Yang Zicang had already learned that at Lost Illusion Company, only by climbing the ranks through promotions could one use Temporal Restoration to regain a youthful appearance—because restoring youth here grants you a more ethereally handsome or beautiful look, like that of an elf or a fairy.
He looked at the Psi-kat Cassette in his hand, whose mist-wreathed cover featured a samurai pushing a box across a broken plaza, while the back described the scene within.
—This Psi-kat Cassette is a psi-kat training ground constructed by this hero.
—Battling amidst the howling wind is the embodiment of our will; dodging through a rain of boxes is the passion every martial artist dreams of! If you can perfectly clear the challenge, I, the Radiant Wind Katana, shall grant you the mental protection of a stable tri-ring spirit fortitude!
—Come on, if you’re a true warrior, push a full hundred boxes.
Beneath these lines, splashed in bold blood-red characters, were the words, “A trial that hot-blooded men dream of—do not miss it.”
“I don’t know why… but my emotions are inexplicably fired up.”
“After all, it’s a Psi-kat Cassette—it can influence a person’s mind.”
Yang Zicang hesitated as he looked at it, “This kind of thing—even if I clear it perfectly and gain the pattern—will it really be okay?”
“Anything that shows up here…” Wei Zhenguo said uncertainly, “shouldn’t be too much of a problem, right.”
Yang Zicang glanced around; the “people” around him, spurred by his hesitation, were once again eager to recommend their own favorite cassettes.
“Forget it, I’ll start with this one.”
The tall, lean youth walked through the room and inserted the Psi-kat Cassette into the slot by the door.
{Without loss and gain, there is no cherishing of the present.}
A sound from the door rang out.
{Therefore, please invest 1,000-10,000 Temporal Units as a reward or penalty. A GOOD rating allows you to reclaim 90% of the invested amount; a SUPER rating grants you the Temporal Units lost by others as a reward, up to ten times your invested amount.}
{The current Temporal Pool of this cassette has accumulated: 175,300N Virtual Zero Sequence units.}
So much accumulated. Even investing the full 10,000 Temporal Units wouldn’t win all the Virtual Zero Sequence from a single perfect run.
So that’s what Group Leader Jiaoma meant by giving me the 10,000N Virtual Zero Sequence earlier.
Biting his lip, Yang Zicang thought—Virtual Zero Sequence units, they’re precious resources that won’t send you to a new Fate Track even after using them for over 10,000 years. Unfortunately, Virtual Zero Sequence can’t be amplified.
On his chest, beneath the digits 9000N within the glowing silver ring, the image of 10000N was reflected.
Invest 1,000, or 10,000?
He looked toward the door. It was his first time entering, and he knew nothing—better to play it safe.
[I have invested 2000N Virtual Zero Sequence units.]
[Wei Zhenguo has invested 8000N Virtual Zero Sequence units for me.]
Yang Zicang turned around to see the man at the entrance waving his employee card.
“Uncle Wei, you…”
“Step up, be a man. Just eight thousand words—if it fails, it’s on me.”
Yang Zicang paused for a moment, then said firmly, “Alright!”
Click.
The cassette slid securely into the slot, locking into place.
[Barking Dog Gate inquires: Do I wish to enter the training ground of “Heroic Legends: Pushing Crates through the Gale”?]
[What a great deal, entering the training ground without earning any daily temporal income…]
Yang Zicang gazed at the world behind the rapidly opening door.
If his guess was correct, this was not his first time entering the training ground.
The dream worlds he visited in the daily summaries should be similar psychic scenes!
Stepping across the opened door was like entering a water-curtain energy field. As the young man stepped in, the massive door behind him lit up with a hexagonal ripple barrier that blocked entry and exit. Many oddly-shaped heads crowded outside the barrier, staring at the figure inside.
— “Can the newbie pass this training ground?”
— “It’s a bit tough; he has to use his mental power to push.”
— “A newcomer going all in for ten thousand years on his first try?”
— “Wow, hey, young fellow, so bold, diving in blind, you’ll definitely suffer big losses.”
Whoosh whoosh~
The strong wind swept across the vast grassy plains. He was now standing on a dilapidated stone plaza in the center of the grassland. Across the plaza stood an ancient, abandoned temple, with various broken crates scattered on the ground.
A ring lit up on Yang Zicang’s chest.
[To prevent cheating, communication is forbidden here.]
At least he could use the model ability. Yang Zicang looked up at the low-hanging gray clouds. In the fierce wind, the place felt like an ancient Warring States world.
In front of the ancient temple, a lithe, blurry figure stood with one hand pressing on the sword hilt at his waist, poised gracefully in the wind like a figure from an ink painting. By his side was a rock inscribed with several names.
{I will demonstrate for you all, once.}
He strolled slowly toward the rapidly expanding ancient rock field.
The six spinning wooden frames on the horizon, like meteors, carried a mental pressure, poised to fall.
Their speed was not fast, but when they were still over ten meters from the ground, one of them suddenly accelerated and crashed over. At that very moment, a rock on the ground lit up.
The samurai in front flashed his eyes sharply, his wrist trembling at high speed as the long blade whistled out of its sheath, slicing through the air. The wooden box that had just fallen in front of him was precisely struck toward the glowing rock.
Bang, rumble!
The wooden box landed steadily atop the lit rock a few meters away.
Yang Zicang walked over to take a look—the wooden box fit perfectly with the old brick beneath it, aligned without a gap. The man’s accuracy was simply astonishing.
The man sheathed his sword and stood, looking toward the spot where Yang Zicang had been, now empty, and said:
“Have you all understood?”
Yang Zicang, standing at the edge, gave a slight nod.
The man addressed the air, saying:
“Alright, now it’s time to see what you’re made of. A total of one hundred and eight crates will descend. If you can cover all the remaining ninety-nine stone blocks in the order they light up, you will have passed the trial perfectly.”
“It really takes this kind of requirement? It’s truly as hard as I expected.”
[The Barking Dog Gate prompts: Within the allotted time, push the crates falling from the sky to cover the lit-up stone blocks, but wind will hinder your actions.]
As the voice faded, Yang Zicang suddenly felt his body becoming buoyant and drifting. He looked down at his palms, which were rapidly being covered by an energy membrane resembling a “thick fog,” and his appearance grew eerily distorted.
He had a vague realization that this was equivalent to projecting his spirit outward, forming a psychic body encasing his form. In the subsequent training, although it wouldn’t be as agile as directly controlling his physical body, it was far superior to the ethereal sense of grabbing at things purely through imagination during work.
“This training ground does have its merits after all.”
There were still ninety-nine bricks left for him to fill in here.
Yang Zicang looked at the remaining five floating, spinning wooden crates in the sky. As one brick lit up with a faint golden glow, one of the five crates suddenly whistled down.
“Then let’s begin!” Yang Zicang muttered to himself, darting swiftly toward the falling crate.
But just as he was about to touch it, a high-speed whistling sound suddenly came from the sky!
Yang Zicang took a deep breath—two crates came crashing in simultaneously, one after the other.
{The essence of a martial artist is to be sharp and decisive!}
Thump! Yang Zicang, feeling unsteady on his feet like stepping on uneven ground, swung his fist, but it only grazed the edge of the falling crate.
“Damn!” His movements were completely twisted, as if his cerebellum were underdeveloped.
With a heavy thud, the first crate slammed into Yang Zicang’s head and tumbled to the ground, while the second crate was already nearing the ground.
“No good, this movement of mine…”
This feels like it’s going to fail right from the start! Yang Zicang, who originally did not want to use his dispatching ability, made an instant decision—regardless of the training results, he could not let the eight-thousand-year sequence his colleague had paid for on his behalf go to waste.
First, complete this level—then talk about it!
[Trajectory, Dispatching! ]
[Position Expansion, Thousand-rank! ]
Yang Zicang lunged forcefully toward the falling wooden crate, and with both hands, he shoved it toward the glowing golden brick position diagonally ahead. Meanwhile, the quadrilateral within the circular ring on his chest abruptly expanded, surging into the sky.
In the psychic domain, the blurry, faint threads suddenly began to tremble, as if they were swiftly synchronizing with the crate’s trajectory at high frequency, overlapping, replacing.
At this moment, more information about the dispatching trajectory poured into Yang Zicang’s mind.
Boom—it was as if countless previously overlooked details now unfolded before him.
“It’s not unusable!”
Yang Zicang turned his head to look, able to perceive the falling trend of this wooden crate. Originally, it did not follow the physical law of a parabola; instead, there was a telekinetic force planning the direction of the crate’s fall.
However, the driving force and its variations were very simple—his own dispatching ability instantly cracked the amplitude it adhered to and corrected the trajectory.
In that moment, Yang Zicang seemed to glimpse some essence of his own modeling ability.
Countless mathematical symbols leaped within the sea of spirit, flashing, surging, and falling like tides of the ocean, their rhythmic rise and fall imbued with poetic beauty.
With a single thought modifying the destination of the falling object, the trajectory was automatically calculated by the model, sending it plummeting toward the second glowing golden brick.
He wanted to look down at the ring on his chest.
He recalled the term “Mind Model” spoken within the mental field that manifested from the Saint’s Heart.
“Mind Model…”
Whoosh! Whoosh!
Before he could think further, as the second box landed steadily on the ground, three wooden crates came roaring down from the sky.
Yang Zicang turned his head to look over.
So this is what you truly mean!
[Because I am the Great Quadrilateral, I can…]
“Ah!”
Yang Zicang let out a fierce roar.
Three roaring, hurtling wooden crates burst apart in three directions, flying toward three pillars of light that instantaneously flared up on the ground, and landing steadily upon them.
Behind that curtain-like force field standing at the periphery of the square, Wei Zhenguo’s figure arrived before it, touching its surface as he peered inside.
Gasping for air, Yang Zicang straightened up and looked toward the increasingly large black dots in the sky.
Suddenly, they cannonballed down with booming impacts! Boom! Boom!
—”Impressive, to have accurately placed the first batch of five boxes into their fixed positions so quickly!”
“Xiao Zang!” Wei Zhenguo shouted from outside the force field, “You can take it slow at the start. Each wave has a fixed number of bricks—only after you push all of them in will the next wave begin to fall, so you can use that chance to rest.”
The voice reached Yang Zicang’s ears faintly through the rippling force field, but he had lost all interest in resting.
He was already fully immersed in a euphoria of the mind—every sync, every vibration, every infinitesimal ebb and flow of energy symbols, their decryption and replacement, was pure delight!
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