Meanwhile, Xingmang slowly made his way down the winding crystal passage.
The passage walls were crystalline and translucent. Bands of energy light flowed within them like living pulses, radiating a rhythm that calmed the mind.
The sense of Order in the air grew stronger and stronger. Extremely faint scenes even began to emerge, like afterimages from holographic projections—sometimes, a corner of a magnificent crystal city.
Sometimes, silhouettes of fleets crossing the stars; sometimes, blurred images of numerous Creators gathered for some kind of ceremony.
These scenes flashed by without forming any coherent sequence, yet the mingled familiarity and sorrow in Xingmang's heart only deepened.
He reached out and lightly touched the passage wall. The crystal felt icy beneath his fingertips, while the energy flow within gave a faintly receptive response to his contact.
"Authorization confirmed... Secondary Guardian 'Xingmang'... Protocol status: severely compromised... Passage permitted..."
An exceedingly faint, intermittent automated thought-message sounded directly within his remaining protocol-processing unit.
As expected, this place was indeed connected to Creator civilization—and it had recognized his identity! His spirits rose, and his steps unconsciously quickened.
At the end of the passage, the space suddenly opened up.
He entered a space grander and more complex than the crystal cavern from before.
It was an enormous hemispherical hall over a thousand meters in diameter, its dome constructed from countless faceted crystals.
They refracted warm white light, like sunlight from an unknown source, illuminating the entire hall as brightly as day.
At the center of the hall stood neither a console nor any instruments, but an enormous crystal flower bud floating in midair and rotating slowly.
The flower bud was formed from countless layered, semi-translucent pale-gold crystal petals. Every petal was engraved with densely packed glowing runes as tiny as ants.
Those runes were not still. They slowly