Chapter 676: The Ancestor's Gift (65)

Guan Xinyue lost her balance, her center of gravity shifting toward the inside of the coffin. A tremendous sound came from behind her, but she had no time to look, reaching out her right hand toward the edge of the Bronze Coffin. A distorted memory surfaced in her; her hands should have been covered in rough barbs, and the sweat glands in her palms should have been able to secrete highly adhesive sweat. As long as she could manage to hook onto the edge of the Bronze Coffin, she would not fall.

Her fingers gripped the bronze rim, her tense nerves instantly relaxing, her heart sinking back into her chest. A distant memory appeared in her mind: her hands gripping a green branch, her lean body light and agile, the density of her core muscles like metal, allowing her to easily shed the thin gravity and leap toward the golden sun. The world became clear in her perception; wind passing through the forest canopy brought tides, sunlight shimmered on every leaf and every beetle, birds swept across the mountains, and the lower-oxygen air made her spiracles feel incredibly comfortable.

Suddenly, her fingers slipped from the cold metal edge. The illusory memory seemed to emit a faint "click" in her mind; the memory shattered, and she returned to her own body. The human body was heavy and fragile, its joints prone to injury, its waist and abdomen soft, firmly captured downward by Earth's gravity. Losing her balance was no longer a pleasant game, but a deep-seated fear.

Her heart plummeted back down. Before she could even scream, her clumsy body fell. This moment was stretched out long; she struggled in a panic. While the loud sound behind her had not yet ceased, she felt another force, like an inescapable torrent, wrapping around and suctioning her. She was certain she had already slid into the Bronze Coffin and would immediately crash into the bottom, but that force pulled her backward as if to tear her body apart. Guan Xinyue panicked; she had regained consciousness but did not know what was happening. Behind her was the wall of the Bronze Coffin—was she going to be strangled to death against the bronze coffin by this force? What was this? Was this a Curse of the undead? She truly shouldn't have climbed onto the coffin; this didn't seem like something she would do. Had she been possessed by a ghost just now?

But no matter what she prayed for, it was as if she had been grabbed by a bewitched coffin. She collided with that hard bronze, thinking in a panic that she might be trapped inside the Bronze Coffin. Were the human faces and beast faces on those bronze vessels all people who had been trapped?

Her mind was in chaos, the scream she let out stuffed back into her throat. Her body hit the bronze with a heavy thud, and then she felt as if she had been scattered. She knew that should only be her imagination, but she had indeed passed through two layers of bronze coffin shells; the only possibility was that her body had been scattered and reassembled inside and outside the coffin respectively.

She fell to the ground, colliding back-to-back with someone. She let out a scream, feeling as if her internal organs were about to be knocked out of place, and she cursed with a profanity that started with Luo Qi and ended with Luo Qi. It couldn't be anyone else but Luo Qi; from the very beginning, it must have been because of him! The necklace on her neck flashed one last time, only now extinguishing its luster. She shouldn't have fallen into the coffin in the first place; he must have done something.

With astonishing willpower, she jumped up, ignoring the pain in every joint of her body, and turned around, wanting to kill Luo Qi.

Luo Qi was half-sprawled on the ground, covered in blood, holding someone in his arms. Hearing the sound, he raised his head to look at her, his eyes hollow. A few drops of blood were splattered on his pale face—that was his brother's blood. Guan Xinyue's heart softened; Du Zhengyi was going to die.

"I said... you can't use me anymore..." she said half-heartedly, her gaze landing on Du Zhengyi's face, searching that face for a final shred of hope. If he died, there really wouldn't be a single good person left in the Magic World.

"I don't know how to calculate the Beacon for Teleportation; I only thought of the method of using a person for positioning. I could only trust you," Luo Qi answered weakly. He could have chosen not to answer her, but it was as if he couldn't control himself from speaking, muttering a few more sentences in a torrent before fiercely gritting his teeth to restrain himself.

She said nothing. When he gave her that cursed necklace again, he hadn't expected her to actually wear it. If she had thrown the necklace away, Luo Qi wouldn't have known what consequences the Teleportation Magic would have; he only had a superficial understanding of Magic. She had chosen to keep the necklace all along. Luo Qi had crudely assumed she would keep shrinking along the wall, so the area within a one-meter radius of her would likely be empty space. It was a crude method, but it worked.

Luo Qi propped himself up again, half-carrying and half-dragging Du Zhengyi as he walked outward. Guan Xinyue followed, gritting her teeth to help him lift Du Zhengyi. "Is he still alive?"

The cabin door opened automatically as if recharging again, and the spaceship emitted a sharp, clear cry. "He is still alive," Luo Qi said, as if he could only be certain at this very moment.

"How can we keep him alive? Do you have a way?" Guan Xinyue asked, ignoring the black and white Mages of various kinds who had been attracted. The world seemed to shrink once again, becoming only the three of them.

"I have some conjectures," Luo Qi said in a low voice. He clenched his jaw tightly, his eyes wide open, his voice trembling as if he were sobbing.

"Don't be afraid, your conjectures have always been right," Guan Xinyue said.

"Is that so? If I guessed wrong this time..."

"Stop talking nonsense!" Guan Xinyue said impatiently, cutting Luo Qi off decisively.

Luo Qi closed his mouth, his trembling becoming less noticeable. He faced all the prying gazes around him with a gloomy face. "Get lost."

The onlookers around them suddenly scattered, scrambling to escape as if an invisible fear had exploded here. Luo Qi and Guan Xinyue successfully brought Du Zhengyi back to the Second Cabin, just like injecting a massive amount of energy into a spaceship that had been silent for a thousand years. Countless devices, both those they had discovered earlier and those they hadn't, powered on simultaneously. Liu Ziyi, who had been studying the console in the First Cabin, also stumbled in at this moment.

"Luo Qi, what's going on... Senior Brother?" She froze.

"Ziyi, tell everyone that if they want to leave, they should come to this ship. This is the only place that can leave the Seal Land as quickly as possible. After you're done, go to the First Cabin and wait for me," Luo Qi said, pausing here. He was struggling to put Du Zhengyi into the Pillar Container in the middle of the room. "Be sure to keep Zhao Jiaozhu controlled there. If Du Zhengyi... then you will have to rely on Zhao Jiaozhu to maintain the basic operation of this ship."

Liu Ziyi asked nothing and turned to run out.

Guan Xinyue helped Luo Qi put Du Zhengyi into that standing coffin with a sense of horror, then watched with horror as the container automatically swallowed the person in the latter half of the process as if it were alive. The dying Du Zhengyi maintained a standing posture in the solution. But she knew that anyone who came out of this would age rapidly and turn into a skeleton.

"You don't mean to keep him living in the container forever, do you?"

Luo Qi stood next to a device that looked very much like a console. Du Zhengyi's genes and his life force activated this equipment together. He reached out to touch the Crystal blocks on the console one by one. Several versions of Luo Qi were released into these Crystal containers. He traversed all the knowledge bases in his own brain, comparing them with the spaceship's knowledge, and several split versions of Luo Qi ran this task synchronously.