Zorro grinned like he saw it coming and said jokingly, “How about let’s come clean how much ‘some’ you found on your part of ‘some’ Virtual Zero Sequence means. That way I’ll know the size of gap between our two groups.”
“Hmm.” Yang Zicang rested one arm on the table in front of him while his other hand stroked his chin. He took a close look at the person before him, who had been borrowing his name for so long yet was meeting him for the first time. After a moment’s thought, the circle and quadrilateral on the young man’s chest lit up.
[I want to invest 100,000N of full-authority Virtual Zero Sequence for Zorro.]
Zorro was so startled that he almost toppled backward off the stone pier. He leaned over the desk and stared at the circle on Yang Zicang’s chest, grinding his teeth. “You bastard! Where did you get so much Virtual Zero Sequence?!”
“It’s a reward for challenging the ‘Psi-kat Cassette.’”
“Psi-kat Cassette?”
“Uh-huh.” The circle on Yang Zicang’s chest faded away as he briefly recounted the details of his challenge from two days ago.
“Psychic game cartridges? And a hidden level?”
After hearing this, Zorro was stunned, pressing his face against the stone to cool down, muttering:
“I thought when you said ‘a little bit of Virtual Zero Sequence,’ you really meant it was just a little. Hah, how awful—this is the first time in ages I’ve handed someone the chance to show off right to my face.”
“Heh, serves you right for selling my engine without permission. That’ll teach you to underestimate your boss’s strength. Hey, don’t you dare use my name to pull tricks from now on.”
“Tch.” Zorro eyed Yang Zicang sidelong, sizing him up, before saying, “Fine. You wanted to know about ‘Virtual Zero Sequence,’ right? As the name suggests, it’s related to the ‘Virtual Zero’ bloodline.”
“Another bloodline?” Yang Zicang’s brow furrowed slightly. “Just how many bloodlines are there? Oh, never mind.”
“Hmph, the literature archive isn’t as comprehensive as you think. Records on bloodlines are scarce. However, there’s one place that’s somewhat related to the ‘Virtual Zero Bloodline,’” Zorro pointed to the chessboard on the table. “Take a look at this.”
“This is Go?”
“Yes, but since it was carved by a certain ‘steward’ from this world, it’s slightly different from Earth’s version. It has twenty lines. Ha, that’s right—they play Go by placing stones inside the grid cells.”
Yang Zicang asked curiously, “So, how does this relate to ‘Virtual Zero’?”
“That steward left a rule: anyone who beats him in a game and is willing to pay a hundred years of Chrono—or Virtual Zero Chrono—can head to the ruins of ‘City 11’ to spend their vacation.”
Yang Zicang’s heart tensed up at once.
“Go to the city? Without having to resign!”
“That’s right, no need to resign. And you can even communicate directly with friends outside. The only condition is that you can’t reveal any intel from here, otherwise you’ll be sent back immediately and lose the right to ever enter again.”
To think he could go out without quitting! Over the past few days, Yang Zicang had already tried and confirmed that he couldn’t contact the outside world at all, not even communicate with Big Star Xiao Machao. But if he could enter “City 11,” then couldn’t he use the “Big Star” to travel to the Land of Lost Frequencies anytime?
Yang Zicang looked at this chessboard.
But he knew absolutely nothing about Go!
[I, the Great Quadrilateral, am pondering whether, if I could go to “City 11” at any time, I could temporarily put off resigning.]
But after playing two games of chess using the manifested psychic chess pieces on the board, Yang Zicang looked dejected and told Zorro to continue the game here while he took a look around. Because even though the psychic hand left by that steward had opened with a move on the star point, he was no match at all.
Not just in terms of skill, but even in chess mastery, the difference was like that between a professor and a kindergarten student.
For now, the plan of winning against it to go to “City 11” and return to the Lost Frequency Land seemed impossible to achieve.
Sighing with frustration, Yang Zicang shoved both hands into his jacket pockets and walked through the mist floating above the ground. Suddenly, amidst several towering rocks in the distance, he seemed to catch a glimpse of a figure silently standing there, almost blending in with the color of the earth.
“Doesn’t look like an afterimage?”
As Yang Zicang tried to tell if it was a strange rock, this tall figure turned its head to glance in his direction. Then it leaped up, transforming into a mottled bird resembling a black stork, which flapped its wings and disappeared with a whoosh into the void of the same hue.
Yang Zicang stared, stunned. The face that had looked over just now was like a mask made of a mix of metal and stone.
After making sure it had left, Yang Zicang walked over.
[I wonder what that thing was just now.]
He stood near where that person had been standing. From these rocks, ahead lay a slope gradually extending for several kilometers, with dense gray mist churning below. Further away was the boundless Death Mist.
……
Hong Haocheng moved nimbly between buildings, like a humanoid cheetah. But as the halos in his eyes faded, this extremely agile movement gradually slowed down.
“The limit of my bloodline ability is only ten minutes.”
Fatigue surged from deep within his body and soul. After resting for a while, Hong Haocheng climbed to the second floor of a building with a broken staircase and followed the structure up to the fourth floor. This was already the highest floor of this weed-covered building.
“Heh, you’re here after all.”
He looked at the small Bound Spirit forty meters away, which was sitting under the wall with only its head sticking out. After resting for another twenty minutes or so, sensing the Bound Spirit beginning to stir, the Boy cautiously opened his eyes.
A faint earth-yellow halo once again lit up within his pupils.
[Soul Traveler First Ring, Mark of Life.]
Before the Bound Spirit, which was gradually standing up, simplistic traces and trajectory lines began to appear in Hong Haocheng’s glowing eyes.
“I’ve stalked you for a full three days, and it’s almost done.”
This was Hong Haocheng’s first time trying to use the obtained “Route Sketches” to map the terrain the other party had traveled, without devouring its “Navigational Tracks.”
It’s really not easy to find a loner like this suitable for mapping on an island. Only for a short period each day does Hong Haocheng get to see it wander to the fringes, and factoring in his own rest time, the actual time available for mapping is quite limited.
After three whole days, spending nearly five hundred kilometers of sail-ink tracking, he was finally close to completely observing it in full. This was largely thanks to most of its trajectory overlapping with his previously obtained “Bound Spirit,” saving him a significant amount of tracking resource.
The model on his chest flickered, and a red ring on it quickly outlined a slowly rotating triangle.
[Scale Planning.]
[Position Expansion. I will draw the target’s life trajectory using a 100:1 scale.]
The moment he fully perceived the lines behind the Bound Spirit, a rough sketch of an incomplete map took shape rapidly.
It was the topography of this area!
“Success. Finally, ha!” Hong Haocheng rejoiced.
The boy raised his fingertip, red threads shimmering as a model made of folded lines mid-air formed a translucent map.
After taking a detailed look, he lifted his head and gazed at the depths of the island, two to three li away. He had never been there, but now he knew all its terrain.
……
That morning, Yang Zicang, who had already made the decision to switch groups in the last couple of days, felt a mix of relief and heavy-heartedness.
Retreating in disgrace like this, how shameful…
Jiaoma seemed to sense something; all morning, she kept lifting her head and staring in his direction, forcing Yang Zicang to keep his head bowed even lower.
After a short rest, Yang Zicang placed his hand back on the Luminous Tube on the desk and closed his eyes in meditation, sensing the blurry phantoms within the chaotic wavebands. In recent days, his mind had grown increasingly attuned to the influence of these wavebands, gradually experiencing a sense of calm and emptiness, as if he were situated amidst the treetops of a vast forest—an utterly comfortable sensation.
This was the powerful effect of the “Mental Power Circulation Pattern.”
Yang Zicang felt that he was on the verge of reaching the second-tier ninth-ring level of mental power intensity. Just as his consciousness began to involuntarily drift into distraction, a dark glint suddenly streaked across his awareness, accompanied by a smattering of mental noise.
Startled, Yang Zicang immediately channeled all his attention into capturing that fleeting blip of wave-noise, determined to lock onto it firmly.
“I don’t know what you are, but as long as I can see you clearly, there’s no way you’re getting away!”
The waveband causing such abrupt disturbance was undoubtedly of no low level! The distorted scene, which moved to swiftly withdraw, weaved its way out among countless chaotic spots and rays of light. Through the crystal device, Yang Zicang’s mind swiftly pursued it.
“It’s already been twenty-six days! I absolutely cannot leave here with zero results. Right here, you! Stop right now!”
The Luminous Tube on the table flickered with violent fluctuations, like dense stacks of overlapping musical notes. This corner continuously reflected a shimmering radiance, its alternating flares and shadows illuminating Yang Zicang’s tightly shut eyelids.
“This time, it seems promising.”
Lao Xing walked over with his teacup, and Jiaoma also stood up and came over upon seeing this.
“Such violent fluctuations, Zicang has been able to maintain them for so long.”
In the Voidstream, Yang Zicang concentrated his mind, rapidly synchronizing with the targeted flash of light. Since he had no prior knowledge of that world’s environment or other information—not knowing where the thing belonged or what it looked like intact—he couldn’t shape his spirit into the corresponding “terrain” here to intercept it.
So, he decided to let his spirit become it!
Yang Zicang struggled to reshape his ethereal spiritual power, using the light he saw as a source of information, roughly outlining the image of the other by mimicking it.
“Hurry up!” he urged anxiously in his mind.
His consciousness had already begun to waver several times, a precursor to past many failures. Fortunately, he managed to roughly outline the silhouette of this black noise-like light.
Suddenly, waves as loud as the seething tide crashed in Yang Zicang’s Sea of Consciousness.
[Based on the “Foundation Imprint’s” feedback, I have just reached the mental strength required to bear the “Second Stage, Ninth Level of the Cycle of Blood.”]
And such an ascendance happened at this very moment!
Yang Zicang was overjoyed inwardly. A surge of purer energy emerged within the spirit sea that he had just struggled to maintain.
At the same time, the Crystal Perception activated autonomously, and a faint cooling sensation spread over his entire body, soothing both his body and mind.
At the moment these more refined spiritual energies emerged, the distant, wavering black energy suddenly became clear in his eyes—it was formed by numerous overlapping topographical wrinkles, manifesting as a heap of garbage-like noisy interference.
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