Chapter 321: Pressure Cooker Luo Qi

Luo Qi returned to his room, feeling troubled, and threw himself heavily onto his bed. He stared silently at the ceiling for a long time; the patterns decorating the four sides of the ceiling looked like a handwritten script of an ancient Mage language.

He lay there for a while, then pulled a handful of crystals from his pocket, among which were the High-energy Crystals he had stolen from Majiang. They were originally meant for Calculation, but Luo Qi had since deleted the calculation capabilities inside them and filled them with Ghosts from the Society.

Now, just because there was a mysterious figure here, he had to carry these things with him at all times; he didn't want some mysterious person sneaking into his room to rummage through his belongings while he was away. What people generally cannot stand is not lying to or hiding things from their enemies; what they cannot stand is hiding things from their friends. There was already more than one instance where he had engaged in clandestine activities right under the noses of the few friends he shared a bond of mutual trust with, and now there were several Crystals serving as concrete evidence.

However, if one were to insist on finding a few positive points among a pile of troubles, it would be that Luo Qi, having long endured pressure and having recently survived a self-transformation, had basically been hammered into a tough nut and a hardened scoundrel, and his ability to withstand pressure was far from ordinary.

He now had to prepare himself mentally; he had to hide secrets in front of Du Zhengyi, he had to hide secrets in front of Pei Shu, and the day after tomorrow, he would have to hide secrets in front of a whole crowd of Highland Mages.

This was the highest-energy training he had undergone here; by the time he descended from the Highland, he might earn a title: "Liar Luo Qi" or "Pressure Cooker Luo Qi."

He lay there for a while, then pulled a book out of his pocket—an old, thin book. He opened the book, turned to the folded page, read it carefully once more, and suddenly, feeling annoyed, threw the book toward the ceiling.

The book fell and hit his chest; in his anger, he rolled the book up again and stuffed it into his pocket.

He lay on his pillow for a while and began to feel sleepy. Recalling the Highland Mages' mastery of botany, he unhappily pushed the pillow aside. The plant seeds stuffed inside the pillow might have a strong calming effect. But he didn't want to sleep yet; he found a comfortable position, closed his eyes, and bit by bit, entered the Consciousness World.

For safety, he built the barriers of his consciousness very thick. In his Consciousness World, he opened the sealed memories of the Alien Queen and began to browse through them carefully.

His own consciousness was not yet very skilled at this kind of database browsing work, and he didn't want to see the process of the Alien feeding or mating; he needed to find a navigation and retrieval tool.

Luo Qi touched his Crystal, recited the Secret Language with practiced ease, used his own consciousness to open the High-energy Crystal, took out the Society Ghosts inside, and merged these capable consciousnesses into his own Consciousness Space. These consciousnesses crawled like insects rapidly into the part of the memory belonging to the Queen, crawling through that long memory segment by segment, searching for everything that might interest Luo Qi.

The Alien species had existed for too long, and each generation accumulated part of the memories of the previous one upon birth; this method of inheriting knowledge at birth seemed like a massive cheat. It was practically equivalent to every child being born with the knowledge and experience of their parents, without needing a primary learning process; this was truly standing on the shoulders of giants from the very beginning. Luo Qi couldn't help but feel a bit of fear; if this species could evolve, its speed would surely surpass that of humans and Mage humans.

However, for Luo Qi right now, such a memory pattern meant the depth of the memory was simply terrifying. Even with the assistance of the Society Ghosts, the time Luo Qi would need to spend to obtain more meaningful information from the Alien's memories would likely be very long. After all, the number of Society Ghosts he currently controlled was not very large, and it was completely different from the mental power he had when he was simultaneously commanding thousands of Ghosts in the Society. He really missed his own majestic moments.

Luo Qi organized the Queen's memories; most importantly, he pondered how he should catalog and categorize these memories to be most efficient. He had seen how Majiang performed calculations; he first had to choose a suitable calculation model—that is, he needed to organize a workflow—and only then begin to process the problem. Perhaps he needed to do the same. He "felt" his way through the Consciousness World for a method of organization and classification. First, he divided the Queen's memories into two parts: one part before leaving the place of origin, and one part after leaving. Then, he marked the keywords of authoritative figures, letting the Society Ghosts help him sort out everyone the Alien Queen feared, as well as the figures who had once issued orders to the Queen.

He hadn't thought of other organization methods yet. By the time he finished reading a portion of the memories, the night was already very deep. He was like a human boy addicted to games, busy for a long time in a virtual world. Although the Mental World belonged to the depths of time and could take a slight advantage in terms of time, it was extremely exhausting.

When Luo Qi returned from the Mental World, it was already two o'clock in the morning. The only good thing he could think of at this moment was that, fortunately, Du Zhengyi was always a late sleeper, and with nothing to do now, he would surely sleep until nearly noon. Regardless, he wouldn't be the last one to wake up; he would definitely not be very conspicuous.

However, man proposes, God disposes. Luo Qi, exhausted, lay on the bed and fell into a deep sleep, feeling like he had only slept for ten minutes before being woken up by a knock on the door.

He sat up reflexively, reacting blankly for a moment as to where he actually was, then looked at the window. The window was only just covered with a layer of dawn light. Although the Highland Mages' territory was located in the west and the sun rose a bit later, this was still too early.

"Who is it?" Luo Qi said, bleary-eyed.

"It's me," Du Zhengyi said at the door. "Pei Shu is here; come out."

Luo Qi woke up completely, feeling uneasy. Only after Du Zhengyi called his name again and knocked on his door, asking if he had fallen back asleep, did he answer in a flustered manner. He grabbed his hair a few times, tucked his Crystal back onto his person, calmed his mood for a moment, and desperately cast thick mental barriers for himself.

He pulled the door open and went out. Du Zhengyi was standing at the door, his expression looking as if he had eaten bitter medicine. He glared at Luo Qi. "Don't complain; I'm also very annoyed."

Luo Qi had nothing to say; he hadn't even said anything yet. However, he was Pressure Cooker Luo Qi, and he had long been accustomed to being bullied by Du Zhengyi, so without a word, he obsequiously followed Du Zhengyi.