magician in town

Chapter 668 Ancestral Gift (58)

Their conversation ended with their final arrival at their destination, and the clownfish returned to being a gloomy, sorrowful cloud, with the occasional glimpse of "Rocky" like a brief ray of light breaking through the mist.

For a few brief moments, Du Zhengyi felt a sense of closeness, a joyful intimacy that could only be felt when genuinely approaching Luo Qi's soul. He hadn't known Luo Qi for long, but perhaps because Luo Qi was a born master of mental magic, he could directly contact and communicate with Luo Qi's thoughts or soul. Perhaps even a fleeting exchange could surpass the slow, error-ridden communication between humans or magicians, allowing for a deeper level of mutual understanding. Or perhaps it was simply because Luo Qi was a special being, or even just because of some causal relationship he had witnessed in the universe but couldn't explain.

Beyond that, there's an even more important point: everything must be logical. No matter how enigmatic the clownfish mystery may be, the clownfish itself is real. Therefore, the mystery must have a core. If the Roach he reveals isn't his core, then the mystery can hardly exist. Either the clownfish doesn't exist, or the clownfish really is Roach.

So now this intimacy has turned into pain. Du Zhengyi's hand touches the core gate of the sealed land, struggling to concentrate on opening it. But his mind is constantly distracted by the pain. The most real beauty and connection he has in this world can be 1 or 0, but it should never be the absurdity of both existence and non-existence. This prevents him from even fully engaging in self-doubt.

He had countless explanations for the difference between the Roach who returned from the future and the Roach he encountered, but his mind was in turmoil. It was as if every attempt to explain this matter was met with a fog of confusion suppressing his thoughts, forcibly turning this chaotic thinking into a heart-wrenching pain.

Du Zhengyi focused his attention once more, silently reciting the password to open the door in his mind. The clownfish's unsettling speculations had not been without their influence; he couldn't help but recall that the door in front of him was indeed a biometric authentication door.

His job brought him closer to the core of the magical world, giving him a deeper understanding of its essence than others. He hadn't been oblivious to how similar it all was to humanity's envisioned future technology. Like an amateur anthropologist, Roach spent his days incessantly discussing the similarities between magic and human scientific thought. He didn't find it tiresome; in fact, from the beginning, he felt that Roach was right. Although he didn't have Roach's extensive knowledge of human science and technology, he had, even without personal experience, observed how things unfolded, and had consciously or unconsciously acquired some common sense from human society.

So how different is Qionglin's unwavering faith in magic from the Lotus Burners' religious worship of magic? The Primordial Mages treated them like highly intelligent beings arrogantly treat primitive people. The Primordial Mages never truly treated mages as their own children; they never truly taught mages anything, and of course, they never taught humanity anything either.

The door finally moved, contracting to one side like the muscles of a living organism, revealing the suffocating scene inside the control room.

He sensed that the clownfish was looking up at the scene in the control room. The hall was like a bronze tree from human legend, with a nearly ten-meter-tall, extremely complex metal pillar "growing" in the very center of the hall, and at the top, like the fingers of a giant, supporting a sphere that was actually suspended in the dark void.

Like a tree trunk, the pillar meanders out new branches at many asymmetrical points, each branch bearing a "fruit." However, except for the very top "fruit," which is a perfect sphere, the others are all bare hemispheres.

This wasn't the first time Du Zhengyi had seen this scene. He had, of course, visited other sealed lands. Although the main control room's structure wasn't exactly the same, the actual topology was quite similar. Some sealed lands didn't have such a "divine tree," looking as ordinary as a human laboratory or computer room, but they could generally still find main and auxiliary control consoles, like a human mainframe computer and different clients connected to it. The only thing Du Zhengyi was certain of was that many people had once worked busily in such rooms, but now they were deserted, leaving only the still-running automated system. In some special areas, the sealed lands were intentionally constructed with superfluous structures, like this bronze tree. Perhaps the Ancestral Mage had also periodically favored certain decorative styles, wanting to express a spiritual pursuit beyond practical value. He had previously completely failed to understand the existence of these scenes, and he actually harbored many disrespectful thoughts towards the Ancestral Mage.

It wasn't until he traveled to Roach's country in his mental space that he witnessed a scene that, while completely different, was strikingly similar. He once suspected that Roach had serious mental problems, which was why he had built a small, distorted structure in his mental world. "Distorted" didn't even begin to describe those structures; they were like some kind of prototypical creature, somewhat like the slime Roach himself would transform into—without a fixed shape, forever in a state of growth and change. Du Zhengyi felt as if he had seen hairy teacups and fermenting jars, and his vision went black.

Later, Roach awkwardly claimed that he wasn't creating anything original, but rather imitating the Spanish architect Gaudí, drawing inspiration from nature and suggesting that architecture can grow and change. Du Zhengyi even checked the original Roach mentioned, and while he paid homage to the master architect, it was indeed more sophisticated than Roach's imitation, but he felt it would have been better not to have checked it at all.

But this made him feel somewhat more at ease with the original monks; perhaps they too had artistic pursuits they couldn't comprehend. Maybe the shape of the tree expressed some meaning, or perhaps the original monks, like the architect Gaudí, believed their works represented life or nature.

The clownfish suddenly spoke, its voice filled with sneer and mockery. "The Bronze Tree. How could the Primordial Mage have created bronze? This primitive metal was worthless in their culture. To deliberately use the only metal that early humans could smelt, and to deliberately create a shape that humans could recognize and imitate, is clearly an attempt to entice humans to worship and disrupt the progress of human civilization."

"That's really extreme," Du Zhengyi said in a low voice.

The clownfish didn't refute, but walked closer to examine the texture of the bronze tree. A closer look revealed that it wasn't bronze at all, but rather a more advanced alloy used to disguise it as bronze. The texture on the tree's surface wasn't randomly generated; many people would find these shapes familiar, like an abstract description of a human genetic sequence.

"The First Ancestor Masters might be a few geneticists who have gone mad from living too long."

Du Zhengyi ignored what he said. Although he had thought about it too, it wasn't important. He had considered many things, but none of them mattered as much as the safety of the people who were alive right now.

He didn't linger on the other branches, but went straight to the top of the main trunk and entered the largest sphere, which was the true control room of this sealed land.

"New Phenology" will also be updated later.