

Teleportation Soul Guidance Array.

Yun Jingheng wouldn't admit his mistake.

He even personally created a teleportation array at the Shrek Academy.

His gaze shifted from the array to the old woman.

The old woman stood at the edge of the formation, her hands clasped in front of her, her posture as serene as an old tree planted in the ground.

She looked at Yun Jingheng without saying a word.

Yun Jingheng remained silent.

Silence spread through the basement, broken only by the faint buzzing of the glowing stones on the walls, like a swarm of bees fluttering their wings in the distance.

After about five seconds, the old lady spoke first.

I know what you want to say.

Her voice was calm, so calm that there wasn't a trace of emotion in it. "Outer Circle aren't allowed to touch Soul Tool, but my family has one."

Yun Jingheng looked into her eyes, waiting for her to continue.

The old woman sighed.

The sigh was soft, but in the quiet basement, every syllable was as clear as if it had been magnified.

"I had this teleportation array carved by someone twenty years ago."

She raised her hand and pointed to the array on the ground. "The person who inscribed this array was hired from the Inner Circle. It cost me most of my life savings."

She looked at Yun Jingheng, whose eyes, brighter than an old man's, were filled with a helpless composure.

"I know this is wrong. People from the Outer Circle are not allowed to possess Soul Tool, let alone set up teleportation arrays privately. If they are caught, their hands will be cut off."

She stretched out her hands and turned them over in front of Yun Jingheng. The veins on the back of her hands were bulging and her knuckles were thick, all marks left by years of hard work.

"But I'm just an old woman, managing that workshop all by myself, going in and out of the Inner Circle to buy and sell goods. It's a 20-kilometer journey, and you expect me to walk it all?"

She lowered her hand, looked at Yun Jingheng, and said, "So... child, could you... not report me?"

Yun Jingheng remained silent for three seconds.

"Of course I won't report you."

The old woman blinked, and the cautious pleading in her bright eyes slowly faded, replaced by a sly, triumphant glint.

Like an old cat that has stolen a fish.

She smiled, a very happy smile. "Thank you, thank you. This old woman needs to double-check."

Looking at her, Yun Jingheng suddenly realized that he had been tricked by this old lady.

Starting last night.

From the moment she squatted on the edge of the field and called him "child".

Let's go.

The old woman turned around, stepped onto the teleportation array, stood in the center of the array, and looked back at Yun Jingheng.

"Come here, stand next to me."

Yun Jingheng stepped onto the teleportation array and stood beside the old woman.

The formation was smaller than he had imagined; when the two of them stood on it, their shoulders were almost touching.

"Hold on tight."

The old woman pulled a thumb-sized stone from her waist. The stone was a deep blue, almost black, like a piece of night sky compressed into a solid.

She squeezed it hard, and the stone shattered.

Deep blue light flowed from between her fingers and into the grooves of the array pattern beneath her feet. The silvery-white powder seemed to be infused with life, beginning to glow, to flow, and to spin faster along the trajectory of the array pattern.

The twelve runes lit up one after another, not all at the same time, but from the Outer Circle to the Inner Circle, as if someone had lit twelve lamps in the dark.

The moment the last light came on, Yun Jingheng felt a suction force coming from beneath his feet. It wasn't pulling him down, but lifting him up, as if an invisible hand had grabbed every cell in his body and lifted him upwards at the same instant.

The light engulfed everything.

The feeling of weightlessness lasted for about two seconds.

Then his foot touched solid ground again.

The light faded.

Yun Jingheng opened his eyes.

Beneath my feet was a grayish-white stone platform, its surface covered with fine cracks, embedded with dark stains, as if it had been trampled on by countless people but never properly cleaned.

The array patterns of the teleportation array were engraved on the stone platform. Compared to the one he had just stood on, the patterns here were much rougher, with crooked lines and several places that were obviously repaired later. The colors of the repaired lines were different from the originals, with varying shades, as if they had been pasted on with different batches of materials.

This so-called teleportation array...

Very bad.

It's not just bad, it's so bad that it should never have been put into use.

The energy circuit of the array pattern has several obvious breaks, the safety runes are missing at least three key nodes, and the positioning accuracy of the spatial anchor point is most likely more than 100 meters away.

Cai Yue'er once said that a qualified teleportation array should make the user feel almost no sense of being teleported.

This teleportation array made him feel as if he had been stuffed into a catapult and then launched out.

"Get down! Get down! Don't stand up there! Do you want to die?!"

A rough voice came from below, its tone urgent and irritable, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.

Yun Jingheng looked down.

Three people were standing below the stone platform.

The one who spoke was the one standing at the very front, a middle-aged man wearing a gray-blue short-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing his two muscular forearms.

His face was square, with a sharp jawline, furrowed brows, and lips pressed into a thin line. He exuded an aura that said, "Don't mess with me."

Two young men stood behind him, wearing the same gray-blue short jackets, who looked like his apprentices or assistants.

The middle-aged man's gaze first fell on the old woman, and the expression on his face changed from irritation to impatience.

"Tian Apo, how many times have I told you? The energy core of your teleportation array is of very poor quality. Every teleportation will cause irreversible damage to the array."

"If you don't use something better, this place will collapse sooner or later—"

His voice suddenly stopped.

Because his gaze shifted from the old woman to the person behind her.

Yun Jingheng was walking down from the stone platform.

His movements were casual, his pace unhurried, his right hand in his pocket, his left hand hanging at his side. He looked relaxed and lazy, as if he had just come back from a stroll in his own backyard.

He wore a thin black jacket over a gray crew-neck shirt, which was stained with dust and grass juice. There were several tears at the collar. His hair was a little messy, and the wisps of hair on his forehead were blown by the wind, revealing a pair of eyes that were completely out of place with his whole appearance.

Those eyes were very quiet, so quiet that they were almost devoid of emotion, like a bottomless pool of water with no ripples on the surface. But if you stared at them for a long time, you would feel as if something was watching you from beneath the surface.

The middle-aged man's pupils suddenly contracted.

His body froze, as if someone had pressed the pause button.

His mouth was slightly open, his lips were trembling, as if he wanted to say something, but the sound seemed to be blocked in his throat, only a series of muffled breaths came out.

Sweat began to bead on his forehead.

It wasn't a thin layer of fine sweat, but large beads of sweat that trickled down from her hairline, down her temples to her chin, and dripped onto her gray-blue short jacket, spreading out a small dark stain on the fabric.

The two young men behind him noticed his unusual behavior. One of them reached out to help him up, but as soon as his hand touched his shoulder, the middle-aged man jerked violently as if he had been electrocuted, then his knees buckled and he knelt down.

Instead of kneeling slowly and consciously, it was as if all the strength had been drained from his body, his knees slamming onto the stone slab with a dull thud.

"I... I have met you, sir. I, your humble servant, deserve to die..."

Yun Jingheng frowned. "Get up and move aside."

Tian Apo didn't say anything, she just led the way, Yun Jingheng quickly followed.

A moment later, Tian Apo pushed open a wooden door, and the space in front of her suddenly opened up.

Yun Jingheng followed him outside. The sunlight suddenly became dazzling. He squinted and shielded his forehead with his hand. After his eyes adjusted to the light, he lowered his hand and looked up.

He was stunned.

Before me lies a city.

It wasn't the small town he'd seen last night; it was a much larger, more magnificent city within a city, enclosed by towering walls.

The city wall is white, not painted white, but the natural white of the stone itself, shimmering with a faint silver light in the sunlight.

Every ten or so steps along the city wall stands an arrow tower. The towers have arched roofs covered with dark gray tiles, and copper bells hang from the edges of the tiles, making a tinkling sound when the wind blows.

At the base of the city wall is an archway, which is very large, at least ten meters high. On each side of the archway stands a stone pillar, which is covered with densely packed runes. The lines of the runes are golden, making them particularly eye-catching against the white stone pillars.

Through the archway, you can see the streets and buildings of the city.

The street was more than twice as wide as the Outer Circle, and the surface was paved with neat stone slabs. The joints between the stone slabs were filled with silvery-white mortar, which shimmered in the sunlight.

The buildings on both sides of the street are much taller than those on the Outer Circle, with three- or four-story stone buildings everywhere. The roof tiles are dark gray, but colorful cloths and flags hang under the eaves. When the wind blows, the cloths and flags flutter, as if the whole city is breathing.

In the distance, at the very heart of the city, stands a palace.

The palace was so conspicuous that Yun Jingheng saw it at first glance.

Its main body is a huge circular building, entirely silver-white, like a full Full Moon rising from the ground. The surface of the dome is inlaid with countless gems of all sizes, which refract the sunlight into a rainbow of colors. The whole building looks like a huge light source with countless windows cut out.