Chapter 489: Completion

Over a century later, Zuo Meng stepped onto the ruins of the Floating City again.

This place remained the first forbidden zone of the Snow Wolf Empire, yet few now remembered its original name. To current generations, the forbidden zone had simply always existed. Arcane Masters had faded into ancient myths about strong individuals, while the Floating City itself was dismissed as pure fantasy.

One hundred and fifty years – that’s all it took for humanity to forget.

How could they believe what they’d never seen?

The perception of long-lived beings diverged sharply from ordinary people, not due to biological differences but clashing lived experiences. Zuo Meng gazed at the exploration teams below crawling through ruins with their instruments, feeling nothing but detached indifference.

He didn’t even want to speak with them.

Imperial Year 2055 – a calendar counting from the Aige family’s founding. Historians now lumped the Divine Eagle Empire’s timeline into the Snow Wolf Empire’s records. Political marriages and royal negotiations had merged the two into a new imperial family, though the ruling clique stayed unchanged.

After prolonged grind in, this new empire differed from Valen’s era. They’d begun reaching for the stars, still clumsily, but interstellar visitors had started arriving. The fallen Floating City’s impact lingered – though its radioactive core stayed impenetrable, scattered debris had sparked multiple technological revolutions.

As Zuo Meng entered, imperial explorers crept through the ruins below.

New radiation suits from imperial laboratories finally allowed access to the deadly core zone. They advanced with glacial caution.

“Could star-faring civilizations have existed 150 years ago?”

An elderly professor’s voice cracked with awe.

“Observe these statues!” Another scholar ran fingers over eroded carvings. “Arcane runes on every figure. Clearly some cult obsessed with pseudoscience flourished here.”

“Arcane worship destroyed them. Let this warn us against abandoning true science!”

“Ancient superstitions! Only fools believed such tricks.”

Every explorer here was an imperial intellectual, steeped in cutting-edge theories. They’d studied the Floating City’s recovered Arcane documents, even attempted rituals – all failures. Early theories suggested missing energy sources, but interstellar allies with superior tech couldn’t replicate Arcane effects either.

After exhaustive trials, the Academy declared: Arcane arts were mythical nonsense.

“Look here!”

A researcher lifted an anomalous hourglass leaking starlight through its glass.

“Radioactive material,” another confirmed as gauges spiked.

Crack!

The glass fractured before warnings finished.

BOOM!

Starlight-fluid exploded across the chamber. Protective suits saved lives but-

CRUNCH!

The “fake” statues shuddered. A colossal stone head creaked downward, scattering debris like dandruff from some titan.

Screams echoed briefly before silence reclaimed the ruins.

Zuo Meng ignored the chaos, moving to the central academic institution area. He bypassed documents for a mundane tile – architectural debris from the great collapse, once studied then dismissed.

‘Find the lost Arcane civilization.’

Brushing off preservation seals, Zuo Meng examined the brick. Previous inspections through protective films revealed nothing, but now…

Ding!

Task: Locate lost Arcane civilization. (Complete)

Reward: +100 years lifespan.

“Of course.” Zuo Meng laughed bitterly. A century’s quest solved by literal building blocks. Museum tiles preserved civilizations too.

But why?

His nail caught a chip. Scratching deeper, he found hollow space within – impossible for original Floating City construction.