Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Jing Jiu grabbed the alarm through the space and squeezed it into pieces.
The ear-splitting sound of the alarm stopped abruptly.
He thought that this magic treasure must have been triggered when it sensed the sound of a stranger.
It seemed that the people in this world lived a rather anxious life.
Yet, judging from the large number of magic treasures in this regular residential house, the ware sects must have a high status here.
While thinking of all this, Jing Jiu walked into the bathroom, tossed the powder in his hand into the toilet, and then pressed the button to wash it down.
He had seen the girl use this object in the early morning and knew it was an automatic toilet. It was a curious item, but he didn’t feel too sentimental about it because he was not to use it anyway.
Jing Jiu walked back into the living room. He adjusted the cushions on the chair and lay down more comfortably and began to watch TV while learning to speak the local language.
His pronunciation was a bit awkward in the beginning, but he grew more and more proficient as he practiced. In the meantime, he compared the pronunciation to the meaning he understood in his awareness and could pronounce the words more accurately.
The words were displayed on the TV screen. Though the words were similar to those in Chaotian, there was no way he could understand them.
Jing Jiu got up from the chair reluctantly and walked into another room.
The size of the room was small, three sides of which were lined with bookshelves extending all the way to the ceiling. The bookshelves were full of paperback books, making the room feel much smaller.
Standing in the middle of the room, one would have a strong sense of being squashed.
It was unclear why there were so many paperback books here.
Jing Jiu sat down on the floor with his legs crossed. He curled his finger slightly to make all the books on the shelves drift up in the air and move without the aid of the wind.
He and the Young Zen Master had used this method to read books at the Fruit Formation Temple; it was the most efficient way to read books.
Soon, he found he had made a mistake. It was because he couldn’t understand the words in the books; it was useless no matter how fast he read them.
He chose two books that seemed to be simple to read. They might be the introductory books.
Later, he started reading other books.
The door and windows of the room were tightly closed to block the scenery on the street and the narrow corner of the universe.
The drifting books were automatically flipping pages in midair without the aid of the wind.
He was reading them thoroughly with his eyes closed and without the help of light.
Suddenly, he heard a faint sound of paper tearing.
These books were all very old; some of them looked yellowish and brittle, and were torn apart as they were turned over swiftly by the formless wind.
…
…
The twilight was a luxurious occasion for the street below.
The exchange between day and night were always so swift that the people were often ill prepared for it, especially when it was affected by the bright street lamps.
The girl with silvery hair walked into the apartment as the door was pushed open. She tossed the backpack onto the table casually while throwing herself into the long chair.
She had lain in the chair for a long time. As Jing Jiu thought she had fallen asleep, she got up and poured a cup of water for herself before she took the medicine and ate the supper. Then, she walked into that room and looked out at the small sky above the street after pulling the curtain aside, her eyes full of expectation.
After a long while, she pulled back her gaze and turned to leave when she suddenly saw a piece of paper underneath the bookshelf. She squatted down and picked it up, the expression on her face turning grave.
She ran her trembling fingers across the bookshelf. In the end, she found a book and opened it. A corner of one page in the book was torn off as expected.
It was tiring to study at the institute; it was also helpless and exhausting to live a lonely life. Seeing her most precious item damaged when she came back home, the girl with silvery hair could no longer stand it anymore. She started crying while holding her bent legs with both of her hands.
“Dad…Mom…Little Yellow One…I miss you guys so much. I’m a useless person…Why is this world so unfair?”
Standing behind her, Jing Jiu didn’t let his shadow cast on her while listening to her relating her own sad story in a crying tone.
Her mother had died due to a problem with the gene modification when the girl with silvery hair was little. Her father was a professor at the New Era Institute who had been saving money for her future gene modification. After listening to the advice of someone who worked for an important figure, her father invested all of his savings in a mutual fund, even with some borrowed money. Unexpectedly, the commercial fleet guaranteed by the fund had encountered a horrible fight between a human swordsman and the Mother’s Nest on their way back from their trading trip. More than thirty commercial ships and the goods turned into green smoke in the crossfire.
The fund broker had gone belly-up as a result. Her father owed the bank a large amount of debt and had no choice but to declare bankruptcy. They had moved to the street of lower class from the institute residence. Because of the insolvency, her father couldn’t afford to pay for his beloved daughter’s expensive gene modification of the third level. All he could do was watch her being gradually debilitated by the illness just like what had happened to her mother…The seemingly strong man was often very weak at that time; he opted to commit suicide. Perhaps, the professor thought that his daughter didn’t need to take the responsibility for the debt after his death and that his daughter would live a relatively easier life. But he hadn’t expected that what he did would have a terrible impact on her.
In addition to his death, the professor had left a roomful of paperback books and a cat for his daughter.
But the big yellow cat was dead also.
The girl with silvery hair kept on crying while holding her bent legs.
Looking at her, Jing Jiu uttered “sorry” in his mind.
…
…
Jing Jiu didn’t even feel sorry when the Inherited Heaven Sword was destroyed, to say nothing of a piece of paper. The reason he felt this way toward the girl with silvery hair was because the big yellow cat in the photo reminded him of Ada, whom he would probably never see again.
Jing Jiu lived like a ghost in this apartment. He watched TV along with the girl with silvery hair, saw her work on the computer and listened to her mumbling. After she fell asleep, Jing Jiu used the computer in secret and employed the magic to lower the temperature of the computer before she woke up. He lay in the chair to watch TV after she went to school, and he would go to that room to read books when he felt extremely bored, but he was more careful while turning pages.
It only took a few days for Jing Jiu to learn the name of this girl with silvery hair, which was Zong Lizi, not to mention her life from the day of her birth up to now and a great deal of knowledge regarding this world.
This was a human world.
It was true that they were humans similar to those in Chaotian.
Many aspects of the two worlds were similar, be it their bodily structure, their way of thinking, the method of communication, affection and language.
They should be considered the same if viewed at the scale of prolonged time in an endless universe.
Jing Jiu came up with this conclusion based on what he had learned on TV and on the computer and in the books, as well as his observation of the girl with silvery hair.
This human world occupied a patch of the universe, one of hundreds of permanent star systems. The government could make their own decisions regarding how the society should operate, but it was ruled by a unified and symbolic ruler, and it had to follow the general leadership of the federation in military and science.
This unity was called the “Human Federation of the Milky Way”; and he was currently on a planet called the “Stargate”. The inside of this planet had been emptied many years ago, and it was an important base for the Federation.
There were more than ten human governments like the Stargate in the Human Federation of the Milky Way, with a female priest for each government. The main responsibility of the female priest was to inherit knowledge from ancient times.
It was rumored that the ancient knowledge stemmed from a distant ancient civilization a great many years ago. It was said that the distant ancient civilization was very advanced, which had created many magnificent structures in the universe. Unfortunately, it had encountered the most formidable foe in the universe, the Sea of Dark Matter, at the end of its era.
The distant ancient civilization and the Sea of Dark Matter had both vanished in a brutal war. The universe returned to its original tranquility.
The new flowers will grow out of the dust; as time passed, the humans and the foes had grown out of the emptiness and were again engaged in a war of “karma”. It looked like the victor would be the one that had revived to the height of their former civilization sooner than the other.
During the ongoing war, the Federation of the Milky Way had always been on the defensive and was the weak one. Even though the gene modification had improved tremendously and the Cultivation of martial arts became popular, they were still not a match for the evil dark force. As they were on the verge of being defeated and swallowed a hundred years ago, a few swordsmen as powerful as gods and some exceedingly effective spiritual leaders had suddenly appeared one after the other on the side of the Federation and led the Federation until now.
…
…
Jing Jiu took a liking to terms “universe”, permanent stars”, and “planets”; he was also accustomed to the term “emperor”. However, he was unfamiliar with the terms of government, genes and civilization. As for the term Sea of Dark Matter…it was given a bit too casually; what was the difference between this term and the Milky Way he had read in the books from those bookshelves?
The books he read and the TV news he watched had a vague description about the Sea of Dark Matter; it was evident that they tried to cover up something. He didn’t believe that the monsters resembling the black dandelion without a stem were the only beings in the Sea of Dark Matter. He felt the monsters were rather familiar; the familiarity meant it was not so simple.
The fact that a few godly swordsmen and brilliant leaders had suddenly appeared one hundred years ago made him feel familiar with it.
It had nothing to do with his narcissistic tendency, but time.
If one day in the starry sky was equivalent to one year in Chaotian, one hundred years here was about thirty thousand years in Chaotian.
The founding grandmasters of Green Mountain had started ascending around that time.
The founding grandmasters of the Center Sect had done so at that time as well.
Where did those ascendants of Chaotian go afterwards?
Was there a connection between these two things?
It was not Jing Jiu’s way to look up at the starry night and think about the fate of the humans even when he was in a sewage tunnel. His priority was always to solve his own problems.
The important issue for him at the moment was understanding the essence of this world.
Why did the fireball called the “permanent star” release the purest fairy energy?
Jing Jiu thought that he needed to study the relevant knowledge, including the knowledge of astronomy and physics, seriously and systematically, just like what he had done in that small village.
To log into the network of the institute on the computer of the girl with silvery hair required the validation of her pupils. There were many restrictions on how the populace could use the internet. The books in the room were not in-depth enough. The programs on TV talked nonsense most of time with fewer useful information. What should he do then? It was inconvenient to live like a ghost in this apartment because it was always cumbersome to use the computer and read books this way. It occurred to him that he must do something to change the situation.
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…
One night, Zong Lizi came back to the street in the underground from the Institute of New Era and walked into her apartment with tired steps.
She untied the string binding her hair. The silvery hair scattered down like the beautiful starlight.
As she was about to throw herself onto the soft chair like a backpack after she had poured a cup of water and took the medicine, she suddenly felt a sense of bewilderment, as though something that had accompanied her for a long time went away.
It was tantamount to her father leaving the world undetected and Little Yellow One sneaking out before his death.
She shot another look at the apartment and made sure that nothing had changed. She couldn’t help but smile wryly, thinking that nobody had ever accompanied her and it was pointless to dwell in the matter.
It was then that the doorbell suddenly rang out.
She turned on the screen of the intercom, feeling surprised. “Who is it? what’s the matter?” she asked.
A youth wearing tracksuits with a hoodie appeared on the light screen of the intercom.
“I’ve seen the post about sharing rent on the network of the institute.”
The youth pulled the hoodie quite low to block his face, but it didn’t obstruct his voice.
…
