0166 The Power of Balance

"Can we please hurry up?" someone stamped her foot anxiously, looking back and forth between Jun Yan, who seemed to have a lot to say, and the uncle, whose smile was gradually fading. "We've been chatting for so long. If the night-ghoul army arrives, we're all goners. Cut to the chase and keep it brief! Stop making those faces—can anyone just give me a straight answer?"

Jun Yan retreated backward with a dejected look. Ignoring the warning entirely, the uncle waited until Jun Yan had completely calmed down before he finally prepared to speak. With a rare and solemn seriousness, he wiped away his smile and asked with absolute gravity, "Do you know the legend of the Four Sacred Artifacts?"

"I don't know a damn thing about it! Can't you just tell me something useful—uh?" The frantic and urging words were cut short by the uncle's question. For a moment, she didn't know how to respond. In her shock and hesitation, precious time slipped away quietly. Although Huan Luo didn't know what those Four Sacred Artifacts were, seeing the other's expression and recalling things she had previously mentioned about needing herself and Liang Yin, she could easily piece together the general idea. With a calm expression, she stepped forward and placed a hand on the other's shoulder, giving a subtle reminder to pull herself together.

"Although I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to get at," Huan Luo said calmly to the uncle, "if this isn't something directly related to our current situation, please save it for another time. Our time is precious and we cannot afford to drag things out."

"Lady Huan Luo need not worry about that," the uncle sighed, having no choice but to swallow his question and answer Huan Luo first. "If the night-ghoul army or the night-ghoul guards really wanted to stop us from talking, they would have come long ago. We fought so fiercely just now that surely any night-ghoul stationed in this territory must have seen it. Under normal circumstances, we should have been thrown into a dungeon and locked up by now. But since nothing has happened to us, I have reason to believe we will be in no danger before dawn."

"Before dawn? Where on earth did you get that intelligence, uncle? So precise?" The other folded her arms, adopting a thoughtful posture. Under Huan Luo's forced reassurance, her previous panic and surprise smoothly subsided, and her brain immediately resumed operating at high speed to play the hand she was dealt.

Unfazed by the question, the uncle shrugged nonchalantly. "I wasn't sure before, but seeing that the night-ghouls still haven't made a move, I'm certain now. You should know that every so often, at the end of summer, the night-ghouls hold a grand ritual. There's a lot of preparation work to be done beforehand, and the most troublesome part is gathering the ritual offerings. The night-ghouls worship the spirits of nature, so naturally, these items cannot be artificially manufactured—they must come directly from the untouched forest. Furthermore, among these items are precious materials that only grow during this very season. It's not uncommon for something to take centuries to sprout a single stalk. Naturally, such treasures are guarded by massive beasts. It's entirely possible that the night-ghouls have mobilized their entire force to scour the area for ritual materials just to beat the clock."

"So... all those guards we saw earlier were just for show?" Veins throbbed visibly on her forehead.

"If those guards were meticulously arranged by someone's deliberate design, it's entirely possible." The uncle's smile returned, this time carrying a deeply unfathomable mystery.

For some inexplicable reason, Xi's face flashed across her mind, and she hurriedly shook her head to banish the image. With matters having progressed to this point, it was no longer worth dwelling on why the guards or the night-ghoul army hadn't charged at them. She automatically picked up the thread of the conversation she had interrupted earlier. "If the Four Sacred Artifacts you're talking about are the same ones in my head, I think I might roughly know. Legend has it that if you connect the Four Sacred Artifacts and four-element mages using a single magic array, you can open a... well... a door leading to another world." Despite heavy mental preparation, after saying this, she still involuntarily and awkwardly swallowed her saliva.

"What?" The uncle was stunned by her words. "Were you just joking?"

"Joking? Sister here hasn't made a joke this deadpan in a long time, let me tell you..." She frowned in confusion. "Is something wrong with that?"

The uncle slowly shook his head. "If opening a door to another world were the only effect of running the Four Sacred Artifacts and four-element mages together with that legendary ancient array, then that little girl of the night-ghoul tribe wouldn't have gone to such painstaking lengths to gather all of you here. I don't know where you heard such gossip to arrive at this conclusion, but the outcome you described isn't entirely unreasonable. According to records, if the Four Sacred Artifacts and a fully-activated four-element mage are linked and activated upon the legendary array, it triggers a tremendous power. This power can rectify the world's imbalances, causing forces that are overly dominant or capable of conquering the world single-handedly to instantly dissipate, thereby maintaining the world's equilibrium. The moment this power is unleashed, it is far too immense for the spatial fabric of this world to bear, forcing it to shatter the barriers between spaces so the energy can be released. That is what causes the door to another world that you spoke of."

"The Power of Balance," she murmured involuntarily, uttering a powerful term frequently found in various fantasy novels.

"Precisely. You could say that," the uncle did not deny her words. "Do you remember the sudden annihilation of the four-element mages hundreds of years ago? Legend has it that there was once a four-element mage with a sudden pang of conscience who could no longer bear the cruelty of his peers, acting much like ferocious beasts. He used his own strength coupled with the power of the Four Sacred Artifacts to drive the magic array. The moment that array activated, nearly all four-element mages were subjected to its overwhelming pressure, walking uncontrollably toward the array with their entire bodies stripped of free will, utterly powerless to break free from this force regardless of the method they tried. In the end, all those powerful four-element mages were suppressed by the magic array and never appeared again. According to accounts by eyewitnesses, when the array was activated, a star-like mark drifted above the head of every person forced into the array—silver, shimmering, and remarkably striking. Thus, some people named this magic array the Stardust Array."

"The Stardust Array," she muttered the words repeatedly. "So... you mean Xi actually trapped us here to save the world? She wants to activate this array to balance out the sudden berserk surge of magical beasts' power?"

"If only that were true," the uncle lowered his head and said helplessly. "Have you ever considered what happens once this Stardust Array is activated? It won't just be the power of the magical beasts that gets balanced. The elders guarding the White Tower and those ancient monsters residing in the center of Kerenia—who have remained dormant for centuries precisely to avoid triggering the world's balance rules—will be affected. Their lack of movement doesn't mean their powers haven't grown. Once the array is activated, the national strength of both the White Tower Kingdom and Kerenia will suffer devastating blows, and the beast tribes will revert to their former state. Just think about who stands to benefit the most when that happens."