Chapter 72: “Research Institute”

Chapter 72: “Research Institute”

At the same time he obtained the Staff of the Stars, Klein’s other hand took out a gold coin from the air and flicked it upward with a clang.

As the coin spun, the revelation he had obtained through divination naturally surfaced in his mind:

It was an extremely deep, dark ravine. At its bottom stood a thick, broad structure built layer upon layer from gray-white material.

Every detail reproduced the Chernobyl Klein had once seen. Yet the source was not the spirit world. It came from Klein’s own subconscious.

Using the technique of dream divination, he had recreated the image he had seen inside his mind.

No sooner had that scene been sketched than the gemstones inlaid upon the Staff of the Stars emitted a faint light. With Klein’s historical projection, it vanished instantly, then appeared above the gray-white building.

In only one second, Klein had returned from the easternmost part of the Forsaken Land of the Gods to Chernobyl!

This was one of the Staff of the Stars’ main abilities. If the corresponding scene appeared in the holder’s mind, and that place truly existed and still existed, then the Staff of the Stars could bring him across every obstacle and any distance, directly to the destination.

Of course, the prerequisite was that the imagined scene had to be absolutely correct. Not a single detail visible to the naked eye could differ from the original.

The reason Klein had chosen the deep ravine where Chernobyl was located, rather than the wasteland filled with grayish-yellow mist, was that he knew that after Bradell, the youngest son of the Giant King and the God of Honor, escaped the curse and completely passed away, that place would definitely have undergone a significant change. The only part likely unaffected would be the mysterious Chernobyl, which the ancient Sun God and Amon’s father and son both valued highly.

This did not mean the deep ravine and gray-white building definitely would not have any visible changes. Klein had actually prepared himself for Teleportation failure and an unknown destination. After all, the person was fake, and so was the item in his hand. Losing them would not be a pity.

In midair, Klein, holding the Staff of the Stars, had not yet had time to examine his surroundings when his whole body abruptly sank and fell downward.

Without Creeping Hunger, and without transforming into a bird, he currently had no ability to fly.

Therefore, despite how strange and terrifying a Seer-pathway demigod could be, he still possessed a very ordinary human side.

As his thoughts raced, Klein visualized a Beyonder power inside his mind.

The Staff of the Stars lit up with multicolored radiance, causing one violent gust of wind after another to stir around him.

These winds coiled around Klein, making his black trench coat flap noisily and letting his body slowly descend.

During this process, Klein flicked his right wrist, causing the historical projection of the Staff of the Stars to return to where it normally should be, lest instinctive images in his mind cause accidents.

Immediately afterward, he pressed down his silk half top hat with his left hand. As the lightning high in the sky had only just faded, he dragged a lantern out of the void.

Under the lantern’s dim yellow glow, Klein’s feet, in buttonless leather shoes, landed steadily on the ground at the bottom of the deep ravine. Within the endless darkness around him, it seemed as though monster after monster were hidden.

Before him stood Chernobyl, constructed layer upon layer from gray-white material.

Under the combined effect of high-altitude lightning and the lantern in his hand, Klein quickly discovered something:

This thick, broad, gray-white building had no door!

Mm, every part is sealed shut… I remember the ancient Sun God opened an illusory crack in the gray-white wall… Klein thoughtfully found the position in his memory and began reciting The Fool’s honorific name.

At the easternmost part of the Forsaken Land of the Gods, beside the solidified fog near Moon City, Klein’s true body, hidden within the gaps of history, immediately entered Sefirah Castle. Through the prayer light, he used True Vision to sweep over Chernobyl’s situation.

Inside that deep ravine and within the wasteland still filled with remnants of grayish-yellow mist, there was not a single Amon.

As for Chernobyl itself, even with the True Vision provided by Sefirah Castle, Klein could not see clearly what existed inside:

Beneath layer after layer of gray-white material seemed to be absolute nothingness, without any color at all.

It really isn’t simple… As expected of the place the ancient Sun God, the Creator of the City of Silver, walked out from… Klein sighed inwardly a couple of times, swiftly left Sefirah Castle, and returned to the historical fragment before the First Epoch.

The Klein outside Chernobyl regained consciousness. Reaching into the air, he took out Leymano’s Travels.

He quickly flipped to a page and prepared to use the Apprentice’s Open Door.

To Klein, this action was actually somewhat reckless. But considering that this was merely an image from the gaps of history, he felt there was no problem.

Beyonders of the Seer pathway truly possess the two attributes of caution and recklessness at the same time: cautious while preparing, reckless after preparations are complete. It presents a cautious-reckless duality… While lampooning himself, Klein soundlessly passed through the obstruction and entered Chernobyl.

After using Open Door again and again, he finally left the area formed from gray-white material and saw a half-open heavy iron door ahead.

This iron door was not tall, only around two and a half meters—obviously built for humans.

In front of it lay two patches of pitch-black traces and two firearms far more futuristic-looking than any weapon of the current era.

The two firearms resembled things Klein had seen in certain magazines in his previous life, but he had never been especially interested in that field and could not be certain.

Klein neither picked them up nor attempted to study them, because his spiritual intuition told him those two gun-like weapons had already been thoroughly corroded. The slightest touch would instantly make them collapse and dissolve into foam.

After looking twice, Klein dismissed Leymano’s Travels. Carrying the lantern, he walked between the two black marks and arrived beyond the iron door.

Beyond it was a very wide corridor. On both sides stood rooms of different sizes. Inside them, some tables, chairs, and objects had toppled over; others remained in place; some were missing half of themselves. Black marks covered the walls and floor everywhere.

“This looks like a research institute…” Klein made a preliminary judgment based on the remaining objects and the overall layout.

There was no need for him to search deliberately. He soon discovered several yellowed sheets of paper lying on a table inside a room where some machine had collapsed.

It seemed as though someone had gathered them and casually placed them there.

The ancient Sun God, or Amon? Klein hesitated for two seconds, but in the end, he still stepped into the room.

The lantern’s dim yellow glow drove away the darkness inside. He picked up the pages and quickly skimmed them.

Ten seconds later, Klein put down the papers, the corners of his mouth twitching faintly.

Of the words on those pages, he recognized almost none!

In my previous life, I could only barely pass English. How am I supposed to handle other languages? Klein suddenly felt what every other Beyonder in this world felt when looking at Roselle’s diary.

He slowly breathed out, reached into the void, and took out an item.

It was a translator Zhou Mingrui had bought after saving some money, planning to use it when traveling abroad. When he held the luck-enhancement ritual, it had been beside him inside his computer bag.

To Klein, this translator’s greatest advantage now was that it could translate offline—as long as the words did not exceed its built-in dictionary.

After some fiddling, he finally understood what those few pages said:

“…Research into the reappearance of oil in exhausted oil fields… Why build a research institute in a place no one could possibly imagine for something like this?”

“…God, what did they discover deep inside the oil field…”

“…These are truly wondrous materials…”

“…What exactly happened? The Doctor turned into a pool of black oil right in front of me!”

“…More and more people are turning into oil. The outside has sealed this research institute… No one can leave. No one can leave…”

“…They’ve all gone mad. All of them. Only we are still normal, but our food is almost gone…”

“…I seem to be hearing things. There seems to be a voice coming from underground. It is calling me. He is calling me!”

Those simple, direct lines made Klein’s back inexplicably chill. He felt as if he himself were step by step approaching madness and death.

At the same time, a thought naturally appeared in his mind:

Pollution originating from underground.

The origin of everything was that when researching exhausted oil fields, they discovered some strange geological materials and performed unnecessary in-depth experiments? Then the world was destroyed? But if the disaster had been caused by an accident like this, there would be no reason for Roselle, me, and the others to receive items that helped us “transmigrate” beforehand… Perhaps it was chance within inevitability, inevitability hidden within chance? The pollution underground had actually always been influencing the human world, just not obviously enough, only intermittently bringing mysterious events. Then once this research advanced, He fully awakened? Klein subconsciously swallowed.

Carrying the lantern, he left the room and walked toward the depths of the research institute, paying close attention to whether there was anything else nearby worthy of notice.

After walking for dozens of seconds, the scene before him suddenly became much darker.

The lantern’s dim yellow glow had been mostly devoured by the region ahead!

Klein looked carefully and discovered that two steps away stood a “cliff.”

That part of the research institute had collapsed into the earth. The darkness there was deep, hollow, and endless, with no bottom visible.

Vaguely, Klein seemed to hear soundless cries. They came from deep underground, ringing directly inside his mind.

Klein had experienced this feeling before. It was what the bronze door in the Hall of Truth had brought him.

He frowned slightly and retreated several steps, ready at any moment to end his maintenance of the historical projection.

Just then, a shriveled hand, skin over bone, stretched out from the darkness that could not be illuminated and grabbed onto the edge of the “cliff.”

Then a figure leaped out and landed before Klein.

He wore a pointed soft hat, a classical black robe, and a monocle embedded in his right eye socket. He was none other than the Angel of Time, Amon.

But this Amon’s condition was not too normal. He looked like a skeleton covered in a thin membrane of skin.

Klein instinctively retreated a few more steps, watching as the flesh and blood of the Amon before him rapidly filled out.

He pushed the monocle and said with a smile, “A visitor, how unexpected.

“Who are you?”