Chapter 111: 3 [Progress Like a Riddle Person]

And at this moment, the original world.

Lao Zhang, you're here. Long Siwu, lounging on the recliner by the fire, tugged at her blanket and teasingly shouted at the old man dressed in white.

I thought you had already sneaked in with them, but I didn't expect you'd finally be willing to listen. Huff—

The newcomer took off the thick ear‑flap hat, removed the cold‑weather garments one by one, and naturally dragged a stool over to sit opposite Long Siwu.

What, you still expect me to go in? she pouted, a little angry.

Seeing that reaction basically confirms you can't get in—how's it going over there? Zhang Dao Yin narrowed his eyes slightly, took out a packet of tea from his pocket, and boiled it with the kettle in the tent.

Not good—I can't get in, and it seems to be rejecting me. Forcing my way in wouldn't be a problem, but I have to worry about the two of them, so I can only retreat.

I don't believe you'd go to all this trouble without having some idea.

He poked the firewood in the stove, making a sharp sound.

Xiao Wuming has the chance for my transcendence on her. Long Siwu turned her head toward the fire, her eyes slightly vacant, and said softly.

Why bother? We don't even know for sure—how can you be so certain and even place your bet so early? Zhang Dao Yin paused, then sighed softly.

I was still a bit hesitant before, but some things... heh, nothing much. Early bets bring early returns. I'm not really that invested in the Dragon King Proper God position. Or rather, I don't care about you guys. Long Siwu gave a low chuckle twice.

... Seeking good fortune and avoiding misfortune, leaving it to heaven. After a moment of silence, his tone was casual, like small talk, as he said casually.

So what? I'm not close with them, and whether they live or die is none of my business. Bai Long paused slightly, then said indifferently.

Cough, setting aside other things, even this tiny place called Earth is bound to fall into chaos. Recently, among the Strange Learning Society, some members with higher spiritual potential have begun reporting that they observed abnormal fluctuations in the void realm. Some spiritual beings living in secret realms and in the ordinary world have also retracted their spiritual power like quail. Old Daoist Zhang gave a light cough, his voice hoarse.

Looks like you're not completely clueless either. For something big enough that neither of them can escape, leaving early might still lead to a decent outcome.

Long Siwu pursed her lips, her tone hinting at envy.

Why must we flee? What's wrong with standing together with us to the end?

Zhang Dao Yin frowned slightly, speaking with mild dissatisfaction, as if he had also inferred something.

Huh~—don't feed me that line; who says my transcendence has to be escape? Watch your attitude, humanity. You don't understand her, the Strange Learning Society doesn't know her, the Mysterious Management Bureau is merely a superficial shallow analysis—you'll never get it! She's different.... Long Siwu's expression suddenly turned cold; she turned her head, releasing an aura that only one who has long stood at the very top of the food chain could possess, pouring it unreservedly onto the old man beside her.

She's just a human who ran out of some other secret realm, though her spiritual potential is indeed enviable. Hmm—

Zhang Dao Yin seemed lost in thought.

Don't think about going back to file a petty report—this isn't a threat; feel free to try. If you don't notice it right away, it's just lack of affinity, and if you later want to know, you can only wait to see whether she's willing to respond to you.

Long Siwu withdrew the aura she had released, speaking disdainfully.

She was naturally referring to the time when Wu Ming was still in school, interacting with the teachers during class.

Zhang Dao Yin's peripheral vision seemed to catch Bai Long's hand instinctively blocking a certain spot.

I see, I roughly understand. Still, let me offer one piece of advice: everything has a price. Although the Dragon King position has offended those few from the East Sea, you could at least enjoy several years, possibly even a millennium. If you choose the cosmos, your fate will be as unpredictable as hers—whether you truly transcend or drop dead in the next moment. A flicker of loneliness crossed Zhang Dao Yin's eyes; he slightly trembled as he reached out to pat Long Siwu's head.

At that moment, Long Siwu merely responded in silence, even lowering her head a bit to let him finish that pat.

You've lived so long yourself—I've practically grown up watching you—don't you want to give everything a shot? After Zhang Lao Dao stopped his hand, she poured herself a cup of hot tea and muttered softly.

Pfft—don't talk like that. I'm old, I carry too much, and I also want to see how far this fledgling nation can go; as for the Star Sea, that's left to the successors. Though I've entered the Dao, I'm now nearing my limit. I am ultimately human—long-lived compared to ordinary beasts, but still short compared to true longevity. My thought patterns will gradually wear away, so I've planned to, in another ten or so years, shed my mortal coil and leave my body to a more suitable new consciousness. By then, you can just find him and be friends. He also poured himself a cup of tea into the temporary aluminum lunchbox and sipped it slowly.

Hey hey, why are you saying such depressing stuff again? Do you really want to add to my mental burden, old fogey? Long Siwu flicked her fingers twice in front of his face, a bit annoyed.

After all, I'm human and old, while you may have the physique of a girl, your age by dragon reckoning is still a toddler just learning to walk—so it's natural you'd think that way. I just want to put up a safeguard for when you truly take flight, to avoid some issues. Zhang Dao Yin rose, stroked his beard, and looked down at the somewhat puzzled Long Siwu.

Your transcendence means severing ties with humanity—but what then? I don't want you to later meet them on the battlefield; upheaval is coming, and I can only do my best to consider every possibility.

... I'm overthinking. How could I...?

Better to think too much than to do nothing, since I have no foundation either.

Having said that, Long Siwu also fell silent, her gaze unintentionally drifting toward the Spacetime Gate.

Their conversation ended just like that, in a atmosphere that had grown somewhat cold.

Outside the tent, on the makeshift runway around the camp, a new small transport aircraft was parked. A streamlined research team also arrived here after Wu Ming and the others entered the Spacetime Gate, and began follow‑up research.

They need to confirm the status of the spatial link point from the outside.

——————————————————

Hiss—pop—snap.

A glowing blue sphere shot from the tip of the staff, tracing a not‑slow arc. When it hit the ground it burst like a soap bubble and vanished, but the slight scorch mark left in the earth showed this projectile wasn't mere decoration.

It has some attack capability, but the firing rate....

Pop-pop-pop~~

The girl looked disgusted at the pile of tiny missiles, like a child blowing bubble solution, that exploded and vanished in midair.

It's hard to link these things to an attack.

Yet the other staff yielded her a little surprise.

Examining the sole stone shard set into it, one sees a gradually phantasmal image of three people; the faint dots behind the most solid figure suggest a sense of altering one's form.

Wu Ming raised the staff, aimed at a nearby dirt mound, and focused her will.

Screech————!!

A white light ball shot from the staff's tip at roughly the speed of a hand‑thrown pebble; upon reaching the target point, Wu Ming felt her body lighten, and she found herself at the spot where the projectile had landed.

Wow, position transfer—this thing is really useful.

Mina beside her exclaimed in amazement.

Hey, Mina, can you translate the writing on this?

After testing the effects, Wu Ming, adhering to the principle of not missing any detail, pulled the stone shards from both staffs and pointed to the engraved characters on the back, asking.

Sure, let me see... this one is 'Bubble Spark', and the stone that changes position reads 'Small Teleportation Bullet'. Mina pointed at the inscription and read it aloud.

Sounds more like a toy. Wu Ming smirked, waved at Mina to take it, then reached toward the house behind her; the hastily fabricated strange crystal shot forth, carrying a staff‑transformed gun and a neatly packed backpack.

Her spiritual power remained effective here—this also counts as a boon for Wu Ming.

Feeling the familiar sense of control, the girl clenched her fist, split off another backpack to give Mina, and then pointed toward the distant tall trees.

Let's go!

This robe was found outside together with the staffs; at that time, two staffs were propping it up like a scarecrow. As for why I put it on, although I've never seen this garment at home, I always felt the robe was familiar, so after a quick check that seemed fine, I wore it. Not bad..?

On the way, Mi Na explained her discovery.

Marvelous intuition.... Hmm... nothing, you look good in anything. Quite nice.... Wu Ming thought of some memories with a sense of déjà vu, thinking deeply.

The mountain looks close, but you'll die trying to reach it. Although the giant tree serving as a landmark looked near, the two of them walked for three and a half hours according to their watches, not only getting hardly any closer but also growing gradually colder with the continual uphill.

Wu Ming had also considered using a wand with small teleportation bolts to hurry along, but since only the person who fires the magic bolt gets teleported, to avoid the low-level mistake of splitting up and getting killed, they could only walk slowly like this.

"Not right... not quite right." Wu Ming lowered her head, checked the time again, and muttered.

"Ah——. I can't go on, I can't go on, I need to rest, huh——." Mi Na saw the girl stop, had no mind to ask about her feeling off, and instead simply took off her pack, panting and complaining.

After all, she had no spiritual energy and was not a practitioner of any spiritual energy system.

"According to the time, it's already past three in the afternoon, but that celestial body in the sky—or whatever else it is—hasn't moved at all!" Wu Ming had been monitoring various information dynamics.

"Moreover, things here are too pure. Along the way I haven't felt even a bit of silica that I could control."

She furrowed her brow, pinched the nearby strange crystal into the shape of a shovel and a pointed rod, and turned over the soil on the ground.

The soil under her feet seemed to be pure earth, just earth, not the mixture she was familiar with from her original world. Here, earth is earth. Wu Ming also set down her pack, solemnly grabbed a handful of the turned soil from the ground, even stuck her hand into the softer turned earth, yet still felt nothing that could connect with her magic.

Being idle is still being idle; Wu Ming took out her notebook she brought along to record discoveries and doubts, while also controlling more strange crystals to form various tools to dig the surrounding soil.

If the surface soil is like this, what about the rock beneath the soil layer?

The result was disappointing; although as expected they had dug down to the rock layer, after smashing a few samples the rock was just like soil—no matter how finely crushed, it remained 'rock', well, pure rock.

"Is this what they mean by incomplete rules?" Wu Ming pondered the explanation given by the 'butterfly' carefully.

She also took the wand she had previously picked up from Mi Na for close inspection, loaded with the 'Bubble Spark' magic—let's just call this crystal piece that for now—this wand is uniformly earthen yellow, with a transparent gem of indeterminate material set at the tip. Wu Ming likewise released spiritual energy or her own magic at it, but still got no feedback, only the same erodability as ordinary matter. To avoid damaging the wand's structure and rendering it unusable, she could only do this much.

As for the wand used to shift position, it is much cruder, looking like a short, uniform rolling pin, with little decoration, only the tip painted white to indicate the emission end, and entirely green. Based on current information, Wu Ming also cannot infer any relationship between the wand's outward color and its inner nature.

After preparing for about half an hour more, the two set off again.

"No signs of life have been found, not even small animals. Even the horseshoe crab reagent just now detected no microorganisms like bacteria; this world is more desolate than I imagined. Yet there are plants on the ground—strange. Haven't we found any traces of other active life?"

Wu Ming shoved the all-in-one test she had made back into its box, took out a plastic sealed bag, filled it with a few stones to use as a marker stuck in the ground, and said to Mi Na beside her.

"Ha——, I didn't notice, I'm too exhausted, I didn't expect your stamina to be this abnormal, huh—."

Mi Na, who is just an ordinary student, although her physical strength has recovered somewhat, the burden on her body still presses on her in the short term.

Wu Ming saw this, lightly tapped her own head, then diverted a bit of scanning crystal dust to attach to her pack, providing an upward force to help her.

Another boring stretch of travel; after testing five reagent boxes with no result, Wu Ming didn't even bother to make a marker, just walked mechanically for a bit, then released spiritual energy to transmute part of the ground material into strange crystal, pinched it into a sign, and continued toward the giant tree until.....

"? Why aren't we walking?" Feeling the hand behind her that had been holding hers all along suddenly stop, Wu Ming immediately asked.

"Look, what are those?" Mi Na pointed toward the direction of the trees, which were considerably closer, where a dark mass lay about a hundred eighty meters away in the middle stretch.

"Not sure, maybe.... a tree hollow?" Wu Ming, who couldn't see clearly, guessed.

A dead tree, no matter how grandly described in legends, is still just a tree.

Having a tree hollow would be quite reasonable.... right?

"... Get ready, there's nothing else nearby worth exploring. Let's recover our strength quickly; we'll start climbing the giant tree directly later." Wu Ming looked around in all directions, confirmed that the only suspicious point and the only place to advance exploration was this very tree before her, and then gave the order.

Afterward, she stepped forward to rub the shoulders of the already exhausted Mi Na to encourage her, took a deep breath to gather her strength, and walked ahead. 5

"Hey——! Hold on! Come——up!!"

Still nothing unexpected; after exerting effort, Wu Ming let out a slight sigh, feeling a bit disappointed, but immediately scolded herself in her heart for being meddlesome.

"Any problems?" Seeing the person in charge's expression off, Mi Na instinctively gripped her staff and asked.

"Can I say I'm just bored and find it weird not to have any unexpected feeling?" Wu Ming scratched her head, looked back at the two packs tossed at the tree roots, her tone somewhat irritable.

"No problem is fine; better not have any trouble." Hearing the girl's words, Mi Na muttered while checking the tree hole ahead.

"Ha~~~~"

Behind her, the somewhat mentally fatigued Wu Ming glanced at the time again, stretched a little, then turned and followed Mi Na, who had gone in first, to begin exploring.

The exterior of the tree hole has nothing much to say; its material is the same as the part sampled during the climb—some kind of dried‑up plant. Yet Wu Ming also noticed other doubts: this world, besides the defects previously found, also lacks a complete cycle. Although there are a few small puddles at her feet, the parts soaked in them show no change, no swelling from water absorption, and no signs of rot.

All the irrationalities along the way, although the time worm explained that it was a problem of the world, Wu Ming still couldn't grasp it all directly, and thus felt a great deal of unease from insufficient information control.

"After leaving Long Siwu, it wasn't long before a feeling of insecurity like when I first crossed over appeared—what exactly am I afraid of?"

Wu Ming, heavy‑hearted, kept exploring and in a passage without branches found a dim stone platform.

A kind of dull metal, cut with an artistic touch, formed a four‑sided trapezoidal table—smaller on top, larger on bottom—not high, reaching only up to the girl's calf.

Mi Na stepped forward and rubbed it with a small shovel, only to find that the dullness was merely a layer of unknown rust; beneath it the bright metallic color reflected the glow stick's light all around the space.

Behind her, Wu Ming immediately noticed the unusual spot—under these circumstances where other circulatory systems are incomplete, the very appearance of this material change is itself abnormal.

After a cleaning, the metal platform revealed its original appearance; once the flashlight was turned on, the platform that had been reflecting yellow fluorescence returned to normal bright silver metal.

It looks somewhat like titanium or platinum; Wu Ming is unsure whether this world still has those ordinary substances she knows.

There were some things to be expected; the two used the metal platform to illuminate the cave and found some new scattered notes.

—————

Day Seven

By interpreting this world's Jade Emerald Record, I confirmed that a long‑dead tree is the world's origin, its center.

However, I discovered something different within it.

"Eternal Wealth"

I found this thing by chance on the metal platform in the tree hole; for now I don't know what it does.

But whenever I look at it, an indescribable desire seizes me, calling on me to claim it as my own.

Yet who would have thought I possess 'source substance'—how could such a bewitching thing move me even a bit?

But who placed it here, and what is the altar on the snow mountain demanding?

I still need to continue exploring.

Those worms outside are truly a nuisance—why do the eggs on the trees hatch into worms?

——————

Third time.

I found a room beneath the western desert pyramid made of the same material as the metal platform here; what is the relationship between the two?

Maybe I should try sending this gold coin there, but my condition isn't good right now; I have a premonition that if I actually take it, something will definitely change.

Maybe I should wait until the fourth cycle to do this?

——————

Seventh time.

I see, that's the case.

Following such rules, perhaps I can truly defeat whatever guards *** and thus bring this alchemy back to my world for real.

——————

There are three sheets in total, each recording the progress of Mina's father at different times.

Some clues can be discerned, but they are still riddles.

"Did we miss finding some?"

Mina looked at the note fragments that felt disjointed from before, feeling somewhat worried.

"We will definitely find them all; no matter what, we must fully explore this world."

While comforting the girl, Wumeng recalled in her mind the good view she had gotten from a higher position at the tree-hole entrance earlier, and her observation of the surroundings.

Behind the house they came from there is indeed a not-low snow mountain, but because there is a hook-shaped cliff blocking their path, plus the huge trees seen upon going out are quite shocking, Wumeng's view at the time was also exactly blocked by that cliff, so she naturally chose the conspicuous giant tree as the first step of exploration.

However, looking at this, there is definitely something on the snow mountain that also needs to be checked out.