The Shadow Fiend Fragment drifted like a weathered black canoe through a "jungle" formed from enormous rusted pipes, twisted metal braces, and piles of ancient scrap.
This abandoned structural interlayer was broader and deeper than expected, like the rotting innards of a colossal mechanical beast, filled with deathly stillness, dust, and an indescribable sense of oppression.
The only light came from dim, unknown glimmers filtering through cracks high above.
They barely outlined the silhouettes of the surroundings, while most areas remained shrouded in thick darkness.
Ming Xin drove the fragment and pushed his senses to their limit.
Here, vision was nearly useless. He could only rely on energy perception, material echoes, and the "key" frequency's faint grasp of laws and Order.
The air was stagnant and oppressive, carrying the strange sweet-and-rotten stench of rust, oil stains, and some inert energy leak.
He no longer dared to easily activate the Ning Guang Fragment's power—it would become a conspicuous beacon in the darkness.
He merely kept it tightly adhered to the fragment's surface, relying on the extremely restrained Order nourishment it naturally emitted to maintain the most basic stability of his soul and the fragment.
The repair process became extraordinarily slow, but fortunately, the deterioration had stopped.
His primary objective was to find a hiding place more concealed and easier to defend than the previous metal interlayer.
His secondary objective was to explore this area and see whether he could discover other valuable resources or routes leading elsewhere.
As he ventured deeper, Ming Xin discovered that this interlayer was not completely disorderly. Although the enormous pipes were rusted and damaged, their arrangement and direction still vaguely followed some kind of pattern.
They seemed to have once served an enormous energy transmission or material circulation system.
Occasionally, he could see embedded, lightless guiding