Chapter 180: One thousand false hearts

Ethan did not let the Flame Bone Dragon remain in front of the door.

Ruo Yan moved it more than thirty meters back. Only when the fire patterns across its wings had completely stopped glowing did she inspect the core again.

Not much energy had been taken, but the Ancient Fire-Pattern Material around the wing joint had become slightly dimmer.

If they used the Bone Dragon as a key, the door could probably be opened very quickly, but all the work they had done repairing it at the Purefire Main Furnace might be consumed right here.

“I have no intention of making this dragon pay the entrance fee.”

Ethan crouched in front of the patterns carved into the floor.

“Especially when we just repaired it using our own rewards.”

Laira placed one hand against the edge of the door and tried pushing.

The door trembled but only moved slightly.

At the same time, countless energy channels inside the two cliff walls lit up, causing cracking sounds to come from the ceiling of the corridor.

She immediately stopped using force.

“I can break the door, but the ceiling will collapse before it fully opens.”

“Then let me handle the recognition mechanism.”

Ethan looked toward Mumu.

“How much have you recovered?”

Mumu, who was hugging a crystal while sitting on the Undead Mage’s shoulder, immediately hid it behind its back.

Ethan looked at its body, which had already become round again, then at the crystal that had been reduced to half its original size.

He did not ask anything else.

Mumu slowly crawled down and stood beside him with a rarely seen serious expression.

The halo above its head began to rotate.

The Eye of Truth showed Ethan that the door did not actually require a large amount of energy.

It only recognized the self-circulating cycle of fire-element energy within the Ancient Fire-Pattern Material, then used the energy of the carrier itself to maintain the opening process.

The Bone Dragon satisfied both requirements because the fire patterns on its wings were already connected to its core.

But that did not mean Ethan needed to bring the entire dragon over and use it as a key.

Among the materials left from the Main Furnace, he still had a small piece of Ancient Fire-Pattern Material that was too small to repair equipment, along with two Refined Fire-Element Energy Crystals.

He used Decomposition to remove the outer layer of one crystal, keeping only the most stable energy inside, then fused it into a groove on the piece of material.

The Eye of Truth continuously adjusted the direction of the energy flow, creating a closed loop similar to the cycle on the Bone Dragon’s wings.

Ethan did not use the Fragment of the Lava Emperor’s Heart as a model.

He only placed it beside the material to determine which fire patterns belonged to the sealing system and which had been interfered with by another source of energy.

Ruo Yan watched the carrier gradually take shape.

“How long can it last?”

“About thirty seconds.”

Ethan looked at the tiny cracks already appearing inside the crystal.

“The door only needs to recognize a self-sustaining circulation cycle. I’m not copying the Lava Emperor’s aura, and I can’t create a real core. This thing can only fool the damaged recognition mechanism for a short time.”

“Are thirty seconds enough for the Bone Dragon to get through?” Laira looked toward the enormous body standing at the end of the corridor.

“As long as its wings don’t get stuck.”

The Undead Mage turned its head toward the Bone Dragon.

For the first time, the blue flames inside its eye sockets seemed to carry a faint sense of happiness that the one at risk of getting stuck in the doorway was not itself.

Ethan placed the carrier into the indentation at the center of the heart-shaped pattern on the door.

The surrounding fire patterns immediately lit up.

Energy flowed through the carrier before returning to the channels inside the wall.

The door slowly opened, producing a heavy grinding sound.

Mumu spread its body across the carrier to keep its temperature stable.

The halo above its head rotated once more.

[Mumu has activated Endless Blessing.]

[Buff acquired: Stable Circulation.]

[The ability to maintain a closed energy flow has temporarily increased.]

Thanks to the buff, the cracks spreading through the crystal slowed down.

Laira stood beside the door and used her strength to stop it from pressing shut again, while Ruo Yan controlled the Bone Dragon, making it fold its wings tightly before stepping through.

Even though the opening was nearly ten meters wide, the wing bones still almost scraped against the stone edge.

The Undead Mage hurriedly moved aside, while Ruo Yan’s Soul Threads pulled the dragon’s head lower at exactly the right moment.

After the Bone Dragon and Ruo Yan passed through, Laira looked at Ethan.

“You go first.”

“The carrier can still hold.”

“That’s exactly why you should go first.”

She tilted her head toward the gap.

“If it breaks, I can still force the door open for a while. You shouldn’t try standing between two blocks of stone like these.”

Ethan did not argue.

He removed Mumu from the carrier and stepped through the doorway together with the Undead Mage.

Laira entered last, one hand still holding the stone edge until her entire body had crossed the threshold.

The crystal inside the carrier shattered immediately afterward.

The door slammed shut with a loud boom.

The remaining fire-element energy spread across the stone surface before quickly disappearing.

“Thirty seconds was just enough.”

Ethan picked up Mumu, who had gone flat again on the Undead Mage’s shoulder.

“That buff came at the right time.”

Mumu raised its head proudly, then stretched one tentacle toward Ethan’s storage space.

Ethan took out a small crystal and handed it over.

The moment it received its reward, Mumu immediately forgot how exhausted it had been, hugged the crystal, and rolled onto Ethan’s shoulder.

Only then did Ethan get a clear look at the chamber ahead.

It was larger than the entire plaza surrounding the Purefire Main Furnace.

Thousands of fire-patterned threads hung down from the stone ceiling.

At the end of every thread was a teardrop-shaped crystal.

Inside each crystal was a red-gold spark that slowly contracted and expanded, almost identical in appearance to the Fragment of the Lava Emperor’s Heart that Ethan possessed.

Every time one spark pulsed, the nearby crystals responded.

Light spread throughout the chamber as though thousands of hearts were awakening together.

Laira raised her head and stared at the scene for several seconds before turning toward Ethan.

“You said the Fragment of the Lava Emperor’s Heart was extremely rare.”

“Correct.”

“Then this place has quite a lot of extremely rare things.”

“Looking the same on the outside doesn’t mean they’re the same inside.”

Ethan took out the real heart fragment.

The instant the spark in his palm appeared, every crystal in the chamber pulsed in the same rhythm.

Fire-element energy surged through the room like waves.

“This is an array designed to interfere with detection. If the Lava Emperor still retained some will, even he wouldn’t be able to distinguish his own heart fragment among thousands of fire sources beating at the same rhythm.”

Ruo Yan looked up at the crystals hanging overhead.

“Then there’s a real fragment somewhere among them?”

“Possibly. Or every one of them could be bait hiding the route to somewhere else.”

Ethan activated the Eye of Truth.

The outer layers of the crystals rapidly became transparent, revealing countless interwoven energy pathways.

Information appeared continuously before his eyes.

[Simulated Fire Heart.]

[Simulated Fire Heart.]

[Simulated Fire Heart.]

Dozens.

Hundreds.

Then thousands of identical results overlapped.

Every crystal received energy from a shared network running beneath the floor and across the ceiling, then used the same structure to imitate the rhythm of a heartbeat.

The Eye of Truth was not fooled by their outer appearance, but the sealing network had deliberately made their surface structures so similar that if Ethan wanted to see deeper, he would have to trace each connection all the way back to its source.

“I can pull all of them down.”

Laira reached toward the Boundless Fishing Rod.

“Then you can decompose them one by one.”

“There are more than a thousand.”

Ethan looked at her.

“If there’s a real fragment among them, dropping all of them at once will turn this room into an exploding furnace.”

Laira withdrew her hand.

“Then we’ll do it slowly.”

“It won’t take that long.”

Ethan sat down and placed one hand against the nearest ring of fire patterns beneath the floor.

“The fake crystals need energy from the Magic Array to maintain their rhythm. The real heart fragment possesses Ember Rebirth. Even if it’s cut off from the network, the flame inside it should still be able to sustain itself.”

Ruo Yan immediately understood.

She had the Undead Mage spread deathly energy into a defensive ring around everyone, while controlling the Bone Dragon to stand in front of the door they had just passed through.

Laira also stepped beside Ethan, ready to hold up the ceiling if cutting the energy flow caused the chamber to collapse.

Mumu lay on his shoulder, but the halo above its head continued rotating as it waited for the next buff to appear.

Ethan did not use Decomposition on the entire array.

Instead, he used the Eye of Truth to locate a secondary resonance ring connected to nearly one hundred crystals, then removed precisely the piece of material feeding energy into that ring.

The red-gold light immediately disappeared from the fire-patterned threads one after another.

Ninety crystals lost their rhythm almost simultaneously.

The sparks inside froze, then turned gray.

Only seven crystals continued glowing.

Ethan looked at them without the slightest trace of joy in his eyes.

Six of the seven crystals were connected by black-purple energy threads thinner than hair.

The fire-element energy from the Magic Array had already been cut off, but the Void had replaced the energy source and was forcibly making them continue imitating the heartbeat.

The seventh crystal was located deeper inside the chamber.

The spark within it received no external energy at all, yet still pulsed faintly on its own.

“There’s one real fragment,” Ethan said. “The other six are being kept active by the Void.”

The black-purple threads seemed to realize they had been discovered.

They immediately withdrew from the six crystals, entered the shared network, then spread throughout the entire chamber.

Thousands of Simulated Fire Hearts that had just gone dark lit up again.

But this time, the red-gold color had been stained a deep purple.

On the surface of one crystal near Ethan, the light contracted into a distorted face.

Red-purple eyes.

Black cracks stretching toward the temples.

And a smile filled with resentment.

Ethan recognized Ryan immediately.

“At last… you found it.”

The voice came from thousands of crystals at once.

Sometimes close.

Sometimes distant.

As though it had been torn into countless pieces.

Ruo Yan immediately raised her hand, Soul Threads spreading around the Bone Dragon.

Laira pulled Ethan away from the fire-patterned ring, while Mumu expanded into a golden shield in front of him.

“Ryan?” Laira looked at the face appearing across the crystals.

“Only a fragment of his consciousness or a trace left behind.”

Ethan raised Realm Breaker.

“The thing controlling this chamber is the Void.”

The black-purple crystals began to crack.

Thousands of strands of smoke reached out from inside like tentacles, all stretching toward the real heart fragment located deeper inside the chamber.

The sealing ring surrounding it immediately lit up, attempting to prevent the Void from approaching, but many of the fire patterns had already been corroded long ago.

At the same time, a long tear appeared in the space behind the heart fragment.

Inside the fissure, a black-purple pupil slowly opened.

Faint cracks still surrounded the eye from the bullet Ethan had fired back in the Ember Battlefield.

The Void Eye did not immediately attack.

It looked at the Fragment of the Lava Emperor’s Heart, then shifted its pupil toward Ethan.

Ryan’s face across the thousands of crystals smiled in unison.

“Thank you for finding it for me.”

Ethan looked at the real heart fragment pulsing in front of the Void Eye, then raised Realm Breaker and aimed directly at the black-purple pupil.

The corner of his mouth slowly curved upward.

“You’re thanking me a little too early,” he said. “Who said that just because I found it, it belongs to you?”