New concept of the mysterious way to ascend to immortality

Chapter 10: Running City, a city of outstanding people and beautiful scenery, and Taixi City, a city of simple folk customs

Time was limited, and at the elf's repeated urging, Yuan Zhu reluctantly left the manor owner's bedroom and left the Western-style mansion with a small number of valuable treasures.

"Let me tell you, although the items you embezzled aren't many, they're all top-notch. Each one of them exudes a contaminant aura, and they're also exquisitely small and easy to carry. I've finally figured it out. Aside from the shadow-related powers temporarily included on the 'White List,' all the extraordinary items and powers on this Duling planet are considered sources of contamination in the eyes of 'Xian Jing Lao Deng.' They're simply categorized as generally dangerous, extremely dangerous, and incredibly dangerous!"

When Yuan Zhu and the elf were ransacking the mansion, they relied on the pollution perception of the [Immortal Scripture] to accidentally discover many hidden compartments in the bedroom and scrape out these treasures.

As he held these small items in his hands, his [Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture. Standard Edition] continuously issued danger warnings, constantly refreshing on the retina's data panel:
[Warning! Suffering from unknown contamination, mental contamination -1. Resistance assessment in progress... Passed, immune to this attack.]

[Suffering from mental pollution attack -2, judgment passed, ignored. ]

[Soul Pollution -1, Damage Blocked...]

Although the object in his hand was completely unable to penetrate his passive defense, no more than a breeze blowing in his face, the constantly refreshing mental pollution and mental attack prompts still made him somewhat concerned.

In Yuan Zhu's opinion, if these items really had some kind of pollution or curse that could cause harm to people, then the owner of the manor would definitely not hide them in the bedroom where he lived every day.

The reason is simple. When you were taking a walk downstairs of your house, you accidentally picked up nuclear waste that was beautifully packaged and printed with a special radiation sign. It was discarded by a nuclear power plant. You took it home with the idea that it was a rare commodity and planned to take a photo and sell it on Xianyu.

You wouldn't hide nuclear waste under your pillow to help you sleep. Even though you're a student who doesn't like studying, you know that it's radioactive and can cause damage to your body and hair loss.

Similarly, the owner of the house placed these items in the secret compartment by the bed. This can only mean that they are beneficial to the body. Perhaps they can ward off evil spirits, improve sleep quality, or have other benefits?

Yuan Zhu warned the system spirit, "You need to be more careful in the future. You can't just lump 'pollution' into one category. You need to make a more detailed distinction and find out which ones are truly dangerous, and which ones appear dangerous according to the [Immortal Scripture] but are actually harmless or even beneficial to the body. By the way, can you do this?"

The elf confidently responded, "Of course I do! I'm an expert in this area. The [Immortal Scripture] has built-in specialized detection programs. If you successfully reach the Immortal Universe, the [Immortal Scripture] will directly activate environmental monitoring, spiritual energy spectrum, biological gene sequencing, and other functions. Now that we've moved to a new world, all these built-in parameters have been invalidated, but the basic functions are still there."

"It only takes a while for you to adjust. I can adjust the parameters bit by bit to help you quickly integrate into the new environment and deeply explore the secrets of this world. Take your predecessor, Brother Yuan Zhu, for example. He knew nothing about the extraordinary system and stubbornly rushed in, only to die. Look at us, we just cleverly use the [Immortal Scripture's] keen sense of pollution to scrape out these treasures."

While the game wizard was blindly optimistic about the future, Yuan Zhu was more calm. He still had one hurdle to overcome (proving his innocence), so he had to make more plans.

After leaving the mansion, Yuan Zhu stood on the empty lawn, took a deep breath, and felt refreshed.

He raised his wrist, and the mechanical watch he had picked up showed 4 p.m. Normally, he would have finished cleaning up the manor by this time, and it would be time to return to Running City.

But now, he doesn't plan to escape, but stay here and wait for the police to arrive.

"Luckily, this world has invented the telephone, so we can just dial and report the crime."

This manor was a private mansion, so naturally it was equipped with a remote communication device called a "dialer." The police station's unified number, 7711, was also common knowledge, so his surrender went smoothly.

Now he came to the front yard and finally had the energy, time and mood to appreciate the scenery of this strange planet: "It's so beautiful!"

Looking up, on the right side of the north-facing courtyard, there are endless mountains rising from the ground. The peaks continue to rise one after another, and the highest peak is shrouded in clouds and fog and reaches the sky.

In the memories of his predecessor, Running was a 2.5-tier city on the west coast of the Desolate Continent. Built in a basin, it was surrounded by endless misty mountains.

The entire city is shrouded in fog year-round, with extremely high humidity. On average, it rains for one-third of the year, and the remaining 1-odd days are mostly cloudy, foggy, or extremely humid and sunny.

In short, the daytime can be very bright and the visibility is very far, but you can't even expect to see a ray of sunlight.

Because of its extreme humidity, Running is also known as the "Rain City" and the "Rain Capital." As for why it's not called the "Fog City," it's because just a hundred kilometers away lies Taixi City, the economic and cultural center of the New Federation and the largest super-tier city on the west coast. Every morning, the city is often shrouded in a thin mist that slowly drifts down from the Misty Mountains.

To some extent, Running City has always served as Taixi's "satellite city + secondary capital" role.

Taixi is a coastal trading port city connected to Running by the Yudai River.

When the first group of new immigrants from the [Gen Continent] arrived in the [New World], they immediately chose present-day Running as the colonization point.

Because it's surrounded by mountains, it's largely shielded from typhoons and ocean monsoons. Furthermore, while this area experiences heavy rainfall, a river runs through the center of the city, winding along the mountains before finally merging into the sea, where Taixi City is today. Therefore, water transportation is quite convenient.

In addition, the abundant rainfall, coupled with the suitable temperature, has led to an exceptionally lush vegetation. The nearby mountains have been cut down for over two hundred years, but in the distance there is still a dense primeval forest, with extremely rich flora and fauna.

Today, Running is still Taixi’s fruit and vegetable supply base.

In addition to convenient water transportation, abundant flora and fauna, and a safe geographical environment, the main reason why new immigrants chose this place was the rich underground mineral resources.

The mountains and underground surrounding Running are densely packed with natural fissures wide enough for human passage. Within these fissures lie a vast array of coal, metal minerals, and other rare gemstone veins.

The new immigrants of that era had experienced the collapse of the dynasty and were beaten by aliens who possessed magic. When they finally decided to immigrate and escape, they encountered the vigorous "Second Magic Industrial Revolution".

The reason why Xiguo's "old aristocratic group" failed to defeat the "Red Dragon Empire" that now controls the Eastern State's sacred artifacts is because the latter decisively abandoned the magic that was eliminated by the times and actively embraced the emerging "elemental steam engine + alchemy", sweeping away those antiques who played "magic cultivation" in one fell swoop.

Although the old nobility of Xi State had suffered another ignominious defeat and been forced to flee to develop new lands, they were still committed to progress. Therefore, before arriving in the New World, they dispatched several geological exploration teams, selecting Running, a region rich in coal and metal resources, and subsequently building the first "magic industrial" city.

Running boasts a comprehensive and outdated industrial system. Numerous abandoned mining areas, dug to the point of collapse and threatened with collapse, are also home to the gemstone processing and high-end jewelry manufacturing industries that once flourished alongside the mining industry.

In short, Running was once prosperous, but due to its limited basin area, it was eventually siphoned off by the emerging Taixi City. New immigrants first established themselves in Running, opened factories, engaged in mining and metallurgy, and then transported supplies to the new coastal city via river transport, building an even more prosperous port city.

Over the past hundred years, the 'Second Magic Industrial Revolution', like the 'First Magic Revival', flourished and was rapidly iterated.

After all, Du Ling can access more than just one or two universes. As more strange universes connect with Du Ling, the vision of the local indigenous people is getting higher and higher. They are no longer satisfied with simply optimizing the existing technological system, but want to have both, taking the strengths of each and integrating them into a more superior and unique extraordinary system.

The reason is very simple. If the humans of Duling chose to fight the magic system from the beginning, and tried to make the magic power complete a new natural cycle on this planet and completely enter the era of magic civilization, then Duling would most likely become a colony of the "Crystal Wall Magic Universe".

Similarly, the second prosperous "Magical Industrial Revolution" was based on the original "Alchemy" of the Steam Universe. It modified and added the newly learned "Magic System" to create the slightly innovative "Elemental Steam Engine".

After this, the major nations of the Duling Kingdom began to make random changes, causing Running, a "classical industrial city," to quickly fall behind and become obsolete. By then, it was already too late to transform.

Over the past few decades, Running has been providing blood transfusions to Taixi City, supplying highly educated and technical talents... and Taixi will also send back the obsolete production capacity that cannot be eliminated in big cities, those wastes.

As a result, Running's crime rate continued to soar, and three heavy-duty prisons were built to detain criminals from Taixi City! Furthermore, various cases involving evil spirits frequently broke out, and were then cleared out by professional teams and sent to Running City.

Because there are a large number of natural or artificial cracks and tunnels under this city, one only needs to choose a pit deep enough, throw the pollution source, evil spirits, and monsters into it, and then throw a bundle of explosives to detonate it, artificially create a collapse and bury it, and then bury the disaster without covering up the truth.

The reason Taixi is so teeming with criminals and monsters isn't simply because of its exceptional people and beautiful scenery. It's because it's the largest and most prosperous city on the West Coast, attracting talented individuals from across the New World Federation. Its population has already surpassed 12 million.

With more people, there are naturally more scum and villains, which then attracts more evil spirits and monsters... In the end, in order to save trouble, the city management simply swept all the garbage into Running City.

As a former twin city, a sister city, haven't you always complained about backward production capacity, outdated industrial chains, and the inability to transform your industry? Now, we at Taixi have decided to vigorously support Running in developing a 'prison industry', transporting half the West Coast's criminals there to achieve urban transformation!

A brand new "prison-type city" also has some "competitive events", such as prison fitness, cage death match, death racing, arena beast fighting... Anyway, they are all serious criminals, so it won't be a pity if they die.

If sports competitions are successful, the prison city could be further transformed into a tourist city, a prison tourism industry. Is there a future for this? Can it develop the economy?

Even the [Fire Fang] where Yuan Zhu was located was killing a large number of goblins that were flooding the underground. This was also because major pharmaceutical groups took a fancy to the cheap prisoner resources and moved their laboratories here.

The planet of Duling is plagued by goblins, but only the people of Running are so keen on hunting and selling them. Why? Because pharmaceutical companies have gradually gathered here, and medical resources have begun to converge here, which has led to a surge in technology breakthroughs.

Why do pharmaceutical companies come here? Because there's a vast and affordable pool of prisoners for drug testing. Some companies even sponsor fighting tournaments held in prisons.

Before the competition started, the prisoner used my family's magic potion to complete the Green Grass Trial, which greatly improved his strength, made the competition more enjoyable, and demonstrated the effectiveness of the potion to the outside world.

After the competition, the half-dead prisoners were brought back to the company for rescue, recycling, and reuse. This not only allowed them to verify the effectiveness of drugs and analyze side effects, but also served as training for newcomers, cultivating a group of excellent doctors to serve the nobility and wealthy.

The loop is closed, completely closed! Running City is truly transforming! Prison competition, medical tourism, traditional gemstones, and the constant reverse output of poisonous blood from Taixi City have allowed Yuan Zhu's hometown to maintain its unique vitality.

...

Yuan Zhu was standing on the lawn at this time, looking at the endless mountains that stretched out in an endless stream, the sharp and tall peaks, the lush green forests, and the wonders that could not be distinguished between clouds and fog. It made him feel particularly beautiful. This was simply a fairyland!
Then turn your gaze to the left. The manor at the foot of the mountain is at a slightly higher altitude. Looking at Running City from afar, black smoke is rising from the urban area. The dense smoke is gathering together and mixing with the white clouds, which is quite like the artistic conception of Tai Chi's mutual transformation.

This city is like a green curtain with a glaring black mold stain on it.

While Running wasn't as advanced, prosperous, or developed as Taixi, it wasn't bad either. It was just like Mexico in the Americas, being too close to Taixi had influenced it in every way, making it unable to maintain its independence. As a result, its development became increasingly distorted, and it could no longer be considered a normal city.

Perhaps it was because Taixi was madly outputting garbage to Running that more than a dozen inferior evil gods appeared after one sacrifice?

"Could it be that there are endless treasure mines buried beneath this city?"

Originally, Yuan Zhu's greatest desire was to work hard, achieve class advancement, become a superior person, and then leave Running and move to Taixi to settle down and live the life of a big boss with plenty of food and fish.

But for Yuan Zhu now, he feels that Running City has great potential!

His [Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture] didn't seem to be a clean thing either, and since it couldn't be exposed to the public, perhaps leaving it in Running City would be a good option. After all, this place continuously absorbs the pollution produced by the entire West Coast, and if he blended in with it, he wouldn't be conspicuous at all, and he might even be able to get something to eat.

After the elf sensed his thoughts, it couldn't hold back and grumbled, "Is [Xian Jing Lao Deng] so despicable in your eyes? To have fallen so low as to eat polluted garbage?"

Yuan Zhu retorted: "How dare you say that [Deformed Spiritual Roots] weren't created by [Immortal Scripture] eating garbage?!"

"Uh... How can you call it eating garbage when you're binding with special spiritual energy? Quickly hide these things. That direction is good. Bury them at the edge of the forest and come back to retrieve them later when you have time."

Yuan Zhu, who lacked experience in this area, followed suit and wrapped up the special items along with some gold rings and jewelry, then buried them. He then returned to the door of the sacrificial hall, found a step to sit down, and began to wait quietly.

At about 4:30, there was a noise outside the manor. Someone opened the gate from the outside, and then a retro blue-gray vintage car slowly drove in, emitting black smoke and making a sharp clanging noise.

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(End of this chapter)