Chapter 594: The Ruins of the Gnome Civilization

After the act of plane annihilation occurs, it generally takes at least a thousand years for the plane to be completely erased—this process depends on the size of the plane and the timing of the annihilation!
Thus, Donald wasn’t afraid that an entire plane might suddenly be destroyed; in fact, he even considered entering such a plane to investigate.
Upon entering the annihilation zone under the protection of the Book of Truth, Donald found that all his attempts to explore were ineffective. Even with his divine vision, he couldn’t see or hear anything outside the range illuminated by the Book of Truth’s light. All his actions had to rely on instinct.
Fortunately, the Book of Truth seemed quite resilient against the forces of spatial annihilation. Despite several sudden bursts of these forces, it was only pushed away from its original position, without any signs of weakened defense.
As a result, Donald drifted through the annihilation zone for over ten days without encountering any danger. Along the way, he discovered many substances that had been drawn into the annihilation process. The fact that these substances could exist on the periphery of the annihilation zone without being instantly destroyed by spatial forces indicated that their materials were extraordinary—worth at least the level of elementary divine artifacts!
Adhering to the principle that even small things have value, Donald collected all the materials he encountered.
Donald wasn’t as lucky as Basedo, who managed to obtain an annihilation crystal—a substance that is rarely expelled from the annihilation zone. But thanks to the protection provided by his higher-grade divine artifact against spatial annihilation forces, he was able to venture deeper into the annihilation zone and retrieve three such crystals.
The smallest one was only the size of a needle tip, clearly a newly formed crystal. Without the sharp vision of a true god, even an ordinary powerful mortal might have missed it, as annihilation crystals cannot be detected by any detection spells.
The next one was the size of a fingernail, similar to the one Basedo obtained. It was sufficient to add to his few elementary divine artifacts, elevating them to the level of intermediate divine artifacts!
The largest crystal was as big as a fist. This discovery far exceeded Donald’s expectations. Its value was almost equivalent to that of a complete, powerful intermediate divine artifact. Even for higher gods, exchanging it for two intermediate divine artifacts might not be worthwhile—after all, adding this material to their own artifacts could grant them defense capabilities comparable to those of higher-grade divine artifacts!

Especially the properties of the Annihilation Crystal—just like the Book of Truth—it is a superior artifact enhanced with the Annihilation Crystal, possessing a much stronger resistance to spatial annihilation forces compared to other superior artifacts of the same rank. It can almost be said to be immune to most non-offensive aspects of spatial laws! After obtaining the largest piece of Annihilation Crystal, Donald seemed to have run out of luck. He had ample divine energy upon his arrival and could have held on for a while longer. He had originally planned to collect more Annihilation Crystals, as such opportunities were extremely rare, but soon he encountered an outbreak of annihilation forces, forcing him, protected by the superior artifact, to be expelled from the annihilation zone. When Donald regained his sense of the outside world, he found that this place was no longer the previous void area but a dim and ruined realm. Smiling at this, Donald said, “I’ve been expelled into the interior of the Annihilation Realm. It seems that the ever-changing river of fate also wants me to explore this place! I’m curious to see what discoveries I can make!” With that, Donald released his divine will, enveloping this small realm, which was only slightly smaller than his own Nodahill Realm. The gloomy sky and the desolate surroundings clearly indicated that this place had once suffered a catastrophic disaster. Using his divine will for extensive exploration, Donald soon discovered some interesting things. In a flash, he appeared at the location detected by his divine will—once a prosperous city with a completely different architectural style from that of the humans and elves and other advanced intelligent races in the main world, or rather, what was once a prosperous city, now reduced to ruins. “Is this… the style of the Gnome Technological Empire civilization?” Having seen some descriptions in texts from the main world, Donald quickly recognized some familiar elements, though he couldn’t be entirely sure. After all, due to the great passage of time, and because the remnants of the Gnome civilization had been deliberately erased from the main world by the gods, only fragments and ruins of little research value remained. So Donald entered these ruins himself to begin searching. Half an hour later, he arrived at a building at the center of the ruined city. His previous searches had confirmed that this was indeed a relic left by the Gnome Technological Empire civilization. However, he hadn’t found anything noteworthy, so the most likely place to discover secrets was this castle-like hall!

Donald, now back to his normal human size, stepped into the building. Dirt, dust, and other impurities were automatically repelled before they could even touch him. However, staying in such a dusty environment wasn’t comfortable, so with a wave of his hand, all the dust inside the building disappeared as if it had never existed, and all objects became as clean and new as if they had just been crafted. Smiling in satisfaction, Donald headed toward the altar-like structure in the center of the vast hall. If he wasn’t mistaken, this must be something similar to the core control panel of the Sky City. Sure enough, as soon as he stepped onto the platform, projections appeared around him, displaying complex alchemical formulas and diagrams of arcane spells. Upon examining them, he found that they were all results of combining goblin alchemical technology with certain arcane knowledge. “It seems I’ve stumbled upon a treasure this time!” Even Donald was excited by such findings. Although these alchemical technologies and arcane achievements were mostly low-level applications for true gods, they could be transformed into something extremely important for them if refined by gods skilled in alchemy and magic! Donald didn’t have time to study each one in detail, so he quickly scanned and recorded everything in the Book of Truth and his own memory, planning to analyze it later. At the end of the scanning, he also discovered the most precious records left by the goblins. In addition to detailing some of their greatest achievements in technological civilization, these records explained the reasons behind their downfall. Due to the cleansing by the gods, other races in the main world knew nothing about the true circumstances of the goblin technological empire’s collapse, and the truth of history was often buried under dust. In fact, as a great civilization second only to the Arcane Empire, the goblin technological empire was ruled by a group of mad researchers. Apart from creating remarkable alchemical technologies, these goblin scientists, with no other pursuits, spent hundreds of years of research and development, eventually inventing a new type of clean, pollution-free energy source that surpassed the magic crystal energy system! That was the Element Furnace—a technological marvel second only to the arcane core of the Sky City in the history of the main world!

This energy system can cause fundamental elements to undergo fission, generating enormous amounts of energy that can supply an entire city. Moreover, the elemental particles produced after use return and dissipate into the main world plane, essentially achieving a renewable cycle. The fuel sources are very convenient—water, ice, or even ordinary rocks and soil will do. Any substance composed of fundamental elements can be decomposed into usable elemental energy when fed into the element furnace; all that is required is startup energy and some additives.

This is undoubtedly a highly convenient and completely clean new energy source, one that would even earn the admiration of the gods.

If things continued this way, it might not be powerful races like humans or elves who would rule the main world in the future, but rather these goblins.

Unfortunately, the elite of the Goblin Empire were blinded by such great achievements. After seeing the vast potential of the element furnace, they found simple magic-powered mechanical puppets insufficient and even dared to imagine creating divine puppets with mechanical bodies, the element furnace as their core, and divine essences as fuel—puppets with powers on par with those of mighty true gods.

“So that’s how it is!”

Upon reading this, Donald already guessed the reason behind the destruction of the Goblin civilization.

Even a powerful legendary expert would not dare attempt to refine a true god’s divine essence directly, let alone the goblins who had no combat capabilities at all.

Although the element furnace had developed to the point where it could cause element fission and even break down the law-based forces within divine essences, it could not withstand the explosive energy generated when activated—energy far stronger than element fission itself.

The Goblin elders and engineers were utterly unable to control the intense reactions caused by the divine essences fed into the element furnace. As a result, the explosion of divine power combined with elemental tides triggered a devastating storm that instantly destroyed the Goblin civilization’s most powerful capital. Apart from a group of Goblin engineers and scientists in underground laboratories, all life within that area was annihilated in an instant.

This was the result of the goblins attempting to create gods and bring about forces they could not control, leading to a backlash from the world’s rules. Naturally, their lack of strength to withstand such backlash did not improve their situation.

After this disaster, one-tenth of the main continent was destroyed, which became the real reason why the continent was divided into north and south. This prompted the gods of the time to destroy the dangerous Goblin technology and prevent it from developing any further.

This story is just like the disaster movies Donald watched in his past life—often, arrogant mortals create forces they cannot control, and these forces ultimately bring catastrophic destruction to human civilization!
However, the crisis posed by the Gnome Empire is even more dangerous than that of human society, as most of them are scientists who have gone to extreme lengths in their research of alchemical technology and arcane knowledge. With no internal voices to advise or stop them, once they come up with a new idea, the entire population will devote themselves to putting it into practice, greatly increasing the likelihood of experimental failures and disasters!
Especially those short-lived beings who only focus on research have become blinded by their repeated successes and are completely unable to see the destructive risks inherent in such experiments!