Throughout the day, Yang Zicang did not even eat dinner and flopped onto the bed as soon as he returned to his room. He did not want to bother with anything; not even lifting a finger, he just wanted to sleep.
But no sooner had he laid his head on the pillow than he heard a knock on the door.
“……”
Yang Zicang had absolutely no intention of getting up to answer the door.
Outside the room, Zorro glanced at the horizontal card on the door, which displayed a yellow smiley face indicating someone was inside.
The model on his chest lit up.
[Zicang, are you in there?]
After a few moments, dragging footsteps were heard, and the door clicked open a crack.
Zorro was startled by the heavy dark circles under Yang Zicang’s eyes, as if he had lost all vitality, standing in the doorway with vacant, listless eyes.
Zorro’s eyes darted to the smiley face on the doorplate, then slowly shifted to confirm the dark circles standing before him.
“You, what happened to you?”
The man inside dragged his feet to the bedside, turned around, and sat down without uttering a single word.
Following him in, Zorro couldn’t help but shudder, feeling an eerie atmosphere permeating the room.
“Is this the power of the Right of Mental Manifestation? Impressive, you can already project such strength from it. One step further, and you might just create a scene real enough to manifest physically.”
As he spoke, Jiaoma arrived at the door carrying a food container and soup.
The girl gave a smile: “Xiao Luo, you came to see him too.”
She entered and closed the door, curiously inspecting the not-too-large small suite.
It was her first time entering Yang Zicang’s room.
“What’s wrong with him?” Zorro asked, looking at the girl who was curiously observing everything around her.
“Oh, our Zicang has had a tough day today. He placed nearly four thousand five hundred treasure chests all morning, crafted three combat scenarios with will tests, and in the afternoon, he built a secret passage and a small lottery wheel.”
“Huh?” The man looked at the gaunt young man sitting by the bedside, utterly stunned. No wonder he was radiating such a sinister and oppresive aura, his mental energy clearly on the verge of spiraling out of control.
The girl walked over to the drowsy Yang Zicang, sat down beside him on the bed, dipped the spoon into the soup, and scraped it against the rim of the box before bringing it to his lips.
“Here, drink this. You’ll feel better.”
“You two… just what’s the matter? I need to sleep.” Yang Zicang collapsed face-first onto the pillow.
Zorro glanced at Jiaoma and cleared his throat. “Group Leader Jiaoma, have you ever seen a Forgetting Engine?”
“No, I haven’t. But I’ve seen their photos before.”
The man turned to Yang Zicang and said:
“Yesterday, I went to the reference library and on one shelf, I found a method for crafting a special Forgetting Engine.”
Yang Zicang’s eyes snapped wide open in an instant.
[I have pushed past my limits.]
A faint, cooling sensation gradually spread through his foggy mind.
This coolness was like that first and last time—when he pulled that heap of distorted terrain out from the Forgetting Wave.
“Crystal Perception” spun slowly into action.
The overwhelming loneliness of a tidal forest suddenly turned gentle and mild.
“[The First Action Department Employee Card indicates that I have reached the three-ring first-level mental intensity.]”
“Hu~”
Yang Zicang rubbed his face as he sat up, glanced at Jiaoma, smiled at her, then cupped the bowl with both hands and gulped down the soup.
With this soup and the breakthrough in mental power, the young man felt a slight improvement in his body and mind. However, this breakthrough came at the cost of pushing his body to its limits; without proper recuperation, an ordinary person might suffer long-term chronic consequences.
Yang Zicang looked at Zorro and asked, “Are there other special things about the Loss Engine?”
“Of course there are.”
Jiaoma picked up the lunchbox and sat in closer. “Here, take a bite of rice before you sleep again.”
Yang Zicang smiled as he took the chopsticks. He looked at Zorro, who was standing with his hands on his hips, and said,
“What kind of Loss Engine is that? Is it the same as that photo I used earlier?”
Zorro’s lips twitched; he neither denied nor confirmed.
Jiaoma looked at Zorro. “Oh, you two. Why do keep dwelling on what happened at the Wavelength-Lost Land? Go on back now. Hurry, hurry, hurry.”
She stood up and pushed Zorro toward the door. “Don’t disturb our Zicang while he’s eating.”
“I came here just to say that last night, Officer Huan Bao’er asked me to join her group. From now on, I’ll be her direct subordinate.”
Yang Zicang paused with a start, looking at Zorro. He suddenly sensed something amiss.
Jiaoma said happily.
“Ah! Well, that calls for congratulations. I was wondering why you insisted on coming right now, so you’ve caught our godmother’s eye.”
Zorro chuckled at the door:
“Maybe I caught him. Haha, I’ll head off now. Group Leader Jiaoma, I’ll come find you all to hang out later. See you.”
He waved, twisted the door open, and left.
“Caught?”
Jiaoma frowned, then quickly set this puzzling remark aside.
She turned around, idly waving her hands as she looked around the room. She recalled that it was long ago, during her childhood, when she last had any impression of this place.
“Caught…” Yang Zicang sighed with a complex expression. Sure enough, things weren’t going smoothly. It seemed that the message the Russian had left behind about “Dark Gold” would ultimately come to nothing; no one would likely succeed in passing it out and making it known to the public.
“Well…” Jiaoma, seeing Yang Zicang absorbed in thought without much to say, nervously twirled her fingers and said, “I’ll head back now, okay?”
Yang Zicang snapped out of his daze, looked up, and with a slight falter in his voice, nodded and said:
“Yeah, get some rest early. I guess, next up, the agent Groft will start making trouble for your group.”
The moment Jiaoma heard the name “Groft,” her small face turned pale.
By the end of today, everyone could see that Yang Zicang was just brought in as a demonstration model. The entire Demonic English Hall couldn’t possibly rely on him alone to handle all the material.
Next, three hundred people would have to deal with the tens of thousands of newly added contents.
……
Yang Zicang woke up after a sleep, feeling much better and nearly fully recovered.
Although mental depletion was significant, the Lost Illusion Company’s internal environment naturally nurtured and repaired the spirit; otherwise, each time someone extracted a miscued frequency spirit band, they would need a long rest afterward.
He turned to look at the dark room—the fluorescent glow of the clock on the wall hadn’t even reached midnight yet.
Seeing that it was still half an hour until midnight, Yang Zicang estimated that Zorro might be resting late tonight. A model lit up on his chest, and hair-thin quadrilateral threads flickered into the air.
{You’re recovering so quickly.}
“Team Leader Jiao Ma’s soup tasted good,” Yang Zicang said lazily. “What about you? Have you ramped up the tasks since returning to the group? Shouldn’t there only be half your team still working now?”
{Hmph, no point wasting words. Let’s cut to the chase—I’ve obtained the method to build the Sub-Ether Tunnel Engine, but I can’t leak the formula. Also, are you in possession of any Lost Thought Models? I’d like to borrow a few.}
“I see…”
There was a hint in the data that the main material for creating the “Dark Gold Hub Town” memory-loss engine might involve a quadrilateral memory-loss model.
In the sensory image, Zorro was writing something, and he continued:
{My memory-loss models here are all obtuse and triangle-shaped, and there are very few of them—only five or six.}
Yang Zicang exhaled upward, blowing away the hair falling over his forehead.
“There are so few quadrilaterals on the Lost Frequency Land. Although I do have some triangle memory-loss models prepared, the quantity is still rather scarce.”
{With the editor-in-chief’s trip to the Lost Frequency Land triggering a catastrophe, didn’t any quadrilateral memory-loss models emerge?}
The man in the sensory projection also knew his words were a bit far-fetched, but this was, after all, the most likely way to obtain a quadrilateral thought-loss model in the recent months.
“I’ve asked around privately, but I haven’t heard any relevant news.”
Yang Zicang thought for a moment and then said:
“Even if they really were unlucky and died, since they’re all owners of quadrilateral models, even in death, they should have fallen in more dangerous places—like those deep, cracked chasms.”
{Sigh, you’re right. I’m afraid even if someone did find them, they wouldn’t come forward with them.}
After a brief pause, Zorro said:
{As I mentioned to you before, the information I obtained from a certain bookshelf has been prohibited from disclosure by the Director-General. Heh, now I’m constantly under the watchful eye of Director-General Huan Bao’er. I’m afraid all I can do is wait until my chess skills are refined and then find an opportunity to build you a sub-ether tunnel engine that doesn’t include certain special coordinates. I hope by then you haven’t already embarked on a new Fate Track.}
Yang Zicang sat silently on the edge of the bed in the darkness.
The room was utterly quiet, save for the “tick-tock” sound simulated by the clock.
“No…”
In the darkness, the young man’s voice suddenly rang out, devoid of any emotion.
On the other side, Zorro looked up, gazing at the blurred outline of the young man’s face in the induction screen. In those hollow eyes, a certain pure light gradually flickered.
{Perhaps… we still have a way to build it now.}
“Now?” Zorro set down his pen. “What do you plan to do?”
{I still have ten triangular amnesia models, and you have at least four or five.}
“That’s right, but… Ah, I see—you want to gamble on upscaling? But the odds are far too low, and I can’t tell you the engine formula. There’s no way I can upscale a three-cylinder engine to four cylinders.”
Yang Zicang glanced at the fixed clock provided by the Lost Illusion Company on the wall.
23:48:09
Zorro also looked at the clock in his own room.
23:48:11
In the sensory feed, Yang Zicang spoke:
{But we still have Lele. I’ll go check my luck today.}
A flickering fold line flashed, and Zorro froze for a moment, lowering his head to look at the ring on his chest. The link was broken.
“Lele, too? What kind of logic is that?”
He couldn’t quite figure out Yang Zicang’s plan.
……
Yang Zicang knocked on Wang Dingshan’s door, who was fast asleep.
“What’s up?” Wang Dingshan, wearing a triangular sleeping cap and rubbing his eyes, opened the door while hugging Lucky Star.
The dark red eyes of Lucky Star, the Demonic Nightmare, scanned around. Before it could get a clear look, a flickering fold line suddenly darted toward it.
Wang Dingshan’s employee card naturally materialized.
“Huh?”
“Quick, there are less than two minutes left. Scratch a ticket for me. I recall you need a one-year principal, don’t you?”
[Yang Zicang wants me to reveal the prize for him.]
“Ooh, eager to throw your life away, huh?” Wang Dingshan perked up. “I still have one chance left unused today.”
Although there was only one year of principal, every time someone scratched a ticket, Wang Dingshan got excited. It had nothing to do with how much time-sequence he could earn; it was mainly about the thrill of seeing the prize revealed.
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