After entering the secret entrance, the path suddenly sloped downward.
They walked down the steep incline for about fifty meters, and an ancient, heavy stone door that was slightly ajar appeared before them.
Within a ten-meter radius around the door, the area was filled with all kinds of dense traps and mechanisms.
Many of these traps had already been triggered. It was easy to guess that they had been set off by those who tried to enter before Lucian arrived.
Unfortunately, none of them made it past the traps. It wasn't until Lucian dismantled the dense mechanisms that the entire wall of traps became harmless and ineffective.
The forces that entered before Elara's group took a quick look around the stone door and quickly slipped inside, disappearing from sight.
Since seeing the stone door, Elara had been watching everything on and around the door from a distance.
From every angle, the mechanisms involved in the door far exceeded the level of technology expected in this era.
Even Elara, someone from the modern era skilled in various fields, found the complexity dazzling.
Should it be called the "relic of the gods"?
Lucian, being a person from this era, was still able to unravel such highly advanced mechanisms. Heaven's Mechanism Pavilion truly deserved its reputation as a top-tier force specializing in researching divine veins and gifted technologies, having gained so much advanced knowledge from the divine veins.
After entering the stone door, the space inside suddenly became deep and vast.
It looked like a naturally formed huge underground chamber. Looking down from the uncovered areas, one could see a bottomless abyss.
Above the abyss, countless suspended stone "single-plank bridges" connected the entrance they stood at, twisting and winding through the vast, deep space like a complex spiderweb with no clear destination.
The forces that entered earlier had already sent people to explore different stone bridges.
Prince Leland looked at the scene in front of him, then turned to the others. "What should we do? Choose a path and go together, or split up?"
Prince Yu and Gareth didn't speak. They turned to look at Elara.
Elara said, "Let's split up."
Although they hadn't come here with the intention of gaining anything specific, since they were already here, it would be a waste not to try. They should at least increase their chances, so the trip wouldn't be in vain.
"Alright, then let this place be the gathering point. Follow the agreed-upon signal markings along the way. No matter what happens, everyone must return here in three hours.
If anyone fails to return due to an accident, the rest will follow the signal markings to search for them."
Everyone nodded, all agreeing with Prince Leland's instructions.
So Elara and Uno formed one group, Gareth and his shadow guard another, Prince Yu and Prince Leland made up a third, and each group took a narrow stone bridge in a different direction.
After giving each other a final glance, they quickly disappeared into the distance at the end of their respective stone bridges.
Because they were among the first to enter the Earth Treasury, and the path Elara chose was more remote, it twisted and turned, going deeper and deeper underground.
She didn't see any signs of the others along the way, only coming across one deadly trap after another, each more complex and unexpected than the last.
Fortunately, with the trap lock Lucian gave her, and her own extensive modern knowledge of machinery, she managed to deal with all of them.
It just took some extra time.
By the time she finally disarmed the last of the many traps and saw a small stone door resembling a side hall at the end of the path, half an hour had already passed.
Elara stood in front of the stone door and, after confirming there were no more traps around it, cautiously stepped inside with Uno.
Behind the door was a quiet and long stone corridor.
This underground treasury was truly massive. She had already walked so far and handled so many traps, yet it felt like she had only now reached the outer edge of this hidden place.
Gripping the trap lock in her hand, Elara carefully moved forward while observing the corridor around her.
The corridor walls were covered with obscure mural paintings. In terms of craftsmanship, aesthetics, and production techniques, they far exceeded the standards of this world.
Some people and creatures were so lifelike it was as if they were real beings embedded into the walls. The messages the paintings conveyed had nothing to do with ancient monarchal ideologies.
Instead, it looked more like a vast and intense battlefield filled with divine and mysterious beings.
In the murals, massive meteorites crashed down from the sky, and on the ground were huge boulders and towering mountain ranges.
Within the thick forests were not only countless human soldiers in armor with weapons but also many half-human, half-beast creatures with snake tails, wings on their backs, or long tails.
Many mythical beasts were flying across the sky, such as golden dragons, fire phoenixes, white deer, qilins, and even people with wings. At the end of the dense forest on the ground, there were giant ancient trees like the Fusang Tree, where the three-legged golden crow lived, and the massive Jianmu Tree that connected heaven and earth. In short, the painting was filled with strong mythical elements, and all these creatures seemed to be in an intense battle with something.
This magnificent and delicate mural was extremely long. Elara followed the corridor with many turns and walked inward for nearly a thousand meters before she finally finished viewing the grand and mysterious mural.
But before she could sigh in awe at the exquisite mural, Elara suddenly realized something that made her breathing pause slightly.
She... somehow had unknowingly returned to the beginning of the mural! She had returned to the very start of the corridor! Even the half-open side hall stone door they had just entered was not far away!
Elara froze for a few seconds. She frowned and carefully compared the corridor walls around her and found that she was indeed back at the small stone door where she had first entered the side hall.
But the problem was, she hadn't encountered any branching paths on her way! Although the corridor had bends, she had drawn a directional map on paper every time she passed a turn.
So even though they had walked through many twists and turns, Elara was very sure that their entire path after entering the corridor was moving inward, and there was no loop. They had never turned back, so it should have been impossible to return to the starting point.
But now the reality was, they... had inexplicably returned to the beginning of the corridor?!
And they had returned by the exact same path!
Why hadn't she noticed anything strange just now?!
"Master, there's something strange here."
Uno frowned and said this. His figure flashed like an afterimage to the half-open stone door of the side hall, and two seconds later, he flashed back behind Elara. His refined eyebrows furrowed even deeper.
"The single-log stone bridge outside is gone."
Elara's expression darkened slightly. She walked to the half-open stone door and looked outside. As expected, the trap-filled single-log stone bridge they had skillfully avoided earlier had completely vanished.
Outside the stone door, there was only a bottomless dark abyss. It felt as if this corridor area had been suddenly isolated from the outside or that some kind of force had erased the connection to the outside world.
"The Gods' ruins" truly were impossible to predict.
"Don't panic. Let's go further in and take another look."
Elara led Uno along the corridor again, this time observing the murals and corridor with even greater attention. The route she drew on the paper was also more detailed and precise.
But once the mural ended, they once again returned to the starting point without noticing anything strange. And again, they had come back along the same path!
Elara frowned.
She didn't panic in her heart and didn't feel like she was experiencing something like "getting trapped in a loop," because there was no fantasy power in this world. She had confirmed this many times with the System.
Since there was no mystical power, then the reason she unknowingly walked the same path back without realizing it must be due to some kind of physical or chemical cause.
It was just that the cause was too well-hidden, carrying a deception that was far ahead of this era, which was why she didn't notice it at all.
[System, have you detected any anomalies in this place?]
After Elara asked, she suddenly realized that ever since they entered this secret chamber, the System had been strangely quiet in her mind. It was so quiet that it felt abnormal.
Right after she asked this, the System's voice did come back, but it sounded even more distorted than it had when Elara first entered the Plumera Kingdom's God Offering Temple.
[M-Master… T-This place's magnetic field is... i-irregular… I... I-I...]
It sounded like something heavy was pressing on it. The System's voice went from stuttering and struggling to speak, to being completely cut off and disappearing. It all happened in just a few seconds.
Elara frowned again. It seemed this place was much more troublesome than she had expected. The System's two malfunctions were both related to the Divine Vein Blessing. Could the Divine Vein Blessing really be a kind of advanced technology that could suppress the System?
Elara called out to the System several more times in her mind, but the System didn't respond. However, the other parts of the System like the mission menu, attribute page, function tab, and most importantly the national luck value feature were still working fine. She could open and use them at any time with just her thoughts. The various attributes were also steadily increasing with the new developments happening back in the Plumera homeland, thousands of miles away.
With the safety net of the national luck value, Elara's mind became a little more settled.
After confirming that only the System's voice was gone and everything else was still working, Elara lowered her eyes in thought for a while. She suppressed the messy thoughts in her mind and focused on the situation in front of her.
She looked up at the mural that covered the entire hallway. She handed her charcoal pencil and paper to Uno to hold for her. Then she rolled up her sleeves and put on the thin leather gloves she had prepared earlier, and slowly reached out to touch the mural.
The mural was three-dimensional. When she touched it, there were raised surfaces that matched the people and scenes depicted.