Chapter 490: The Frankenstein Rebellion

Du Zhengyi was never one to be coerced. Luo Qi's words caused anger to burn fiercely in his chest, and he looked at Luo Qi dangerously. Luo Qi looked back at him; amidst the apocalyptic scene, he saw a moist luster in Luo Qi's wide-eyed stare, mixed with fear, resilience, and a touch of untimely innocence.

"Are you afraid?"

Luo Qi did not speak; he stared at Du Zhengyi, assessing him.

"Fear is normal. Using anger to overcome fear is one way, but in the end, one must be strong. My teacher always told me that tempering makes a person gradually stronger. True strength will help you attain peace, without needing to rely on anger and hatred to balance your mental world," Du Zhengyi said in a low voice.

Luo Qi snorted in disapproval. Du Zhengyi suddenly reached out, pulled him close by the shoulder, and patted his back heavily. Luo Qi's expression softened, looking somewhat embarrassed. "Don't worry, I can overcome it."

Du Zhengyi let him go. "Your parameters are not bad; your internal organs have grown sturdy."

"What? You're diagnosing me? I knew you weren't that tender. You diagnose me like this? By patting? What if my lungs were cracked by your patting?" He raised his hand to wipe the blood from the corner of his lips and looked at his fingernails; they were stained with black mud, and nearly all ten were split. "I'm like a groundhog, as if I just dug a big den."

"Your physiological parameters have recovered enough. I can see a general overview, but I am not a Doctor, and I suspect you aren't much better. Let's be practical; now that you can move, let's go out and find a Doctor to take a look at you."

"I..." Luo Qi opened his mouth to speak, but was stopped by Du Zhengyi reaching out.

"What if you adjust a hormone level wrong and end up turning into a girl?" Du Zhengyi asked.

Luo Qi was stunned. "Then my mom might be happy; I always felt she wanted a daughter."

Du Zhengyi ignored him, standing still for a moment as if listening to sounds in the distance. Luo Qi guessed he wasn't listening at all, but measuring Magic, yet he still kept his mouth shut.

"The Mages outside should have handled the puppets by now; we should head out."

"You felt it?" Luo Qi turned to look at the edge of the world. This place really was like a world, a narrow world, but he had a feeling that the world of Mages wasn't much bigger, and the larger world outside was already within reach, close at hand. "The Frankenstein monster has human emotions; it's too difficult to handle. Will they just kill them?"

"Mages are rational, and the Great Mages of the Qionglin are even more so," Du Zhengyi said.

"Rational?" Luo Qi muttered. Vaguely, in his memory, he heard another memory echoing a related sentence—rationality itself is the barbarism within a rational society. He froze for a moment; whose memory was this, and whose memory was quoting whose words? He couldn't remember, couldn't sort it out.

Du Zhengyi saw a layer of trance appear on Luo Qi's face, and almost at the same time, he noticed that the Yajian in the Consciousness World was suddenly very far away from him. The speed of thought can break through physical distance in an instant; one departure can lead very far away. "Luo Qi?"

Luo Qi looked up, confused. "What's wrong?"

Du Zhengyi looked at him suspiciously, not voicing his own doubts. The Yajian appeared by his side again, incredibly real in the Consciousness World. With his Telepathy ability, he simply could not be sure what exactly was wrong with Luo Qi. "Let's go, we're going back."

He grabbed Luo Qi. "Teleportation directly from the Open Boundary might be a bit uncomfortable; I'll try my best to bring you back in one piece."

Luo Qi was startled. "You're not joking, Boss?"

Du Zhengyi ignored his protest. "Ready? Don't tremble. You're quite brave, aren't you, little hero? You dared to shove yourself into a zombie's brain, so what are you afraid of a roller coaster for?"

"We could walk through..." Luo Qi's words were not finished, as if he had choked on a gust of wind, and the sound was stuffed back into his throat. He vaguely realized that space had vanished, and even though Du Zhengyi had told him many times that the feeling of being flattened was just his own hallucination, he still felt he was being twisted and stuffed into the eye of a needle, only to be restored on the other side of the hole.

His brain always refused to accept the sudden change in space, and his reaction was like motion sickness; furthermore, this time it was falling from a "narrow" vast space into a "wide" indoor area, and the severe contrast made him nauseous for quite a while. If it weren't for the fact that he could now more actively adjust his body parameters, he definitely would have vomited. Fortunately, he didn't have to fight using Teleportation, otherwise, vomiting while beating people up would have been a terrifying scene.

"Where is this?" Luo Qi asked hurriedly, enduring the nausea. His vision was still a bit blurry, and the residual Magic Energy in this place scraped across his nerves like flying sparks; his hands began to tremble again.

"The underground hall of the Highland Mages," Du Zhengyi said calmly.

"Is it safe?" Luo Qi asked.

"It's not completely over yet." Du Zhengyi looked up at the ceiling, and after a moment, said more firmly, "Further away, on the surface. I feel the Magic of the Highland Mages; they have also participated."

"That must be because they stepped on the flowers, right?" Luo Qi said. His vision cleared, and he first saw something sparkling under his feet. He kicked it, and broken Crystal Fragments splashed out. "What is this... a storage Crystal of a Technical mage? Damn... heavy losses."

Luo Qi looked up and saw Crystal Fragments everywhere, mixed with bricks, rubble, broken furniture, and some body parts from a second death. He shifted his gaze away from those limbs. "Pretty miserable. They also spent a lot of effort to contain it."

Du Zhengyi's expression was somewhat sarcastic; he extended a finger and pointed upward.

Luo Qi looked up and finally understood why the indoor light source looked so much like natural light. A large hole had been broken in the ceiling of the hall, casting the effect of a holy light descent into the basement level.

He stepped forward a few paces, looked up, and saw the blue sky directly. "Pierced through two floors? This is... who did this?"

Du Zhengyi shook his head. "Could be a High-Reaction Mage. But it could also be that some Great Mage was too excited and used too much force."

Luo Qi examined the size of the hole and pondered, "I was still wondering how the puppets got upstairs without stairs." A thought crossed his mind. "The Highland Mages definitely won't be happy about this; we caused them to have to do major repairs on the building twice in two weeks."

"What are you rambling about?" Du Zhengyi said. "Forget about them, let's go straight to find Mahjong."