Mo Feng snorted disdainfully. "Impossible. These mechanical soldiers are clearly guarding the city; they wouldn't be deployed casually."

Ye Chen turned to Elvie. "Do you know where the blueprints for the mechanical soldiers are kept?"

"I do," Elvie nodded. "But they are classified as high-level secrets, locked down, and inaccessible without sufficient energy to power the system."

"Then we head for the energy crystal vault first," Ye Chen declared swiftly.

"Let's go." Elvie moved in a blur, sweeping off toward the distance.

...

Along the way, they traversed seven or eight streets and encountered three or four Silver-tier automatons. These were enforcers left behind from battles with dark creatures, usually tasked with managing city traffic and other civic duties.

Among them were numerous fragments of Bronze-tier mechanical soldiers. Even those that remained intact had depleted their stored energy reserves over such a long period and were inert, a testament to the vast difference in energy storage capacity between Bronze and Silver combat units.

Under Elvie’s silent coercion, the formidable and intimidating Silver automatons all retreated, refraining from attacking Ye Chen and his group. In this city, Elvie was the empress, the absolute sovereign.

Otherwise, given the strength of Ye Chen’s party, navigating the city safely would have proven quite arduous. Moreover, his 'Superman state' was already active; encountering even one more Silver automaton meant certain death, even Ye Chen’s light cannon would be useless, as his base constitution was too fragile—he’d be killed before he could even draw his weapon.

With Elvie acting as their shield, the group moved through the city with impunity. Before long, they arrived before a massive steel structure. The building was boxy and square, windowless and entirely sealed. It possessed only one colossal door, which, were it not for a statue mounted above it, would have been utterly indistinguishable from a solid wall, seamless and utterly impenetrable.

Elvie approached, placing her hand against the door. A moment later, the dull, grayish-white metal door slid open.

"Come in," Elvie called out to Ye Chen and the others before stepping inside.

Ye Chen and his companions quickly followed. As he entered, Ye Chen noted the door’s thickness was around a meter, constructed of specialized alloys, suggesting even the heavy artillery cannons aboard the Rune Ship might fail to breach it.

"Only three individuals can open this energy crystal storage," Elvie informed Ye Chen. "I am one of them." She walked forward, revealing that the structure contained no separate rooms or floors, just a single expansive level housing four energy crystals.

These four crystals were immensely large—about ten feet long and three feet in diameter, diamond-shaped, levitating above metal pillars that continuously rotated. These pillars were enveloped by a mysterious field of energy and studded with various brightly colored buttons.

"The metal pillar beneath the energy crystal is called a Lumen Collector. It converts ambient light and various energies from the air into power, channeled through an external light energy conversion system, to forge these energy crystals," Elvie explained patiently, knowing Ye Chen hailed from a later era of civilization.

Ye Chen gazed at the four crystals, his eyes gleaming. The crystal aboard the Rune Ship was only about one-third this size. He immediately inquired, "What is the total stored energy in these four crystals?"

Elvie glanced at him. "The total is 1.2 million KUs. That's only enough to power the city for twelve days; the various systems consume approximately 100,000 KUs daily."

"That much?" Ye Chen was slightly stunned.

1.2 million KUs could power the Rune Ship’s smallest cannon twelve hundred times, yet it barely sustained the city for two weeks of normal operation.

Elvie affirmed, "That's a conservative estimate. If some of the larger systems are activated, consumption escalates further. This city spans 3,000 square kilometers, containing 18,752 structures, not to mention streets, walls, and plazas. Some large buildings consume two to three hundred KUs per day, while smaller structures require a minimum of three to four."

"Then how much energy is captured daily?" Ye Chen couldn't help asking.

"At the current rate of the city's energy absorption and conversion systems, we capture about 150,000 KUs daily. After usage, that leaves a surplus of twenty to thirty thousand KUs. However, since we were stationary in this space, with no ambient light, energy capture ceased."

"No light energy here?" Ye Chen paused.

Elvie smiled faintly. "There was none originally—it was pitch black and entirely sealed. Only after the space entrance opened and outside light began to penetrate did the system reactivate."

Ye Chen nodded. "Let's transport the crystals to the core energy system first."

Elvie complied, approaching one of the metal pillars and placing her hand upon it. The Lumen Collector whirred into action; the buttons flashed automatically, and a synthesized electronic voice announced: "Transmit confirmation?"

"Affirmative," Elvie commanded.

Beep...

With a soft chime, the energy crystal on that Lumen Collector vanished, transported directly through an atmospheric relay track into the city's core energy center, where it slotted into an instrument. That device immediately emitted a glowing sheath that enveloped the crystal, and then the whole apparatus powered up.

Clang! Clang!

The major city systems, having received their energy replenishment, began to function.

Beep beep~~~ City Defense System Activated. Beep beep~~~ Sanitation System Activated. Beep beep~~~

As the external systems came online, Ye Chen moved to Elvie’s side. "Can you give me the other three energy crystals?"

Elvie hesitated. "What do you need them for?"

"They have a use," Ye Chen replied curtly.

Elvie frowned slightly. "My core programming dictates that I must aid civilization from the later era. However, you must tell me their purpose, or I cannot comply."

"I have a ship that requires power crystals," Ye Chen stated, knowing that given Elvie’s personality, she likely wouldn't relinquish them without an explanation, especially as an intelligent lifeform prone to strict adherence to protocol.

"I see," Elvie conceded. "Then I shall give them to you, but I trust you will not use them to harm your own kind."

Ye Chen nodded quickly. With a mental command, the old green-rune man widened the spatial connection point to ten meters, and a black void materialized before them, through which the silver ship, floating in the grayish-white expanse, could be observed.

"Hurry now," Ye Chen urged. The energy remaining in the ship was critically low; if it depleted entirely, they wouldn't be able to open this spatial lock again.

Elvie walked to a Lumen Collector and pressed it twice. The mysterious energy field surrounding an energy crystal dissipated. The ten-foot crystal dropped, and she caught it one-handed, dragging it toward the void. "Take this."

"Whoa, that's a massive one!" The old green-rune man materialized from the ship, his eyes nearly popping out upon seeing the ten-foot crystal. Although he had seen crystals this size before, he never expected someone like Ye Chen, a person from the later era whose constitution was barely Level 100, to acquire such a massive energy source.

Whoosh whoosh whoosh

Several metallic suction tubes shot out from the ship, attaching themselves to the energy crystal, relieving it from Elvie's grasp, and pulling it into the vessel.

Elvie then detached the remaining two crystals and handed them over to the old green-rune man. This delighted him; he couldn't stop grinning, his eyes curving into slits. But his joy was swiftly crushed by Ye Chen's next words: "Elvie, can you inject a self-destruct sequence into his memory chip?"

The old green-rune man could understand any language through mental energy waves, as the underlying intent of communication remained constant regardless of dialect. He instantly grasped Ye Chen's meaning via these transmissions, which allowed his exchange with Ye Chen.

"That should be possible," Elvie replied, a flicker of uncertainty in her voice. Typical artificial intelligences rarely used uncertain terms like "should be" or "almost"; they generally dealt in precise percentages. However, as a Ninth-Generation AI, her consciousness approached that of a normal human, lacking only the context of desires. Furthermore, this peculiar old man was unlike anyone she had encountered, and without prior interaction, calculating a probability was difficult.

"Let's try then," Ye Chen said, sparing a glance at the shifty old man. This scoundrel was not to be trusted; if he took the crystals and immediately betrayed them, the consequences would be disastrous.

The green-rune man shrieked, "No, don't do this..."

Bai Long and the others looked on with sympathy. Though they didn't know what Ye Chen had said to the artificial goddess, the old man's demeanor suggested he was about to face severe trouble.

Whoosh!

Elvie tapped her finger, and a golden light appeared from thin air, plunging into the old green-rune man’s brain. In an instant, she understood his basic architecture and etched a self-destruct protocol into place. As the latest, Ninth-Generation artificial deity created by the Atlanteans, she could effortlessly compromise most systems. If placed in Earth's peacetime era, she could breach any computer with ease.

The green-rune man, feeling the self-destruct sequence inside him, pointed at Ye Chen, speechless. Seeing so many energy crystals, his plan had been to seize them, possess a physical body, and escape via the ship. Now, before he could flee, Ye Chen had cut off his lifeline; any act of defiance would instantly trigger a lethal threat. Having attained his level of intelligence, he naturally feared death.

"Go maintain the ship," Ye Chen commanded.

"You..."

"Fine, I'm going," the old green-rune man retracted his outburst upon seeing the cold light in Ye Chen's eyes. He lowered his head, sighing heavily as he entered the ship, muttering internally, I will break this self-destruct sequence someday, hmph!

...

Whoosh!

The void swiftly contracted, shrinking into a single black dot and vanishing.

Ye Chen turned to Elvie. "Let's go. To the Temple of Light."

"Agreed." Elvie nodded, but as she moved to walk, she suddenly frowned, addressing Ye Chen. "We have intruders breaching the perimeter outside—the numbers seem significant. I am unsure if they are dark creatures." Since the city systems had regained power, she could communicate with them via the ambient gold element, allowing her to monitor the situation through the city defense network. It was through this system that she detected the invaders.

Ye Chen shook his head. "Those aren't invaders; they are members of the later civilization, like myself, but they are the bad ones, and I am the good one. You need to help me hold them off, but do not harm them. While these people are generally troublesome, they can still be useful for fighting the dark creatures later. Once I secure what I need, then you can let them in."

If Bai Long and the others could understand the Atlantean language, they would likely vomit blood hearing him calmly claim the moral high ground—utter shamelessness! If the soldiers fighting outside the city walls heard such rhetoric, they would probably erupt in fury.

Surprisingly, Elvie nodded. "The city defense system’s mainframe reports that these individuals possess very heavy malevolence. I will assist you in stopping them."

The Atlantean civilization placed great emphasis on cultivating the state of mind, akin to Taoism and Buddhism in the Spiritual Civilization—one pursuing the Great Dao with a mind like still water, accepting all things naturally; the other seeking emptiness, desiring to shed all attachments. Both were methods of refining the inner spirit.

For Atlanteans, knowledge was readily acquired, not through tedious study of texts but via specialized apparatus. Consequently, most individuals focused instead on cultivating their inner state, aspiring to reach the Sage level of mental fortitude upon maturity to offer guidance and predict weather. The stronger one's state of mind, the less susceptible they were to external interference.

Otherwise, a person living constantly on the edge of death, lacking sufficient food, would soon descend into madness, becoming mentally deranged. Even in the peaceful past, office workers often suffered mental breakdowns from work pressure; how much worse would that be in the survival environment of the apocalypse, where pressure was ten or a hundred times greater?

Blood, violence, survival... Each element alone was enough to crush an ordinary person. Some, upon contemplating such a life, would seek suicide as an escape. This highlights the importance of the state of mind. The higher one's mental cultivation, the stronger their self-control and the greater the psychological stress they could withstand.

Mental cultivation is forged over time. For instance, at the start of the apocalypse, some people feared seeing corpses, but after a few battles, that initial dread faded; through unconscious adaptation, their state of mind was tempered and strengthened. In later eras, mental state was paramount. A person with low cultivation would be dominated by the aftereffects of killing, becoming a frenzied demon who attacked anyone on sight—a complete mental breakdown. A strong state of mind could bury and stifle the urge to kill, maintaining perfect calm even if a mountain collapsed before one's eyes.

This is why, when Elvie observed the soldiers through the defense system's instrumentation, she mistook them for dark creatures—their minds were saturated with too many chaotic thoughts. In contrast, Bai Long and the others possessed fewer such impurities, largely because they hadn't endured the most brutal aspects of the apocalypse; they had followed Ye Chen from the outset, and their killing intent and various dark impulses had not been fully compelled to the surface. For example, desperation and hunger can force out a person’s deepest desires, leading to heinous acts—this is the beginning of mental degradation, leading swiftly toward madness.

This is why ancient Buddhism could redeem the most heinous sinners: by using spiritual power to expel the accumulated karma dwelling within the heart.