Chapter 21 – Space Lock

Wei An followed the driving route marked by escort vehicles and fluorescent road signs.

Over the years, the ruins of ancient civilizations discovered by humans were mostly broken walls and debris. Occasionally, some were extremely dangerous—uninterpretable disasters—while others were useless or things people didn’t know how to use.

Legends about ruins always mentioned the wealth within them. In the era of the ancient kingdoms, even the remnants of a small warehouse could drastically change a nation’s situation.

The situation in Yingtian City, Taoyuan Province, looked astonishing, but it was just a relatively small storage point. Currently, the only “large” warehouse discovered by the Federation belonged to the Ministry of Science.

The fog thickened slightly, and the signs of battle around grew more intense.

There were some severed limbs here but no complete corpses—it was obvious that the forces involved had conducted basic cleanup operations. Clearing away dead bodies was a conventional habit passed down from ancient times and also prevented too much information from being exposed.

But at this moment, Wei An entered a relatively open battlefield area and saw corpses there.

A few of them lay far away near a fortress block, their details unclear, but their appearances were somewhat strange…

Wei An wanted to take a closer look, but something even more bizarre caught his attention, so he walked forward instead.

He found himself in a vast, flat plaza. The ground had a stone-like texture, seemingly ancient yet fused with signs of high-level civilization manufacturing—large machinery could pass and operate directly here. It was enormous, as if it could stretch infinitely.

He abruptly stopped—the road ahead was cut off.

Gray mist swirled around, visibility extremely low. At first, he could faintly see a patch of darkness ahead, but as he approached, he realized that the previously smooth ground suddenly ended, turning into a cliff.

It was as if the entire world had terminated ahead. The mist in the void hung motionless like a monstrous entity, long dead, rotting in the abyss.

The lower space had no airflow; everything was deathly still. Unlike cliffs in the normal world, this place was frozen in both time and space.

Wei An took a step back. Facing such a vast space was unnerving.

Beneath his feet was a cleanly severed stone slab edge, as if cut by some unknown and immense force. Whatever had happened here, it must have involved a weapon of ultimate violence.

The scene was so supernatural that it took Wei An a while to realize that what he was seeing might be the result of someone imposing a Space Lock on this area.

The ancient civilization’s Space Lock technology was extremely bizarre and destructive, probably designed for some extreme event.

When space was locked, an area would seemingly vanish into another layer of replicated space. The original region would still exist but appear completely empty.

Even after the lock was lifted, the damaged portions remained—this was not something meant for conventional use.

Space-related technology was exceedingly rare, considered high-level technology belonging to the domain of gods in legends. Currently, there were no more than twenty space-related technological artifacts in the entire universe, some already lost. Ancient tales spoke of them in reverent mystery, hinting at divine forces beyond mortal grasp.

Wei An stared at this void and thought for three minutes.

He no longer felt any headache at all. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever feeling this good in his life.

No matter how terrifying it looked, he was certain this was some massive joint faction’s vault, and the value of its contents must be staggering.

He knew what might be inside—just as he knew how broken and dangerous the thing in his own head was, and that this good feeling wouldn’t last.

He turned to Gui Ling.

“I remember all ancient civilization weapons can be stored in contracts, right?” he asked. “The one I have is high-level. Can it incorporate a Space Lock?”

Gui Ling had been staring blankly at the void. Hearing the question, he turned back and said, “No. Yours is a special authorization agreement. To unlock this, you’d need a *Primal Covenant*.”

“Why the hell would some horror-movie-style ancient civilization contract be so complicated? It’s like lawyer paperwork.”

Gui Ling gave him a look that said, That’s just how fucking complicated it is.

Wei An made a noncommittal sound. “Fine.”

He walked over and sat on a fallen truck door, then took the skull metal fragment from his pocket.

This thing was essentially a storage drive. Most people who underwent parasitic system surgeries worked behind the scenes, but through specific methods, they could fully access frontline battlefields. Their hard drives contained plenty of on-site data.

Wei An began data synchronization. Gui Ling glanced at his actions—this was a very new technology. But after watching for a while, he said, “Biological video synchronization?”

“Something like that,” Wei An replied.

His phone had many functions and could interface with various systems.

Once done, he’d have access to a large number of on-site video files.

To carry out such a large-scale Space Lock, there must have been a high-ranking private militia member holding the contract on-site. He could find this person in the videos, investigate their identity, kill them, and take the contract.

Gui Ling watched for a while, then realized what Wei An was planning.

“If you can get this,” the monster said in an unusually cheerful tone, “there’s something inside that can upgrade my contract again.”

Wei An looked at him, remembering how happy Gui Ling had seemed when talking about upgrading the contract during the blackout earlier.

Gui Ling was a true disaster, capable of sparking unimaginable fervor and danger in people’s hearts—just look at what happened with the contract in Qingshi Province. The box sealing him shouldn’t have the slightest gap.

But the thing locked inside was also a deranged weapon, steeped in misery and suffering.

Wei An thought this but only nodded, maintaining his usual polite, distant, businesslike demeanor. “Of course, I’ll do my best.”

The data synchronization would take some time, and neither of them spoke further.

The surroundings were quiet. Wei An examined the Golden Ticket in his hand while the Horn continued to sound.

He had thought the noise in his head would disappear once things stabilized, but it hadn’t. It still rang through the city—hollow, desolate, urgent, endless.

Wei An turned to Gui Ling. The man was leaning against an overturned truck, looking down at the phone Wei An had bought him. Judging by his movements, Wei An suspected he was playing a game—a farming simulator he’d installed earlier for his persona, so boring it was unclear why it even existed.

“What is this horn sound?” Wei An couldn’t help asking Gui Ling.

The man looked up.

“Horn?”

“Yeah, it’s been sounding since the hotel,” Wei An muttered. “It’s been calling me down like it’s haunting me, and it still hasn’t stopped. Can you make it shut up?”

Gui Ling tilted his head as if listening, then agreed, “There really is one.”

“It sounds like we’re going to war—this place has been dead for thousands of years—” Wei An started but stopped when Gui Ling put down his phone and stared at him.

Wei An unconsciously straightened his posture. He felt uneasy—Gui Ling had never looked at him like this before. In fact, he didn’t look at anything like this. He was inherently absentminded.

“Hmm. The Deep Domain System.”

Wei An couldn’t speak for a moment.

Those past events had never been put into words before. Even when he occasionally had to think about them, his mind used cold, detached, formal language.

He was a rational adult who knew how life should be lived—just sometimes a little broken, hallucinating. He buried it all deep inside, treating it as an insignificant, embarrassing personal psychological quirk.

After a pause, Wei An spoke again, his voice soft—unlike his usual tone, more like when he was a child, standing on thin ice, afraid of breaking anything.

“I think it’s calling me…” he said.

“It is calling,” Gui Ling agreed. “You’re the Deep Domain System. If there’s a call, you’d hear it first.”

Wei An gripped his phone tightly. Gui Ling studied him for a moment before adding, “This system is extremely dangerous.”

Gui Ling was hard to understand, but Wei An could see something in his gaze at that moment—the way he looked at him was like staring at a horrifying, unbearable crime scene.

Wei An averted his eyes. Gui Ling continued, “This system can touch… very deep things. You hear something sometimes, don’t you?”

Wei An didn’t answer, only nodding.

“Don’t listen to those voices. Don’t try to perceive anything there,” Gui Ling said. “‘That side’ is deadly. Even one look could kill you.”

“I can feel it,” Wei An murmured.

“You already knew you wouldn’t live long, didn’t you? In this state, you’d be lucky to last two years,” Gui Ling said. “So you retired—wanted to enjoy a few leisurely years?”

Wei An didn’t answer.

“The Golden Ticket can stabilize deep fluctuations. If you can gather enough, it might buy you a few more years. You…” Gui Ling paused, then added, “Enjoy life while you can.”

“I will,” Wei An said quietly.

The silence around them was tomblike, the aura of death seeping into their bones.

Wei An looked as he always had under the gray city light—calm and harmless.

Neither of them spoke further. Gui Ling pocketed his phone and dusted himself off.

“I’ll go deal with the horn. You can wait here,” he said. “It’s an alarm system. Not sure what’s going on—maybe some loose ends weren’t tied up earlier.”

“You’re just leaving me here alone?”

“You handle a gun pretty well. Staying by yourself for a bit isn’t that dangerous.”

Then he even smiled at him.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon.”

Wei An was reluctant but had no choice. Gui Ling exchanged a glance with him, confirming his agreement, then turned and vanished into the mist.

Wei An watched the direction he disappeared in for a moment before looking back at his phone.

The video connection had been steadily progressing and now showed a successful link.

The video list from the skull hard drive loaded—some files were corrupted, but the portion showing the Space Lock activation was intact. It dated back over half a year, when Yingtian’s forces were still at their peak.

Wei An opened it. The video was somewhat damaged, but after some effort, he found the Space Lock footage.

The skull hard drive owner’s video feed came from a camera atop an engineering vehicle—an auxiliary angle, slightly off-center and not the clearest, but serviceable.

In the footage, everyone was on high alert. Three fortified defense lines stood ahead, all equipped with devices to enhance spatial inertia—clearly a major operation was underway.

The next moment, the devouring began from the upper right of the video.

It was horrifying—the void spread, pitch-black and lightless, like an incomprehensible monster consuming the world itself.

Someone shouted: “Distance thirty meters—ten meters—five meters—boundary reached—negative ten meters—”

It was the hard drive owner’s voice, bordering on hysterical.

The screen descended into chaos, the footage glitching as a massive black stain rapidly expanded from above, swallowing fortresses, people, vehicles, and machinery whole.

The void expanded outward—too fast. The first, then the second and third defense lines vanished into it in mere seconds, flickering once before disappearing entirely.

The camera flickered, cutting to black before switching to a higher-angle feed—likely from a large engineering vehicle. The same voice screamed: “Zone overflow three hundred meters—fall back! Fall back!”

The team had prepared thoroughly, but when it happened, it was still a disaster. Space technology was hard to control.

After a long stretch of chaos, static, and lost footage, the Space Lock finally stabilized.

Wei An watched intently, then spotted the person he was looking for—at the edge of the video, a middle-aged man stepped out of a command vehicle and approached the “cliff.”

A group worked busily around him, but he simply observed the spectacular void.

He had a stern expression, closely cropped hair, and wore a military-style coat without insignia. His demeanor gave off an air of authority, suggesting long-standing high-ranking experience.

A team of specialists reported data to him, and he occasionally responded. His accent didn’t sound local to Taoyuan, but he’d likely lived there for many years.

Wei An noted this detail and kept searching for clues. He didn’t recognize this man, but they’d definitely have to… get acquainted later.

He soon found something new—after all, this was internal footage without rigorous secrecy measures.

He spotted a jacket casually stuffed in the private militia leader’s truck, its cuff peeking out from a bag. Wei An paused the video, zoomed in, and saw the logo of a motorcycle modification club.

He knew that club—headquartered in Tongyun, high-security clearance, exclusive to specific groups.

It was enough of a lead.

Gui Ling hadn’t returned yet, so Wei An checked the other video files.

While reviewing the Space Lock footage, he’d noticed something odd in the folder—a few videos titled with rare symbols automatically generated by ancient civilization primal technology. If he remembered correctly, they indicated extreme danger.

Curious, Wei An opened one—and saw something terrifying.