AnalogHorror: Rule Kaidan 4016

He slowly raised his hand and gently placed it on the iron gate.

It was rather peculiar. This iron gate was shut tight with a single lightless crevice, yet even with his current vision power, he couldn't see through to the image beyond that crevice.

At the same time, his perception tentacles gradually seeped into the iron gate like water. As his perception deepened, the mysteries of the gate began to open up slowly in his perception like a magic box...

His perception seemed to enter a labyrinth with no boundaries, where countless transcendent materials connected by secret marks clashed and combined to form towering barriers layer by layer...

Just having the perception to enter it felt like getting lost in endless mountains, while in reality, this gate was merely an old iron door.

Breaking and opening this iron door at the map level was exponentially harder than pushing it open in the visible layer.

"Just a door... is like this?" Lin Yi couldn't help but sigh.

"Don't be confused by what this door wants to show you," Tian Bufan said, "These secret marks and structures can have countless combinations, but only one combination matches the shape of this door. You can indeed 'gain insight' into the traces left by the Divine Craftsman when he forged it through perception, but this isn't what we need to delve into this time."

"Perceive the existence of the door, gain insight into the path that traverses it, open the door at the map level, and then enter."

Lin Yi was slightly startled: "Open the door at the map level...?"

He pondered it several times and faintly understood something, then reassembled his perception tentacles, ceasing the endless exploration and starting to find the form of this door at the map level.

While he was still perceiving, suddenly, a crisp sound appeared in his consciousness—

"Ding..."

"Ding..."

It seemed like the sound of someone wielding a hammer to strike metal.

"Ding! Ding!!"

The sound became clearer and crisper...

In Lin Yi's mind, the refined yet somewhat slight figure emerged—the figure of the Divine Craftsman!

At the same time, he seemed to feel waves of scorching breath pouncing towards him, like the heat waves gushing from the Divine Craftman's furnace.

"Forging... is not a particularly profound skill..."

"What you see now is just the technique after becoming proficient... Of course, you only need to remember what I look like now because every detail of my hammering is the vague illusion that future generations will long to glimpse in their lifetime..."

"The core of casting lies in controlling the whole..."

"The process is important, but every action needs to aim towards your desired outcome to be effective..."

"Ding! Ding! Ding..."

The Divine Craftsman spoke while hammering a red-hot piece of iron at hand.

The sound transmitted intermittently, unclear to whom he was speaking, as if he was talking to someone by his side at the time, or maybe... to present-day Lin Yi.

Lin Yi listened to the Divine Craftsman's words very clearly, but because of the interruptions, he couldn't hear it all completely.

"...There are many things we haven't had time to teach you... learn whatever you can..."

"Ding! Ding! Ding..."

"I can foresee... that the time left for us is not much..."

The Divine Craftsman spoke whatever came to mind while hammering.

"Astrology, observing the celestial events, have foreseen from the sequence of stars that they are on their way back... Probably will return soon..."

"Ding! Ding! Ding..."

"But our last disagreement with the Law was significant... don't know if we can find a compromise this time..."

"Hope things don't get violent..."

"Especially with that guy, the Butcher... temper is too explosive... if it really comes to a fight, it's bad for everyone, and may give 'His' an opportunity to take advantage..."

"Ugh... what a headache..."

"Forget it, let's see what Law says, after all, she's the boss, she calls the shots! If she gives the order to fight, I'll definitely steal Amon's treasures and go all out against them..."

He muttered to himself, without receiving any response.

"Ding! Ding! Ding..."

The Divine Craftsman's figure, in the firelight and heat of the furnace, distorted, then gradually faded with the increasingly softer hammering sounds.

Then, Lin Yi returned to the perception of the iron gate.

The previous scene appeared seamlessly, not at all abruptly, like someone strolling down an old alley, suddenly moved by the scene, evoking a past memory quietly resurfacing...

"'Control of the whole', 'every action must aim towards the goal'..."

"Could it be... that this door at the map level doesn't absolutely 'exist', but is a concept of door attributes...?"

Precisely because it's a concept, to open the door is like being trapped in a labyrinth?

Lin Yi mused, then changed his approach.

Since the door is there, why must he open it?

At the map level, just find the crevice!

A crevice big enough for him to traverse!

After changing his approach, he soon detected the key, discovering some gnawing marks at the map level between the secret marks.

He then gently nudged the gnawing marks, and the power of the secret mark immediately spread at the map level, slowly revealing a not too big, nor too small hole, just enough for one person to pass through.