In the underground cavity, the suffocating heat wave finally receded.

  As the "Primordial Power Furnace" entered a stable low-power idling cycle, a low, rhythmic hum became the only background sound here, like the breathing of a sleeping giant beast.

  Savage was awakened by a burst of piercing phantom pain.

  "Wake up, old buddy. If you don't wake up soon, I'll saw off your remaining hand and sell it for parts."

  Carlisle's voice rang in his ears, carrying hoarse mockery, yet unable to hide a trace of tired concern.

  The dwarf twitched violently, cloudy eyes opening with difficulty. He subconsciously tried to prop up his body with his right hand but grabbed empty air—center of gravity lost instantly, rolling down awkwardly from the makeshift obsidian recliner, smashing heavily onto the ground.

  "F*ck..."

  Savage turned his head sluggishly, staring at his right shoulder.

  There should have been his proud brass mechanical arm connected there. That was a "Masterpiece" he polished for five years, picking up scraps in wasteland junk piles, hammering parts, even risking his life for a precise transmission shaft.

  But now, only a charred, twisted metal skeleton remained there. Several broken hydraulic pipes hung like dead snakes, still dripping black engine oil tick-tock.

  "My arm..." Savage's voice carried a crying tone; that old face full of oil stains was written with despair. "That was my lifeblood... even the transmission shaft was mithril-plated..."

  For a mechanic, losing a prosthetic limb was not only losing combat power but also dignity. He couldn't even tighten a screw now.

  "Stop howling. That pile of junk should have gone to the recycling bin long ago."

  Carlisle sat on a protruding rock not far away, holding Savage's unfinished bottle of brown spirits. He didn't drink but gritted his teeth, pouring the spirits directly onto a twenty-centimeter-long charred wound on his left arm.

  Sizzle—

  The moment alcohol touched raw flesh, it made a roasting meat sound. Carlisle's cheek muscles twitched violently; veins on his forehead popped up. Cold sweat slid down his temples into his collar, but he didn't make a sound, just wrapping the bandage tightly circle by circle with trembling fingers.

  After treating the wound, he panted heavily, fished out a crumpled blueprint stained with blood and soot from his bosom, and threw it in front of Savage.

  "What is this?" Savage picked up the blueprint with his remaining left hand.

  At first, his gaze was cloudy, but when he saw those complex geometric lines and ancient rune annotations clearly, his pupils dilated sharply; breathing became heavy.

  "This is... a construct structure diagram of the Second Epoch?" Savage's voice was trembling.

  "More than that."

  Although Carlisle's voice was weak, it revealed the madness and arrogance of a fire thief:

  "Just now, to deceive Alastor, I forcibly accessed the underlying protocol of the 'Primordial Power Furnace.' In that instant, the massive data stream almost burned my brain out, but I still grabbed this bit in those garbled codes..."

  He pointed at that mechanical structure on the blueprint precise enough to make one dizzy:

  "This is the right arm repair blueprint of a 'Titan-Class' War Sentinel—originally a classified file stored in the power furnace core, 'Inscribed' by me in passing."

  "This is God's creation..." Savage held that paper like holding a bible. "Abandoning hydraulic transmission, switching to mana return valve drive. Torque increased at least three times, reaction speed can keep up with neural signals... My god, this is forbidden technology lost for a thousand years."

  Savage clutched the blueprint dead tight; the decadence in his eyes swept away, replaced by a nearly fanatical artisan ambition.

  Savage's hand began to tremble, this time not from pain, but excitement. He stared at that sketch like a lecher seeing a peerless beauty, giggling on the spot.

  "It's yours."

  Carlisle leaned against the rock, speaking weakly:

  "My brain is now a library. Although most of the book is burned, these few pages are still readable." Carlisle pointed to his temple. "Provided that you survive and use that hand of yours to help me build it."

  In the shadow on the other side, Lyria sat alone.

  She didn't participate in the conversation of the two men. She curled herself into a small ball, back against the cold black basalt wall.

  As an elf accustomed to forests, breeze, and starlight, this closed space buried thousands of meters underground, filled with the smell of aged engine oil, ozone, and dead metal, was no different from a torture chamber for her.

  Claustrophobia was gnawing at her nerves like a poisonous snake.

  Her breathing was rapid and shallow; hands hugged her knees tightly, knuckles turning white. That dagger with only the handle left was gripped dead tight by her, as if that was her only connection to the past world full of vitality.

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  "We are buried."

  Lyria's voice was very light, carrying an imperceptible tremble, stirring up layers of echoes in the empty hall:

  "The Order has blockaded the surface. My wind tells me all exits are blocked by 'Order Barriers.' We became rats in a jar... can only rot slowly in this darkness."

  "Who said we are going to rot here?"

  Carlisle finished bandaging the wound, staggering to stand up. His body tottered as if a gust of wind could blow him down, but his back was straight, like a steel nail broken but still sharp.

  He walked to the edge of the trestle bridge, facing that huge blue crystal statue sealing the monster.

  "We need to light a lamp for this new home."

  Carlisle took out a glowing control rune from his pocket—that was the underlying permission he intercepted when forcibly cracking the power furnace just now—then flicked it gently into the air.

  Hummmm—

  The moment the rune activated, the suspended golden power furnace in the center of the hall suddenly shone brightly.

  The next scene made Savage forget the pain of the severed limb and made Lyria forget claustrophobia.

  The strong golden light didn't illuminate the hall directly but hit that giant blue crystal statue sealing the monster. This twenty-meter-high crystal had countless irregular facets; when light penetrated it, ten million refractions and reflections occurred.

  The originally dim underground hall was instantly penetrated by countless interwoven blue and gold beams. Beams hit the surrounding smooth-as-mirror black basalt walls, then bounced and split again.

  In an instant, the entire huge underground cavity turned into a bizarre kaleidoscope. Thousands of reflections were projected on the walls: twisted Savage, elongated Lyria, countless overlapping Carlisles...

  This was no longer a dark, damp basement, but a dazzling, sacred, yet psychedelic crystal palace.

  "Look around, Lyria."

  Carlisle spread his arms, like the king of this light and shadow. His voice echoed in countless reflections, creating a layered resonance:

  "This is not a tomb. This is a Mirror."

  He turned around, looking at the dumbfounded two, ambition burning in his eyes:

  "The surface world is hypocritical order, and here... is the light refracted by true chaos."

  "Mirrors can reflect reality, and also distort reality. We hide in the mirror, watching people outside, while they can't see us."

  Carlisle walked between the two, raising that half bottle of remaining spirits of Savage:

  "The Order looks down on all living beings from the high tower. Then we look up from the underground—using this as a base point, deconstruct their laws, establish our rules."

  "From today on, this place is called 'The Mirror Hall.'"

  "Mirror Hall..." Savage murmured, looking at the countless majestic selves on the wall (reflections covered the disability of his broken arm), suddenly grinning, revealing a gold tooth. "Sounds much more valuable than 'Scrap Metal Inn.' Grand enough!"

  Lyria looked up, watching those gorgeous light paths interwoven in the air. That dazzling light dispelled the shadow and temporarily dispelled the sense of confinement in her heart.

  She hesitated but finally stood up, walking into the light.

  She didn't raise her hand, just looking at these two lunatics, a helpless yet relieved arc curling slightly on the corner of her mouth:

  "If this is the only way to live... then, to survival."

  "To survival."

  Three scarred exiles clinked non-existent glasses in this underground maze of interlaced light and shadow.

  It was late at night (if there was a concept of time underground).

  The Power Furnace switched to low-power mode; the light in the hall dimmed again, leaving only that huge gloomy blue crystal statue still emitting faint fluorescence.

  Savage was already snoring like thunder in the corner; Lyria sat cross-legged on the trestle bridge meditating, trying to rebuild contact with faint leylines in the dead silence.

  Carlisle came to that crystal statue alone.

  He didn't look at that Power Furnace symbolizing strength but stood in front of the sealed monster. At this distance, he could clearly see the situation inside the crystal. That once arrogant tumor monster was frozen in time in its most hideous posture at this moment. The barbs on every tentacle, the texture of every piece of rotten meat, were clearly visible.

  Carlisle extended his charred left hand, fingertips gently touching the cold crystal surface—he wanted to confirm if that "Formatting True Script" was still running stably.

  Zzzzt.

  Not electric current sound, but an extremely light noise drilling straight into the mind. Like that annoying electric current sound when tuning an old radio.

  The Truth Vision on Carlisle's retina suddenly jumped violently; the originally stable blue True Script stream was instantly forcibly overwritten by a weird deep purple.

  [Warning: Deep Echo Detected]

  [Source: The Void Silence - Fourth Epoch Residue]

  [Message: IT SEES YOU]

  Carlisle's heart skipped a beat. That feeling was like diving in the deep sea, suddenly feeling a huge eye open in the bottomless darkness beneath his feet.

  He shrank his hand back sharply, retreating two steps.

  Illusion?

  In that instant, he clearly saw the monster's compound eye in the crystal... turned a bit.

  No, not the monster's eye moved. The monster was dead, completely turned into stone.

  Something was watching him through the monster's corpse, through this thick layer of crystal, even through the underlying rules of this world.

  That gaze was cold, greedy, and full of desperate emptiness. It didn't belong to the Order's order, nor the Fifth Epoch's chaos; it was a more ancient, more fundamental "Nothingness." It was the dead pixel of the universe.

  "When you gaze into the abyss of code..."

  Alastor's curse before leaving echoed faintly in Carlisle's ear like a tarsal maggot.

  Carlisle took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the shudder rising in his heart. He walked to a puddle, lowered his head, and looked at his reflection.

  Under the faint blue light, his reflection seemed particularly strange.

  In that instant, he saw his left eye in the reflection was no longer gloomy blue, but briefly turned into a black, constantly rotating vortex. That vortex was sucking the surrounding light, as if wanting to suck his soul in too.

  But only for an instant.

  In the blink of an eye, everything returned to normal. Blue True Script streams began to flow again.

  "Interesting."

  Carlisle slowly revealed a bloody smile at himself in the reflection.

  That wasn't a smile of fear; that was the expression mixed with fear, excitement, and desire for conquest when a hunter discovered a prey stronger than himself.

  He touched the eye socket still faintly aching, whispering to himself:

  "Want to eat me? Then get in line."

  "People who want to kill me can line up from here to Aethelgard. Who do you think you are?"

  He turned and left; the black tattered robe disappeared deep in the shadow, back figure lonely and resolute.

  But behind him.

  Deep in that dead silent crystal statue, that wisp of purple light didn't disappear completely. It was like a weak heart, beating extremely slowly and silently inside the crystal.

  Thump.

  The monitoring background on the retina captured this abnormal wave peak instantly, popping up a yellow warning box, but was immediately drowned by a large amount of refreshed system self-check information.

  [Base Status: Online]

  [Energy Output: Stable]

  [Supply Reserve: 0% (Critical)]

  [Savage Vitals: Limb Missing, Advanced Repair Required]

  [Lyria Vitals: Mana Exhausted, Natural Environment Recharge Required]

  Carlisle's footsteps paused. He didn't look back at that weird crystal but looked further away—that maintenance channel leading to the surface, to the chaotic and filthy "Ashen Wasteland."

  "Don't sleep too soundly."

  He whispered to the two tired companions in the darkness, voice echoing in the empty hall:

  "This is just the beginning. To keep this 'Mirror Hall,' we have to go to that man-eating world outside and snatch back the bones that belong to us."

  In the darkness, that unknown channel was like a gaping giant mouth, quietly waiting for their entry.