At that moment, the silver-gray world began to tremble.

The mercury-like spiritual substance began to churn violently.

The absolute stillness was broken, and fine cracks appeared out of thin air on the spatial barrier of Limbo.

Lin Jie felt the vibration beneath his feet.

Standing opposite him, Merlin's solidified body suddenly flickered and became translucent for an instant.

It was like an image projected by a faulty projector, the edges of the old man's form began to blur, parts of his body briefly decomposing into flickering points of light.

"What's happening?"

Lin Jie instinctively reached out to support him, but his hand passed through Merlin's shoulder.

In this seam between reality and illusion, the stable Anchor Point was failing.

"It seems we have even less time than anticipated."

Merlin stabilized his form again, but his face grew even paler. The vitality sustained by the nourishment of Limbo was rapidly draining away.

The old man raised his head, his eyes piercing through the thick rock layers, through the ruins of Tintagel, directly seeing the scene above the cliff.

"They've made their move."

There was no fear in Merlin's voice, only a sorrow he had long expected.

"Ackerman, he has deployed that thing."

Lin Jie's consciousness was violently yanked, feeling like a deep-sea diver being forcibly dragged to the surface.

The silver-gray Veil rapidly receded, replaced by the senses of the dim, damp, and dust-filled underground temple.

Sound returned.

It was the deafening roar of shattering rock.

"Boom—"

The entire underground hall shook violently. On the thirty-meter-high dome above their heads, countless massive granite blocks were loosening, dust cascading down like a waterfall.

"Not good! Structural collapse!"

Evelyn screamed.

In the structural vision constructed by her glasses, she saw a sight that chilled her soul.

Directly above the ruins of Tintagel Castle, in that rain-soaked night illuminated by searchlights, a massive, black geometric object had appeared.

It was an inverted pyramid-shaped device, suspended beneath a giant balloon airship.

It was releasing silent waves downward.

Wherever the waves touched, solid granite turned into loose sand.

"What the hell is that thing?"

Evelyn clutched her glasses, blood seeping from the corners of her eyes. The waves were almost overloading her observation equipment.

"The strata are disappearing! They're wiping the entire Tintagel off the map!"

"That is the Earth Plough."

Merlin's voice sounded behind them. Now, he was no longer the radiant sage within Limbo.

In the flickering candlelight of reality, he was just a dying old man on his last legs, hunched over.

"It was an engineering marvel created by the Round Table Knights to level the land of Avalon, later modified into a weapon."

"They would rather destroy Tintagel."

"Rather let this land, connected to ancient myths, sink completely into the Atlantic, than let that secret spread."

Merlin coughed twice.

With each cough, a black, foul-smelling clot of blood spilled from the corner of his mouth.

"You're injured?"

William stepped forward, wanting to examine the old man's wounds.

But when he saw the condition beneath Merlin's cloak, even this veteran accustomed to death couldn't help but gasp sharply.

Beneath the gray, coarse linen cloak, there was no intact body.

On Merlin's chest was a horrifying, penetrating wound.

It was an old injury.

The edges of the wound had long since stopped bleeding, taking on a grayish-brown hue like dead wood.

But deep within the wound, a faint silver flame flickered.

And in his abdomen, half of a broken spear was embedded.

The material of that spear was identical in style to those on the iron throne above, clearly having been there for many years.

This wise man who had lived for half a century should have died long ago.

"Fifty years ago."

Merlin looked down at the wound, his eyes calm.

"On that bloody rainy night, when we tried to rush out of the conference room, Lancelot's personal guard pierced my body with this specially made spear."

"I should have died in the Thames, but I escaped here, to Tintagel."

The old man used his staff to support his tottering body.

"The Limbo here is the convergence point between the present world and Avalon. The flow of time here is different from the outside."

"I used this environment to pause my injuries."

"As long as I don't leave this underground cavity, as long as Limbo remains stable, I can linger on in this living dead state."

"Waiting for that person to appear."

Merlin looked at Lin Jie.

"Now, you have come, but Ackerman has come too."

"It is time for me to go as well."

Lin Jie clenched his fists, an indescribable heaviness pressing on his heart.

"Come with us."

Lin Jie said through gritted teeth.

"I have remnants of the Ghost Mother Flower Nectar, and substitution talismans."

"As long as we can leave here, we will definitely find a way to heal you."

"No."

Merlin shook his head.

He extended a withered hand and pulled out a scroll of parchment from his chest.

It was a piece of parchment that looked extremely ancient, its edges severely worn.

On it was a string of complex coordinates written in a mix of Old English and Latin, along with a hand-drawn star chart.

"Take this."

Merlin shoved the parchment into Lin Jie's chest, his movements rough and urgent, brooking no refusal.

"I cannot leave. My life is completely bound to Tintagel's Limbo."

"If I leave this node, or if I die."

"The spatial structure here will instantly collapse."

"The spatial fissures suppressed for fifty years will erupt like a volcano."

"By then, not only the castle above, but the entire hundred-mile radius of Cornwall will be pulled into Limbo."

"That's tens of thousands of civilians. I cannot, for the sake of clinging to life, turn the oath of that year into a joke."

The tremors overhead grew increasingly violent.

A rock the size of a millstone fell from the dome, crashing heavily less than five meters away from them, sending stone fragments flying.

Dust filled the air, the entire temple emitting a dying wail.

"Go now!"

Merlin suddenly straightened his back.

In that moment, the aura of impending death vanished from him, replaced by an overwhelming pressure that was hard to look at directly.

He raised the oak staff in his hand high.

The burl at the top of the staff began to glow.

It was an emerald green light, representing the light of Druid life and nature.

The Celtic rune array on the ground began to operate frantically.

"The array can be used one more time. It will send you to a safe area beyond the coastline."

Merlin roared, his voice drowning out the rumbling above.

"Go to London!"

"Finish what Gawain left undone!"

Lin Jie stared fixedly at Merlin, not moving.

Because he saw Merlin's gaze. It wasn't looking at a stranger.

It was looking through him, at another person.

"I know what you're thinking, child."

Merlin suddenly smiled.

That smile was warm, like an elder looking at his most accomplished disciple.

"You are very much like him, truly."

"Especially those eyes, that look that still tries to find logic in desperate situations, that unwillingness to give up on anyone."

"Karl..."

Merlin softly uttered that name.

"I taught him that as a hunter, the first rule is not to be emotional."

"But he never listened. He always tried to understand those monsters, tried to record the passing of every life."

"In the end, he died because of that too."

Merlin's eyes grew slightly moist.

"I always thought that was my failure. I thought I had trained an unqualified hunter."

"But seeing you, I realized he wasn't wrong."

"The torch is passed on."

"He passed that foolish yet precious will to you. That's good."

Merlin reached out, wanting to pat Lin Jie's shoulder, but stopped mid-air.

Because his hand was beginning to turn wooden.

Withered, brownish textures were rapidly spreading upward from his fingertips.

"Go, Lin Jie."

"Live on, with Karl's share."

Lin Jie felt a heat in his eyes.

He took a deep breath, stepped back, and bowed deeply to Merlin.

It was the highest courtesy among hunters.

"Rise!"

Merlin slammed his staff onto the ground.

"Boom!"

A dazzling green light shot upward, instantly enveloping the six members of Lin Jie's team, including the unconscious Vera.

The familiar spatial pulling sensation assaulted them again. In the last moment before his vision blurred, Lin Jie saw a scene he would never forget.

Ackerman's bombardment finally pierced through the strata. The dome above completely collapsed.

Tons of rock, earth, mixed with seawater pouring in, like an apocalyptic mudslide, cascaded down towards the underground temple.

It was an unstoppable force of destruction.

But at the center of that destruction, the frail old man was not crushed. He spread his arms, his body rapidly expanding, transforming within the green light.

Flesh and blood melted away.

Bones grew.

In that moment, Merlin transformed into a towering tree.

It was an immense oak tree, composed of pure spiritual radiance.

Its roots plunged deep into the magma beneath the earth, its canopy propped up the collapsing sky.

Thick branches like giant hands desperately held up the falling boulders, plugging the gap torn open by the Earth Plough.

He was using his own body to mend the cracks in this world.

He was using his last life to place a seal upon Tintagel.

"Goodbye, Oak Sage."

Lin Jie silently thought.

In that moment, he clearly saw the center of the tree, where a badge was slowly falling.

It was the Round Table badge Merlin had always worn on his person, his own.

In the instant before the teleportation light vanished.

Lin Jie suddenly reached out.

Using the distortion field of the spatial teleportation, his fingers brushed the edge of that badge.

"Snap."

The badge was in his hand.

Immediately after, the green light swallowed his vision.

The world spun.

When Lin Jie felt solid ground under his feet again, a biting cold wind and icy rain assaulted his face.

They were no longer underground.

They were standing on a desolate headland five kilometers away from the Tintagel Castle ruins.

In the distance, that thousand-year-old cliffside castle, under the searchlights of Ackerman's airship, slowly sank with a dull rumble.

It sank quietly into the earth.

As if a giant was holding it from below, then taking it with him, slowly falling asleep.

On the sea, the raging waves calmed at this moment.

The phantom of that giant tree flickered above the ruins for an instant, then turned into a sky full of light points, dissipating in the rainy night.

Merlin's presence completely vanished from the real world.

Lin Jie stood in the rain, tightly clutching the two badges in his hand.

One engraved with "Gawain".

The other, engraved with "Merlin".

They were still warm, but the old man who had waited for half a century might never wake again.

"Is he dead?"

William took off his hat, letting the rain soak his hair.

"No."

Lin Jie carefully stored the badges and the parchment scroll inside his clothes, placing them close to his chest.

He turned, looking in the direction of London, a fire burning in his eyes like never before.

"He just became a tree, became roots."

"And what we must do, is make the seeds of this tree take root and sprout."