Chapter 162: Tiandu Feixu

This strange phenomenon also caused his own father and second uncle to worry, but after inviting a doctor, the only conclusion they could reach was sleepwalking.

Because his body was perfectly fine, not sick in the slightest, in fact even healthier than the average person.

Because of this, as Ergou's sleepwalking incidents increased and no accidents occurred, over time everyone simply grew accustomed to the sleepwalking Ergou.

As for the sleepwalking itself, apart from his initial curiosity, Ergou actually didn't feel much about it.

What he was even more curious about was that strange dream of his; deep down he always had a feeling telling him that perhaps his sleepwalking was connected to his dream.

So he began trying to ask his father and second uncle about it, and after his father said that the place was once the capital of the former Da Zhou, now the Tiandu Feixu.

He even said in a somewhat dazed manner that he wanted to go there and take a look, and only upon seeing his father's stunned expression did he realize he had misspoken.

Because of this, the premonition in his heart finally reached its peak; he wanted to go to the Tiandu Feixu and take a look. His intuition told him that going there would definitely yield some special gains.

……

And all of this, naturally, was orchestrated by Baichuan. After resolving the matter of the herbivorous dragon, he returned to Qingzhou and began experimenting with his first attempt at controlling a human.

Speaking of which, this was the first human he had invaded and replaced; before this, everything he had used for experiments were animals found everywhere.

Beings without intelligence he naturally controlled however he wished — at most they'd feel something was strange, and even if they felt fear, so what? They couldn't resist anyway.

But beings possessing intelligence could not be treated this way, because if he activated neural signals to control their body without the consent of that being's original owner, then a conscious human would inevitably feel fear at their body being out of control.

Therefore, unless he chose to disregard this human's original consciousness entirely, he had to proceed gradually.

But he currently wanted to understand all of Da Zhou's written records, and for that he needed to use this human's consciousness; his proactive understanding meant he couldn't simply abandon this human's consciousness.

He had originally thought about going to learn human writing, until he asked Huang Zhongtian about it back then, when he discovered that his ability to perceive information within sounds had an obvious drawback.

Their words had already been unconsciously converted by his ability into grammatical structures familiar to him; their communication was separated by a thick layer of translationese……

For example, the meaning expressed by a certain Da Qin character, after Baichuan's ability automatically converted it, became a word or even a short phrase, while the meaning of a certain short phrase became a single word in Baichuan's understanding.

Added to that the grammar and word order within their writing, where the meaning expressed in different contexts would change to a certain degree, as well as some characters recorded in Da Zhou's books being uncommon and rarely used in everyday life — characters only recognizable by scholars who had specifically studied them.

And the previous Huang Zhongtian happened to have risen from humble origins, having never received any systematic education.

Therefore, apart from a sudden whim at the beginning where he tried learning from Huang Zhongtian and discovered that the ability's conversion was too torturous for his comprehension, Baichuan let the matter drop. Later, when receiving offerings from Zhang Rang and others, he never even thought about this issue.

So, in order to proactively obtain a character converter that could serve as a bridge between him and the true Da Qin, Baichuan came up with his current scheme.

First, after the parasitic host fell asleep, he caused him to dream for no reason to pique his curiosity; then he began inducing unexplained sleepwalking — this was mainly insurance in case the host wasn't curious, so that he could directly use the excuse of the host's sleepwalking to abduct him there, and surely the host would then go investigate on his own initiative.

In any case, the entire purpose was to let them grow accustomed to it without vigilance, treating it all as normal habitual behavior.

And now, when Ergou inadvertently said he wanted to go to the Tiandu Feixu, Baichuan knew that everything had succeeded!

He had successfully piqued Ergou's curiosity.

Then things would be easy from here. In this situation, within just a few days, they saw the naturally youthful Ergou sneak out behind his father's back.

At this point, Baichuan's plan had succeeded.

After protecting Ergou from above at high altitude through eight days of safe travel, Baichuan and Ergou finally both let out a sigh of relief at the same time, because they had finally arrived at Tiandu!

A full eight days — Baichuan had practically worried his heart out over this fellow. Not to mention secretly using Light Points to keep him from going hungry, or occasionally having wild animals crash into things or stand there stupidly waiting to be caught — these trivial matters.

Just the matter of secretly carrying him along great distances while he slept, plus the disguises needed to hide this from being discovered — the bitterness and tears during this period left Baichuan utterly speechless.

He had already paid such a tremendous price; he hoped the gains from this trip would satisfy him.

Baichuan, flying above, thought silently to himself.

Now, after eight days of travel, Ergou was completely a travel-worn and disheveled sight. Having ventured far from home alone for the first time, he never questioned why he hadn't encountered any bandits or robbers along the way, or wild beasts and the like.

He only felt that his luck was especially good, having safely arrived at what was once Da Zhou's most magnificent and spectacular city — Tiandu.

"Tap tap—"

In the long-empty deserted city, after many years, human footsteps once again arrived.

The crisp sound of footsteps echoed through the city; looking around, one could see nothing but various empty, uninhabited houses.

Ergou couldn't help but feel a bit unnerved. That deathly still atmosphere could only be truly appreciated by being there in person. Occasionally a Laoshu or wild rabbit would dash past, setting off a string of "clatter-clatter" sounds, which made Ergou shrink his body even more.

But since he'd already come, could he possibly slink back in defeat?

The thought of his father's angry face upon his return made Ergou a little scared too. He rubbed his hands together to bolster his courage, and sure enough, took large strides forward, ignoring the surroundings.

Walking toward the scene that had always appeared in his dreams.

And then several more days passed, because Tiandu was simply too vast.

After an arduous journey, Ergou finally saw the very center of all of Tiandu — the former Da Zhou Huang Gong, now the Tiandu Feixu.

Looking at the ground covered everywhere with burn marks and ruins, even Ergou couldn't help clicking his tongue in amazement. Just from looking at the current scene, he seemed able to imagine how intense the battle that once took place here had been.

Is this the power of dragons?

Amidst his exclamations, Ergou also walked upward step by step. However, before he could get close, a sudden chill swept over him, and he immediately sneezed, after which his body began trembling uncontrollably.

(End of this chapter)