A Psychiatrist's Bizarre Game Journey / Dream of the Mist

To be honest, Zhou Ke'er didn't have high hopes for cultivation techniques. After all, even if he obtained one, he might not be able to practice it, because the human body structure in the new era is somewhat different from that of the old era.

However, those cultivation techniques that resemble "skills" should be learnable, or at least usable, since they're all just methods of manipulating energy to produce effects, and they must have commonalities. If Zhou Ke'er could obtain these techniques, she wouldn't have to keep self-destructing with a ball of spiritual energy every day.

The usage that Zhou Ke'er could figure out on her own was inefficient and low in damage—even if it was high, it would also harm herself—and it consumed a lot of energy. The usage that she figured out on her own in a short period of time was definitely not as sophisticated as the techniques that countless people had perfected over generations.

"what?"

Huang Quan was taken aback at first. She had just been paying attention to the direction from which the sound had come, wondering what had happened. She hadn't expected Zhou Ke'er to suddenly ask her such a question out of the blue. She paused for a moment, then subconsciously replied, "Cultivation techniques... I do have some, but I only practiced them a long time ago and haven't used them in a long time. Um... I know a little bit about immortal cultivation, internal energy cultivation, and magic. What do you want to learn?"

"Hey! Is this the time to talk about this?! I know mortals are stupid, but I never thought anyone could be as stupid as you!"

Kronos was so angry that he couldn't help but slap Huang Quan on the back of the head. "What we should be paying attention to now is what exactly happened over there!"

"Oh, Coach! I want to learn how to cultivate immortality!"

Zhou Ke'er completely ignored what Kronos said and immediately went to Huang Quan's side to say something.

Hmph, Zhou Ke'er is determined to learn cultivation today, and even Kronos can't stop her, he said so!

"Oh... let me see..."

Huang Quan was stunned by Zhou Ke'er's words. He casually picked up the Death Scythe, drew a circle in the air with the blade, and then reached in to rummage around. "Hmm, I remember what I used a long time ago when I was learning to cultivate immortality... Oh right, it was the beginner level, 'Two Years to Qi Refining, Three Years to Foundation Establishment,' and 'Three Years to Core Formation, Five Years to Nascent Soul.' They were both written by Pompeiro. Since you seem to have a connection with them, I'm giving them to you."

As he spoke, Huang Quan casually tossed the two... uh, super, super thick booklets to Zhou Ke'er, "Anyway, I don't practice this stuff anymore, but it's said to be quite useful, although not as exaggerated as the title makes it out to be."

"Huh?"

Zhou Ke'er held the two large booklets in her hands, completely bewildered—what on earth were these incredibly incongruous titles?! And how could he possibly finish studying all these two booklets?! There wasn't even room to put them all! Besides... who knew if they'd even be able to pull out this fragment of memory in the end...

Wait a minute... Zhou Ke'er suddenly remembered that the watch assigned by the Divine Academy seemed to have a function that was quite suitable for the current situation, but he had never had the chance to use it before.

Without hesitation, Zhou Ke'er immediately pointed her watch at the two large booklets and activated the "scan" function.

A beam of shimmering blue light scanned the two large books, and soon the watch indicated that all the text in the books had been captured.

That's really some cutting-edge technology.

Zhou Ke'er flipped through the first few pages and the last few pages, compared them with the text included, and found no errors, so there should be no problem.

"Um..."

Suddenly, Zhou Ke'er's eyes lit up, and she turned to look at Huang Quan with excitement, saying, "Fellow Daoist... ah, no, dear friend, could you show me all the cultivation techniques you have?"

"Huh? Oh..."

Huang Quan scratched his head, making a gesture as if to grab it.

Unfortunately, a hand reached out and suddenly grabbed Huang Quan's wrist.

Kronos roughly pulled Huang Quan aside and roared, "Mortal! Do you know you've been tricked? How can you do whatever someone tells you to do? Don't you have a brain?! How many times have I told you to listen to me? Why do you still ignore me?! I'm furious! If it weren't for that bastard Di Xin using the Heavenly Joy Star Lord's Seal to keep me under the Heavenly Court's divine authority, I would have abandoned you long ago!"

"Okay, okay, don't be angry, don't be angry. I won't give him the book, alright?"

Huang Quan, with a helpless expression, stood on tiptoe, patted Kronos on the shoulder, and comforted him.

"...Stop fooling around! Hurry up and check what's going on over there! If something really happens over there, the responsibility will fall on you for delaying until now!"

Kronos snorted coldly, grabbed Huang Quan by the back of his collar, glared at the smiling Zhou Ke'er, and said, "Come if you want, but you'd better not come."

Then, he reached out and tore open a spatial rift, then slipped inside.

The spatial rift healed in the next instant.

"That's weird. What do you mean by 'come if you want'? It's obvious they don't want me to go!"

Zhou Ke'er was furious, but he hadn't intended to go over there anyway—what was a mere memory fragment compared to the cultivation technique he had just acquired! Of course, he wanted to try it out immediately!

Just keep cultivating here until the memory fragments end. If they just don't end...

Let's see how it goes later.

Zhou Ke'er nodded, then found a relatively clean and safe place nearby and began to seriously study "Two Years of Qi Refining and Three Years of Foundation Building".

Incidentally, he could also test out the sword control technique Chen Tian had taught him not long ago. Although he didn't have a sword, controlling a dagger should be the same.

## Chapter 359, Section 354. That's it?

The words are divided into two parts.

While Zhou Ke'er was engrossed in practicing her skills, things weren't so easy for Chen Tian and Zhijiansha.

"Um... what should we do now?"

Zhijiansha awkwardly scratched her cheek, a little afraid that Chen Tian would get angry—after all, they were just having a nice romantic conversation (?), and she suddenly interrupted, saying that she had discovered something, which led to Zhou Ke'er's current disappearance (even though it was Zhou Ke'er's own fault for being so impulsive). What if Chen Tian took her anger out on her?

"...Forget it, let's keep going. If we wait for him, who knows how long we'll have to wait. And even if he comes back, he might not be here."

Chen Tian shook her head and explained, "We still have the mission of exploring the main world. We can't just split up and end up making progress even slower."

Although Chen Tian was very familiar with this area, he didn't dare to boast that he knew everything about it, nor did he have a reason to explain why he knew the terrain so well. So he still had to take the automatically generated map and walk around to make it look like a proper place.

However, from the perspective of the sand between the fingers:

"Hehe, although I want to kill you right now, it wouldn't be good if Zhou Ke'er saw your body scattered all over the place. So let's go a little further away, hehe. Don't splatter blood on me."

Chen Tian's expression was sinister and vicious, his eyes flashing with malice, as if he wished he could grind her to dust and cut her into eight pieces on the spot.

How terrifying!! Why did I have to get involved too!! Sand between my fingers wanted to cry but couldn't, and I trembled with fear.

"Oh...okay, hehe..."

Barely realizing what was happening, Zhijiansha swallowed hard, cautiously tugged at the corners of his mouth, and managed a weak smile.

Oh no, I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die.

No, this can't go on. We have to take the initiative!

A strong will to survive made the sand between my fingers rack their brains. "Wait, why am I the one who's getting the short end of the stick?! This doesn't make sense! They're the ones having the affair, I'm the one catching them in the act! If I tell Red Crane about this, they'll be the ones fighting, why should I be afraid?!"

Under the oppressive weight of death, the sand between her fingers suddenly felt a surge of clarity: That's right! It was clearly Zhou Ke'er and Chen Tian's little secret that she discovered, and it should have been the sand between her fingers that could have used it to blackmail and coerce them! How did she end up living in fear and anxiety herself? Is this reasonable?!

It's all because of the preconceived notions about Zhou Ke'er that scared her!

A will to survive ignited in Zhijiansha's eyes. "Hmph, there's more to come! I'm not going to sit here and wait to die!" she thought. "That two-timing scumbag Zhou Ke'er deserves to die! I, Zhijiansha, am innocent!"

"Hey? What's wrong? What are you spacing out for? What happened?"

When Zhijiansha came to her senses, the first thing she saw was Chen Tian standing in front of her with a puzzled look on her face, waving his hand back and forth in front of her eyes, clearly because she had been staring blankly for too long.

"No, it's nothing... Let's go!"

Bring on all your schemes and tricks! I, Sand Between My Fingers, am ready!

Zhijiansha's lips curled into a checkmark shape. She's back. The shrewd and calculating Zhijiansha from before she met Zhou Ke'er is back!

"……oh..."

Chen Tian glanced suspiciously at Zhijian Sha, who seemed a bit off, wondering what kind of trouble he was up to, but didn't pursue the matter and simply led the way forward.

----------------

"boom!"

Flamingo swung her Death Scythe sharply, slamming the monster hooked on the blade aside.

For some reason, from the very beginning, she felt a strange sense of unease, which made her feel somewhat uneasy.

However, now is not the time for her to overthink things.

Just a short while ago, they were exploring the city, gradually unlocking the map, when unexpectedly...

As I walked, around a corner, whoosh...

A large teleportation array appeared before everyone's eyes.

However, the teleportation array was currently in a grayed-out state, and on the stone pillar standing in the very center, there was an empty circular groove—well, there was no need to guess at all; according to the oldest game tropes, it was simply missing something that could be embedded in it, so the teleportation array was not activated.

As expected, Red Crane and his companions were soon prompted by the system to trigger a side quest in the main world, the objective of which was to restore the teleportation array to function.

Although the mission didn't specify where to find the missing item.

Immediately afterward, before Red Crane and the others could even approach the teleportation array, a horde of bizarre monsters suddenly appeared from nowhere and attacked them. These were presumably the monsters guarding the teleportation array; Red Crane and the others would have to eliminate them before they could get close.

Although their numbers are not many, the individual strength of these monsters is, on average, much stronger than the ghosts encountered in that previous event module. Even the Red Crane, who used the Faceless One's Mask, could only fight two at most. If there were more, she could only barely manage to keep up.

As for the others... Zhang He used his bug-level ability to share luck as an auxiliary to help Chun Kun Qiu Fei, who was wielding dual pistols, to restrain the other monsters and prevent them from adding more pressure to Hong He.

It's worth mentioning that the two guns seem to be of fairly high quality, and it's unclear when she acquired them. She didn't even use them in the last event module.

As for Cold-Eating Rabbit... her giant anchor was already used up and was now on cooldown. Since she couldn't use such a heavy thing for basic attacks, she pulled out a hammer that could be described as huge. Without even checking if she could hit the monsters, she just swung the hammer wildly. In the end, due to inertia, she even started spinning rapidly in circles, crashing through the monsters and disrupting their formation.

The fact that it can keep spinning for so long probably means it has some kind of skill to it.

From this perspective, if we disregard spiritual power, Zhou Ke'er's destructive power is actually not as strong as Leng Chi Tu's.

Actually, upon closer analysis, the team's positioning is quite clear now.

First, there are two control-type support heroes, Zhijiansha and Zhang He, who can also act as the team's strategist.

Secondly, there's the main DPS character, Red Crane. At this stage, once she activates her Faceless One's Face, her combat power is undoubtedly the strongest.

The two secondary DPS characters are Cold-Eating Rabbit and Spring Slumber. Cold-Eating Rabbit can unleash more damage than Red Crane at the start, but its sustain is relatively poor afterward, since the anchor's impact is one-hit wonder and has a long cooldown. Spring Slumber is of average strength, but perhaps due to its rich experience in this type of holographic combat game, it has better combat awareness and overall strategy, making it a key point of pressure-bearing in team fights.

Chen Tian is the only healer character with healing skills and equipment, but she seems to be quite strong, definitely a powerful healer.

Zhou Ke'er is the only exception... her strength isn't low, but it's also not low either... she's unpredictable, potentially causing heavy losses on both sides. Because of her position-shifting skill, calling her a support character is plausible, but the effect is rather lackluster, usually used for escaping. As for her acting as a behind-the-scenes strategist, while she's certainly intelligent enough, her thinking is unconventional, and she might abandon her teammates to do inexplicable things, making her someone no one dares to trust.

Well, it's a kind of "chicken rib" positioning—tasteless to eat, but a pity to throw away.

Sure enough, it's Zhang Jie again.

## Chapter 360, Section 355: The Array Master

"No... the duration of the Faceless One's Face is about to expire. If we continue to use it up, we might die here. Let's retreat."

After a while of maneuvering, Honghe frowned and suddenly addressed the crowd.

Because in the previous event module, Flamingo had almost exhausted all the energy she had accumulated in the Faceless Ones, and the energy she had accumulated afterward was not enough to support Flamingo in a long battle. It is reasonable that her energy is about to run out.

Hearing what Honghe said, the others had no choice but to retreat first and make plans later. After a brief struggle, they fought their way back to Honghe's side.

When the other three arrived at Honghe's side, Honghe activated the talisman that Chen Tian had given her without hesitation.

Instantly, a tiny teleportation array appeared beneath everyone's feet, and in the blink of an eye, Red Crane and the others were back in the safe house.