Chapter 46: Defense

Du Zhengyi found Liu Ziyi without much effort; the short-haired girl seemed to have anticipated that he would come looking for her. She released the tools she had been busy with, slowly descended from mid-air, and locked eyes with Du Zhengyi—

"Senior Brother."

Du Zhengyi turned and walked toward the end of the hall, with Liu Ziyi floating behind him as she followed. He stopped beneath the statues of Fuxi and Nuwa where no one else was around, and the white sneakers on Liu Ziyi's feet touched the ground lightly.

Du Zhengyi glanced at her and said straightforwardly, "Does Luo Qi have any words for you to bring me?"

She shook her head, and Du Zhengyi felt a moment of disappointment.

"But I want to tell you something," she said. She raised her hands and performed a set of complex gestures, looking somewhat like the hand seals in ancient Japanese mythology. Du Zhengyi knew this was a habit she had formed while studying under Teacher Liu Li when she was young; she no longer needed gestures to focus her attention to cast Magic, but many Mages simply had all sorts of quirks.

Following her gestures, the environment around the two fell completely silent. She had cut off the sounds from inside and out, creating a Sandbox of her own; however, this Sandbox had simple functions, suitable only for confidential conversations.

"He is not in the Cube," Liu Ziyi said. "I guessed you would want to know this. That weirdo from the Security Department has taken him to the Interrogation Room for two days already."

"Do you know which Interrogation Room?" Du Zhengyi asked.

"He mentioned Pei Shu when he came," Liu Ziyi said, wrinkling her nose slightly. "But Teacher hasn't been home lately, and we aren't you; we can't just enter Gushan at will. I asked Senior Brother Mahjong and only then found out that person hangs out with you. I thought you would probably come by these few days, so I kept an eye on this side—they took him to that Interrogation Room."

"Which one?" Du Zhengyi frowned. He was not Mahjong, who could get along very well with all the fellow disciples. This girl looked a bit reclusive, and he couldn't quite understand what she was talking about. "Which Interrogation Room?"

"It's that one," Liu Ziyi said, looking surprised at Du Zhengyi's reaction. "That one is the oldest one."

Du Zhengyi's heart sank abruptly. "Two days?"

Liu Ziyi looked up and thought for a moment. "It's almost forty-eight hours."

For the first time, Du Zhengyi felt regret, and he turned to leave. He had walked two steps before remembering he hadn't thanked her. Not being very good at accepting favors from others in his life, he turned back and awkwardly muttered a "Thank you."

Liu Ziyi nodded absentmindedly, put away her Soundproofing Magic, and turned back to her work.

Du Zhengyi found Guan Xinyue, who was struggling to stay hidden by the window; a dim-witted male Mage seemed interested in her and was pestering her with talk. Du Zhengyi irritably glared the boy away, for the first time agreeing slightly with Zuo Yu's assessment: were these idiots a bit too pathetic? Couldn't they tell that Guan Xinyue wasn't even an adult yet?

Guan Xinyue let out a breath and hurriedly hid by Du Zhengyi's side, unable to worry about the earlier agreement to keep a few steps of distance. "What on earth are you doing? We had an agreement! You actually hid behind a statue to chat with a girl! Oh my god, what is that statue?"

"You cannot ask questions, understand?" Du Zhengyi said in a low voice. No Mage would be curious about the symmetrical statues of Fuxi and Nuwa that they saw all the time; even the chocolates they ate as children were in this image.

Guan Xinyue clamped her mouth shut and looked around nervously. Du Zhengyi knew her spirit was already stretched very thin; having delayed here for too long, she was nearing her limit.

"Don't look, don't be afraid." Du Zhengyi reached out a hand and gripped the girl's forearm.

Guan Xinyue's heart settled, and she held her head higher, like a haughty Mage. Du Zhengyi squeezed her forearm with a little force, and she heard a faint whisper: "Something must have happened to him; I was wrong."

Guan Xinyue looked up, dazed, seeing only a blank expression on the young Great Mage's face, but she understood what he meant. They finally walked out of the hall; in Qionglin, this hall had a name: the Fifth Laboratory. Even Du Zhengyi didn't know the original purpose for which it was built, but those genius Mages just gathered in this huge laboratory to conduct their respective Magic experiments. The back of the hall led to a spacious corridor. Du Zhengyi did not delay, taking Guan Xinyue straight through the corridor and into another hall at the end of it.

This was the Qionglin Library, preserving books from every era of the Magic World, and even some bamboo slips rescued from the previous Qionglin. Of course, there was more knowledge stored by Magic Crystals, which were embedded in the pillars of the library. Upon walking into the library, Guan Xinyue thought she had walked into a crystal palace. She wandered between the crystal pillars, the walls filled to the brim with books, and for a moment, she felt it was truly crazy; she was like Alice who had fallen down the Rabbit Hole.

"Here," Du Zhengyi said briefly, then let go of Guan Xinyue and disappeared behind a pillar.

Guan Xinyue knew it wasn't the time for amazement and anxiously chased after Du Zhengyi's footsteps.

"There is no one in the library," Du Zhengyi said in a low voice, letting out a breath. "Fortunately, many people don't come to the library at this time. Come here, I need you to dismantle the Defense Crystal."

"You're not asking me to dismantle the pillar, are you?" Guan Xinyue said worriedly, fearing that Du Zhengyi had overestimated her strength and hadn't made it clear to her.

Guan Xinyue ran a few steps and reached the center of the library, where a garden sundial-like pedestal stood between four pillars, and a crystal the size of a fire extinguisher stood in the center of the pedestal. Guan Xinyue had already noticed that the Mages' crystals varied in quality; this crystal looked amber-colored and wasn't very transparent, and the lower part of the crystal was embedded seamlessly into a groove in the pedestal.

"Press it once first, then hold it with both hands and pull it out," Du Zhengyi said. "I can't help you; you need to have some strength. After pulling it out, there will be crystal filaments connected underneath; I will tell you the order to disconnect those crystal filaments."

"Oh my god." Guan Xinyue did as told, first pressing the amber crystal, then pulling it upward. This part wasn't difficult, but this operation gave her a strange sense of familiarity. "Oh my god, Du Zhengyi, don't you think this set of yours is very similar to many of our electronic devices? The only difference is the material. Oh my god, even the fine filaments are a bit like fiber optics!"

"Don't talk." Du Zhengyi watched the completely transparent filaments beneath the crystal carefully and pointed out the order for Guan Xinyue to disconnect the crystal filaments.

Guan Xinyue hugged the crystal with one arm and disconnected the crystal filaments one by one. When she completely pulled out the crystal, she didn't feel any particularly big change; if there was a slight feeling of being noise-cancelled, she suspected it was an illusion. "There's no change."

"Shh," Du Zhengyi said softly. "The biggest change now is that the Sensing Crystals in the woods have all stopped working."

Guan Xinyue stood motionless, still hugging the amber crystal of considerable size. It wasn't that she felt some sensor stop working; she clearly heard footsteps, and the hall outside seemed to be in complete chaos. She suddenly realized that not only did Du Zhengyi know Qionglin's defense had been cut off, but other Mages knew it too.

"What do we do next?" She suddenly realized the problem with this plan. "They will come to check immediately, right? Where do we hide such a big crystal?"

She looked around in a panic, checking which bookshelves still had empty space. "Even if we can hide it, there will always be a Great Mage who, like you, can find it by following the energy sensing, right?"