Chapter 562: Meeting Up (4)

"Junior sister, little junior sister." Luo Qi called out to Liu Ziyi, who was eating mango sago, from across two people. "Is the sago delicious?"

Liu Ziyi held her spoon, raised her head, and looked at Luo Qi with a dazed expression. "Huh?"

"Is it delicious?" Luo Qi asked with a beaming smile.

Liu Ziyi looked left and right, hesitated for a moment, and said vaguely, "It's alright."

"If it's delicious, then take a break and send your senior brother a WeChat message," Luo Qi suggested.

"Tell him the sago is delicious?"

Luo Qi glared at Liu Ziyi. Liu Ziyi glared back at him, put down her magnetic spoon sullenly, and it made a "clack" sound in the bowl. She fished a mobile phone out of the small bag slung across her body. "Alright, alright, I know. Tell him to watch out for a butcher-like White Impermanence. Also, I won't tell him you've already slipped out."

Luo Qi smiled ingratiatingly. "So smart, too smart. Clever as ice and snow."

"But he didn't reply to me," Liu Ziyi said. "Are you sure he'll see it?"

"What smart person would intentionally miss a message sent by Ziyi? That would be asking for death," Luo Qi said flatteringly, though he was speaking the truth. His fingers tapped on the tabletop, and after a brief and rapid moment of deliberation, he turned his head to Wen Lin. "Let's continue. You suspect that pig butcher is a Lotus Burner; I agree with that. He might be monitoring you, but in my experience, monitoring without actually making a move is abnormal. Unless you never truly approached the key point."

A trace of displeasure flashed across Wen Lin's face, and the lines of her lips tightened. "Big Raccoon King, are you saying I'm useless? That after investigating for so long, it was all for nothing?"

"I didn't mean that," Luo Qi said, a soothing smile appearing on his face. "Screening is tedious but important work that requires huge sacrifices. Qionglin used the power of the entire Mage World and spent nearly a thousand years without discovering anything at Kongsang Mountain; it's unrealistic to expect you two to find clues in a month. Furthermore, looking at the current situation, they didn't contact you, perhaps just because you aren't the right people."

"What kind of people are the right people?" Wen Lin asked.

Luo Qi's mouth opened slightly, and everyone looked at him, waiting for his answer. But then the corners of his lips curled into a nice angle, turning into a teasing smile, and he looked at Wen Lin with a meaningful expression.

"Oh, fine," Wen Lin raised her head helplessly and let out a breath toward the ceiling. "I'm so stupid, I didn't mean to pry."

"You searched for everyone in Qiongqi Mountain who had nightmares or was mentally unstable; can you mark the locations of these human villages on the map?" Luo Qi asked.

"Now?" Wen Lin looked at the human waiters nearby, and two other tables of human families eating dessert.

"It doesn't matter, they won't look at us," Luo Qi said quietly and firmly.

A "hiss" sound came from Wen Lin's mouth, and she whistled. "Fine, I hadn't thought about looking at the locations of these villages. After all, some humans are complete blockheads; even if they live right on the Seal Land, they might not feel anything. But... since the Big Raccoon King wants to see, who can refuse?"

As she spoke, she opened both hands, and abundant Magic power rose instantly from her palms. Both girls' hair was blown back behind their shoulders, and a sand table with mottled light and shadow floated in the air twenty centimeters above the table. Mountains, rivers, streets, and villages were all clearly visible. She closed her eyes and pondered for a moment, and several red light spots flew up and landed on the sand table.

"That's it," Wen Lin said. "If there really were any patterns here, the Qionglin of the past should have discovered them long ago."

The golden light of the sand table illuminated Luo Qi's face. He watched it earnestly for a while and then said, "When Qionglin explored Kongsang Mountain with the greatest effort, it must have been after that riot a thousand years ago, but they returned empty-handed. As time passed, the world changed, and mages gradually began to ignore and forget this place, believing the Seal Beasts had long been cleared out. This situation continued until the last hundred years; perhaps the Seal had some changes, so it began to actively call out to mages. It seems that if mages want to discover ancient Seal Lands, they can mostly only do so in this passive form. However, living conditions in the west have been harsh over the last hundred years, and mages have lived in luxury and long since moved to human comfort zones, so much so that those receiving these calls are some mentally sensitive humans. The news has to pass through humans and be relayed back to the mage community, which of course takes a long time. Most ominously, for some reason, Qionglin ignored this warning, while the Lotus Burners noticed it instead."

Wusu interjected, "This probably has to do with Venerable Fan Shi. Venerable Fan has always been responsible for the management of Alien beasts and Psychic Beasts in Qionglin."

Luo Qi looked at Wen Lin, whose expression was somewhat uncomfortable. "Uh, Venerable... Fan, has some..."

"High-level gatherings..."

"Pervert parties."

Two voices said simultaneously; the first was Wen Lin, and the second was Shi Qian.

Luo Qi was surprised to see Shi Qian's face flush red, a thin layer of anger covering his face. Wen Lin shrugged and let out an awkward breath. Shi Qian continued indignantly, "Every time it's very bizarre, with different themes."

Wen Lin added, "Sometimes it's just appreciating human ancient paintings."

"Right," Shi Qian took over, looking as if he wanted to spit out phlegm in disgust, "More often it's showing off the speed of Alien beasts, with Mind Mages controlling them while we are responsible for fighting them!"

"Ha—" Luo Qi gave a dry laugh and said dryly, "He really... has an imagination."

Wusu shook his head helplessly. "It's certain that there must be Lotus Burners among these people. It won't be long before their higher-ups figure out what those things are and where they came from. I'm afraid that in their exchanges with Battle Mages, they realized that monsters are very useful, but Qionglin controls existing high-risk fierce beasts very strictly, so it's hard for them to get a few. It's far less satisfying than digging a mine themselves."

Luo Qi didn't speak; he was a bit distracted, thinking about his father, wondering if he was ordered to control monsters at these events.

"Luo Qi?" Wusu called him.

"Oh." Luo Qi came back to his senses, smiled, and said casually, "I was just thinking that Du Zhengyi is really honest. With so many fierce Alien beasts that could be psychically linked, they just got him a lion."

Guan Xinyue's expression changed, and she suddenly said, "It's fortunate it was a lion, otherwise you would have been dead long ago."

Luo Qi laughed dryly a few times and abruptly changed the subject. "It seems the mage Du Zhengyi is investigating was just unlucky. Maybe the White Impermanence was also looking for those abnormal humans and just happened to run into him."

Liu Ziyi suddenly said, "But that's no reason to kill him. Anyway, the appearance of the White Impermanence had already been seen by Wen Lin and the others; what difference does it make whether that witness is left alive or not?"

Shi Qian shook his head and said, "He is not a normal person. I have seen his eyes; killing means nothing to him. In his view, knocking someone unconscious or smashing someone to pieces makes no difference."

Luo Qi bit his lower lip silently. Then what about Han Yi? They had long realized that a human little girl could write human Magic; they grasped this situation earlier than Qionglin, so they wouldn't be just confirming it now. No, that's not right. They aren't killing indiscriminately, otherwise they would have crushed Wen Lin's throat long ago. Han Yi's conversation with him was just a prelude; they killed the mage in Kongsang Mountain, Ganzhou, to completely lure Du Zhengyi over, accurately leading him to a fixed location."

Wen Lin interrupted his train of thought and said sharply, "Are you still going to look at this map or not? Did you not see anything either? If not, I'm putting it away."

"Wait a moment," Luo Qi said. "Ziyi, can you find the Pendragon Track ruins here? I want the oldest and most complete ones, it doesn't matter if the stations are still usable."

"I should be able to," Liu Ziyi said.

"Find them, and project them all onto this map," Luo Qi said.

"What's the use?" Wusu asked with interest.

"Legend has it that Ganzhou was the earliest landing place of the Progenitor Mages, the place where we mages were born, which is the first settlement area of mages. In the legendary era of flourishing Magic, the Seal Land might not have been anything particularly secret; it might just have been a toy for the Progenitor Mages, not too far from the living areas of mages. We now need to determine where the true Ancient Mage gathering areas were; this can be determined by the density of the Pendragon Track stations, just as the core area of humans must be where subways and buses intersect. There might be several such places. We will ignore the most dense city centers and use the secondary dense areas to intersect with the areas where abnormal humans are produced; we might be able to identify several potential locations."

"Wait," Wen Lin said, "How can you apply human urban living experience to Ancient Mages?"

Luo Qi raised his eyes from the sand table to look at Wen Lin. "The greatest universal rule of the two worlds of mages and humans is logic. If the number of mages was prosperous enough to support cities, then the structure of the cities must be similar to human cities."

"How is that possible?" Wen Lin said, unable to believe it. "We are mages, we are magicians."

Luo Qi looked at her kindly. "If you think you are a god, then you will never be able to go even one step further beyond yourself."

Wusu suddenly looked at him, his eyes like needles. Luo Qi instinctively turned his head to look, but Wusu's expression had already calmed down. Liu Ziyi happened to clap her hands at this moment, and a blue light flew from the crystal on her wrist, turning into several points covering the sand table.

Everyone's attention was drawn to it. Liu Ziyi looked focused, rapidly adjusting the size of the light points and the intensity of the light to form layers on the map. Soon, everyone could see that there was an exceptionally complex Pendragon Orbital System near today's Ganzhou; that was undoubtedly the city of mages in the past.

Liu Ziyi's lips trembled. "I have to say, this is the densest Pendragon Orbital System in the world. The number of mages who gathered to live here at that time..."

"Can you estimate how many?" Luo Qi asked softly.

"At least a million," Liu Ziyi said. She dimmed the luster of this area, as if the ancient city had extinguished its lights in the valley. Several smaller dense station areas became more prominent, and red light spots flickered on the edge of one of the station areas, with a density that was not low.

"The core of the station is a valley. Where is the place with the red human spots?" Luo Qi asked.

Shi Qian stood up slowly, his face turning pale again. "This is Hongquangou Village; that person killed people right here. That valley is Hongquangou, a river valley."

Luo Qi looked at the map calmly. "Is there a glacier next to it?"

"Of course there's a glacier if there's a river valley," Liu Ziyi replied. "It's adjacent to the largest glacier area here."

(End of chapter)