"This is all my knowledge of witchcraft; our contract is now complete."
The moment Jia ye he was sucked into the bottle, Tao Rhys tossed Leo a wizard's notebook.
Thank you.
Leo handed over 1200 energy crystals and 100 bottles of potions to Tao Rhys. This was an equivalent exchange written into the contract, which no one could violate.
"We need to go back to turn in our mission now. Are you guys going back too?" April was a little anxious. As long as she didn't have the Third-Class Wizard Medal, she dared not slack off in the slightest.
Third-Class Wizard Medal —you can't overvalue it!
"You guys go ahead, Alice and I still have some things to do."
Before Alice could speak, Leo declined April's invitation. Although Alice didn't understand what Leo meant, their long-standing tacit understanding made Alice nod in agreement.
The two of them definitely still had things to do!
See you later.
April quickly returned with Tao Rhys and Allison. For a wizard to receive Third-Class Wizard Medal was the most glorious moment of his life, and everything else had to take a backseat.
What did you discover?
After confirming that April and the other two had flown far away, Alice asked Leo.
"Doesn't this look like a post-apocalyptic shelter?"
Leo pointed to the underground city and told them about his discovery. Perhaps April and the others were too focused on Jia ye he and the Third-Class Wizard Medal, so they didn't notice the special structure here.
Upon hearing Leo's words, Alice released her senses and discovered that, as Leo had said, this place indeed resembled a post-apocalyptic shelter.
Alice's eyes lit up instantly. A post-apocalyptic shelter—that meant the world's last treasure!
"Find it quickly!!!"
Five fire elemental spirits illuminated the underground city, and Banjani shrunk himself to the size of a pet cat, searching inch by inch with Li Xi and Alice.
Buried bones, parallel scratches on the cavity walls, piles of excrement...
All the discoveries indicate that a civilization once existed in the Black Tomb World and thrived within the cavity for a very long time.
Because by observing the degree of decomposition of excrement, the excrement at the bottom was 500 to 1000 years older than the excrement at the top.
"The shelter has been around for too long; they've exhausted all their resources. I haven't found anything here," Alice said dejectedly.
"Me too." Benji was a little disappointed. He had thought he could make a fortune, but he found nothing, not even a single written record.
The hallmark of a civilization is its written language; without it, it is difficult to determine whether a group is a civilization.
Perhaps the Black Tomb World was just a rudimentary civilization that perished before it could even develop writing.
Leo didn't pay much attention to Alice and Benji's words; their lack of awareness was entirely within his expectations.
He was standing right below the small mound where Jia ye he had stood earlier. It looked like an ordinary little mound, but he could definitely feel a fluctuation of energy within it.
The energy fluctuations are so subtle that they cannot be detected unless the distance is close enough and the perception is extremely precise!
If anything can be found in this underground city, it must be here!
Gradually, as they dug away the small mounds of earth, slabs of stone emerged.
The stone slab itself is not important, but the characters drawn on it are the most important discovery!
"Is this the writing of the Eyeless Spider?" Alice exclaimed in surprise, looking at the characters.
These characters follow a certain pattern, so they can't be just random doodles. A simple judgment will tell you that they are text!
"I think so. This should be the center of the shelter, preserving all the information about it. It's just that the building, which was only made of earth, couldn't withstand the erosion of time and collapsed into a small mound."
Leo carefully took out the stone slabs one by one and placed them on the ground. The greatest treasure of a civilization lies not in its appearance, nor in how many treasures it has, but in its writing and records!
When the entire small mound was dug up, a total of 3,125 stone slabs were found, each with 312 characters recorded on it, totaling 975,000 characters.
For a civilization, nearly a million words of records are far from enough, but they are more than sufficient for recording important events.
Leo, Alice, and Benji stared at the stone slabs and the writing on them, exchanging bewildered glances. They couldn't understand a word of it!
"There is a faint energy present on these stone slabs; we should be able to decipher the content using other methods, even without knowing the writing."
"After all, for a civilization on the verge of extinction, ensuring that the next civilization accurately obtains information from the previous civilization is far more important than any inheritance. So how did they determine that the next civilization would be able to understand the contents of these texts upon seeing them?"
Leo's mind raced as he recalled everything he had encountered in the Black Tomb World, trying to find any information that could be helpful in deciphering the text.
Alice was also busy; she was using methods commonly employed by wizarding civilizations to decipher the texts of other civilizations' knowledge systems.
There was actually another way to decipher the text, but they both pretended to have forgotten and neither of them said a word.
That means taking it back and handing it over. With the powerful knowledge system of the wizarding civilization, this piece of writing can be deciphered very quickly.
However, the rewards they would receive for doing so would likely be negligible compared to the amount of information they gain.
After all, neither of them was certain whether cracking the information would bring them unimaginable benefits.
So it should be handed over...
That's absolutely impossible to hand over.
Even if the two of them ultimately fail to solve the problem, they will split it privately and not hand it over.
Leo was still pondering when a sudden flash of inspiration struck him. He remembered Jia ye he standing on the small mound and the soul attack he had suffered, and exclaimed, "A soul... it might be necessary to interpret it using soul techniques!"
"Soul?"
Alice looked at the stone tablet in her hand, somewhat troubled. Soul cultivation was something even wizards rarely touched upon; it was extremely difficult to cultivate and belonged to the most unorthodox of unorthodox paths.
"I'll give it a try."
Leo stepped forward, and a shadow stood up, facing Leo directly.
Leo stepped in, instantly merging with the shadow.
Leo disappeared, and in his original spot, there was only a dark figure with the same physical characteristics as Leo.
The moment Leo disappeared, Benji appeared at Leo's feet. Although he seemed to have maintained the same size as a kitten, his body was constantly tense.
The aura emanating from him was so subtle that even Alice, his closest friend, was secretly on guard.
Seeing Benji's expression, Alice rolled her eyes in exasperation. Did Benji think she was a villain who would harm Leo?
Leo was unaware of what was happening outside; his perspective had shifted to the Shadow World.
One-tenth of his soul resides in the Shadow World, and if his guess is correct, he can use this one-tenth of his soul to read the information on the stone tablet.
Looking at the stone slabs on the ground, which should have been shadowy, they were now clusters of light shimmering with faint glow.
Leo immediately recognized that these were not orbs of light, but rather remnants of souls left on the stone slab.
You guessed right.
The Eyeless Spider race must be skilled in using soul power, which is why they leave messages using their souls.
In their minds, they believe that the next generation of civilization, even if they don't understand their writing system, will be able to read the important messages they left for the next civilization as long as they develop the method of using the power of the soul.
Leo smiled and touched it with her fingers. Words appeared, and because it was a touch of the soul, the lingering voice came directly from the depths of Leo's heart.
The crackling sound made Leo's heart sink; it sounded just like the poor television reception in the 1980s on Earth...
"... God has gone mad, he actually wants to..."
"... Praise be to the eight warriors, it is they... we..."
"... Optimism... Warrior... Sanctuary"
"I heard... they're all dead..."
"Warriors too... we should..."
"This is our last resort..."
"￥#...#￥#...#"
So much time has passed that even the remaining souls on the stone slab have almost completely dissipated. The remaining souls carry little information and have lost most of their contents.
Based on the information he obtained, Leo could only roughly guess that the three World Lord had gone mad and were up to something, which led to the appearance of eight warriors.
It's highly likely that eight brave warriors led them to establish the shelter, and then the warriors themselves encountered problems.
What happened in the middle is completely unknown, and their ending is never mentioned.
As for information about Jia ye he, there is none.
Ultimately, what methods were left behind—whether for preserving civilization, killing warriors, or confronting the gods—remains unknown.
The large gaps in the text left Leo with very limited information; he couldn't even assess whether his guesses were correct.
The last thing the soul left behind was a long, obscure message that appeared as gibberish in Leo's mind.
This long string of gibberish must be the last means of preservation, the most precious thing left behind by the entire civilization.
It's highly likely that Leo's soul strength is insufficient to unlock the text content, leaving it only as gibberish in his mind.
Once all the information was read, the stone tablets in the Shadow World quickly dissipated. Before Leo could even make amends, these already incomplete souls had vanished.
"... Depend on..."
Leo emerged from the shadows, saw the shattered stone slabs on the ground, and looked at Alice with an awkward, dry laugh, saying, "Would you believe me if I told you the contents of these stone slabs were all gibberish?"
"You guess..."
Alice rarely showed her pearly teeth to Leo. Beneath her playful and cute expression, Leo saw a pair of clenched fists and small tiger teeth gleaming coldly.