Chapter 192 - Library
Hao Xuan walked around the hall and scrutinized every single thing he found.
Towards the left side was a small chamber. It was out of the way and covered only about twenty square meters in size. There was a half-open 'pod' placed horizontally on one side. Its material looked organic and it even had a small layer of what seemed like 'skin' around it.
Besides the pod was a small table with a metal board on top. The board was about two feet in length and half a foot in width. There were metal engravings on both sides of it, in a language Hao Xuan didn't understand.
With the board in hand, he walked back out and went towards the spiky chair where Ensis was standing.
"Any idea what all this is?" he asked as he ran his finger across the glass desk.
Ensis shook his head.
"How about this then? Can you read this?" he threw the metal board over to him.
Ensis looked at the board with furrowed brows before closing his eyes and placing his hand over it. A stream of black Qi came out of his hand and was instantly absorbed into the board.
Hao Xuan watched on without interrupting. About ten minutes later Ensis opened his eyes again, which seemed slightly 'brighter'.
"This is the being, "Poriverse's" Mémoire. It details its personal thoughts and goals it had set for itself over the years," Ensis explained with a heavy voice. "The last entry is over seven thousand years old so it's a good guess that this Poriverse isn't here anymore."
Hao Xuan's expression turned bright as he heard that, "Does it say anything about this place? What it is and how to get out of it?"
Ensis seemed hesitant at first but he once again closed his eyes and inserted Qi into the board.
A minute later he opened them again.
"This is one of several dozen planets Poriverse had occupied over the years. It conducted experiments here, trying to find a way to gain immortality, and most important of all, it was designed specifically to facilitate the needs of an 'unknown' object it had found out in the void space. It thought this 'object' would be able to help in some way, due to the special circumstances it was found in."
"Unknown object? Which one? Is it the one in the glass tank by any chance?" Hao Xuan asked curiously.
"Precisely," Ensis nodded, "About nine thousand years ago Poriverse was studying the effects of black holes and dark matter on the physical matter at the edge of the universe. The place he had chosen for this study had three different black holes merging into one. One day, an object shot out from the center of these three black holes."
"Of course, this was an unprecedented turn of events. Even with all its power, it could only observe the black holes from a distance of billions of kilometers, yet this object had broken through the gravitational forces of three black holes, from which even light wasn't able to escape."
"Poriverse caught this object and spent the next two thousand years trying to understand it, yet it bore no results. The object seemed to distort the very space itself and even had abilities related to time. So Poriverse made this lab to help germinate it since it seemed to like the Yin Qi which was available in abundance in the vast universe."
"Woah..." Hao Xuan was left speechless upon hearing the true history of this place, and that object.
"But wait, when I jumped into the liquid, I'm sure there was something alive in there. It 'reacted' to me," he mumbled.
"It was an oval grey object when Poriverse obtained it. Whatever it is now only happened after his death," Ensis said when he heard Hao Xuan.
"Hmm. Well, whatever," Hao Xuan waved his hand after some thought. There were more pressing matters at hand for now.
"Is there anything else in there? What are these globes? And what's behind the middle hallway? Also, what's with the tombs and temples above?" he asked with a raised eyebrow. Every answer raised even more questions.
"Yes," Ensis nodded, "The globes are the accumulation of all its knowledge. When a Sagax reaches the end of its life, they develop a type of dementia. Knowing that its life was coming to an end, Poriverse forcefully extracted his experiences and interpretations and stored them here."
"As for the information regarding the middle hallway, that's in one of those globes," he pointed at the last shelf which only had fifteen globes on it.
"And the tombs and temples, they were probably made after its death. There was a mortal civilization that lived here, it thought of Poriverse as a god and worshiped him for quite some time. Of course, Poriverse never cared about any of that to begin with."
"Alright. Better than nothing I guess," Hao Xuan sighed.
He went up to the last shelf and picked up a globe at random, before looking at Ensis.
"How do I get the knowledge? Do I just break the globe and drink it?"
Ensis opened his mouth but no sound came out. He couldn't find the words to tell him the truth.
"What?" Hao Xuan frowned upon seeing his troubled expression.
Ensis looked at Hao Xuan and then at the chair, "That. It was made specifically for this task. And the only way to get the knowledge from the globes is through this chair. It will "insert" the knowledge directly into your mind."
Hao Xuan looked at the chair and the protruding 3cm needles all along its middle frame.
"...."
"....."
"You know what, on second thought, I don't really need all this information.. Let's find another way out," he carefully put the globe back on the shelf and walked out with large steps.