As soon as he stepped in, he sneezed and hurriedly cast a filtering spell on himself.
While examining the third bag of spices, the magic wand suddenly grew slightly warm—a small silver box was hidden at the bottom of the bag, inside were several pieces of golden crystals, very precious discontinued alchemy materials.
"Crystalized Sun Salt!"
Ian's eyes lit up. This substance only forms around objects that have long been exposed to Solar Divine Power. But curiously, the crystals had become cloudy and gray, as if polluted.
Following this clue, he continued searching and arrived at the priests' dressing room. Several white robes were hanging neatly on brass hooks, each exuding a faint cedar scent.
Ian noticed that the innermost robe's sleeve had slight golden stains, and it felt unusually warm to the touch. Flipping open the inner lining, he found a hidden pocket containing a piece of blue broken glass—it looked like ordinary craftsmanship at first glance, but when Ian touched it with his magic wand.
Golden web-like patterns suddenly appeared inside the glass.
"A counterfeit... just a higher-grade counterfeit than the one the old man had. Why are they making so many counterfeits?" Ian disappointedly put down the fragment. This was merely an ordinary crystal enhanced by a sophisticated imitation spell, which could mimic some features of a real Divine Eye but lacked the key essence of the Sun God.
After all.
The true Eye of the Ra is something formed from the eye of the Sun God Ra. Time ticked away slowly, and Ian had already checked most of the rooms in the temple's west wing: the Scarab Breeding Room, Sacrificial Instrument Vault, Calendar Calculation Room... each place was frustratingly normal. He narrowly escaped being discovered by passing priests several times.
Thankfully, the Illusionary Body Spell was reliable enough.
Several hours of searching.
Ian was still empty-handed.
He sighed as he arrived at the medical room in the east wing. The place was empty, with shelves full of herbs and ointments. In the corner, there was a bronze basin with suspicious black sediment at the bottom. Just as Ian wanted to inspect it closely, he suddenly heard footsteps approaching from outside the door. He quickly hid behind an Isis statue.
Watching as two priests helped a pale-faced companion inside.
"Another episode?" the older priest asked, fatigue in his voice.
"Suddenly started at the cellar door..." the younger priest's voice trembled, "He said he saw countless eyes..."
"Shut up! Go get the Holy Oil, quickly!"
Ian took advantage of their busyness to slip quietly out, his heart racing. "Cellar"—the Scepter Priest had indeed mentioned this place. He must find the cellar's entrance, perhaps it held not only embryos but the true treasure of this place.
"But where could the cellar actually be?"
The magical world is indeed wondrous; the embryos seemed merely to have sunk below ground, but were actually placed in some secret room that under normal circumstances would absolutely not appear in the building's structure. Later Hogwarts also had many such rooms.
The Room of Requirement is a similar case.
In the next two hours, Ian almost searched every corner of the temple and even daringly sneaked into the High Priest's private prayer room. There was a detailed plan of the temple there, but strangely, the marked location of the "Seventh-Level Cellar" was just a plain stone wall upon actual inspection.
No traces of hidden doors.
"Space Folding?" Ian mused as he touched the cold stone wall, his magic wand detected faint space magic fluctuations, but the intensity was far from sufficient to support a complete cellar space. Unless... unless the cellar was itself a magic creature or existed in another dimension, though the odds of such a situation weren't that high.
After all, small worlds are extremely rare.