Chapter 137: A Beginner's Nightmare

Luo Qi calculated, moving like a large bird in the Consciousness World, slowly approaching the stranger.

In this moment, he did not think too much; his consciousness was like a trickling stream, and he saw the ins and outs more and more clearly.

He found it increasingly easy to control his consciousness. In the Consciousness World, some people like to sculpt their own image, but Luo Qi had never spent any effort on that. At the start, he was a Slime, and he had always been a Slime.

He did not mind his amoeba-like prototype appearance at all. The greatest characteristic of a Slime is that it has no fixed shape, just like the form Luo Qi pursued in the Consciousness World.

Luo Qi extended his tentacles toward the stranger casually yet stickily, his technique skillful, as if natural-born. He steadily delved into the stranger Mage's Consciousness World, not thinking much about what impact it would have on his consciousness if the other party suddenly performed Space Travel at this moment.

He had a faint sense of self-confidence; being immersed in the Consciousness World seemed to give him more confidence. He vaguely felt that although he had not tried it yet, as long as he delved into the other party's neural network, he would certainly be able to dismantle their actions before they intended to use Teleportation.

At this moment, a part deep in his consciousness flashed an uneasy message. He slid into the stranger Mage's consciousness like a Slime, using only a bit of consciousness to analyze that bit of unease.

What he felt first was a burst of excitement and joy. These feelings came from himself, because he had figured out a new way to play. He could split his consciousness into two parts; he was like an inverted tree, a Tree Structure. He was the root node, then he copied a subset of himself, a child node of the Tree Structure, assigned a large amount of logical thinking ability to this part, and then sent this Sub-consciousness into the depths of consciousness to ponder what exactly his subconscious had discovered that made him uneasy.

In this way, it was equivalent to him having two Luo Qis, two Luo Qis working simultaneously, parallel processing. It was just that the second Luo Qi lacked the part that made a person human; it was merely a piece of consciousness that had been copied. He could freely merge this part of consciousness back into his main body. Dissolving the identical parts and merging the different parts—that which was different was, in fact, a new discovery, or even new knowledge.

Luo Qi felt another burst of excitement, thinking that he might end up being smarter and more learned than Du Zhengyi. If a dozen Luo Qis compared to one Du Zhengyi, couldn't the odds of winning be higher?

Thinking of this, he realized that he could actually differentiate more child nodes from the root node, and even child nodes could differentiate into child nodes. For the sake of safety, it was best not to split out too many at the start; splitting out one more experimentally would suffice. For example, three is a stable structure; three Luo Qis must also be a stable combination.

He was currently in the Consciousness World, as if in the depths of time. The speed at which time flowed here was much faster than the natural speed of the outside world. He had plenty of time to complete this series of operations simultaneously; to this stranger Mage, it might have been just a fleeting instant.

Luo Qi created a new child node and placed it in the field of vision watching Du Zhengyi. He was satisfied to see simultaneously that Du Zhengyi and the other two were briefly stopping in one place; perhaps Du Zhengyi was checking for traces.

Just as he had finished with this end, his previous child node had already returned the results of its thinking to him. He merged this child node and received the analysis results:

The stranger Mage had flown across almost the entire forest, crossing from one side of the national highway area where people occasionally passed by to the other side of the national highway area;

There was a Public Post Station in the forest, and the area where the Public Post Station was located usually had an abnormal Energy Field;

Du Zhengyi had said that in areas with abnormal Energy Fields, because the parameters were complex and changeable, ordinary people could not perform Space Travel at all. Even if Du Zhengyi had extraordinary talent in this regard, he could only perform small-scale travel.

Luo Qi realized the anomaly marked by the contradiction, but he had been working too fast. By the time he realized the situation might be more complex than he had anticipated, he had already completed the final steps of sliding into the stranger Mage's consciousness.

His heart panicked, knowing he might have waded into deep water.

But it was too late.

A brand-new world accommodated his consciousness. Luo Qi cautiously and slowly extended his Slime form. Using the same method as when entering Guan Xinyue's Consciousness World, he carefully isolated the majority of his main body's consciousness; he did not want to drown here.

In that instant, he realized a problem: he had not encountered any defensive Consciousness Barrier in the Mage's mind. The Mage had opened up their brain like a human. He lost his confidence; this was unlikely. The main body was a high-energy Mage capable of initiating Space Travel paths. The lack of defense before him might just be a facade, a complex situation he, as a beginner, had not yet encountered.

But this was still just an instant. Even in the time flow where Luo Qi was, at the same time he discovered the problem, his consciousness had already connected to the stranger Mage's surface consciousness.

He would see what others saw, hear what others heard, and feel others' heartbeats, breathing, and even pain.

But he never expected a world to unfold before him like an explosion. In his ears was white noise, and before his eyes was a hideous and bizarre world with highly saturated colors. Luo Qi felt his optic nerves were going to go blind.

He was like a swimming beginner who had just learned to breathe and had plunged headfirst into the deep end. And it was not just deep water; this was simply a giant whirlpool at the top of a waterfall.

Luo Qi stayed in this bizarre world in terror. A pair of giant eyes on a pillar were looking at him, and he screamed silently in terror. That pillar was twisted and spliced in a way that did not conform to geometric principles; everywhere there were planes, and on every plane, there was a pair of eyes staring at him.

Luo Qi did not know what this was, nor did he know what he had encountered. In his fear, he also felt the fear and anger of this world, as well as the infinite desire for attack that filled this world.

His perspective suddenly shifted. The pillar and the eyes disappeared, and he seemed to see a forest, an endless, deformed forest. The forest was intertwined, overlapping, and spliced, playing tricks with geometry. Luo Qi felt as if he were looking at an Escher print.

Suddenly, eyes grew on all the tree trunks. The giant eyes blinked together. He could not escape; he had been firmly locked onto. Luo Qi was so panicked he felt like vomiting.

He started running. It was only after a good while that Luo Qi realized from his own consciousness that it was not he who was running, but the main body that was running. He ran for a good while before stopping, moving slowly, and Luo Qi calmed down slightly.

Just then, he heard a strange, demonic scream from afar: "I am going to kill Luo Qi."

Luo Qi was greatly alarmed. It took a good while for him to realize that the main body had stopped completely, and a wave of intense malice engulfed him. At the same time, the consciousness node monitoring Du Zhengyi transmitted new information to him—they were already very close, close enough to have entered the Mage's hearing range. Of course, it was the main body he was currently staying in that was already very close to Du Zhengyi and the others.

Luo Qi trembled, and suddenly he had an idea; he might have finally figured out the situation before him.