If you look closely, you can find many problems within the altar. For example:
The lush vegetation around the altar indicates abundant rainfall, yet the altar, though uncovered, remains completely dry with no standing water.
Even if this ancient architectural design has a very advanced drainage system, rainwater can be drained away, but what about dust? Wind and rain, over a long period of time, dust accumulates, leaving behind silt and mud after the rainwater dries up. Yet the stones here are cleaner than the artificial rocks in city parks.
Animals may know how to avoid radiation, but do wind and dust also know how?
Su Huilan suddenly had a whimsical idea and said to the Crow, "Aren't you a bird too? Why don't you fly up and see why your kind are like this...?"
"Why don't you poop here?" the Crow chimed in. "Caw! This is the first time I've heard someone ask me to fly up to their head and poop! Guagua!"
Su Huilan was used to the Crow arguing with her, so she wasn't angry. She just urged the crow to fly up.
The Crow then actually flew up.
Qingmu was a little worried, but he didn't stop it.
If the interior and exterior of the altar were two separate spaces, then the Crow should have disappeared from sight after flying out. However, after the Crow flew to one side of the altar, people could still clearly see it circling in the sky, and there was indeed only one Sun in the sky; the other two Sun had disappeared.
This puzzled people greatly, and even Situ frowned.
Crow flew in from one side of the sky, and people could hear its Guagua. When it reached the edge of the altar, it suddenly disappeared and then reappeared in the sky on the other side of the altar, as if the middle section had never existed.
The Crow turned back, darted across the altar, and then glided in from the side, landing on Qingmu's head.
When people curiously asked it how it felt about disappearing into thin air, the Crow lowered its head, pondered for a long time, and said:
"Quack, vanished into thin air? You saw me disappear into thin air? I was perfectly normal, just like a bird, flying from one side to the other, and then back again!"
"But what we saw was you suddenly appearing over there in a flash," Su Huilan said.
"Woman, are you sure you and the book aren't hallucinating?" the Crow asked, squinting.
Su Huilan said irritably, "Do you think we're both hallucinating?"
"Quack! How did I get back?"
The Crow's question was puzzling. Yes, if it disappears when it flies over the altar, then how did it fly in?
"I understand!" Situ said, "Above the altar is a special space that we cannot see. The structure of this space may not be smooth, and it may be folded in three dimensions, like a sheet of paper. When the Boss Coal flew past at the right height, he passed through this space, and it appeared to us as if he disappeared. But when he flew in, he flew diagonally downwards, possibly along the edge of the space, thus avoiding the interior."
The Boss Coal said, "Quack, so that means if I take off vertically, I'll... disappear?"
Su Huilan said, "You can give it a try."
The Crow said, "I have a feeling there's something fishy going on in your words."
Mrs. Larry said, "I know what this space is."
"What?" everyone asked in unison.
"I saw it before, during the last giant moon," Mrs. Larry said. "It was two overlapping pyramids, one extending upwards from the outer edge of the altar we are standing on, and the other an inverted pyramid opposite it. The two pyramids overlapped, with each apex corresponding to the center point of the other's base."
When Qingmu heard about the two pyramids, he thought of the Alliance symbol, but it seemed to differ from Mrs. Larry's description. Why wasn't it apex to apex, but rather apex to the center of the base?
Situ said, "We need to find this central point; it might be the key to activating the altar."
People then walked toward the center of the altar, but because there were stones everywhere, some of which were taller than a person and blocked the view, and some of which were connected to each other to form a wall, the entire interior of the altar was like a maze, and it was difficult to find the center point at once.
So they had no choice but to return to the stone steps of the altar and try to find the center from above. But because they were worried about the mutual influence between the two spaces inside and outside the altar, they did not dare to climb to the top, but only stopped halfway up the steps and looked back.
Qingmu glanced around and suddenly felt a strange sensation. He quickly found the center of the entire altar, a place surrounded by a palindrome-like stone circle, in which stood a drum-shaped boulder, taller than a person, that looked very regular.
Others had obviously also discovered the location; it wasn't hard to find, but its precise location was difficult to pinpoint from below due to limited visibility.
Just as Qingmu was about to have the Boss Coal fly over and stand on the rock first, he suddenly heard Mrs. Larry say:
"There's a problem with the arrangement of these stones."
Qingmu withdrew his gaze and swept it over the scattered rocks again, discovering that they did indeed seem to be arranged according to some special pattern. He finally understood what had been the strange feeling he had just had, because the formation of the rocks seemed familiar.
"Is this a formation?"
He suddenly recalled the ancient legends of Qimen Dunjia, where stones were arranged into formations and beans were scattered to create soldiers. While it was certainly unbelievable by common sense, what if the stones were special stones that formed a special space? Just like when they walked from outside the altar into its interior, even the Sun in the sky suddenly changed. Wouldn't that be the most powerful escape technique?
For some reason, he recalled that passage in the Wanli edition of the * Gazetteer of Pingjiang *:
Sang Yun, courtesy name Linxi, was a native of Pingjiang. He was a descendant of Sang Daomao of the Tang Sang Daomao. He was skilled in the Taiyi Dunjia Technique and was reclusive by Shizong. Emperor Shizong summoned him but he refused to come. He lived in Jiangzuo, where he planted mulberry trees everywhere and raised silkworms to cultivate his mind. He called his garden "Sangyuan" ( Mulberry Garden ), and the villagers all became wealthy.
"No, these are writings," Mrs. Larry said. "These stones are three-dimensional writings left by the altar's builders. At certain special moments..."
She looked up and recalled the giant moon from before, "The stones would lift off the ground and display these words as real three-dimensional patterns in the air. Now, we can only see their projections on the ground."
"So this is the fourth piece of writing belonging to Gaia. If we combine it with the first three we already have, we can see a more complete picture."
Qingmu remembered that when he was expanding and restoring the dimensions of those words in his dream last time, there were many dark spots in the starry sky he saw, which should be caused by missing information.
Mrs. Larry said, "Theoretically, that's true, but the projection of the text we see now is distorted, so we can't use it directly based on the shape of these stones."
"Distortion?"
"Yes. Under the influence of some special force, when these stones floated into the air, they weren't arranged in a flat plane like they are now; otherwise, they wouldn't be able to form three-dimensional information. Based on what I saw in the Sangqi Tribe, they would fill the space of the two pyramids, each stone having its own place. At that time, when the light from the sky shines down, we could see the projection of real three-dimensional text on the ground. Of course, if we could witness that scene and have enough time to observe it with our consciousness, we could understand the information it contains without needing to expand our dimensions."