magician in town

Chapter 675 Ancestral Gift (65)

Guan Xinyue lost her balance, her center of gravity tilting towards the coffin. A loud noise came from behind her, but she didn't have time to look. Her outstretched right hand reached for the edge of the bronze coffin. A distorted memory came to her mind: her hands should be covered in rough barbs, and the sweat glands on her palms should secrete sticky sweat. If she could just grab the edge of the bronze coffin in time, she wouldn't fall.

Her fingers gripped the bronze rim, and her tense nerves instantly relaxed, her heart sinking back into her stomach. A distant memory flashed through her mind: her hands grasped a green branch, her slender body light and agile, her core muscles as dense as metal, allowing her to easily defy gravity and leap towards the golden sun. The world became clearer in her perception: the wind rustling through the forest like tides, sunlight shimmering on every leaf and every beetle, birds soaring over the mountains, the lower oxygen levels making her stomata feel incredibly comfortable.

Suddenly, her fingers slipped from the cold metal edge. The illusory memory seemed to make a faint "click" in her mind, the memory shattered, and she returned to her body. The human body is heavy and fragile, joints easily damaged, waist and abdomen flexible, firmly held down by the Earth's gravity. Losing balance is no longer a pleasurable game, but a deep-seated fear.

Her heart sank back down. Before she could even scream, her heavy body plummeted downwards. The moment stretched out, and as she struggled frantically, before the loud crash behind her had even subsided, she felt another force, like an inescapable torrent, engulfing and pulling her in. She was certain she had slipped into the bronze coffin and would soon fall to the bottom, but the force seemed to be tearing her body apart, pulling her backwards. Guan Xinyue panicked. She regained her senses but didn't know what was happening. Behind her was the bronze coffin wall. Was she going to be strangled to death by this force on the bronze coffin? What was this? Was it a curse of the dead? She shouldn't have climbed onto the coffin; it wasn't something she should have done. Had she been bewitched?

No matter what she prayed for, she was as if she had been grabbed by a coffin possessed by evil spirits. She crashed into the hard bronze, panicking at the thought that she might be trapped in the bronze coffin. Were the human and animal faces on those bronze artifacts people who were trapped inside?

Her mind was in turmoil, and the scream she was about to let out was swallowed back down. Her body slammed heavily into the bronze, and then she felt as if she had been shattered. She knew it must have been just her imagination, but she had indeed passed through two bronze coffins. The only possibility was that her body had been shattered and reassembled both inside and outside the coffins.

She fell to the ground, colliding back-to-back with someone. She screamed, feeling as if her insides were about to be displaced. She cursed, a curse word that began and ended with Roach. There could be no one but Roach; it must have been him from the very beginning! The necklace around her neck flashed one last time before its light went out. She shouldn't have fallen into the coffin in the first place; it must have been him who did it.

With astonishing willpower, she jumped up, ignoring the pain in her bones, and turned around to kill Roach.

Luo Qi was half-lying on the ground, covered in blood, holding the person in his arms. Hearing the sound, he looked up at her, his eyes empty. A few drops of blood splattered on his pale face—his brother's blood. Guan Xinyue's heart softened; Du Zhengyi was going to die.

"I told you... you can't use me anymore..." she said half-heartedly, her gaze fixed on Du Zhengyi's face, searching for a last glimmer of hope. If he died, there wouldn't be a single good person left in the magical world.

“I don’t know how to calculate teleportation beacons. I can only think of using people to locate things. I can only trust you,” Roach replied weakly. He could have not answered her, but he seemed unable to control himself from speaking. He murmured a few more words before suddenly gritting his teeth and controlling himself.

She didn't say anything, and when he gave her the unfortunate necklace again, he didn't expect her to actually wear it. If she threw it away, Roach didn't know what the consequences of teleportation magic would be; he only had a superficial understanding of magic. She chose to keep the necklace, and Roach roughly assumed she would always stay close to the wall, meaning there was likely an open space within a one-meter radius around her. It was a crude method, but it worked.

Luo Qi steadied himself again, half-carrying, half-dragging Du Zhengyi outside. Guan Xinyue followed, gritting her teeth as she helped him lift Du Zhengyi. "Is he still alive?"

The hatch opened automatically as if recharging, and the spaceship emitted a clear, sharp whistle. "He's still alive," Roach seemed certain only now. "How can we keep him alive? Do you have a way?" Guan Xinyue asked, ignoring the various black and white mages who had been attracted there. The world seemed to shrink once more, becoming just the three of them.

“I have some guesses,” Roach said in a low voice, his jaw clenched, his eyes wide open, and his voice trembling as if he were sobbing.

“Don’t be afraid, your guess has always been right,” Guan Xinyue said.

"Really? If I'm wrong this time..."

"Stop talking nonsense!" Guan Xinyue said impatiently, abruptly interrupting Luo Qi.

Roach shut his mouth, and the trembling became less noticeable. He faced the speculative gazes around him with a grim expression. "Get out of my way."

The onlookers suddenly scattered, scrambling to escape, as if an invisible fear had exploded within them. Luo Qi and Guan Xinyue successfully brought Du Zhengyi back to the second compartment, like injecting a massive amount of energy into a spaceship that had been dormant for millennia. Countless devices they had previously discovered, and those they hadn't, were activated simultaneously. Liu Ziyu, who had been studying the control panel in the first compartment, stumbled in at this moment.

"What happened to Luo Qi... Senior Brother?" She was stunned.

“Ziyu, tell everyone that if they want to leave, they should come to this ship. This is the only place where they can leave the sealed land as quickly as possible. After you’re done, wait for me in the first cabin.” Luo Qi paused here, as he was trying to put Du Zhengyi into the pillar container in the middle of the room. “Make sure to keep Master Zhao under control there. If Du Zhengyi… then you’ll only be able to rely on Master Zhao to maintain the basic operation of this ship.”

Liu Ziyu didn't ask any questions, turned around and ran out.

Guan Xinyue, her skin crawling with dread, helped Luo Qi place Du Zhengyi into the standing coffin. She then watched in horror as the container, as if alive, automatically swallowed the person inside. The dying Du Zhengyi maintained his upright position in the solution. But she knew that anyone who emerged from this container would rapidly age and become a skeleton.

"You don't mean you want him to live in the container forever, do you?"

Roach stood next to a device that resembled a control panel. Du Zhengyi's genes and his life activated the device. He reached out and touched the crystal blocks on the control panel, and several Roachs were released into these crystal containers. He traversed the entire knowledge base in his brain, comparing it with the knowledge of the spaceship. The several split Roachs began to work synchronously.