Chapter 180: 179 Re‑Entering the True Realm

The war with the Marchians brought many new gadgets, naturally including mobile phones.

The Marchians' communication technology is a bit more advanced than ours, or rather, compared to our existing tech it costs far less.

So after the war, countless communication base stations and low‑cost miniature communication devices sprouted up everywhere like bamboo shoots after rain.

Although White Horn City lies in the water, it also enjoys the service of the base stations, and "mobile phones" quickly became commonplace in this world.

Using their communication scheme and our local device designs, a semi‑domestic mobile phone was produced just like that.

Wang Wu has used it too; I won't lie, the performance is quite good, but he still prefers the old companion that has been with him since his hometown.

As for why Xie Yu could reach Wang Wu on this phone, the answer is that a phone's purpose is exactly that—nothing mysterious.

After receiving Xie Yu's call, Wang Wu promptly returned to the Jiaolong Hall in White Horn City, and of course didn't forget to bring those companions who had already fainted.

"What's up? Something happen?"

He quickly returned to the palace, tossed the few female demons onto a bed, and hurried over to Xie Yu.

The lord of White Horn City is Bai Tan's father, named Bai Tong.

Monsters basically name themselves arbitrarily, even though they're not completely uncultured; those living in monster cities and belonging to the upper class can read and have read a little.

But the problem is that even educated monsters always name themselves so casually.

Take Tian Ling, for example; he's already the highest‑ranking intellectual among monsters, yet his name is still random.

Though Tian Ling's name sounds odd, his son Tian Xing's name is also fine. It wasn't the result of careful thought, just a character picked off a dictionary.

Yes, monster clans name things like that—whichever character comes to mind.

Anyway, that's not important; let's get down to business.

"What problem arose in the palace?"

Standing in the main hall of Jiaolong Hall, looking at the hurriedly pacing lord Bai Tong, Wang Wu asked.

Bai Tong knows Wang Wu's identity; after all, he's his friend's father, so Wang Wu didn't have to be vague with him.

"Ah! Commissioner Wang!"

Seeing Wang Wu arrive, Bai Tong rushed over and said, "Commissioner, you're really timely—come, look, look!"

Following Bai Tong to the center of the main hall, there was a large table with something that looked like a holographic projection on it.

This isn't Marchian tech; the Tianyuan people had been tinkering with this long ago, and it's even more advanced than the Marchians'.

The reason the folk art in the Tianyuan Realm looks more antiquated is because, although the common living standards aren't bad, many things have usage thresholds.

Only a True Dao cultivator qualifies to use those items, but now that Marchian technology is available, many fun things once limited to cultivators and transcendents are beginning to trickle into the populace.

In the holographic projection on the table, Wang Wu saw several people frantically fleeing the palace; there's a surveillance system here, and it works well—high resolution and real‑time modeling.

That's irrelevant, because Wang Wu was stunned by the clothing the fleeing figures wore in the projection.

"Marchians?" he turned to ask the lord beside him.

"Don't know," Bai Tong shook his head. "But probably; such odd outfits have only been seen on Marchians so far."

"Commissioner Wang, any thoughts?"

"No thoughts," Wang Wu shrugged. "Just send people over to capture them, and it's done."

"But the problem is here," Bai Tong said gravely. "Our guards can't locate these people."

"What does that mean?" The answer made Wang Wu pause, but then he thought of something and his expression grew serious: "You mean they're anomalies?"

"Very likely…" Bai Tong nodded grimly. "Otherwise, why can we find them in the projection but see no trace of them on site?"

"Then I'll go check." Wang Wu nodded.

Master Yin Shenli really is moving freely; Wang Wu has no idea where she is now.

But he certainly isn't worried about Yin Shenli's safety, because there's no enemy in this world she can't handle.

Well, except Wang Wu.

Yin Shenli can't really do anything to Wang Wu; she insults him daily, but it's useless—she still often gets so angry at him she turns red‑hot.

Led by the guards, Wang Wu quickly reached the direction where those people were fleeing in the holographic projection.

Just as Bai Tong said, he also saw no one there. The area was already surrounded by Jiaolong Hall's guards, yet not a single silhouette was visible.

"They're still running, heading straight for you! Commissioner!"

A voice from the phone, Bai Tong's, rang out; Wang Wu looked ahead but still saw nothing.

Yet the next second, he could clearly feel his body being knocked.

Then Wang Wu vanished on the spot.

"Commissioner Wang!?"

Seeing Wang Wu disappear before his eyes, Bai Tong's face was instantly covered with shock.

"It's fine, Uncle Bai," Xie Yu said, far calmer, and after seeing his uncle's shocked face, he also offered a comforting word.

"C‑can…"

"It's okay, it's okay. Don't worry, Brother Wang's divine powers are vast; he's just gone to deal with the anomalies for us." Xie Yu patted his father‑in‑law, and although the marriage contract between the two families had been dissolved, Xie Yu still treated Bai Tong as a father‑in‑law.

Or rather, calling him father‑in‑law isn't quite right; more accurately, he's just his father.

Xie Yu spent a lot of time with Bai Tong as a child, essentially growing up under the care of her mother and Bai Tong. As for her own father, to be honest she doesn't know who he is.

Her mother is still unmarried, and although she co‑founded White Horn City with Bai Tong, the two never ended up together and never even had an intimate relationship.

It's normal for friends to do that kind of thing among monsters. But Xie Ying never had that kind of bond with the good brother Bai Tong.

The relationship between these two monsters can be called the rarest pure friendship between opposite sexes, usually only seen between siblings and considered a family tie.

After all, the vast majority of siblings don't have any feelings for each other, and Bai Tong and Xie Ying are basically the same pattern.

Bai Tong's wife is the daughter of another monster‑city lord; the two families are allied by marriage but also quite affectionate.

Of course, monster affection may differ from human affection.

Like how Bai Tong… (cough) … I'm digressing.

Mist, still mist.

After Wang Wu suddenly vanished and then just as suddenly reappeared, he looked at the unfamiliar world before him.

He glanced around, first immediately spotting the few people he had seen in the holographic projection earlier, then observing the surrounding environment.

The feeling here was just like before in that True Realm—shrouded in thick mist—but the architecture around him was not the same style Wang Wu had seen in that previous True Realm.

Instead, it was a style he was very familiar with, similar to the Victorian-era buildings back in his hometown.

Those few people frantically fleeing also gave Wang Wu a slight sense of famil... well, not exactly familiarity.

Among them were people with blond hair and blue eyes, foreign-looking types that only appeared in Wang Wu's hometown.

But these foreigners weren't that foreign; if anything, their features were softer, leaning more toward Eastern aesthetics. They weren't even as sharply defined as some people he had seen in Great Zhou.

Sharp features, of course, weren't exclusive to Westerners; they existed in "Eastern worlds" like his hometown and the Tianyuan Realm as well.

And even with very sharp features, you could still tell at a glance that they were Eastern-looking people.

But that wasn't important.

Because the moment he set foot here, his phone immediately started ringing.

"Hello?"

"Where did you go?" The cold voice of his master, Yin Shenli, came through the receiver.

"I don't know. I think I got knocked into a True Realm again." Wang Wu answered while dodging a liquid the blond-haired, blue-eyed woman in front of him splashed at him.

At the same time, he stepped forward and kicked her in the stomach, sending her to her knees.

Then, following the same method, he instantly took down the other three who were with her.

"True Realm?"

On the other end of the line, Yin Shenli, who had already arrived at the spot where Wang Wu had vanished, furrowed her brow. Around her, all the monsters were prostrate on the ground, trembling in fear at her arrival.

The immense pressure, the temperature approaching absolute zero, completely robbed them of their ability to move.

"Probably?" Wang Wu said, pressing the few people to the ground as he continued speaking to his master on the phone.

"The feeling here is pretty similar to that True Realm before, but what's strange is I don't sense any danger, and nothing feels off."

"With your level of strength, you couldn't sense a damn thing." Yin Shenli belittled Wang Wu, then said:

"Send me your location first."

"Oh." Wang Wu nodded, hung up the phone, and immediately sent his master an address.

"My disciple is going to solve your problem for you. Just wait."

Ending the call, Yin Shenli glanced at the monsters prostrate and trembling on the ground around her, said a single sentence lightly, and then vanished from the spot.

After she left, the pressure and low temperature dissipated instantly. The monsters, as if granted a reprieve, scrambled up from the ground.

"That was Commissioner Wang's master, a Divine General of the Extreme Heaven Divine Palace." Xie Yu explained to her still-shaken father, ah no, father-in-law, on the side.

"Don't worry, Uncle Bai. Since Brother Wang's master said he's handling things for us, there's no need to be concerned."

"Th-then that's good..." His daughter-in-law's reassurance calmed Bai Tong's nerves a bit. He nodded at Xie Yu. "In that case, I'll await Commissioner Wang's good news."

"Mm." Xie Yu smiled and nodded.

"But Xiao Yu, you can't keep going on like this forever. How about you give those talented young men I recommended a try? They're actually pretty good."

Once his emotions settled, Bai Tong switched into the mode Xie Yu dreaded most. His words instantly froze the expression on Xie Yu's face, which had just been warmly caring toward her father-in-law.

"I have things to do. I'm leaving."

Coldly dropping that one line, Xie Yu quickly left Bai Tong's side.

"Sigh." Watching Xie Yu's retreating figure, Bai Tong swallowed the words that had been on the tip of his tongue.

Looking at Xie Yu's back, he shook his head and let out a sigh.

Meanwhile, on the other side.

"What are you doing? Why are you attacking me?"

Wang Wu sat on the back of the blond-haired, blue-eyed woman who had attacked him, grabbing her hair and pulling her head up as he asked.

She could understand him; after reaching the Complete Realm, his barrier-free communication skill had been upgraded and enhanced.

Having reached the fourth-grade Complete Realm, Wang Wu couldn't tell if she was a monster, so he temporarily treated her as a human.

But she didn't respond, just stared at the ground with a deathly pale face, not even looking at him.

"I know you understand me. Answer me, dammit."

He yanked the woman's head and shook it, asking loudly with impatience.

His actions were rough, because he had always treated men and women equally, giving no special treatment to either gender.

No discrimination, no preferential treatment either.

"Spare us! Spare us!!!"

Although the blond-haired, blue-eyed woman didn't speak, the black-haired, Eastern-faced woman among the four did.

She crawled up from the ground, clutching her stomach. After trying to escape earlier but being pinned to the ground by Wang Wu with a single finger pointed from midair, writhing in pain, she was now throwing caution to the wind.

If she encountered a monster she could communicate with, and if she could figure out the rules, maybe she could still fight for a slim chance of survival.

Even if the odds were low, it was still better than surrendering without a fight and giving up completely.

That was Ling Luo's thought.

The few of them were all wearing very "modern" clothes—modern meaning the modern style from Wang Wu's hometown, not the Three Moons Realm here, nor his master's Earth.

It was his hometown Earth.

"I saw you running through our city on the instruments earlier, but when I got to the scene, you weren't there."

As Wang Wu spoke, he got off the woman and kicked her again as she tried to struggle and splash water at him.

"Then I got knocked into you, and ended up here."

"So this is a True Realm, right?"

Wang Wu's explanation was concise and clear, for the few people, though it was unknown whether the few besides this eastern‑faced woman were listening.

But at least if those few were listening, they would certainly be able to understand completely.

"Yes, this place is real, real…" the woman formed the words, imitating Wang Wu, and with some difficulty spoke those two characters.

"Real, realm."

"This place is real… realm."

"No need to imitate my speech, I can understand." Wang Wu shook his hand, then asked:

"So where did you come from?"

(End of chapter)