Chapter 342: Exploration and Sound

Wu Pifu walked at the very front of the team. The light source he held, which was stacked, illuminated the front and sides, while leaving a long shadow behind him. The others followed behind, still in the same seven-person formation as before, but with Gao Zhanggong carrying the unconscious personnel. As for the bodies of the two sacrificed personnel, there was really no way, so they could only wait until after the sanctuary was established to come back and retrieve them.

Eight people walked along the edge of the buildings, exploring forward building by building.

Some building doors were tightly closed. These doors possessed incredible power and could not be pushed open from the outside by any means. Even Wu Pifu exploded with power to test it, but the entire door remained motionless. If the power were increased further, the entire building would be destroyed, yet the door still could not be opened. At the same time, because this door was not a hostile entity, the Pifu title was ineffective.

So in the end, everyone could only bypass all the buildings with tightly closed doors and specifically look for those with open doors to enter.

The exploration action was very unsmooth.

There were many buildings in this street district, which could even be described as dense, but less than one-fifth of them had doors wide open. And after checking them, it was discovered that they were exactly the same as the building they entered; the internal space was different, the structure was different, but they were all empty. There was no furniture or utensils, nor were there any words or patterns. Except for the existence of the building itself, there were not even windows, and no traces of any man-made objects could be found.

However, this kind of archaeological-like behavior was boring in itself. After all, this was the Zero-point-three Dream World. Except for the two who died and the one who was seriously injured at the beginning, they did not encounter any major damage or attrition. At the same time, they had figured out some of the rules here. The rest was just repeated verification and exploration. This was already a very good start.

After continuously exploring dozens of buildings, everyone still gained nothing, and by this time they had reached the edge of the surging darkness.

"... The surging darkness is eroding this gray space."

Wang Yihui looked at the surging darkness outside the door with worry and turned to say to the others.

Everyone could actually see it. As the time of their exploration passed, this gray space was indeed gradually shrinking. The black surging in the distance was slowly eroding inward. From the initial gray space with a diameter of about 1,000 meters, it might now be less than 700 meters in diameter.

"Although I should be able to break the black surging again, we have explored for at least five or six hours, and we haven't gained even a tiny bit of harvest." Wu Pifu said with depression.

Everyone looked at him in surprise, and at the same time, the "cluelessness index" at the corner of Wu Pifu's eye rose by another two hundred points.

"No!"

Wu Pifu immediately called out: "What is wrong with you all!? Why does everything I say make you clueless? Do I look that much like a clown? Could it be that we didn't waste five or six hours and investigate nothing?"

Everyone smiled bitterly. Gao Zhanggong couldn't help but ask: "So... how do you usually explore the Dream World?"

Wu Pifu said seriously: "Arrive at the Dream World, find the crowd, explore the era and location, and then combine it with the history, events, characters I know, or key information inquired, confirm the target, find the target, kill the target... isn't that how you do it?"

Everyone looked at each other, and then Captain Hao Cheng whispered in a rough voice from the side: "Perhaps... we are experiencing two different sets of standards?"

Wu Pifu immediately stared at Captain Hao Cheng and said: "Don't deliberately use a rough voice, speak in a normal tone! Also, what do you mean by two sets of standards?"

Chu Yuyan said with a bitter smile from the side: "Mr. Wu, you have to know that we don't know the history before the Third War, and you are a future person who has been sleeping since the 21st century. This means that for us, unless it is a Dream World after the Third War, we don't even know the general situation of that world. Then think about it, we enter an ancient society, there are dynasty names, historical figures, but we know nothing about them. All the information we gather cannot produce inherent concepts in our minds. We don't even know who is good or bad in that era. In this situation, we must explore everything about the Dream World from scratch."

"And you? You only need to compare it with the history you know, and then you can go and fight. So, do you think this counts as two sets of standards?"

Wu Pifu was stunned. He opened his mouth to refute, but after thinking back carefully, when Amida and Xu Shilan teamed up with him, they really knew nothing about the history before the Third War, so he fell silent.

Wang Yihui also said at the same time: "Brother Wu, you have developed a habitual path dependency. Your exploration method indeed works in high-level Dream Worlds, but the further down the Dream World goes, the greater the deviation from the baseline reality. For example, this Zero-point-three Dream World is like this. We know nothing about it, and we have no cognitive concept of the entire worldview. Being able to know the rules in just a few hours and avoid 'door-opening kills' is already a very fast progress. It's only been a few hours. For us, exploring a Dream World for a few days and being able to know some of its secrets is already a very good start."

Wu Pifu nodded slowly, having to accept this reality...

"So, I don't like this slow-paced decryption segment. If I could just do some simple tasks, like going to a certain place to kill someone, or bringing back the head of someone or something... that would be great." Wu Pifu muttered. The green-headed big fly on his waist chuckled, causing Wu Pifu to glare at her.

Chu Yuyan suddenly said at this time: "Actually, we haven't gained nothing. These five or six hours of exploration have already let us know a lot of important information."

The cluelessness index at the corner of Wu Pifu's eye began to drop for the first time. He didn't care, just said incredulously: "Don't tease me, we haven't found anything, what kind of important information is this."

Chu Yuyan shook his head: "No, not finding anything is also a part of important information. At least this has ruled out many fallacies. For example, after these five..."

"At the same time, judging from the density of the buildings, a conclusion can be generally drawn: this world underwent some kind of change at a certain period, causing the population density per unit area to increase significantly, which is why the buildings we see are so compact, even to the point of being almost chaotic."

Wang Yihui also kept nodding from the side, while Wu Pifu thought and recalled carefully, nodding in agreement.

When it wasn't broken down, he couldn't think of so much, but once Chu Yuyan broke down the connections, based on the density of the buildings seen along the way, such a conclusion could indeed be drawn.

Chu Yuyan said to Wu Pifu: "So don't be anxious. As long as we can fight step by step and explore bit by bit, even if we can't find any key information, we can obtain part of the truth through the method of elimination, and this is enough for us to establish a Level One Sanctuary. And now there are only two problems: first, safety. We cannot be killed by rules again. Personnel losses are not allowed, otherwise it won't count as a 'faction'. Second, enough exploration areas and enough exploration samples, otherwise we cannot piece together the truth of this world bit by bit through the method of elimination."

Now Wu Pifu understood. He nodded silently, then looked at the surging darkness in the distance and said: "In other words, we should explore a wider space, right?"

Chu Yuyan and Wang Yihui both nodded at the same time. Wu Pifu raised the light source and said: "Okay, let's approach the edge of the darkness. I'll break another piece of black, and then explore as wide a space as possible. It's best to leave this residential area and see if there are any commercial areas, or landmark buildings, libraries, etc."

!

This is naturally the best. Everyone followed Wu Pifu toward the surging darkness at the edge. Wang Yihui said to Wu Pifu while walking: "Brother Wu, pay attention to the direction of the light source. When you break the darkness, there is a high possibility that intense flashes will appear again. If this intense flash only appears in front of you, that is naturally the best, and we can all leave shadows behind us. But if the flash flickers from all directions at the same time, it is very likely that a widespread shadowless space will appear, and this will require you to think of a way."

Wu Pifu was silent for a moment and said: "Super Brain Heaven and Earth?"

Chu Yuyan smiled and said: "Right, this is your responsibility. As the only awakened Super Brain, and also our General Commander, when the flash appears, it is impossible for us to react in time, but you are different. In your Super Brain Heaven and Earth state, you can see light flickering in the form of waves. In other words, even at the speed of light, you can have reaction time. In this situation, you should take the lead in preserving yourself, let yourself at least maintain part of your shadow, and wait until the flash disappears. As long as your speed is fast enough, you can quickly create a shadow to drag us out of the second layer of space. Still the same sentence, in the case of fast enough speed, the embedding damage we receive will definitely not be great, at least not fatal."

Wang Yihui also added from the side: "At the same time, Brother Wu, you also need to pay attention to the light intensity problem of this gray shadowless space. Every time you break the darkness, whether the light intensity of this gray space will change. If it produces overlapping light sources, this means it will be increasingly difficult for us to produce shadows when we act within it, which will increase the difficulty of our exploration and reduce our fault tolerance during exploration. You need to pay attention to all these."

Wu Pifu nodded repeatedly, keeping both of their words in his heart.

Then the team quickly arrived at the edge of the gray space and the surging darkness. Wu Pifu turned his head to look at the people behind him, and then walked toward this piece of darkness.

The darkness surged and began to become intense, as if it couldn't wait to accommodate Wu Pifu within it.

When Wu Pifu walked to the boundary line, he stood still with concentration, and then threw a punch toward the front. At the same time, he unfolded his Super Brain Heaven and Earth.

The whole world instantly turned into black and white, and everything around it fell into stillness.

In this state, Wu Pifu's fist was hitting the darkness at an extremely slow speed, bit by bit, getting closer and closer to the surging darkness, and then, he suddenly heard a tiny, extremely faint sound that felt like a hallucination.

"... Wu Pifu, save me, I am..."

"Dong Ting!"

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 343 =====