Chapter 454: Leaving a Message (2)

The book was shaken again, but nothing fell out, and there was no further information on it. In truth, Luo Qi knew he didn't even need to flip through it once; the person who left the book for him would not risk leaving obvious traces. This book was one volume of a complete set and was not particularly thick. He rolled the book up and couldn't help but stroke the scroll, as if he could feel the familiar Magic Temperament of the person who left it with his bare hands.

The situation was urgent, but Liu Ziyi did not urge him. She was steady and cautious, her two eyes sharp enough to discern the finest detail. Therefore, Luo Qi did not look directly into her eyes; judging by the few sentences he had just spoken, he suspected he had already said a bit too much. Liu Ziyi was a rare, intelligent Mage who survived by her brain rather than her strength; she was one of the few Mages capable of restoring ancient spells. As Luo Qi tightly rolled the book up again, he pondered that the children raised by the Qionglin were none of them to be underestimated.

Luo Qi pulled open his coat and tucked the rolled-up book into the long, narrow inner pocket. The Pine Branch was played with a little longer between his fingers, and as he finally made up his mind, the Pine Branch was also carelessly stuffed into his pocket. All of this took no more than ten seconds. He looked up; Liu Ziyi was waiting for him, though most of her was lost within her own brain. Through the wisps of her Consciousness Space, Luo Qi could estimate the spectacular scale of her brain, as well as the thoughts swirling within her complex neural structure; she was comprehensively analyzing the situation before them, from logic and reasoning to various technical issues.

"Since it is certain that there is no one left here who needs assistance with evacuation, we now have two choices," she said, sensing that Luo Qi had turned his attention to her. "The conservative way is for us to retreat underground, stay with that mysterious force, and try our best to avoid the attack."

Luo Qi nodded and interjected, "The adventurous way is to leave here, walk twenty kilometers to the nearest Pendragon Track, and leave this place via the track transport."

"I still can't be sure what exactly the attack is," Liu Ziyi said with a frown, complaining a little as if a teacher had given her a flawed problem, yet the teacher refused to come to the exam room to confront her, which made her particularly annoyed. "But I know there definitely isn't much time left. We have to make a decision quickly."

Luo Qi reached his hand into his pocket, fiddling with the Pine Branch and letting the pine needles prick his fingertips lightly. He deliberated for a few seconds, frowned, and said, "Let's flip a coin."

Liu Ziyi looked at Luo Qi in astonishment. "What?"

Because this was not a fair exam.

Luo Qi murmured this sentence in his heart, took his hands out of his pockets, and slowly pulled up the sleeves of his coat, revealing a section of his forearm. Then, he raised his head and gazed at the dome of the Highland Mage, which was studded with star trajectories.

"What's wrong?" Liu Ziyi asked, puzzled.

Luo Qi raised his right hand and made a shushing gesture to Liu Ziyi. Liu Ziyi immediately closed her mouth; her chest heaved violently, and she grew slightly panicked, but her logical thinking was doing its duty, reminding her that Luo Qi was not a Battle Mage and he should not be able to hear sounds she could not.

"Shh," Luo Qi said in a low voice. "I am concentrating; I am not actually using my ears. Your barrier is too weak; I can hear the thoughts directed at me. That's right, I know your surface consciousness is pondering me. Please try to think about something else; do not focus your attention on me, or else you are interfering with me."

Liu Ziyi understood immediately; almost instantly, her surface thinking turned to reciting the Great Compendium of Spells in alphabetical order. Luo Qi wanted to give her a smile, but he didn't.

He looked at the dome again to concentrate. The drifting gauze curtains and the tranquil atmosphere here reminded him of the Meditation he had learned from the Highland Mage. With the help of a little Meditation, he successfully accelerated his Mind Magic abilities. The star trajectories outlined on the dome began to rotate in his eyes, and at the same time, his Mental World opened up more deeply, breaking through shackles he hadn't noticed just moments ago.

He heard his kitten let out a whimper on his shoulder. A tributary of his consciousness realized in a hurry why it was climbing upward; it possessed more intuition than humans, and it sensed an anomaly he had not originally noticed. In a corner of his consciousness, an inconspicuous tributary stirred up a ripple, pondering that the star map depicted by the Highland Mage was not realistic at all; none of the constellations he was familiar with were there, and the stars were arranged in strange patterns.

However, none of this was important. He still had many swirling thoughts—thoughts about where Du Zhengyi was, worries about whether Du Zhengyi had run into some inescapable trouble, and anger over how many people had not told him the truth. These thoughts occupied only a small corner of his brain, and he could think in parallel. As his consciousness flow became more vibrant due to the initial Meditation, new sounds began to appear. It felt as if these sounds had been there all along, only his numb ears had not wanted to hear them, and now his attention had finally fallen on the right place; his brain had finally let him hear this sound.

The sound was very soft, like a group of women humming ethereal tunes in a distant place. If one listened carefully, one could also hear a male chorus beneath the women's slightly shrill singing. The female singers' voices grew shriller and shriller, finally drifting away from human voices and turning into piercing screams, then into the high-frequency noise emitted when using a Magic Crystal.

Luo Qi opened his eyes. Different dimensions separated within his world, and he captured the lingering traces of Mind Magic; a will that was neither human nor non-human had left a unique mark here. This was a complex magic structure; he had never seen it dismantled like this, and he could not truly understand it. But for a trick, it was enough to see the crux of it—enough to distinguish the real from the fake.

"I'm afraid we can't leave," Luo Qi said. "I originally thought they wouldn't give us enough time to choose, but the situation is actually worse than that. The real situation is that we have already chosen."

"What do you mean?" Liu Ziyi asked, puzzled.

"The most detestable thing about passive Teleportation Magic is that no one knows if the destination will be changed," Luo Qi said. "Do you really think we are currently in the hall of the Highland Mage?"

Liu Ziyi opened her mouth in astonishment. She seemed to want to say something, but the original sentence disappeared from her mouth, and her expression became one of realization. "I see," she said unhappily. "We are trapped. A Sandbox?"

"It should be," Luo Qi said. "There is also some plant Radiation forged by Mind Magic. If they hadn't been so superfluous, I might not have found the flaw."