At this moment, he was standing on the edge of the ruins of Valyria city. When he heard Redd say "three years" instead of "two years" or "one year", he felt that the two ropes that had been continuously tightened were finally loosened a little.
He looked at Fourteen Flames in the distance, looking at the craters that were still spewing dark red smoke into the sky. His eyes paused for a moment, and then fell back to the ruins that were about to begin reconstruction.
Douglas quickly started working.
He first summoned several craftsmen with construction experience in the accompanying team and asked them to conduct a preliminary survey of the current situation of the ruins.
Record which remaining walls can be retained as the foundation for new buildings, which ones have been seriously damaged and need to be completely demolished and cleaned, and whether there is any possibility of reuse of the remaining underground pipes.
The craftsmen carried their tools and dispersed to different areas of the ruins. Some squatted down next to the base of the collapsed tower to measure the thickness and number of stones, and some drew traces on the broken edge of the street as a reference point.
The recorded data was compiled into a rough status report in the evening of that day. Douglas browsed it by the campfire, then got up and walked into the tent where Redd was, and put the report on the table.
It pointed out several pieces of information about the availability of underground waterways and foundations. "Cleaning and surveying will take a while, but based on the several main blocks that have been completed so far, the foundations are better preserved than expected.
As long as the collapsed rubble on the upper floor is removed, most of the load-bearing structures on the bottom floor will still be intact. If these old foundations can be used, a lot of construction time and materials will be saved."
Redd raised his head from the summary report, his eyes resting on Douglas's face for a moment, as if to confirm that he did not deliberately exaggerate the availability of data to shorten the construction period when he said these words.
Douglas stared directly at that gaze, without adding or explaining, just stood there quietly, waiting for Redd to compare the information in the report with the previous plan one by one, and then read his true attitude from his sight and posture.
Outside the tent, the evening light is gradually dimming. The brightness at the edge of Fourteen Flames still maintains a stable dark red tone, reflecting a large, slow-moving warm halo at the bottom of the clouds, but the clouds in the sky are getting thinner.
Those gray-white clouds are being blown into pieces by the wind, causing the previously completely obscured sky to reveal patches of light blue gaps at certain times. Sunlight occasionally pours down obliquely from those gaps, casting transition zones from light to dark on the sea.
Cursed Power is fading, and the dark power that once attached to those creatures and land is losing its carrier, disintegrating, and finally dissipating completely.
Those plants that were once suppressed by Cursed Power are slowly recovering, with tiny, very light-colored shoots stretching out from the gaps in the dry and cracked soil.
The once pungent smell in the air is also weakening, the sulfur smell is diluted, and is covered by the salty smell brought by the sea breeze and the new earthy smell.
But what Douglas doesn't know is that although Cursed Power is a hazard, it is also a protection.
It is like a dark film covering the earth, preventing outsiders from going deep and also preventing something deeper from penetrating outward.
When that layer of film is peeled off, shredded, and cleared in pieces, those existences below the ground that were once suppressed are feeling the disappearance of the pressure from the upper level.
Deep underground, the altars hidden at the bottom of the abandoned mine tunnels are undergoing changes visible to the naked eye.
The black runes on their surfaces that once slowly squirmed and maintained a certain balance are gradually dimming due to the loss of their source of power.
The first to break were the outermost rune lines. They first became blurred and then cracked into tiny pieces.
Peeling off the surface of the altar, it fell into the gravel and dust accumulated below, curling and shattering like the edges of a burnt page, and finally turning into fine powder.
Then there are the runes in the middle layer. Their color changes from dark black to light gray, then from light gray to transparent, and finally disappears completely, leaving only light dents on the surface of the altar, like marks that a certain pattern once existed.
When the energy of the last rune completely dissipated, cracks began to appear on the surface of the altar, spreading from the center to the edges. Those cracks staggered and extended to all sides, covering the entire table within a few breaths.
Then the altar made a low and short collapse sound from the inside. First, the center collapsed, and then the surrounding fragments slid toward the center and piled up into a low pile of rubble.
It was as if there had never been anything carefully constructed there, only scattered fragments left after the rock formations had naturally broken apart.
As the altar disintegrates, the power seal covering it also weakens.
Those space nodes that were once forcibly sealed in different strata are being loosened again, like a door that has been blocked for a long time. After the top door is removed, it slowly pops open, first revealing a thin crack, and then opening wider and wider under the pressure of the air.
The deepest one, the Rift, slowly cracked open in this darkness, and its width continued to expand as time went by.
The shape of that crack is completely different from that of ordinary crust the Rift. It is not formed by the physical structure of the rock being fractured by force, but a smoother dividing line, as if it was evenly torn apart from the inside by something, with neat and stable edges.
What emerges from the crack is not deeper rocks, but a black, edgeless void.
The void is slowly becoming more condensed, like a dense dark smoke that is being compressed, from the initial thin, almost transparent outline to a deep, almost solid dark column.
It passes through the ruins of the crumbling altars and penetrates upward along the mine tunnels and the Rift, like a slowly growing root system injected with reverse flow of energy.
It extends to higher rock formations at a stable speed, and is constantly consumed during the advancement process, but is constantly refilled by subsequent outflows, maintaining the momentum of advancement without interruption.
Deep in the underground mine tunnel, a low and continuous sound was coming from the direction of the crack, as if the air that had been sealed underground for too long had finally found an outlet and was surging outward along the outer wall of the tunnel, forming a layer of continuous vibrations on the rock wall.
When the sound reached the bottom area where the orcs gathered, the coolie orcs who were carrying stones stopped, turned their heads and looked in the direction of the sound, but no one flinched back or shouted in panic.
They seemed to have been waiting for the arrival of that sound. They were slowly closing their postures in the continuous vibration caused by the sound, turning their heads to look deeper, and their eyes were directed towards the source of the sound that was becoming clearer.