Chapter 39: The Celestial Star Spans the Continent – 1

Over twenty days later, after several failures, usable but ugly pottery emerged from the kiln.
At first, only the child stayed by his side, but in the following days, more and more primitive people came. They were initially curious or drawn by Yang Zicang’s fighting prowess, since he could drive away sand centipedes with just a few stones.
However, they soon became unsettled.
As various pottery shapes came into view, the way the crowd looked at Yang Zicang shifted from viewing him as a man to regarding him as a sage.
At dawn, another batch of pottery came out of the kiln.
“This one’s for you to play with.”
Yang Zicang casually picked up a frog-shaped pottery figurine from this batch and handed it to the child.
“Waah.”
Stars practically shone in the child’s eyes, drawing envious gazes from the surrounding kids.
“Atata!” The child held up the pottery frog, as proudly as if holding a crown.
“Ah tata ah tata!”
Then her treasure was snatched away.
Yang Zicang watched them laugh and play.
After many days, more than half of the people in this primitive tribe had learned to use pottery to hold water.
Thus, another forty-plus years passed.
……
Yang Zicang had traveled through every corner of the continent.
He had long grown too lazy to curse that “Radiance Mail Insignia” from ages ago, and no longer held illusions about the statue; he just wanted to seek useful skills while incidentally searching for that thing. Fortunately, no matter how long he stayed here, for reality, it would merely pass like a short nap.
At the seaside, Yang Zicang, draped in a straw raincoat, looked up at the dissipating dark clouds on the horizon, then rolled up his pant legs and waded into the water, trudging forward toward a small boat ahead.
This was called a boat, but in reality, it was a dugout canoe made by cutting and hollowing out a large tree, only slightly larger than an ordinary one.
Although over the decades he had found iron ore and forged brittle, not-so-durable iron tools, restocking his arrows, he still couldn’t handle the kind of craftsmanship needed for shipbuilding.
Yang Zicang turned to look at the primitive people bowing to him. This small tribe was developing relatively quickly; they already had simple language and used vines to tie things up, while he taught them to use more complex vine nets for fishing. As for more, there was nothing he could do—all that could be left to time.
“See you in the future, savages!”
“Kula gula!”
The savages, carrying saw blades and axes, bid an unwilling farewell.
Yang Zicang smiled as he hoisted the animal-hide sail and sailed away. If he stayed any longer, he’d almost become the sage who founded a civilization.
He had to keep searching for that statue!
This continent was impossible; he would need to cross the sea and go to a more distant place. Still, maybe there would be new discoveries right at sea.
“Maybe the moment I set sail, I’ll spot a derelict East India Company cargo ship, abandoned for thousands of years, anchored in the distance,” he thought with anticipation.
……
“Sixty years—time for a new attempt! From now on, I am: Zheng. Magellan Columbus. Jack Zang!”
The young man placed one foot on the ship’s gunwale and put on a straw sun hat with one hand, amusing himself.
If this attempt failed again, perhaps this postal badge would be ruined by his own greed.
Suddenly, the shouts of the savages on the shore grew louder, many voices filled with fear. Yang Zicang turned in confusion, following their gaze upward…
A streak of meteoric light appeared in the sky, like a pinpoint far in the distant horizon.
“Hoo, hoo, it’s a comet, savages.”
Yang Zicang laughed heartily, finding these primitives so naive.
Yet, he couldn’t really blame them; a comet with its tail visible even during the day was a rarity. Seeing such a bizarre phenomenon suddenly in the sky was indeed hard to comprehend.
Their fear came naturally.
……
Days later, Yang Zicang glanced at the sky—the comet still lingered at the horizon.
It had only advanced a small distance; to traverse the entire sky, it would still take considerable time.
“Will I cross the ocean first, or will you cross the sky?”
Yang Zicang murmured to himself.
In a world with only oneself, everything around seems to become a subject to converse with.
……
After dozens of days and nights passed, the weather gradually cooled.
At noon, the fine snow had just ceased. Yang Zicang, feeling idle and bored, used a flat iron spear as long as a blade to paddle the water a few times when suddenly a sense of panic came over him, as an ominous aura permeated the surrounding air.
He frowned, took off his straw hat whose brim had long since unraveled, and looked around. Finding nothing amiss, he turned his gaze to the sky, where the comet loomed overhead.
Suddenly, an overwhelming sense of dread and horror emerged.
On the edge of the wooden canoe, shadows converged around the flat iron spear, as if something was about to take shape upon it.
“What is that!?”
A long-buried memory surfaced.
A Nightmare!
Stunned, Yang Zicang stared at this shoddy iron spear.
Didn’t I make this myself? Why would a Nightmare have been born from it? It’s not a projection from Earth. “Squeak!” A peculiar eye-like pattern grew on the wooden handle of the stone spear!
Within it, a faint red light flickered up and down, then fixed its gaze on Yang Zicang. Startled, the young man dropped it with a slap, and it landed onto the dugout canoe.
The stone spear, now on the ground, transformed into a serpentine shadow monster, its red eyes venomous. Its body coiled and arched before springing toward him.
In an instant, a golden phantom light flashed in Yang Zicang’s hand as he threw a punch.
Bang!
This newly born Nightmare from the iron spear perished instantly. Finally, the Jishi were proving effective!
Strange, eerie patterns flickered across the spear, and dark red smoke shrank back into the weapon as it dropped onto the boat, motionless. Yang Zicang picked up the transformed gun, and several mental voices sounded in his mind.
[The Councilors call it — the Spiritual Weapon.]
Spiritual Weapon, not Chrono Weapon?
Yang Zicang’s eyes snapped wide open.
More waves of panic surged forth.
Yang Zicang looked left and right, finally fixing his gaze on the unfurled beast-hide sail.
Having drifted at sea for so long, it was nearly waterlogged and rotting. But now, countless shadows flowed like blue-black blood vessels across the hide and the small mast, as if something was about to come back to life from within.
“Another nightmare creature? No, two of them!”
He stabbed down with the golden spear.
Thud! The gray mist just beginning to coalesce around the dugout canoe was deflected as the dark red, metal-like weapon plunged deep into it. Yang Zicang could hardly accept this—if it were just here, it might still be manageable, but…
Then it struck him: the land!
“Puff, puff!”
Two streams of gray mist shot toward him.
[Redirect!]
The gray mist could also be deflected by the Redirection ability, and they were sent flying into the ocean. Some fishes swimming underwater were struck by the mist and instantly writhed in agony as their forms twisted, sprouting extra, octopus-like limbs.
Even though his Chrono ability should protect him from such attacks, Yang Zicang still felt his scalp crawl from sheer horror.
He himself didn’t mind, but there were savages still in this world who knew nothing of how things worked! He pulled out his demonic longspear and thrust it forward; an illusory scream erupted from the mast. This very sound, however, allowed Yang Zicang to regain a measure of composure.
“I must take this opportunity to gather more data.”
This was a rare anomaly he had been searching for decades; he absolutely couldn’t just kill them all and be done with it.
He grabbed a wooden club from the dugout canoe and struck at it.
……
After several attempts, this ordinary wooden club—aside from making a dull thud against the already rotting leather—proved useless, as expected.
“It seems that, just like those nightmares, although you differ from them in that you don’t require a time tax, you still can’t be hurt by ordinary attacks.”
Puff, puff, puff! Several more streams of gray mist shot over.
As always, once the model lured it into the water, Yang Zicang used the spiritual weapon tool in his hand and thoroughly smashed it apart in a few strokes.
On the mast, now reduced to a stump, the black patterns gradually ceased to flow. A bluish-red mucus seeped out, and after drying, it formed a translucent film covering the surface.
YangZicang reached out and touched it.
[This must be a spiritual artifact that can accelerate the canoe.]
He waited for some time longer, but no further abnormalities appeared on the canoe.