Chapter 221: Zhang Suannai's Boring Day

The Gobitai is very hot during the day.

Extremely hot.

Hot to the point where one needs to wear more clothes to ensure it isn't quite so hot.

Most people here are fully armed and wrapped up thick, not a single patch of skin exposed—

The elite troops of Yiguo and Lan Country wear battle armor; the auxiliary rune groups inside the armor can handle various climates and resist high temperatures. Although the rest of the troops only wear standard-issue uniforms, they also have comprehensive functional inserts, which can still withstand the heat.

By comparison, the Dukin Government Army and the Watchers appear quite shabby, wearing only thin uniforms or everyday clothes, with cloth wrapped around their necks and heads.

Zhang Suannai, however, remains dressed lightly, as if she fears neither the sun nor the heat.

A loose white short-sleeved T-shirt, with orange stripes on one cuff and sky-blue stripes on the other, fresh and youthful.

Below, she wears shorts, a pair of toned legs that are straight and long, her skin so fair it is dazzling. On her feet are athletic training shoes and rainbow socks, her hair tied into braids hanging behind her head, looking both out of place with the surrounding environment and out of place with the surrounding soldiers.

Yet she is truly born beautiful, with a great figure, and the aura about her is wonderful as well.

But the most interesting thing is her behavior.

Many people cannot help but cast their gaze toward her.

Every time one looks at her, it is a different scene—

Zhang Suannai walks back and forth along the main barrel of a Heavy Shield Tank, walking from the very back to the muzzle, her figure steady, then turning around to walk back;

Zhang Suannai sits cross-legged on top of an early-warning War Chariot, spinning in circles following the spiritual sense detector, her braids whipped up into the air;

Zhang Suannai lies spread-eagled on the Gobitai, sun-drying herself like a piece of jerky;

Zhang Suannai sits on her Sword, shuttling everywhere, specifically picking places with many people and vehicles, flying to and fro;

Zhang Suannai goes to chat with a Lan Country officer, and after ten minutes, she despises them for not being able to speak Chinese, calling them an illiterate, worse than a beggar;

Zhang Suannai wreaks havoc on the desert tamarisk trees;

Zhang Suannai teases someone's military dog, getting chased all over the place;

Zhang Suannai goes to ask for someone's chewing gum to eat;

……

Gradually, it reaches dusk.

The sunset in the vast desert is stunningly beautiful.

Zhang Suannai, who had volunteered to help cook only to be kicked out, sits bored on top of an infantry fighting vehicle, her hands supporting her on either side of her body, her extremely eye-catching long legs dangling in the breeze as she gazes into the distance.

A figure wearing Daoist robes walks over from below, stops, and looks up at her, saying, "You seem to have had a lot of fun today."

"Wrong! I'm so bored..."

Zhang Suannai stops swinging her legs, looks down to meet the gaze of this young Daoist, and asks in return, "Are you bored?"

"Not bored."

"What are you doing for fun?"

"Meditation, cultivation, reading, refining the heart."

"So boring, I'm so bored, it's so boring here, there's no internet at all..."

"Do you want to read a book? I can lend you one."

"I don't want to read, I want to play games, I want to go online, I want to watch cartoons, I want to scroll through short videos, I want to be cold-shouldered by my roommate..." Zhang Suannai says incessantly, then suddenly remembers something—

This was something she wanted to ask yesterday, but after her attention was slightly diverted, she had forgotten.

So she leans forward slightly to get closer to this young Daoist, her voice dropping very low:

"Do you have an understanding of the Secret Sect?"

"Yes."

"You also practice the Secret Sect as a secondary path?"

"I have dabbled in it." Zhong Miao Zhimen admits it quite readily, as he is the most highly regarded disciple of the Daoist sect.

"I heard that Secret Sect Practitioners can peek into the future?"

"Yes, but it is not as exaggerated as the rumors say; to be able to know the past and know the future, one must have a very high level of cultivation."

"What if the cultivation level isn't high?"

"Then at most, one can only vaguely perceive the future trend of things around them, and combined with guesswork, one can obtain relatively accurate results; at least it will be more accurate than the random guesses of ordinary people who have no intuition at all." Zhong Miao Zhimen says, asking Zhang Suannai, "What's wrong?"

"There is someone around me who is especially good at guessing; whatever they guess, they hit the mark."

"Do you suspect they are a Secret Sect Practitioner?"

"I didn't suspect it before, but now I do." Zhang Suannai says firmly, "My intuition is very accurate; it's not random guessing without any sense of it."

"What kind of person are they?"

"They have a Heavenly Human Bloodline, very cold and aloof—no, wait, sometimes cold and aloof, sometimes not."

"Are they sometimes like a god?"

"She is my goddess."

"I mean..."

Zhong Miao Zhimen organizes his words: "Anyway, for those who practice the Secret Sect path—excluding those like me who have only dabbled in it—those who truly practice the Secret Sect path, besides peeking into the underlying rules of the world, are also very good at reading people's inner thoughts; nothing can be hidden from them..."

"Right, right, right!"

Zhang Suannai nods repeatedly, already fully convinced.

Zhong Miao Zhimen is interrupted by her and feels a bit helpless, but continues: "However, the human heart is too complex, and those who are exquisite and transparent are few and far between. Therefore, in the process of peeking into the human heart, on one hand, they easily feel disappointed in the human heart, and on the other hand, they easily establish an absolute sense of superiority in this process, despising mortals from every angle, like cold and unfeeling gods; both aspects may easily lead to a person being lonely for life."

After hearing this, Zhang Suannai frowns.

Suddenly, she feels it doesn't quite sound like Ning Qing anymore.

Zhang Suannai does often feel Ning Qing's coldness and contempt toward her, but then again, what she despises is her intelligence and behavior. Come to think of it, Zhang Suannai often sees such expressions in the eyes of others, especially when at the sect; many people look at her like that, and she looks at others like that too. It couldn't be that the Sword Sect is actually entirely made up of hidden Secret Sect Practitioners, could it?

Disappointed in the human heart?

A cold and heartless god?

Absolutely impossible!

My roommate is so good to me!

And...

Never mind, better not to mention it.

Zhong Miao Zhimen stood below, watching her expression, inferring her inner thoughts from it, and asked uncertainly:

"Does she not seem like one?"

"I don't think she is that cold and heartless; she is still very cute," Zhang Suannai said. "When she goes out, she even specifically brings food back for me, and she even specifically cooks several kinds of dishes just to make the mixed rice bowl I love to eat."

"If a Secret Sect Practitioner can see through the human heart while not only accepting its complexity, darkness, and filth, but also remaining indifferent and maintaining a normal heart and an objective eye, then that would be a truly remarkable Secret Sect Practitioner," Zhong Miao Zhimen said to her. "This sounds simple, but it is actually very, very difficult. At least I cannot do it; I cannot even manage to correctly choose when to look at the heart and when to look at the tracks when viewing a person."

"And she even dates," Zhang Suannai added.

"The Secret Sect Practitioners I have heard of are usually all alone because they have long since seen through the human heart, and have even long since seen the ending."

"Then she definitely isn't one."

"Among the newborns born in the world every hundred years, perhaps only a few dozen, or a hundred, possess the talent for Secret Sect cultivation, and perhaps only a dozen or so have talent high enough to walk the path of the Secret Sect. My talent is very poor; I am destined to be unable to formally walk the path of Secret Sect cultivation."

"But she guesses everything right."

"..."

Zhong Miao Zhimen silently glanced at Zhang Suannai and said tactfully: "Perhaps she is just relatively smart..."

"Oh, oh, that's it!"

Zhang Suannai felt that was also true.

Goddess Qingqing is just smart.

So she abandoned this thought, spread her arms, stretched lazily, and said again: "So boring, little Daoist, why don't you use that ghost possession technique again to invite a Sword Master, and we two find a place further away to have a fight? I've wanted to fight a Sword Master for a long time!"

"We are guards now; we must be conscientious and responsible, and cannot leave our posts without authorization."

"Then you stay here and talk with me."

"I am going back to the tent."

"Then call that nameless person over to talk with me; isn't he very talkative in the group..."

"That is in the group."

"I want to make him a chatterbox in reality too."

"That won't work."

"Why?"

"Fellow Daoist Nameless has things on his mind."

"What things on his mind?"

"I am not a Secret Sect Practitioner."

"Fine, fine..."

Zhang Suannai waved her hand, signaling him to leave quickly, then continued to look up at the distant scenery.

The desert seemed endless, with rolling waves spreading to the edge of the sky, the end of the line of sight blurred by impurities in the air.

The junction of gray and blue at the edge of the sky is the most beautiful.

Zhang Suannai chewed gum, dangling her legs, suddenly wanting to go to the end of this desert to take a look, but unfortunately, she had to be a conscientious and responsible guard.

"Sigh..."

Zhang Suannai praised her own professional ethics.

One hour later.

The sunset had completely fallen below the horizon, leaving only a streak of fiery red at the edge of the sky. The people inside the Square Body finally came out, and then the four-way guards sealed the Square Body again, waiting until the next day to let the people from the four directions enter together.

Zhang Suannai sat on the ground playing with sand, bored to death. Seeing a crowd surge over, she immediately stood up, patted her butt, and pretended she hadn't been doing something stupid.

Chen Shu didn't even look at her, heading straight for the logistics vehicle, his heart set only on eating.

Night fell once again.

Lights were lit in the camp for illumination.

Experts from Lan Country came to visit; they were the ones familiar with Professor Liu, Professor Shi, and others. They stood together chatting, frowning, discussing the anomalies of the various Tesseract Secret Realms last night and the abnormalities discovered after entering the Duqin Fangti today, but they did not talk about specific cultural relics.

Knowledge and culture themselves have no borders, but scholars and cultural relics do.

Therefore, one must exercise restraint.

Chen Shu returned to his tent and used concentrated juice tablets to make himself a cup of grape juice. In front were Zhang Suannai and Zhong Miao Zhimen, who had also come to visit, and the Nameless Person who lived with Zhong Miao Zhimen also followed.

"Ah, I'm so bored today!" Zhang Suannai sat on a folding chair, feeling very uncomfortable. "Nobody kept me company all day today, and this ghost place doesn't have a single bit of internet signal; the satellites are all blocked. If this goes on, I'm going to go crazy."

"Ask them to keep you company," Chen Shu said, holding his juice.

"They won't..." Zhang Suannai was very dissatisfied and asked again, "What about you? How was it inside? Any gains? Was it fun?"

"It was alright."

"Was it fun?"

"It was okay."

"Tell me, tell me!"

"It's nothing much, it's just that this Square Body is quite strange."

"How is it strange?"

"There's nothing strange outside the Secret Realm; it's mainly inside the Secret Realm. In the past, every Secret Realm would store many heavenly treasures; this is basically standard for Tesseract Secret Realms, just like various Artifacts and artworks, but this Secret Realm lacks many heavenly treasures." Chen Shu said, taking a sip of juice, secretly glancing at the three people in front, and lowering his voice, "By the way, do you know about the Square Body anomaly last night?"

"What anomaly? I did hear movement last night; I thought a fight was about to break out, so I crawled up and even took out my Sword," Zhang Suannai said, her eyebrows dancing.

"I heard a little something while working today," Zhong Miao Zhimen also said.

"What? Heard what? Why didn't you tell me?" Zhang Suannai turned her head and said in an accusatory tone.

"You could hear it if you came to work."

"I'm not stupid, slacking off is so much better," Zhang Suannai said, then continued to urge Chen Shu, "Hurry up and tell me, tell me."

"It's just that there was an anomaly in the Mijing; I don't know the reason either. Anyway, the Yuanzhou Fangti had an anomaly last year too. I was there at the time, and a Nine-Tier Cultivator also rushed over from Yujing to investigate the cause, though I don't know if there was any result," Chen Shu paused, "Such a thing had never happened before."

"And then?"

"Then today we entered the Mijing and discovered that a lot of heavenly treasures were missing inside. And it wasn't that they weren't there, it was more like someone had moved them away; there were even traces left on the ground. Don't you all think that's amazing?"

"..."

Zhong Miao Zhimen frowned.

The Nameless Person expressed no opinion.

Zhang Suannai pondered for a few seconds and quickly reached a conclusion, her tone resolute: "It must have been done by the people of Lan Country!"

After saying that, she even cursed.

"..."

Chen Shu was immediately filled with respect and gave Zhang Suannai a thumbs up: "Brother Suannai, your thinking is sharp, your vision is unique, and you hit the nail on the head. I truly admire you!"

"Heh..."

Zhang Suannai waved her hand: "It's nothing..."

She felt a little carried away inside.