Living Water Shrine

Lincon heard the commotion and slightly raised his head to glance in Li Zhouhai and the others' direction.

Just as Zhang Rui had said before, the rules of the peaceful era no longer applied in the Dark Age.

If one still dreamed of equality for all and universal harmony, one would only become a corpse in the Dark Age.

If the strong wanted to protect the weak, power had to be centralized. That was an indisputable fact.

Lincon did not know whether Li Zhouhai was doing this to curry favor with him indirectly, to boost morale, or both.

But he had to admit, he gladly accepted this preferential treatment.

With the Demon Ancient Tree providing a nightglow environment, so long as no powerful Anomaly Calamity or Weird Calamity appeared, it was not difficult for Li Zhouhai and the others to fend off ordinary E-rank dark creatures.

Thus, Lincon gradually relaxed and focused on his own work.

But what happened next caught him somewhat by surprise.

As Li Zhouhai and the others killed dark creatures, he actually received Sunlight rewards as well.

That meant that in the future, he only needed to cultivate a group of powerful ability users, much like cultivating plants, and have them hunt dark creatures for him.

So this is the best way for a main profession to obtain Sunlight, Lincon thought.

They had gathered almost enough plants, but there was something even more important to do next.

Their main purpose in coming here was to purify the water source.

Lincon had already learned from the Demon Ancient Tree why this marshland had become so severely polluted.

It was actually due to the impurities expelled after the Demon Ancient Tree devoured Dark Energy—namely, the black resin seeping from its roots.

Once this resin dissolved in the water, it became the source that worsened Longwind Lake's pollution.

However, that problem had basically been resolved.

Through their mental connection, Lincon instructed the Demon Ancient Tree to discharge the resin into one designated location in the future. He would arrange for people to handle it later.

All that remained was to purify the pollution before them.

"Guan Teng, take out the Living Water Shrines." Lincon looked at Guan Teng, who was standing guard nearby.

The Living Water Shrine was a special Shrine Lincon had created by exploiting a Rune bug.

Ever since completing this Shrine, Lincon had gained a deeper understanding of how Runes could be used.

He had discovered from the very beginning that Junior Runes could not be engraved on top of one another.

But the inability to stack engravings did not mean they could not be fused through special methods.

Lincon discovered that carving a Shrine from stones engraved with Purification Runes produced an effect almost identical to that of a Purification Shrine.

So he tried engraving Reinforcement Runes onto that Shrine again, and it succeeded.

The success of this experiment with an enhanced purification Shrine gave Lincon an idea for solving Longwind Lake's water problem.

But whether it would work still depended on whether it could achieve the result he imagined.

Lincon took three Living Water Shrines from Guan Teng.

The Living Water Shrine was made somewhat differently from the Purification Shrine. Instead of a statue of Lincon himself, it contained a carefully crafted filtering device.

Lincon had divided it into several layers. Each layer was carved from a separate Purification Stone, then enhanced with Reinforcement Runes.

A single Living Water Shrine alone contained three purification layers.

Lincon had tested it. When a bucket of polluted water drawn from Longwind Lake flowed through a Living Water Shrine, it almost eliminated the time needed to purify the water separately with Purification Stones. Though the water that emerged was still somewhat grayish, it was clean and free of impurities, fully meeting the standard for use.

His use of Runes had risen to a new level, and that was what truly strengthened Lincon's resolve to solve the water source problem.

First, he used a large number of Purification Stones to seal and alter the natural channel where the marsh water converged downward into a stream. Then, he placed the Living Water Shrines along the path of the current.

As the three Living Water Shrines were placed at every unavoidable point in the flow, the gray-black, foul-smelling wastewater first came into contact with the Purification Stones, then flowed through their gaps and into the Living Water Shrines.

The three Shrines were like toads standing at the stream's choke points. The Purification Stones formed their foundations, continuously devouring and absorbing filth before converting it into cleaner flowing water.

"The effect seems even stronger than I expected." Lincon murmured in surprise.

Guan Teng watched from the side, dumbfounded. His gaze kept shifting between Lincon and the Shrines. After a long while, he could no longer suppress his thoughts and blurted out.

"My lord, you look just like those qi refiners in the cultivation novels I read, using Spirit Stones to set up Spirit Arrays."

Upon hearing that, Lincon's movements paused, and a sudden realization came over him.

Spirit Stones and Purification Stones did share some similarities.

But as for setting up an array...

Only then did Lincon notice that although the three Living Water Shrines stood in separate locations, when viewed together, they seemed to possess an inexplicable connection.

Especially within the Demon Ancient Tree's nightglow life circle, the Living Water Shrines did not seem out of place at all. Instead, they took root and merged into the environment at an eerie speed, making the scene appear even more mysterious and fantastical.

"Could it be that, by sheer coincidence, I really used these Shrines to form an array?" Lincon narrowed his eyes and quietly watched the strange scene before him.

He recalled the workshop that had appeared when he first acquired the Rune Blueprint.

Within that vast corridor of knowledge, there might truly be such things as Rune Arrays.

It was just that such knowledge should have belonged to intermediate or advanced blueprints, yet he had accidentally unlocked it ahead of time.

A divine light flickered in Lincon's eyes. Although the Junior Rune Blueprint contained only three Runes, those three Runes might well be the foundation of intermediate and advanced Rune patterns. There were still many mysteries awaiting his exploration.

What would mathematical geniuses do if they encountered these three types of Runes?

Bang!!

As Lincon pondered this, a huge commotion suddenly erupted from Li Zhouhai's side.

Li Zhouhai's body had already swollen and mutated. He was using both hands to desperately hold back a creature resembling a wild bull.

It had rammed him against a tree behind him. As an enhancement-type ability user, he had actually lost to it in a contest of strength.

Li Zhouhai's face nearly turned red with strain as he cursed.

"What the hell is this thing? It's not a dark creature at all!"

Dark creatures typically relied on erosion and pollution. They would not be like this thing, using nothing but brute force to overpower others.

Moreover, there was no Dark Energy on this wild bull's body. Instead, its aura was fiery, with surging heat constantly rising from it.

At the sight of this, Lincon's eyes lit up.

It truly was not a dark creature, but a mutated creature.

Lincon had always been puzzled by the relationship between mutated creatures and dark creatures.

Even humans could not survive in the darkness, so how had those animals managed to live on?

Ever since seeing the Carrion Rats, he had believed there had to be other mutated creatures as well.

All living things competed freely beneath the frosted sky. Humans would adapt to the era and evolve; naturally, animals would too.