The style of Godslayers has always been distinctly unique—perhaps this is related to their obsession with becoming "gods." This obsession drives them to try and transcend the mundane in every detail, whether it be inscribing complex runes and murals on starship armor plating or installing useless sculptures and shrines in spaceship corridors. These are things not commonly seen among other civilizations.

Moreover, the style of their runes and reliefs is itself difficult to imitate.

In fact, Hao Ren should have thought of this earlier. However, he had only seen Godslayer warships before, and had not seen what their buildings looked like. In addition, the ruins in this forest have been weathered by time for many years. Even the magnificent golden halls have now collapsed into piles of rubble blackened by腐叶 (fu ye, rotten leaves) and mud. The appearance of these things is far from their former glory, making it difficult to recognize them at first glance.

But as long as these gray-black ruins are tinted with gold, their distinctive features become apparent.

Vivian also seemed to recognize something. Her eyes changed slightly, and she moved closer to Hao Ren inconspicuously: "Do you see it? It's that race..."

"The Godslayers," Hao Ren nodded gently. "It seems... this planet of Lahrien is truly an extraordinary place."

The ruins in front of them were clearly permanent structures fixed to the ground rather than mobile spaceships, which indicated that the people who left the ruins were settled here. Then, the legendary ancient civilization of the Lahrien continent was about to emerge: there was no other answer besides the Godslayers.

So, this Lahrien is the Godslayers' homeworld? It turns out this planet is so close to the Star of Creation? And this planet was also swept into the Dark Domain during the God Realm Explosion?

Hao Ren couldn't help but look up at the sky. Night had not yet fallen, and the Shattered Heavens had not yet moved to a position where they could be observed. However, Hao Ren knew very well that the fragmented planet was orbiting extremely close to Lahrien. The distance between the two was so close that it violated the laws of physics: according to rough estimates, the Shattered Heavens was even in Lahrien's high orbit. At this position, the gravitational disturbance generated by the Shattered Heavens would be enough to cause all of the planet's oceans to rise in tsunamis thousands of meters high, causing constant earthquakes across the entire continent, and even leading to a new round of species extinction on this planet. However, the actual situation was that none of this had happened. Even in the information he found earlier, Hao Ren learned that this planet called Lahrien had an unusually stable environment. Apart from the Great Tunnels, which could be classified as supernatural disasters, this planet rarely experienced any natural disasters.

Of course, considering that the Shattered Heavens was very likely the wreckage of the Star of Creation, then everything could be explained by the power of the Goddess of Creation.

The only thing that made Hao Ren feel incredulous was that the homeworld of the Godslayer race, which had launched a rebellion in the past, was so close to the Star of Creation... Mulu or Zohm had never mentioned this before.

"It's just a ruin; perhaps it doesn't explain anything," although there was no verbal communication, Vivian had similar guesses and doubts as Hao Ren. She frowned and shook her head, "Mulu never said that the Godslayers' homeworld was next to the Star of Creation. He should have told us such important information earlier. Perhaps this is just a base that the Godslayers built near the Star of Creation."

Hao Ren nodded gently: "That's also possible."

While he and Vivian were whispering to each other, Leah had completed the preliminary inspection of the magical energy emanating near the ruins. The magician girl turned her head, waving and loudly beckoning: "Hey—what are you two doing? We should continue going inside!"

"We'll discuss it in detail later. Let's collect information first," Hao Ren said in a low voice, then walked towards Leah while answering, "Coming, coming—we were just guessing the origin of this ruin. We don't know as much as you do in this area."

After giving a slight compliment, Leah immediately took the bait: "That's right; after all, I'm a scholar who specializes in this—but I really didn't expect you adventurers who travel around the world to have never heard of the Anno Ruins?"

"Anno Ruins?" Hao Ren was stunned. He vaguely remembered seeing this word when he was looking up information in Leah's library a few days ago, but it was in an extremely obscure and difficult professional book. Because a lot of basic knowledge and side notes were needed to understand it, Hao Ren thought that it was not common knowledge that everyone in this world would master, so he temporarily put the book aside, but he didn't expect to hear Leah mention the name again at this time.

"Ah, it's normal if you don't know. After all, this is a professional term in archeology, and not every adventurer is interested in this kind of thing," Leah waved her hand nonchalantly. "The Anno Ruins are not ruins left by any known ancient civilization, but a collective name for ancient ruins that cannot be classified or dated in history, and that have no common points with each other."

"Ruins that cannot be classified or dated, and have no common points?" Hao Ren felt that this was different from what he had expected, and couldn't help but ask, "In other words, there are many ancient ruins with different styles and forms that are also classified into this category? Are there many of them?"

"How should I put it... scholars believe that there are many Anno Ruins, but very few can be discovered by humans, because most of them are hidden in places far away from human habitation, or even places where humans cannot reach at all, such as the bottom of the Misty Sea or the highest peaks," Leah said, while pulling a strand of hair next to her ear, unconsciously twisting them around her fingers: this seemed to be her habitual action when thinking about problems. "Over the years, countless archaeologists have sorted out a systematic system of civilizational evolution through the excavation and research of ancient ruins around the world. Whether it's the changes in human civilization or the history of those demi-human races, they can be systematically sorted out and find corresponding ancient relics. However, there has always been a special group of ancient ruins that cannot be classified into this system—they are distributed irregularly around the world, and the words or images found in them do not correspond to any known ancient civilization. If you have to say it, this inability to correspond to known civilizations is their only common point."

At this point, Leah paused, as if recalling the knowledge in her memory, and continued after a few seconds: "Initially, a scholar named 'Anno' statistically analyzed these ruins and suggested that they be classified as one type. Therefore, this type of ruins was later collectively called the Anno Ruins. Their existence has always been a nightmarish challenge for archaeologists: the Anno Ruins are like a group of ghosts that suddenly appeared in this world. They cannot find their origins in the past, nor can they find their successors in the future. It's as if a group of extraterrestrial visitors suddenly descended on this world, hurriedly built a bunch of big houses, and then all disappeared, leaving only a bunch of unexplained ancient ruins to torture us experts and scholars who are obsessed with details."

Once Leah started talking about something she was interested in, it was as if she had opened a chatterbox. Perhaps it was a suspicion of showing off her knowledge, or it might simply be that she liked to teach others. Anyway, she entered a lecturing mode, but after babbling for a long time, she suddenly stopped, smiling a little awkwardly: "Hi, why am I telling you so much? Few people are interested in these things."

"No, we are quite interested in this kind of thing," Hao Ren quickly said. "And I think your last analogy is very vivid. Maybe those unknown ruins were really left by a group of extraterrestrial visitors who came and went in a hurry..."

"You guys are really an interesting bunch," Leah sized up Hao Ren. "Speaking of the 'extraterrestrial visitors' theory... there is indeed a school of thought that seriously puts it forward as a theory. This school believes that our world has experienced a very special period, and this period almost subverted everything. Whether it is the Shattered Heavens in the sky or the Anno Ruins on the ground, they were all formed during this period. They believe that at this special point in time, a large number of 'visitors' from outside the sky visited the ancient continent of Lahrien and left countless wonders of various kinds on the ancient continent. Then, they all disappeared in a sudden catastrophe, and the creations they left behind were also impacted by the laws of the world, making it impossible to determine their age. And the local civilization of Lahrien appeared only after that."

Hao Ren and Vivian couldn't help but look at each other.

This continent of Lahrien... really has a lot of remarkable scholars.

At this time, Nangong Sanba, who had been listening for a long time, suddenly asked as if inadvertently: "Miss Leah, do you know of any other Anno Ruins that are different in style from this one?"

"Ah, as far as I know, the more famous Anno Ruins include the Black Pyramid in the Golden Sea, the Moon Temple in the Sylvan Elf Territory, and the Colossus Group near the South Coast of the Misty Sea," Leah said, while looking at the surrounding architectural remains. "Of course, those are large-scale and well-preserved ruins, so they are naturally more famous. Apart from that, there are countless small-scale Anno Ruins scattered around, like the ones we found. There are probably dozens of them just in Longwind Ridge. Of course, ruins that still have magical reactions are still more valuable."

"I see," Hao Ren made a gesture of being taught. "This is really eye-opening."

In this way, it seems that the guess that "Lahrien is the homeworld of the Godslayers" can be overturned. It seems that those Godslayers only built some facilities on this planet, and the ruins they left behind are just one of the countless mysterious ruins of Lahrien.

Leah smiled triumphantly. It seemed that meeting a "studious new friend" had fully satisfied her scholarly soul. Then, she turned and walked towards the ancient dome that had a large hole broken in it: "The lecture time is over for now; we still have a lot to do. I have already confirmed the strength of this thing. Although the outside has collapsed very seriously, the inside structure is still quite stable. Next, our task is to go down through this hole and find its central hub."

Hao Ren smiled slightly: "Then what are we waiting for? That's what we came for."