In his last words, Ronald Cohen mentioned that the reason they fell into the "deep well" was because they only had half a Soul of Fire. Now, when the Huracan altar is activated, Duwa has a whole Soul of Wind, but the time-space freeze line still moves from the horizon.
Although Situ warned everyone to escape, it was clear to everyone that, given the speed at which the black line was moving, no one except the Boss Coal could escape.
Qingmu urged the Boss Coal to run, but the Crow gripped his hair tightly with its claws.
"I don't want to fly outside, only to turn around and see you turned into a dried-up corpse," it said.
Knowing it wouldn't change its mind, Qingmu said nothing more. He began to ponder the relationship between the Spacetime Stasis Zone and the altar. Judging from the current situation, the sudden appearance of the Stasis Spacetime was probably not accidental, but rather inevitably linked to the activation of the altar. This was likely a protective mechanism set up by the Itza People, meaning that if they couldn't stop the altar from activating, they would inevitably be swallowed by the Spacetime Deep Well. In that case, the invaders would only be able to leave behind their last words, like Ronald Cohen, hoping that someone would see them centuries later and activate the remaining altars.
But this hope is extremely slim. First, you would have to escape the Spacetime Stasis Zone by chance, like drifting in the deep sea of death until you reach its edge. But the problem is, you would already be dead, and even if you reached the edge, you wouldn't know it and would most likely just miss it. Second, someone would have to see your last words, believe them, and be willing to risk everything to welcome back Gaia's will. Moreover, they would have to have strong Mental Power, otherwise they wouldn't be able to use the Sacred Staff. Finally, even if this hope were to come true, like Ronald Cohen's, such a cycle would have to be repeated four times to activate all five altars, which undoubtedly makes the probability even smaller, almost non-existent.
From this perspective, Ronald Cohen's behavior is also illogical. If he knew about the Spacetime Deep Well beforehand, he should have made more thorough preparations, such as preparing more than five teams to take turns completing this mission. If he didn't know at the beginning, how did he judge his own fate and write such a well-organized will? Or, if he didn't know at first but later understood the problem, he should at least have left a hint in his will to prevent others from repeating the same mistake.
Qingmu felt that there must be some problem that had been overlooked.
They thought about it, but they still had to run. They had already rushed out of the altar and were running at top speed through the valley. But Mrs. Larry and Alice slowed down their pace, and the black line of time was getting closer and closer to them, like the shadow of death.
Of course, even without their presence, they wouldn't be able to escape. Logically speaking, Stasis Space itself doesn't move much in the universe, so their planet must be crashing into Stasis Space at some speed. If that's the case, even the Crow wouldn't be able to escape, because it's impossible for it to fly away from the planet.
Ramla likely possesses a spatial passage that traverses the Spacetime Stasis Zone. Perhaps the designers of this Ant Nest were unaware of the well's existence, or perhaps the Itza People intentionally designed this passage so that whenever the altar is activated, the space containing the altar enters this passage. The passage's speed remains constant, like a train passing through a tunnel, but those passing through the tunnel experience a lifetime in a slow flow of time. When the train emerges from the tunnel and sunlight shines back into the windows, the passengers have been dead for millennia.
Seeing that they couldn't outrun death, they simply stopped.
At this moment, the sky and the earth were divided into two halves, one bright and one dark. The bright half had four Sun, while the dark half was the starry sky. A clear boundary line separated the two halves, which seemed to move slowly but was actually moving extremely fast, with darkness constantly devouring the light.
At that moment, no one cared why the three Sun in the sky had suddenly become four. Everyone stared wide-eyed as the black line moved across them, forgetting even to breathe. For a fleeting instant, they felt as if they had entered a mirror, a gelatinous space where the air became viscous and movement slowed. When they looked back, they could still see the bright world outside the mirror. However, the light from that bright world, once it entered this shadow, also began to slow down.
But soon everything returned to normal, as if it had simply been a transition from day to night. They could no longer see the moving black line; the entire world had fallen into the Spacetime Deep Well. But strangely, their vision remained clear, unlike the usual darkness.
When Qingmu looked up, he noticed that behind the dazzling stars, he could vaguely see the blurry shadows of four Sun, as if a dark film studded with stars had been covered the original sky. This meant that they were still in their original space, but had entered a space similar to a glass house, where they could see outside. However, he wondered how big this glass house was, and why the Sun were above the Tushu sky.
Apart from the strange sight of the Sun covering the starry sky, which was a bit unsettling, everything returned to normal, which to some extent alleviated everyone's fear of the Spacetime Stasis Zone. Only Situ's expression grew increasingly solemn.
They returned to the altar. The altar remained unchanged, as if no one had ever been there. They left the altar again, and the plaza was piled high with the corpses of Itza People, a sight even more horrifying now. People realized then that a massacre had just taken place. The tribe that had guarded the altar for countless generations had perished amidst the roar of machine guns. They probably didn't know why they had guarded this place, or why they had died. In their eyes, these outsiders were messengers of evil, and they had been abandoned by the gods.
Such wars may be happening all the time in the universe, with no distinction between good and evil.
The starry sky was constantly changing, as if they were traveling through endless darkness in a spaceship, with only the Sun behind the four fuzzy, dark lenses above the sky remaining constant.
They searched the surrounding mountains again, trying to find clues to leave, and finally returned to the boat in the lake.
"Are we really going to die of old age here?" Alice, recovering from the grief of Anderson's death, felt extremely depressed at the thought that a thousand years from now they would all be mummies like the soldiers on the ship.
"It's just getting darker. We can't confirm if this is Spacetime Deep Well, or perhaps there's no such thing as Stasis Spacetime," Su Huilan said.
Situ had remained silent until this moment, when he finally spoke, saying, "This is indeed Spacetime Stasis Zone."
"How do you know?" Although everyone knew that this was highly likely, and that Situ wouldn't lie, they still didn't want to believe it deep down.
Situ asked, "How much time has passed since you activated the altar?"
"About ten to twelve hours." Mrs. Larry had a good sense of time; she often knew how long she had been working at an archaeological site without needing a watch.
Everyone else agreed with the lady's feelings.
Situ looked up at the sky, silent, as if waiting for a certain moment. After a while, as if that moment had arrived, he said:
"From the moment we were shrouded in shadow until now, my conscious atomic clock has only ticked for one second."