Chapter 689: Everyone Needs an Amulet

Perhaps it was the content of those two work orders that had an impact on Qionglin, as a very strange atmosphere began to permeate the place. First, a large number of Mind Mages entered Qionglin; even if they only appeared due to work requirements, as long as the number of Mind Mages around them increased, the Mages would always feel uneasy. Second, almost all Experimental Mages were placed on an investigation list, and they had no memory of why, which caused their unease to multiply.

These Experimental Mages would be extremely focused if they were busy, but if they were left aimlessly idle, they would become particularly prone to spewing nonsense. Their volume of nonsense was immense; Du Zhengyi had excellent hearing, and the Experimental Mages did not care at all if their words were overheard.

The topic they discussed most was why the Mind Mages had the right to come and inspect their brains, and why Wushan had closed its doors to the outside for unknown reasons, with Wushan Mages abroad also suspending all business operations.

These two events caused a faint fear to grow in the depths of everyone's hearts. The Mind Mages were coming to verify their level of purity, and the Magic World seemed to have undergone a massive change. Wushan had always been able to sense such massive changes; they were like the barometer of this world, the canary in the magic mine. In every legendary era of crisis, Wushan would be the first to sniff out the changes, they would conceal their tracks, disappear from the eyes of the world, and then the disaster for the Mages would arrive.

Du Zhengyi listened quietly; even he admitted that what Qionglin was doing now was like a madman in hysterics. He knew that it was Pei Shu who made the decisions, and only Pei Shu's handiwork could erase the memories of so many people in a basically harmless way. He had known Pei Shu for many years and could be considered to have been raised by Pei Shu; he knew Pei Shu would not go insane. Therefore, Zhou Quan's analysis was correct: if Pei Shu could do this, it could only be to cover up a monumental scandal.

This scandal was very serious, serious enough to shake the foundations of Qionglin, and even shake the foundations of the entire world. In fact, he could vaguely guess a part of the matter; he also lived in the human world and would not be blind enough to ignore major human events. When he brought Luo Qi into the Seal Land, he had expected that Luo Qi would inevitably comprehend faster and understand more deeply. Luo Qi would discover some truths, and Luo Qi's interpretation would be deeper than his own.

Perhaps the existence of Mages itself was the scandal. Luo Qi might be very shocked, but he did not particularly care.

More importantly, why could Luo Qi's discovery not be covered up? Luo Qi would not take the initiative to expose himself; that was not his personality.

He tested whether he had any desire to attack Luo Qi.

There was none.

He had originally worried that the vague restraint on him would include these things, but it was clear that the Gushan Guard was indeed not a lackey of Qionglin. Pei Shu's judgment did not entirely represent the Magic World itself. What he guarded was simpler and purer than these things; otherwise, the restraint would not work at all.

Therefore, Pei Shu would not dispatch him to deal with Luo Qi. Now that manpower was even more short-handed, if one were to rank by priority, Luo Qi was a more severe but not the most urgent trouble for Qionglin. The number of Battle Mages and Level 1 Executive Mages was already stretched thin; a portion of these people were now untrustworthy because they had been contaminated by the Lotus Burner, and another portion was untrustworthy because they had been "contaminated" by Luo Qi. Du Zhengyi belonged to the latter, so now Pei Shu and the high-level officials of Qionglin were pretending that he had become an invisible person.

He had felt like an invisible person before, but now this feeling was a little different. Now he was like a corpse; they avoided talking about him, waiting for him to slowly go cold, and then bury him under the grass with a sloppy funeral.

He sat in the cafeteria for an entire afternoon. Several batches of people had passed through the cafeteria; some had gone to accept investigations, and some had returned here after a phased investigation to drink something to soothe their overstretched nerves. There were no bars in Qionglin, and everyone had no heart for work, so they eventually gathered in the cafeteria to drink the mediocre alcohol provided by the cafeteria. Some Experimental Mages had already begun to secretly sell drinks of unknown origin; it was said that they had the effect of soothing the nerves and could make people daydream, so that when the Mind Mages checked their brains, they could only see absurd mixtures of truth and falsehood, which helped them protect their privacy.

At this time, Du Zhengyi did not feel anything; if the Experimental Mages did not make a fool of themselves one day, they would feel that the day was dull and tasteless.

But the Experimental Mages who arrived in the evening began to mysteriously sell a type of Amulet; it was a red stone set in a black silver ring setting. To sell them well, the Mage selling the items began to tell stories to his believers. The story started like this: the agate mines in Baoshan, Yunnan, have you heard of them? The red agate deep in the earth carries the magic of the Ancestor Mages, magic so powerful that even humans can perceive it. During the Qing Dynasty, people with power would wear those red agates on their heads! But have you heard? Now those mines in Baoshan have all been sealed by humans; humans dare not continue digging. Do you know why? Because greedy humans dug too deep! They awakened one of the Ancestor Mages sleeping deep underground—the Flame Demon.

Du Zhengyi woke up from his drowsy state of detachment; this story had such distinct personal traces that it was very much like the set of tricks Luo Qi used to deceive ignorant Mages.

There was a small ethnic group in Yunnan where the men were all very short, while the women were particularly tall. So when the women were planting and working, they often carried their husbands in baskets on their backs. The reason they were so short was to adapt to working in the mines to obtain these precious red agates. But those red stones were tempered by the flames spewed out by the Flame Demon. The Flame Demon was the one among the Ancestor Mages who could best restrain the Mind Mages, but he was a fallen Ancestor, so he was suppressed by other Ancestor Mages deep underground in Yunnan.

Du Zhengyi finally remembered; this was a movie that Luo Qi had strongly requested he watch together. At the time, Du Zhengyi had watched it feeling drowsy. What was it called? Magic Necklace? No, he glanced at the ring in their hands; it was "Lord of the Rings".

Now, even sitting in the cafeteria in a daze, he could hear Luo Qi's bullshit. In the future, would these bullshit stories of Luo Qi spread throughout the Magic World?

"So as long as you wear the ring, you can restrain the inspection of the Qionglin Mind Mages and absolutely protect your privacy. The method of use is to rub the stone three times with your right thumb..."

Du Zhengyi stood up and walked toward the scalper. Restrain the inspection of the Qionglin Mind Mages? Wearing this thing, I'm afraid you will all be judged as contaminants. Luo Qi would make the entire Qionglin even more frantic.

He reached out from behind that person and took away a ring.

"You have to pay to buy it before you can touch it!" that Experimental Mage shouted, but when he turned his head and saw who it was, he swallowed in terror, and his other hand hurriedly hid the remaining bag of rings inside his clothes, fearing they would be confiscated by Du Zhengyi.

Du Zhengyi gave him a cold look, turned around, and walked back to his original seat to sit down.

The ring was turned over in his hand; in the middle of the oxidized black silver ring setting was embedded a small red stone. The style was the ethnic style of humans, a style common at roadside stalls, looking like a sloppy plagiarism by Luo Qi. He fiddled with the ring back and forth, his finger slowly touching the stone.

A warm sensation flowed along his fingertip, and a simple consciousness suddenly became cheerful when it approached his own. There was no message; perhaps Luo Qi felt it was not safe enough. The consciousness, which originally had a clear meaning, performed a self-deletion after identifying his consciousness. Those hallucinogenic thoughts all disappeared, leaving only one feeling: the warm feeling of an arm wrapped around his shoulder, carrying a childish, noisy air. The dam deep in his consciousness was gently reinforced by this wisp of consciousness.

Forty-eight hours later.

Liu Li looked at Pei Shu nervously, "What is inside this?"

A pile of confiscated rings was piled on Pei Shu's desk, and his expression was gloomy.

After Liu Li urged him for the third time, he said, "Just a trick, not worth mentioning."

?? Another short story "Do Not Enter the Cage", a story of growth. Not from a fool to a badass, but the opposite.