After annihilating four ancient priests, an eerie silence fell within the main hall of the temple. The remaining eight ice pillars stood quietly, their surfaces covered with web-like cracks, yet showing no signs of further fracture.
Beifa stood in front of Perfikot, her maid outfit dusted with ice crystal fragnts, but her posture remained as upright as a pine.
Perfikot stepped forward slowly and examined each ice pillar with care.
She reached out to touch one, feeling the bone-chilling cold from the ice surface.
"It seems these ice pillars have already lost their function." She withdrew her hand, a thin layer of frost forming on her fingertips. "The priests inside must have completely lost their vitality a thousand years ago."
At this ti, Beifa had deactivated her high-power mode, and it was impossible to tell from her seemingly delicate hands that they could easily shatter these ice pillars.
"Destroy them all." To ensure absolute security, Perfikot decisively ordered: "Crush their heads to ensure there are no mishaps."
Beifa accepted the order, her figure moving ghost-like between the ice pillars.
Each of her attacks was precise and powerful, accompanied by the crisp sound of breaking, as holes appeared in the heads of the ancient priests sealed within the eight ice pillars, shattering their skulls completely. Their dried faces seed to retain their terrified expressions from life at the last mont.
"You can let them in now." After confirming there was no danger, Perfikot spoke to the guards awaiting at the door.
When the scholars nervously returned to the main hall, the scene before them made them gasp in shock.
The elderly scholar trembled as he adjusted his glasses, his voice quivering, "These, these are priceless historical relics!"
His assistant directly knelt before the shattered ice pillars, fingers trembling as they traced over the ice crystal fragnts on the ground: "These murals... these inscriptions... Oh my, this footprint is directly on the most crucial segnt!"
Beifa stood expressionless to the side, her feet indeed pressing down on several ancient engravings.
"Enough." Perfikot coldly interrupted their lantations: "If those priests had co back to life, you wouldn't even have the chance to mourn."
The scholars were silenced, but soon rushed towards the destroyed priest corpses as if they had discovered the New Continent.
A scholar gingerly lifted a dried arm segnt, speaking excitedly, "Madam! Although these mummies have oxidized and blackened, the decorations on them remain quite intact!"
"And these ice pillars!" His assistant pointed to the priest corpses whose heads had been shattered by Beifa, "If we can seal them promptly, perhaps the remaining parts of these corpses and the artifacts frozen within can still be preserved!"
He gathered his courage and deeply bowed to Perfikot: "Madam, I implore you to allow us to transport these ice pillars and bodies back to the laboratory. This may be our most direct evidence in understanding the ancient priest system and mythological era!"
Other scholars chid in, their eyes ablaze with academic fervor.
Perfikot surveyed the area, looking at the scholars' complex expressions of pain and excitent, and nodded slightly, "You may. But there's one condition—"
Her voice suddenly turned cold, "You must prioritize the decoding of the Book of Prophecy; the research on these relics cannot delay the primary task."
"Of course! Of course!" The scholars nodded repeatedly: "We will proceed simultaneously in two groups, we swear by the na of the Sun God Ra, and we won't delay your major affair."
Perfikot turned and walked towards the altar deep within the main hall, with Beifa silently following.
Behind her, the scholars had already begun to frantically command workers to preserve the shattered ice pillars and dried corpses in special sealed containers, their cautious actions starkly contrasting their earlier desperate escape.
Behind her, the scholars treated the shattered ruins with a near-reverent attitude, while the workers cautiously transported the remnants of the ice pillars.
These fragnts bearing thousand-year-old history, after undergoing brief violent destruction, finally received the respect they deserved as artifacts.
Passing through the magnificent main hall, Perfikot arrived at the temple's mysterious back hall area.
The light here was distinctly dimr, and the air was filled with a solemn and mysterious aura.
She surveyed the surroundings and found it to be a carefully designed secret chamber, obviously once used for so significant religious ceremony.
At the center of the room, a square stone pool was embedded in the ground, but the water within had long solidified into a thick ice layer, reflecting a cold blue light in the faint illumination.
This scene felt extraordinarily familiar to Perfikot—just like she had seen in the secret chamber of Nephthys Hecate's temple last ti, a room subrged in water and similarly encased in ice.
The eternally frozen objects and decorations seed to silently tell so forgotten ancient secret.
Last ti, she chose to violently excavate the entire secret chamber directly.
But this ti, Perfikot stood before the ice pool, contemplating for a long ti, and finally changed her mind.
She turned and exited the secret chamber, calling for the chief scholar responsible for excavating the temple.
"I want to know what's inside," she pointed to the ice-sealed chamber and said to the scholar, her voice calm yet undeniable, "You may have the alchemists cooperate with you for research. Rember, what I want is a complete discovery, not a heap of fragnts." With that, she turned and left the temple, leaving the scholars staring at each other.
Back at the temporary camp, Perfikot walked straight to her room. She lit the lamp on the table, taking out a sheet of charting paper from her luggage, and carefully spread it on the desk.
Then, she picked up a sharpened charcoal pencil and began to accurately "reconstruct" the entire structure of the temple based on her detailed observations and remarkable mory.
During the drawing process, she suddenly recalled a famous temple from ancient Egypt.
The architects of that temple employed astonishing astronomical knowledge so that, on the birthday of the divine each year, a beam of sunlight would precisely illuminate the face of the statue in the deepest part of the temple through the complex passageway structure.
Even in modern tis, when scientists attempted to relocate the temple as a whole, utilizing the most advanced computer modeling and precise calculations, there were still slight discrepancies in the date the sunlight illuminated the statue after its relocation.
This association made Perfikot's eyes light up.
The reason she didn't damage the structure of the temple this ti was precisely because during her survey, she had discovered so architectural features resembling light channels.
She suspected that this temple might also hide a similar exquisite design, possibly having so mysterious connection with the celestial movents.
"If that's the case..." Perfikot murmured to herself, drawing precise lines on the paper with the charcoal pencil, "Then the whereabouts of the Book of Prophecy might be related to this chanism."
She decided to first fully restore the three-dinsional structure of the temple, and then, through calculation and simulation, identify any potentially hidden chanisms.
This work required great patience and precision, but for Perfikot, who pursued truth, this was the key to unlocking the mysteries.
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