Chapter 481: Ruins 25

"Wait a moment with the rest." Du Zhengyi cut off the remainder of Liu Ziyi's words and turned to walk out the door.

Liu Ziyi blinked, having no choice but to turn to Xiang Qian to greet her; Xiang Qian nodded. She looked Xiang Qian over a few times and casually tossed a few magic data points into the air. "So... this is a test model, right?"

Xiang Qian looked at Liu Ziyi in surprise. Liu Ziyi avoided her gaze, her attention focused on the symbols tossing back and forth on her hands. She had materialized these symbols and added some weight to them, allowing a Secret Language phrase to tumble over and over in her hands. "After Luo Qi left, I was too bored here alone, so I decrypted part of the Underlying Magic Spell and found two interfaces. I saw the bottom of the Sandbox; I know what this place is for. If you ask me, you all went too far."

"Hey, kid, this has nothing to do with me." Xiang Qian said bluntly, "You know what Battle Mages do; every time they poke a hole in a problem they can't solve themselves, we're responsible for cleaning up their mess. Besides, why aren't you throwing a tantrum at your senior brother?"

Liu Ziyi was not good at arguing, and she could withstand the aura of a Battle Mage even less. Her face flushed slightly. "My senior brother is a victim too; he certainly wouldn't want anything to happen to Luo Qi."

"I was sent in by Liu Li to pick you up too; we don't want anything to happen to you either." Xiang Qian said, trying to handle the young girl as gently as possible.

Liu Ziyi avoided her gaze and remained silent for a long time. Du Zhengyi's footsteps soon approached the doorway again. Liu Ziyi suddenly made up her mind and said, "I've spent my whole life doing experiments; I never thought that one day I would be treated as a test subject. I will remember this nightmare for the rest of my life."

Xiang Qian looked at the young girl with some surprise; in her impression, she had always been a well-behaved girl. "There's no need to be so rebellious."

Her gaze inadvertently fell on the Secret Language phrase tossing in her hands. She recognized which section of the magic spell that phrase could be pieced into, and she was startled again.

Du Zhengyi appeared at the door at that moment, dragging the small puppet with Luo Qi's appearance. Liu Ziyi shrank the Secret Language in her hands into a thin chain, winding it around her wrist, while frowning at them. "Senior brother, what are you doing?"

"Can you be sure if he is Luo Qi?" Du Zhengyi asked.

Liu Ziyi glanced at it. "It is not Luo Qi."

Du Zhengyi had not expected her to be able to say it so easily; he was actually stunned for a moment upon hearing this. "Why?"

Xiang Qian observed Du Zhengyi's expression and mocked with a smile, "What kind of look is that? Can't stand not being the top scorer?"

"Ziyi." Du Zhengyi called out, ignoring the Old Mage's interruption, and urged Liu Ziyi to explain clearly.

"Fine." Liu Ziyi said, and took another careful look at "Luo Qi". "It's not him. Luo Qi's neck was scratched by a puppet; in this position, there are three very obvious wounds. At the time, he refused to let me help him treat them. He told me that he might use some Mental Induction Magic to make a few puppets look like him, but only his neck would have the scratch marks. Besides that, there is much more blood on Luo Qi's clothes than on its clothes. Furthermore, look at the cat; you see its pocket is empty, right? That cat of Luo Qi's has a high probability of survival here; it is very likely the cat would always be by his side."

Du Zhengyi knew he had at least received one piece of relatively good news, but when he turned his head to look at it, "Luo Qi" raised its head to look at him as well, its pupils, a shade lighter, staring at him just as usual. This unfathomable, fake-or-real eye contact made his chest churn, and his movements as he pushed it into the room became much softer. "Let him stay here for now."

"Why?" Xiang Qian asked in surprise, "You aren't..."

"It might still be useful to Luo Qi." Du Zhengyi did not want to argue further, nor did he want to explain. "Believe me, it is definitely useful to Luo Qi. Luo Qi rarely does things with only one purpose. Leave this for Luo Qi; wait for him to recover it."

"Recover what?" Xiang Qian asked.

Du Zhengyi looked at her for a full second, then turned to Liu Ziyi. "What did Luo Qi say? What did he do before he left? Give a brief summary of your experiences."

Liu Ziyi thought for a moment and said, "Luo Qi believed this place identified him as a target, and at the time, that was indeed the case. After we isolated the puppets, not even half an hour passed before a puppet capable of Teleportation appeared and broke through our defensive line. Ah, I feel like Luo Qi had already sensed something before that! For a while, he was silent, staring at a place where there was nothing, and his cat kept meowing—meowing so miserably."

"His cat was meowing miserably?" Du Zhengyi asked.

"Yes, but he had no reaction at all, as if he had fallen into a Mind Mage's Deep Dive. I think he might have been scouting nearby thoughts at that time, and I ended up interrupting him. Because the cat was meowing so pitifully, I thought something had happened to him; I even thought something was attacking his Yajian."

"But you later felt that nothing was attacking him?" Du Zhengyi asked calmly.

"Yes, he said no, and I really didn't feel such a powerful Yajian nearby. But that's not important anymore. Later, we ate some food together and wandered around a bit. I cleared a few ventilation ducts; at the time, I was worried that the long-term disrepair and clogging of the vents would cause us to run out of oxygen." Liu Ziyi said.

Not important? Du Zhengyi glanced at her; if it weren't important, she wouldn't have mentioned it. She was an extremely intelligent Mage, likely smarter than most Mages of her generation. A girl like her, who could reverse-engineer magic, would not mindlessly speak cute, confused words like an immature girl. She would not say things that were unimportant at a time like this, nor would she narrate without logic.

Her "but that's not important anymore" was actually telling him an important piece of information: that Luo Qi, having lost his Anchor, had once been briefly lost. Perhaps this loss of Luo Qi's was not as dangerous or as obvious as the one he had experienced, but she had still discovered traces of it. She had the ability to identify such situations, but she did not intend to say it in front of everyone.

He continued to listen to her expressionlessly. "Specifically, twenty-seven minutes after entering the room, a Teleportation puppet mage suddenly appeared behind us. It was the first time I had seen a puppet that retained so much autonomy; he was almost like a complete person, only his behavioral goals were controlled. When he appeared, Luo Qi's reaction was as intense as if he had suddenly heard an explosion; he violently pushed me to the ground. I hadn't sensed anything at all at the time. I guess that for Luo Qi, the sudden appearance of another person's thoughts in such a small room must have been as noisy as someone suddenly shouting. Then we discovered that the puppet's main attack target was Luo Qi. It stabbed Luo Qi several times, but none were vital points. If it had wanted to kill Luo Qi then, Luo Qi would have died. But no, it was definitely stabbing Luo Qi on purpose. It kept appearing in front of and behind Luo Qi like a ghost, sometimes even letting us run for a while. This cat-and-mouse terror was even worse than killing him directly."

Xiang Qian suddenly interjected, "Can't Luo Qi control it? A puppet should be easy to control, right?"

"He can't." Liu Ziyi shook her head. "Luo Qi said this puppet is mentally ill."

"What does that mean?" Xiang Qian asked in confusion.

"A mentally ill person's Mental World is extremely unstable." Du Zhengyi explained.

"Right, that's what Luo Qi said too. He got close to it once, but could only retreat. A mentally ill person's mind is too spectacular; the emotional fluctuations are very intense and chaotic. Luo Qi said that if he wanted to control it, he would need more time to enter it bit by bit. But it's a Teleportation Mage; every time it appeared, it stabbed Luo Qi and then immediately vanished." Liu Ziyi let out a heavy breath as she said this, as if she had been suppressing it for a long time. However, she quickly regained her composure, immediately returning to her daily dazed state as if in self-defense, her attention shifting elsewhere.

Du Zhengyi suddenly realized that although the formula transformations floating in the hall had stopped, the golden grid projected by Liu Ziyi was still continuously changing data.