"A—ya—!"
Faced with this infuriating junior who had immediately started teasing her the moment they met, Tribbie puffed out her rosy cheeks.
"My apologies, my teacher. That was terribly rude of me."
Aglaea swiftly reigned in her obvious amusement. She offered a slight bow, her apology entirely sincere. "It is simply my first time seeing you manifest in such an... adorable form. The novelty got the better of me, and I couldn't resist poking a bit of fun. Please forgive my insolence."
As she leaned forward, her breathtakingly full chest trembled slightly, tracing an awe-inspiring curve.
In years past, the "Tribios" that Aglaea interacted with had always been the dignified, brilliantly wise First Princess of Britain.
Suddenly seeing her teacher in the form of a pouting child... it was entirely understandable that she'd feel the urge to tease her.
"However, regarding that young man you care so much about... I admit, I am genuinely curious."
At present, Aglaea had yet to complete the final rite of passage for a Chrysos Heir—slaying her corresponding Divine Authority, Hera.
Part of the reason was that she hadn't yet located the conjugate Queen of the Gods shared between Greek and Roman mythology. But the deeper reason lay in her attachment to her own humanity.
As evidenced by Tribios—who had slain the Gate God Janus and fused his Divine Authority into her being as a spark—the Chrysos Heir's personality would constantly fracture and splinter, presenting wildly different facets of her soul.
If Aglaea successfully slew Hera, the absolute authority of the Queen of the Gods would gradually strip away her human emotions, ultimately turning her into a cold, aloof, unfeeling machine.
Unless backed into an absolute corner, Aglaea had no intention of taking that step.
She just wanted to run her little tailor shop in Athens, chat with her friends, and care for the ungrateful stray cat that only came back when it was hungry. She wanted a warm, peaceful, mundane life.
Because of this grounded nature, Aglaea felt a pure, caring interest in the rare man who had managed to capture her teacher's attention.
In truth, even though Aglaea largely kept out of Honkai-related affairs, she frequently heard rumors about Fuli through various channels.
She didn't care for idle gossip, and she certainly wasn't childish enough to believe the exaggerated, clickbait scandals spun by shameless tabloids. What she cared about was whether Tribios would find true happiness.
But since Tribbie was clearly too embarrassed to discuss it, Aglaea knew when to stop pushing.
"Very well. If my teacher doesn't wish to talk about it, we won't."
She offered a soft smile, her tone a perfect blend of teasing and sincerity. "However... if we happen to 'accidentally' run into him here, I'll be sure to take very good care of him."
"Oh, and my teacher? Please ensure that the dress design for your future wedding is left entirely in my hands, exactly as we agreed."
As the stunning beauty spoke, she casually reached up, tucking a stray lock of golden hair behind her ear.
In the dim light of the ruins, her flawless arm seemed to emit a soft, inner glow, the skin as smooth and delicate as the finest mutton-fat jade.
Seeing it, one could instantly understand why Queen Hera was universally lauded as the "White-Armed Goddess" in ancient Greek epics.
"Aya! Why is your imagination running on overdrive?!"
Tribbie felt like Aglaea was performing Olympic-level mental gymnastics. It was the classic case of seeing a bare shoulder and immediately jumping to the conclusion of illegitimate children.
"Should I prepare a few sets of baby clothes in advance, just in case?" Aglaea continued, her tone deadpan. "Your current measurements are actually perfect for fitting child models. It's incredibly convenient."
"Shut up!"
Tribbie finally surrendered completely. Covering her burning cheeks, she spun on her heel and bolted deeper into the industrial zone without looking back.
Aglaea followed at a leisurely pace.
Her breathtakingly perfect legs flashed through the high slit of her dress with every step.
Along the way, she elegantly dispatched a few blind Honkai Beasts with the golden sword in her hand, her golden gladiator heels clicking against the floor in a crisp, rhythmic tempo.
They weren't in a rush to rendezvous with Fuli's group. For one, the Sky Kingdom was massive, its various districts an interlocking labyrinth. They had no idea where the others actually were.
But the main reason was that shortly after stepping into this industrial zone, they had keenly detected a massive, violently unstable energy fluctuation brewing beneath the seemingly solid foundation.
Whether it was a malfunction in the energy grid or something else entirely, it was a threat they needed to investigate before they could safely proceed.
Following the energy readings, the pair soon arrived before a massive facility sealed by heavy, reinforced alloy doors.
"Volcanic Crust Energy Regulation and Conversion Hub," Aglaea read the faded script aloud softly.
As descendants of the Previous Era, the written language of the Sky Kingdom shared the exact same roots. Anyone else would have found the text completely alien, but these two clearly possessed the means to decipher it.
She turned to Tribbie, only to find the little girl had already closed her eyes.
An invisible perceptual field pulsed outward from Tribbie's body, piercing through the metal floor. It dived deep into the intricate maze of pipes and energy circuits below, thoroughly scanning the ancient facility's structure and status.
A moment later, Tribbie opened her eyes.
"The core system here connects to the geological structure through an incredibly precise and complex array for resonance, channeling, and conversion," she said, her childish face bearing a solemnity far beyond her years.
"It's designed to systematically regulate the pressure building up in the tectonic plates. It siphons off the violent geological energy that would normally cause volcanic eruptions or massive earthquakes, channels it, converts it, and stores it."
"A portion of that energy is used to maintain the zenith barrier above us—the one holding back billions of tons of seawater. As for the rest... looking at the system's design, it seems it's just been endlessly accumulating."
"Accumulating... for a thousand years?" Aglaea was stunned.
"Converting and storing the tectonic energy of an entire deep-sea volcano and its surrounding fault lines for that long... If this detonates, the blast alone could probably flip this entire ocean upside down."
"I'm going to try to repair it. Or, at the very least, stabilize it."
Despite her adorable exterior, Tribios wasn't just capable of teleportation; she was a top-tier mechanical and physics genius who could hand-craft hypersonic missiles and churn out cutting-edge inventions for fun.
"I don't know what exactly went wrong here a millennium ago," Tribbie said grimly.
"Compared to the zenith barrier outside—which is damaged but still stubbornly holding on—the internal geological conversion array is basically on life support. Saying it could fail at any second is an understatement; it's a miracle it hasn't blown up already."
"But that miracle is at its end. The energy flow inside is in complete chaos. Most of the critical pressure-relief valves and stabilizers are either dead or failing."
"A catastrophic meltdown is inevitable if left alone. And if a thousand years of pent-up tectonic energy erupts..."
Whether they would survive it was debatable, but the Sky Kingdom would be wiped off the map entirely.
"Besides—"
The little girl crouched down, her pale hand gently brushing against the freezing metal floor.
"I can feel it. This ancient facility... it feels like it's speaking to me."
Her expression shifted into something complex—a blend of melancholy, pity, and a heavy, lingering sorrow.
"I can feel the ambition and excitement of its initial construction. The loneliness and absolute resolve of guarding it through the long centuries. The fiery devotion to their people and their home."
"And at the very end... a sense of bitter, agonizing regret at failing right on the verge of success. It's so intense it's practically tangible..."
"Something unimaginable must have happened in those final moments," Aglaea murmured, a flicker of sorrow crossing her perfect face.
Then, her tone shifted seamlessly back to business.
"So, my teacher, do you need a hand? I'm no expert in energy engineering, but I'm more than capable of passing you wrenches or clearing out any little pests that try to interrupt you."
"Of course!"
Tribbie instantly snapped out of her melancholy, rolling up her sleeves and getting ready for some heavy lifting.
While Fuli's group explored the ruined city, and the master-student duo worked to stabilize the ticking time bomb in the industrial zone, the Grand Library in the center of the kingdom finally welcomed two uninvited guests.
Breaking a silence that had lasted a thousand years.
"Woah! Thank goodness we managed to sneak in right as they opened that water gate."
A silver-haired girl dressed in sleek, lightweight black tactical gear shook her head, two cat ears popping out from under her hood.
"Still, Grove Boy... trailing behind them all the way from the surface, lurking in the shadows while they dived... I didn't peg you for having a stalker fetish."
"The fee I paid you only covered smuggling me into these ruins. You are dismissed, catgirl," the green-haired scholar replied coldly.
He wore a black eyepatch over his left eye and didn't even bother glancing at her. He marched straight forward and pushed open the massive, dust-caked double doors.
A teeth-setting screech of metal-on-stone echoed through the library's vast, silent vestibule as centuries of accumulated dust billowed into the air.
Row upon row of towering bookshelves reached up to the dome, standing on either side like silent giants.
The books they held were mostly reduced to rotting pulp. Even with meticulous preservation, paper simply couldn't survive for millennia in this environment.
The man wasn't surprised by this. His gaze immediately locked onto the solid stone walls, which were covered in massive, faded—but still legible—Fresco (murals) and engravings.
"Don't be so cold, Great Lecturer of the Grove of Epiphany."
Cipher flipped a shiny, ancient silver coin into the air.
Catching it with a deft flick of her wrist, she recited proudly, "Boss Pardo taught us that when you run into danger while treasure hunting, you don't stick around—you bolt!"
"However, if you spot a super-strong sugar daddy whose thigh you can hug for protection... taking a little risk is totally worth it. You might just score the motherlode!"
"Hah!" The man scoffed, not even bothering to turn around. "Do you honestly expect me to out of the goodness of my heart save you if you get into trouble?"
"No, no, no, you misunderstand, Mr. Scholar," the catgirl tsked, wagging a finger with a roguish smirk.
"What I mean is, if we run into something lethal, I'm definitely faster than you. So if you can't keep up, don't blame me for using you as bait while I make my grand escape!"
"But seriously, though." She stretched her arms behind her head, casually strolling through the dust-filled, ancient library.
"I was busy running errands when little Hyacine called that emergency meeting, so I missed it. What exactly did you guys talk about?"
"What's the deal with that crazy Sea God out there, and what the heck is this place? Fill a girl in, won't you?"
"It doesn't concern you."
The Blue representing "Rationality"—the Chrysos Heir corresponding to the Norse All-Father Odin, Anaxagoras—was entirely engrossed in studying the Frescos, completely ignoring her.
(Oh, right, he had specifically demanded she not call him Anaxa.)
"Tch!"
Realizing she wasn't going to get a reaction, Cipher clicked her tongue, though she didn't actually leave.
After Eden broadcasted the coordinates, Anaxagoras had used a special channel to contact Cipher—a mercenary famous for her godlike speed—paying her a hefty sum to transport him here.
Thus, the two had trailed far behind Fuli's group, diving into the ocean alongside them.
They had nearly been locked out, but thankfully, Cipher's speed came in clutch. In the very nick of time, she grabbed Anaxagoras and zipped right through the collapsing edge of the whirlpool portal.
If they had missed it, the sheer embarrassment would have killed them both.
But that led to her current predicament: Cipher's Divine Authority was absolute speed, not spatial teleportation like Tribbie's.
Now that the underwater gateway to the outside world was sealed, and the Sea God was currently throwing an apocalyptic temper tantrum in the ocean above, she had zero confidence in her ability to break out on her own.
Given the situation, it made far more sense to stick by her employer. If she really ran into danger, at least she had a meat shield to draw aggro.
Jokes aside, as the self-proclaimed "Number One Champion under the Great Ancestor Pardofelis's Command," Cipher was genuinely burning with curiosity about this lost thousand-year-old Sky Kingdom.
She was already here, anyway. If she didn't snoop around and "permanently borrow" a few priceless artifacts, she'd be bringing shame to the title of phantom thief and letting Boss Pardo down!
As for Anaxagoras—a core figure in the "Nousporist" faction within the independent academic organization known as the Intelligentsia Guild, and the Chrysos Heir to the God of Wisdom, Odin—it was completely natural for him to be obsessively drawn to the Sky Kingdom's secrets.
Hyacine's plea for help was the other reason he had come.
The man wasn't enough of a tsundere to pretend he didn't care about his brilliant student, but he also saw absolutely no need to dramatically appear in front of her just to announce, 'I'm here to save you.'
Time trickled by.
The only sounds in the library were Anaxagoras muttering as he leaned close to the Frescos, accompanied by the faint beeps of his scanning equipment.
"I see... this section documents the early practical applications of Earth Vein regulation theory..."
"Ahahahaha! The deep-level override authorization for the Celestial Frescos really is tied to the resonance rate of the Stigmata of Wind, not raw energy output!"
"They actually used imaginary space folding to solve the storage limits of super-massive energy circuits! Marvelous! Utterly exquisite! It's practically mag↗ic↘!"
"The ultimate truth of this world... I have decoded it!"
Listening to the man go absolutely crazy with nerd-gasms, Cipher, who was so bored she was close to counting the hairs on her own tail, finally lost her battle against her innate feline curiosity.
Her gold-plated tactical boots hit the ground, and she turned into a blur of lightning, zipping right to Anaxagoras's side.
"Grove Boy! Hey, Grove Boy!"
"Hmm?"
Deeply annoyed at having his train of thought interrupted, the man snapped his head around. The air itself seemed to freeze under the chilling glare of his single eye.
Cipher wasn't intimidated in the slightest. "Stop keeping it all to yourself! Tell me what you found!"
"You?"
Anaxagoras looked her up and down with dismissive contempt, then turned back to his Frescos.
"Hey, don't be like that!" Cipher balked. "You found all this cool stuff, don't you have the overwhelming urge to brag about it to someone?"
"Aren't you supposed to be some bigshot lecturer for the Grove of Epiphany? Just treat it like you're giving a student a history lesson!"
She immediately followed up with a malicious, taunting grin. "Or... could it be that the illustrious founder of the Grove's Nousporist faction is incapable of explaining complex topics to an uneducated peasant who doesn't even know what a classroom looks like?"
"A pitiful attempt at reverse psychology," Anaxagoras replied coldly. "But if you truly wish to listen, sit down and be quiet."
"Huh? Oh, sweet!"
Realizing it worked, Cipher immediately plopped down cross-legged, her fluffy cat tail swishing back and forth in excitement.
"Considering your frankly abysmal educational background and limited comprehension skills, I will simplify this lecture as much as possible."
The man stepped back, standing a few paces away. "As a Chrysos Heir, no matter how ignorant you are, you must have at least heard of 'Project Ember'—the initiative spearheaded by the Previous Era."
Cipher nodded.
"The direct consequence of artificially accelerating civilization's development was the birth of the Current Era's very first recorded Judgment-class Honkai Beast—the demonic god, Chiyou, which spawned in the highly developed coastal regions of Shenzhou."
"Its sheer mass was incomprehensible, far exceeding the parameters of standard Honkai Beasts. The moment it was born, it displayed a terrifying, insatiable devouring trait, systematically consuming islands and coastal landmasses whole."
Anaxagoras adjusted his glasses. "It is an undisputed fact that if no one had stepped in to stop it, all of Shenzhou—and likely the entirety of the Current Era's budding civilization—would have been completely annihilated in record time."
"But it wasn't," he continued. "According to the fragmented historical records meticulously pieced together by the Intelligentsia Guild, the leader of Shenzhou at the time, 'Ji Lin,' along with the assistance of two Pioneers, 'Fuxi' and 'Nuwa,' wielded the Xuanyuan Sword and engaged Chiyou in an earth-shattering battle."
"Ultimately, the three paid a devastating price to successfully seal the demonic god. Ji Lin and her two companions vanished after the battle, their fates unknown."
"Which brings us to a deeply intriguing question." Anaxagoras paused, his single eye locking onto Cipher.
"?" The catgirl stared blankly.
"...I almost forgot the sheer depth of your ignorance."
The man, having subconsciously slipped into his lecturer persona, rubbed his temples, remembering that he couldn't exactly expect Socratic interaction from this particular student.
He resumed, stripping away the rhetorical questions. "The question is this: Where was the Immortal Empyrea during all of this?"
"She was the universally recognized guardian deity of Shenzhou, and a Pioneer whose combat strength ranked among the top three of the entire Previous Era."
"Yes, we must acknowledge that the situation for the Pioneers five thousand years ago was incredibly dire."
"Not only were they dealing with the wild, unchecked awakenings of numerous Divine Authorities, but they were also constantly putting out fires caused by Project Ember—which spawned endless Honkai Beasts and anomalous phenomena."
"Furthermore, the explosive technological leaps caused the spatial barriers of Earth to destabilize, triggering frequent localized Honkai eruptions that dragged World Bubbles like Qingqiu and Tushan to the surface. It was an absolute free-for-all of apocalyptic proportions."
"But even so... Chiyou was a massive, civilization-ending threat. It rampaged for so long that the historical scars remain visible to this day."
"So why, when the chips were down, did absolute powerhouses like the Immortal Empyrea—or the Old Testament God who rained fire on Sodom—never intervene? Why did they leave it entirely to Ji Lin and her group?"
"Yeah, why?!" Cipher was fully hooked now.
"In the past, this was an unsolved mystery in the academic world. But now, through deciphering these Frescos, I have unearthed the truth buried by history."
Anaxagoras's voice dropped low, carrying the solemn weight of forbidden knowledge. "Because they were all busy dealing with the entity currently sealed deep beneath these very ruins—the abomination suppressed by the Celestial Frescos!"
His tone suddenly spiked, fast and fanatical. "The Previous Era's Fourth Herrscher's Companion Calamity!"
"The Incarnation of All Fluids! The Tyrant that Scours Time! The Wandering Eschatology! The Cannibalistic Demon King!"
"Known as the 'Calamity Serpent'—a formless, omnipresent aggregate of conceptual rules!"
"The Calamity... Serpent?" Cipher muttered in disbelief.
"Are you saying that one thing managed to tie down all the top-tier Pioneers, including Boss Pardo and the Immortal Empyrea? It kept them so pinned down they couldn't even spare a second to deal with Chiyou?!"
This reaction proved just how tight Cipher was with Pardofelis.
Many high-ranking officials in Britain knew that Cath Palug—the mysterious cat guarding the River Thames—was a Grand Sequence. But almost no one knew that Pardo was actually a Flame-Chaser from the Previous Era.
In other words, this so-called "Calamity Serpent" had single-handedly stalled Kevin, Su, Pardofelis, and Fu Hua—basically the entire surviving vanguard of the World Serpent and MOTHs!
"How the hell could it do that?!" Cipher demanded, her cat ears flattening nervously against her head.
"How? Because as the companion of the Herrscher of Wind, the Calamity Serpent possessed a plethora of utterly sickening, rule-based mechanics."
Anaxagoras leaned forward, his single eye burning like a ghost fire in the gloom.
"And the absolute highest priority among its rules—the most crucial mechanic of all, was this:"
"An entity born within the same civilized era... cannot defeat it."