Chapter 29: Starting Point 1

Du Zhengyi said nothing; he exchanged a brief look with Luo Qi, then walked out with Zhao Zhiyan, leaving Luo Qi holding the Storage Crystal shaped like a thumb ring. He looked up at the data floating in the air and, suddenly acting on impulse, wiped away all the humanoid phantoms, only then letting out a breath.

Guan Xinyue had been observing him the entire time; he avoided the girl's gaze. When only the two of them were left in the room, Guan Xinyue stood up, walked to his side, and scrutinized his face. "So," she said, putting on an adult-like air, "what happened early this morning?"

Luo Qi glanced at her sideways. "Don't you think you're too sharp? That's dangerous, little sister."

"I could return those exact words to you," Guan Xinyue said dismissively. She tilted her head to look at the ring on his hand and said, as if to herself, "Why have you never asked me if I know where my grandfather's things like this are? Do you think I don't know anything? Actually, I know this is a Storage Crystal. Who isn't their grandfather's treasure, after all?"

Luo Qi froze; he analyzed Guan Xinyue's expression, trying to determine if she was bluffing.

But Guan Xinyue continued, "It's a real pity you smashed those Storage Crystals on the Pendragon Track. Though, there wasn't anything valuable in them to begin with."

Luo Qi stared at Guan Xinyue in horror. "If you know where your grandfather's things are, you should tell me!"

"Of course I don't know," Guan Xinyue said. Her slightly light-colored eyes fixed on him. She let out a soft breath, and her eyes suddenly turned deep. "If I knew, I would ask you to help me read them."

Luo Qi looked at her suspiciously. After a long moment, he said, "Things are already very complicated. If you know something, you should tell us. We really want to help you; don't make things even more complicated!"

"You?" Guan Xinyue said. "How many groups are you already? Are you and Du Zhengyi completely honest classmates, colleagues, and friends? Is Zhao Zhiyan in your group? Can you make promises on behalf of such a complicated—'you'?"

Luo Qi took a deep breath, feeling very uncomfortable. In his agitation, his aggressive side suddenly surfaced, and he said with extreme bitterness, "Sharp girls are especially detestable."

Guan Xinyue was instantly provoked. "I hate you too! I hate you men, I hate you Mages!" She suddenly raised her head, began to gasp violently, her voice choking, "I hate you... I hate everyone... I..."

She suddenly broke down, then quickly suppressed it, regaining her restrained composure, though her whole body was trembling.

Luo Qi regretted it almost immediately, filled with guilt. He knew clearly that he was just taking his frustration out on her; in fact, Guan Xinyue had already done better than him. Her troubles were even greater than his, yet she had behaved more maturely than he had.

For a long while, Guan Xinyue's breathing had returned to normal, but he still couldn't think of how to comfort the girl, his heart filled with self-loathing.

Finally, unable to hold it in, he clumsily nudged Guan Xinyue with his elbow and said in a low voice with a sullen face, "Let's stop talking nonsense. Do you want to look at the Enforcer's records with me? Maybe we can find something useful."

Oh my, he was almost moved by his own stupidity; he was such a good consoler—at this rate, dying alone was no longer a dream.

To his surprise, Guan Xinyue slowly leaned toward him and finally rested against him, having completely calmed down. She hugged her arms to her chest, leaned her side against his shoulder, and tilted her face up, her expression now calm. "Then hurry up and search. Can you operate this?"

Luo Qi kept his face dark, sulking to himself. "I can still manage this; it's just not as fast as Du Zhengyi's search speed."

"Forget it," Guan Xinyue said. "Comparing people only leads to death, and comparing goods only leads to throwing them away. You're a fool anyway, why care so much?"

"You're right! My dear lady!" Luo Qi said angrily, projecting thousands of symbol clouds into the space in front of them, connected by golden lines like a spiderweb covering the entire room.

"Not bad, our place is almost like the Cave of Silk," Guan Xinyue said. "What are those symbol clouds? Are they cocoons you made?"

"Don't put it so disgustingly," Luo Qi said. "Each cloud is information related to a certain topic, and those golden lines are the connections between them."

"What determines the connections?" Guan Xinyue asked. "Causality?"

"Causality here is not necessarily causality there," Luo Qi said. "If we relied on causal chains, the method would be too complex, and it would be hard not to miss some causality. So these connections are mainly based on keywords. The current connections are linked by default keywords; we can also specify keywords to have them re-linked."

As he spoke, Luo Qi gave the first command to the golden network floating in the void: "Temple."

Most of the clouds dimmed and faded into the background, and most of the golden lines lost their luster, but the golden lines connecting the remaining few clouds became significantly thicker.

Guan Xinyue watched intently. "I've never seen my grandfather do this."

"You don't see Du Zhengyi need to, either; they can complete this process rapidly in their brains," Luo Qi said. He thought for a moment and gave another command: "Information unrelated to Guan Yushan and Lu Jinfeng."

This time, only a few symbol clouds floated in the air. Luo Qi made an expanding gesture, and the clouds rotated and expanded into a list format, the text rapidly enlarging.

"Do you mean to say they are smarter than you?" Guan Xinyue asked, her tone devoid of mockery.

"You could say that," Luo Qi said calmly, his eyes rapidly scanning the peripheral information.

"I don't think you're stupider than Du Zhengyi," Guan Xinyue said. "You've come up with many ideas, and you're also a sharp bitch."

Luo Qi laughed, his fingers moving slightly to trigger more information changes. "We generally don't use 'smart' or 'stupid' to describe it. Generally speaking, my situation is called energy deficiency, while Du Zhengyi is energy abundance—no, no, he should be considered the type whose energy is at an explosive critical value."

"Like the internal energy in old martial arts novels?" Guan Xinyue asked with interest.

Luo Qi doubled over with laughter. "Exactly right. Du Zhengyi is Duan Yu or Zhang Wuji, and I am..." He thought about it, but couldn't find a suitable person in martial arts novels to compare himself to. "I'm just a passerby."

"You're quite self-deprecating."

"No, no, I'm a smart person. A smart person is just someone who can recognize the situation and accept themselves." Luo Qi flipped open the next symbol cloud. "Their brains are more in line with the characteristics of a Mage, but I don't know why I'm more like a human. They can process massive amounts of information in their brains, can instantly extract the information they need, can use their minds to gather huge power, and can change the parameters of the environment, just like..."

"Just like a Superpowered Being," Guan Xinyue interjected, simultaneously modifying his terminology. "Not 'like', it should be 'is'. 'Mage' is an ancient word; in today's understanding, you are Superpowered Beings."

"Yes," Luo Qi said. He was silent for a moment, using the time to browse through all the filtered clouds. "Nothing of value."

Guan Xinyue noticed that his speed was still much faster than the reading speed of an ordinary human.

"You must be under a lot of pressure in the world of Superpowered Beings," she said suddenly. "Is that why your personality is so funny? My grandfather once said that humor is sometimes a defense mechanism for dealing with the world."

Luo Qi's fingers, which were in the middle of extinguishing the clouds, paused for a moment. "Mages have the advantages of Mages, and humans have the advantages of humans; each has its own value. No matter which world it is, I like it. Being able to integrate into both worlds is my ideal; I hope even more that one day the two worlds can merge together. Infinite combinations, deriving infinite hope."

"But they don't think so," Guan Xinyue said, her voice full of bitterness and sadness. "One day they will make me forget my grandfather and the others, and they will also make me forget you, right?"

Luo Qi swallowed. "As long as we find your sister, as long as you still have one relative in the Mage World, they have no right to erase your memory of this world." He paused and added, "We will definitely find her."

After a while, Guan Xinyue whispered, "Thank you."

Luo Qi felt a bit embarrassed; he coughed and returned to his work. "Investigating the connections from the temple probably won't be useful; I'm sure they've already thought of checking it that way. I still want to take a closer look at Lu Jinfeng's case... perhaps it should be compared with your grandfather's incident."

"How do you compare them?" Guan Xinyue asked with interest. "They seem completely unrelated; only the temple point has some connection, but it's not even the same temple."

"Then let's arrange them in chronological order first," Luo Qi said, beginning to adjust the network in the air. The clouds related to Lu Jinfeng and Guan Yushan reappeared in the air. "Zhao Zhiyan doesn't seem like a careful person; he didn't even mark the time in detail. Most Mages have become accustomed to relying on their abilities; they don't analyze things very carefully and mostly act on intuition. Of course, with an outstanding brain, intuition is usually quite accurate most of the time. So you see, this is another annoying point; it's too stimulating."

"Sounds like lions and tigers," Guan Xinyue smiled. "Because they run fast enough, they don't need to develop intelligence to survive."

Luo Qi laughed and stuck out his tongue guiltily. "Actually, I think so too. Sometimes I think Mages are quite stupid." He raised his hand to help himself concentrate, made a gesture to control the arrangement, and simultaneously uttered the keyword "time."