Starlight's gesture toward the depths of the cave carried an almost instinctive tremor. Even from a distance, Ming Xin could clearly sense the complex emotional fluctuations.
It was not merely wariness toward the unknown. It was more like a wanderer with amnesia suddenly catching, in the wind of his homeland, a trace of scent long forgotten yet etched into his soul.
Ming Xin endured the weakness and searing pain that nearly swallowed his consciousness and looked in the direction Starlight indicated.
Beyond the exit deep within the cave, where brighter white light shone, there seemed to be a crystal passage winding downward. Light flowed within it, making it appear mysterious and profound.
He did not directly sense the feeling of being called, but the faint resonance of the Key of the Gate within him seemed slightly more stable than before, as though it had been soothed by an environment of the same origin.
"Do you... recognize this place?" Ming Xin asked breathlessly. Every word tugged at the pain in his lungs and viscera.
"...Familiar... yet unfamiliar..." Starlight's answer was filled with uncertain confusion. The star vortexes in his eyes spun sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly, revealing the fierce conflict in his heart.
"The Energy Field characteristics... the spatial structure's resonance frequency... match the simulated parameters of an Eternal Crystal core node in my memory fragments...
The degree of correspondence exceeds seventy percent. But... the scale, energy level, and integrity... are all less than one hundred-millionth of those of the homeworld.
And... they are mixed with other... unknown Order codes..."
He paused, seemingly struggling to retrieve what remained of his memories. "At the height of the Creators' civilization, they once established, at key nodes throughout the universe...
'Secondary ecological shelters' and 'emergency backup vaults for Civilization Seeds'... This place... may be