Chapter 296: Download

"Be careful," Du Zhengyi said toward the courtyard entrance. Because he was enduring pain, his voice sounded a bit ferocious. "Luo Qi, don't do anything extra. It's fine to wait a while longer; act within your limits."

Luo Qi responded immediately, as obediently as could be, and disappeared slowly into the courtyard entrance while leaning on the wall, his every step steady and sure.

Du Zhengyi turned his head to focus on the bone currently being set, and hissed again.

"If the pain is unbearable, you can block the sensation again," Majiang said. Fine beads of sweat had also broken out on his forehead; the Medical Magic had consumed a significant amount of his energy. "Do you need my help?"

"It's fine, it doesn't hurt that much," Du Zhengyi said. "It has nothing to do with that; it's Luo Qi. As long as he looks steady and honest, I get a headache as a conditioned reflex. He must be looking for trouble again."

"Then let Xinyue follow him to keep an eye on him and keep him in check?" Majiang suggested.

Du Zhengyi glanced at Guan Xinyue. "No need. This town is too dangerous for Xinyue; she had better stay here."

Guan Xinyue let out a sigh of relief. In truth, she wanted to follow Luo Qi not just to watch him, but she didn't dare wander around; everything that had happened tonight was truly too terrifying. She looked anxiously toward the courtyard entrance, seeing only darkness, and hoped Luo Qi would return soon.

Outside the courtyard, as soon as Luo Qi was out of everyone's sight, he quickened his pace. Although walking faster pulled at the wound on his stomach that hadn't fully healed, making him want to hiss in pain, he still hurried through the town.

The town shrouded in darkness was deathly silent. There were no living creatures here now; the Seal Beasts, regardless of type, had all had their heads blown off by Luo Qi. Ordinary cats and rats had fled long ago when the mutation occurred here; animals were in some respects much more sensitive than humans.

Luo Qi ignored the silence and, familiar with the path, crossed the town to return to the courtyard they had been staying in. Clutching his stomach, he jumped over the threshold and headed straight for the study Majiang had cleared out.

He turned on the study light and immediately discovered that some Seal Beast must have entered this room as well. Perhaps a blind bat had mistaken the place and smashed it to pieces. The books and ornaments Majiang had tidied up were scattered in a mess on the floor, the chair was overturned, and the heavy sandalwood desk had been knocked askew.

Luo Qi spat out a string of curses and rummaged through the pile of trash in the middle of the room for a while, but didn't find the thing he wanted. He straightened his back, stroked his injured stomach and his soul, and stood blankly in disappointment for a while. The Ghosts of the Mind Mage Society resided in this town; some were in the jade inlaid in the windows, some in the stones on the tables, and others in the marble screens in the rooms. In short, they stayed in the crystals that permeated this Ancient Town. Luo Qi had a few crystals, but rescuing these consciousnesses was almost impossible.

The Ancient Town was equivalent to a massive hard drive, storing a database Luo Qi desperately wanted, and this database could even run a fantastic program.

He wanted to take as much of this database away as possible, even if he could only take fifty percent... or even thirty percent would do. But his few crystals could only be counted as small USB drives; relying on those little toys to copy this database was pure delusion.

He knew the Alien Queen was hiding something from him, and perhaps she had hidden it from the other Mages as well. She couldn't resist the enslavement of the Mages, but she must have found a way to bypass the control of the Mind Mages and retain a portion of her self. At the very least, those Alien creatures had eggs, and they were nearly ready to hatch; that was not a good sign. He had seen many things in the Queen's memories, and he still had many things to find time to think about, but he knew the best thing they could do was burn this place down. No matter what the Queen had left for her race during this field mission, he would burn the Queen's hope to the ground.

For other reasons, he also didn't want to leave this Mind Mage Society here, to be left for Fan Shi or some other old fossil.

It was just that this was, after all, the life's work of generations of Mind Mages, a treasure of the Mind Mage Society; it was truly distressing to destroy it once and for all.

His stomach really did hurt a bit. He knew that in the short term, neither Majiang nor Du Zhengyi would come out to look for him, and Guan Xinyue lacked the ability to come out and find him, nor would she be able to. So he righted Majiang's chair and sat down on it with great composure to rest for a while. Perhaps out of unwillingness to give up, or perhaps a flash of inspiration, he suddenly thought that if all the crystals stored fragments of consciousness, then the Calculation crystals must be the same.

Luo Qi felt a surge of excitement, stood up abruptly, then clutched his stomach and sat back down. He leaned back against the chair, relaxed as much as he could, and closed his eyes. He was searching for a specific consciousness nearby; it was much simpler than a completely independent consciousness, like a subset of a consciousness, like a fragment of a consciousness. In the world of consciousness, such things were as ethereal as Ghosts, without the warmth of a flame.

Sure enough, this time Luo Qi felt it.

He stood up from the chair and walked toward the direction of that Ghost with his eyes closed, his hand groping for the dragon-pattern carving on the sandalwood cabinet. Luo Qi opened his eyes, hurriedly opened the cabinet, reached inside to grope for a while, and took out a sandalwood box. As soon as he opened the box, he immediately felt the power of the High-Energy Crystal flowing inside.

Luo Qi let out a sigh of relief. It seemed that after Majiang returned, he had kept this crystal continuing to calculate the puzzle left behind by Guan Yushan. He stopped the crystal's work, took the crystal out of the box, and tucked it into his pocket. As for the Calculation crystal Majiang needed, he would help him get another one when he had time later; for now, he would use this only High-Energy Crystal here to store the Ghosts of the Mind Society, storing as many as he could.

He hadn't forgotten that the clownfish was nearby, nor had he forgotten that the High-Energy Crystals of the Six Great Black Markets might all be in his hands; those High-Energy Crystals might just be able to store the Ghosts of the entire Mind Society. If he wanted to download the Ghosts, he had to hurry; he wouldn't feel at ease no matter whose hands this treasure fell into.

This was the first time in his life Luo Qi realized how useful High-Energy Crystals were; no wonder even gods would let High-Energy Crystals revolve around them. He picked and chose among the Ghosts, stuffing the strongest Ghosts into this High-Energy Crystal, and had to delete quite a few calculation Ghosts and calculation modules stored in the crystal; those modules were special Magic, and deleting them was a necessity.

He was like a poor little child, feeling through all his pockets for coins to trade for candy. He filled all the crystals he had obtained from the Black Market with Mind Ghosts, and carried the most unique Ghosts in small, separate crystals.

Finally, he hid all these crystals in his pockets, silently swallowing the most excellent souls of the Mind Society. He wouldn't tell Majiang and Du Zhengyi; those two idiots would definitely force him to hand these things over to the organization.

And who was the organization? The most trustworthy thing in this world was one's own brain. The brain was a good thing, and he didn't want to hand his brain over to anyone.