Chapter 493: Joining the Ranks

The Highland Mage wants to recruit him.

Let's put that more decently. The Highland Mage has extended an olive branch; they are willing to accept him.

But there is no such thing as a free lunch in this world; Luo Qi estimates he will have to plant trees for the rest of his life. Planting trees and growing flowers is the life of a Highland Mage, along with Meditation; joining the Highland Mage is equivalent to retiring early.

"I don't want to retire early," Luo Qi said aloud.

Du Zhengyi looked at him, puzzled.

He rubbed his eyes and muttered, "I'll think about this some more."

"It's fine, there's no rush to make a decision. Keep sleeping, we'll talk when you've had enough rest. I don't want to say much more about this; you make the decision yourself."

Luo Qi nodded and closed his eyes. He understands now; Du Zhengyi is definitely stalling for time, waiting for his body to recover and his mind to be clear so he can take responsibility for his own decision. However, he didn't even put much effort into stalling; he just sat in his bedroom like a Plague God, acting fierce and playing dumb. Heh, he actually feels a bit sorry for the Great Mages of the Qionglin; even if they wanted to reason with Du Zhengyi, the eldest son of the Qionglin, it would be useless. Mahjong is outside arguing with them, while Du Zhengyi hasn't paid them any mind at all, not even bothering to show his face. He knows Du Zhengyi doesn't care for details, but he loves to control the field, and his efficiency is incredibly high. He is certain that even if Du Zhengyi needed to investigate twelve High-Reaction Mages at once, he could still arrange a vacation for himself.

"Do you want earplugs?" Du Zhengyi asked him.

Luo Qi opened his eyes a crack and looked weakly at Du Zhengyi; he can be certain that Du Zhengyi doesn't have even a shred of inner struggle. Sure enough, there isn't a hint of worry on that face; he really is a person who is at ease no matter what. This is the quality of his that Luo Qi envies the most. Unlike himself, who always suspects someone is stepping on his tail when walking down the street, or worries if his pockets are leaking and if he's dropped any coins.

Just like now, he can't calm his heart down at all, and he can't sleep. Not only is he somewhat annoyed by the new information, but he is even more curious about how the Highland Mage could instantly discover the secret of the Puppet Legion, when he himself had gone through quite a lot of trouble.

Luo Qi closed his eyes and slowly lengthened his breathing, making himself look as if he had fallen back into sleep. Du Zhengyi wouldn't bother him, and his own consciousness also carefully skirted around Du Zhengyi. The Slime extended tentacles as thin as hair, circling and winding around the few closest to them. He identified several familiar consciousnesses, and with just a brief glance, he recognized Mahjong and Guan Xinyue. He didn't touch them; the consciousnesses of the others had no special defenses and were all ordinary Mages. He gently touched their consciousnesses, as if giving them a light push from behind, and fragments related to the Puppet Legion and the Highland Mage naturally surfaced in their minds.

Luo Qi watched the images floating in his mind quietly, his perspective switching between several people; different angles recorded the chaos when the Puppet Legion appeared out of thin air in the hall. Chaos, noise, and frantic bodies charging forward among the high-level Mages. He ignored these key pieces of information recorded by people's subjective views and pushed forward. The memory traced back to the beginning; the initial memory was Liu Ziyi suddenly letting out a cry. Someone asked Liu Ziyi what happened, and she replied with a string of data on field changes. Luo Qi is certain that those who could react didn't understand, and those who could understand were slow to react. Liu Ziyi must have realized it right then; in someone else's memory, he saw Liu Ziyi heave a long sigh, curse a string of words, and drag several people away. Just as she disappeared from the hall, several high-energy puppets broke out of their shells.

Among the group of chaotic Mages, it was immediately apparent who the Battle Mages were. The Battle Mages distributed in various areas of the hall were the first to react and immediately charged up. Someone cast a few protection spells at the first moment of chaos; Luo Qi switched through several people's memories and found the person who cast the shield: it was Mage Liu Li.

The timing of the protection spell was critical; almost at the same moment the magic took effect, the first high-reaction puppet erupted with a powerful Attack Magic. The ceiling was blown open not long after. Luo Qi didn't care much about who blew it up or who turned the tide; he moved quickly toward the latter part of the memories.

The Highland Mages also appeared in the upper hall almost simultaneously. The path to the garden was covered by the Highland Mages' Magic Field, and a new Barrier protected the Highland Mages' precious botanical garden from both inside and out. When Luo Qi froze the cactus in the garden, the Highland Mages had also appeared at the same time.

Luo Qi repeated this memory of several people over and over; looking from their different angles, the appearance of the Highland Mages was uniform and orderly, just like a super boy band making a grand entrance on stage.

Luo Qi stopped observing this memory repeatedly. In one person's subsequent memory, he saw the low-energy Puppet Legion rushing over, acting as a whole organism blindly sprinting toward the hope of life, destroying almost everything along the way. He couldn't help but sigh; he couldn't say why he would feel sorry for such an ugly, filthy, and deformed creature. An organism—it truly was an organism, a deformed creature "stitched" together mentally by at least several thousand puppets.

It possessed an independent consciousness and had completed its "existence." It rushed out from the gap Du Zhengyi had opened, running toward a new world that could contain them. But this world did not exist; the Sandbox is a box, and outside the box is another box. Frankenstein's monsters had nowhere to go. He had once connected himself to its mind; he remembers that loneliness lasting for centuries. When it rushed out, what it must have craved most was a peer. It's a pity no one could tell it that in all its existence, no matter where it ran, it was destined to be lonely.

The memories continued; he heard the Great Mages intermittently discussing ways to control it. The top Great Mages were not worried; containment was not difficult to achieve, and they discussed feasible plans calmly. This top-level meeting was very brief; what interrupted them was the fury of the Highland Mages.

Before this, he thought the Highland Mages were incapable of the emotion of fury. Their fury was like a thunderstorm on a summer night; even Great Mage Liu Li was taken aback.

"How dare you..." That was the only sentence Luo Qi heard clearly; the oldest Highland Mage glared at them. This anger left Luo Qi a bit confused; the Highland Mages have always been known throughout the Mage World for their emotional stability.

Luo Qi analyzed these memories aimlessly, unable to find any more relevant clues. The Highland Mages' anger erupted intensely, but it came and went quickly, soon suppressed. Luo Qi only saw these Highland Mages looking at those puppets in silence and gloom. The Battle Mages were still fighting the puppets; high-energy puppets were hard to deal with, and there were simply too many ordinary puppets.

But just at this moment, as if someone had cut the power, all the puppets, whether high-energy or ordinary, fell to the ground neatly and quietly. Luo Qi even saw a Battle Mage who couldn't stop their Attack Magic in time, directly striking down a Great Mage; several Battle Mages looked at each other in dismay. Luo Qi knew that the corpses on the ground had died a second time, and this time, it was a total death.

Luo Qi pondered whether he could manage to cut off the brain of an entire legion like that; perhaps he could, but the cost would also be enormous. He estimated the energy of the Highland Mages in the Consciousness World; that heavy power gradually became like a physical entity, pushing over in the mental world.

Luo Qi sat up abruptly, retreating from the Consciousness World in a disheveled state. Du Zhengyi also stood up, his expression somewhat dazed. "The Highland Mages are here."