Accompanied by a low, uncomfortable groan due to the weightlessness, Angel slowly opened his eyes.
After staring blankly for a few seconds, Angel swiftly sat up from the dry ground. He first sensed his whole body to ensure nothing was missing, then moved his Magical Core to ensure energy was fine, before letting out a sigh of relief and surveying his surroundings.
In the pitch-black world, there was essentially nothing visible to the naked eye. Only a vague sense of the vast emptiness around.
Looking up at the sky, a solitary crescent moon hung in the deep black sky.
Angel struggled to his feet, looking around with the aid of the soft moonlight.
—— A vast endless wilderness, an edge of black night.
"This wilderness... seems a bit familiar." The image from "Stars and Trees" floated in Angel’s mind. After a brief comparison, he sighed deeply.
Except for the lack of a brilliant starry sky overhead, the surroundings were exactly like the oil painting in the treasure chest.
Even the lone, solitary big tree in the empty expanse matched perfectly with the oil painting.
"It seems, I really entered the painting." Angel whispered to himself.
He stood there contemplating for a while, attempting to find a way out of the world within the painting through perception. Unfortunately, as of now, he couldn’t find any flaws.
However, Angel was not too worried. This ability to connect the planar world within a painting with the three-dimensional real world, as he knew, was something only Feng could achieve.
Since it was Feng’s painting, and he actively pulled him into it, there must be some significance. It couldn’t be that after overcoming countless hardships to find him, it was only to trap him in the painting, right?
Therefore, by finding the significance of Feng pulling him into the painting and understanding his intentions, Angel believed there was surely a chance to leave. Even if after doing everything he still couldn’t find a way out, Angel wasn’t worried, because there’s Wang Wang...
Wang Wang’s void traversal ability should be able to take him out.
Calming down a bit, Angel decided to first explore the world within this painting to see what Feng intended to do.
Angel didn’t go out of his way to scrutinize the surrounding environment but focused directly on the distant big tree.
Since the tree is the main subject of the oil painting. And in the entire boundless wilderness, there’s only this one tree, it looks strange no matter how you look at it. Angel believed if there was a place of special significance in this world within a painting, it would certainly be hidden near the big tree.
Therefore, Angel temporarily didn’t think about exploring other places, but walked directly towards the tree.
As he walked, Angel was also sensing the surrounding environment.
In his perception, he still could not find any traces of living beings, or even traces of life. This was clearly a world of deathly stillness.
There was primordial magic in the air, though the concentration was slightly below average. If a battle really ensued, it wouldn’t have much impact. It’s just that during meditation, it might take a bit longer than usual.
It’s worth mentioning that there was no sense of oppression here. The strand of Tidal World’s World Will from the outside couldn’t penetrate into this world within the painting. So here, Angel felt a rare sense of relaxation.
Angel wasn’t far from the big tree, and soon, he arrived near it.
Previously on the stone platform outside, Angel had seen the perspective in the oil painting shift, revealing a silhouette leaning behind the big tree. Therefore, he was a bit cautious when he arrived nearby.
Angel didn’t immediately approach the big tree but circled it from a distance.
He originally thought there would be a "person" here, but after walking around, he didn’t see any silhouette.
That is, he had now discovered two differences from the original painting.
The brilliant starry sky in the painting had disappeared, replaced by a starless night. The silhouette under the tree in the painting had also vanished, leaving only this lonely tree.
Since the silhouette was gone, Angel didn’t continue circling around the perimeter, but approached the big tree.
Upon getting closer, Angel found his earlier judgment had a small error.
Previously, he thought the only bit of vitality in this world within the painting might reside on this solitary big tree. But that wasn’t the case. From a distance, it seemed lush and leafy, but up close, Angel still felt no trace of life.
Just like the wild grass on the ground, it seemed merely a part of the scenery in the painting, without any sense of life.
After carefully observing the big tree for a moment, Angel didn’t discover anything amiss. It seemed it was simply part of the landscape in the painting.
Angel pondered for a moment. By his judgment, this was clearly not right.
The tree, being the focal point of the painting, couldn’t be meaningless.
After thinking for a while, Angel attempted to use his spiritual power to investigate the tree’s true form. First, he examined from the outside, including the bark, branches, and the soulless leaves, even the roots underground, yet found no abnormalities.
Next, Angel decided to probe deeper into the tree to see its interior.
As Angel infused his spiritual power into the tree trunk, his expression suddenly turned a bit strange.
It seemed the interior of the tree was configured with some form of encryption, unable to be directly probed by spiritual power. However, when the spiritual power was infused into the tree’s interior, Angel saw a complex and peculiar pattern.
"This is... the Mother Pattern of the Augja Pattern!" Angel couldn’t help but exclaim softly.
He had been searching for the lock corresponding to the Augja Pattern Key, essentially its Mother Pattern, but had never found it. Angel had even speculated it might be inside the light sphere above the stone platform.
At the time, Angel had secretly cursed Feng’s insolence.
Unexpectedly, after searching high and low, the answer was actually this tree!
This tree held the ultimate solution to the Augja Pattern Key!
To confirm his judgment wasn’t wrong, Angel once more used his spiritual power to investigate the intricate pattern.
The so-called Augur Complex Pattern is a type of encryption tool used by a Wizard, it can be understood as a lineal-type parent-and-child lock key that can be autonomously compiled. The item that is locked has a "parent pattern". To unlock this, a corresponding "child pattern" is required. Both the parent and child patterns can be set personally as long as the core is an Augur Complex Pattern, effectively avoiding repetition.
Thus, each Augur Complex Pattern is unique, with one parent pattern corresponding to one child pattern.
The Augur Complex Key in Angel’s hand is a child pattern, allowing him to deduce the parent pattern’s lines from this child pattern.
Soon, Angel deduced the answer.