The small red dot blinked quietly, with countless green dots densely scattered around it, as well as light gray map-like routes.
This was the information received by Xiao Ling after linking to the life detector...
It was the life detector that Jiang Zhaoye had casually tossed into his bundle during his last world exploration.
He had originally forgotten about it, but yesterday when packing his things, he couldn't find the detector after searching for ages, only then remembering he had thrown it alongside the bundle to that child who had almost starved to death by the roadside back then.
Jiang Zhaoye stared at that small red dot for a long time.
That child... he wondered how they were doing now.
Overthinking was useless. Jiang Zhaoye had never been an indecisive person—since he couldn't let it go, he would just do it.
Jiang Zhaoye teleported straight out of the ice cavern.
After a bout of dizziness, Jiang Zhaoye's feet stepped onto a patch of dry, withered fallen leaves, letting out a soft crunch.
He cautiously looked around to confirm his position—it was indeed the woods where he had left a position mark before teleporting back to the ice cavern last time.
Overhead, the withered branches of several old trees overlapped, their canopies blocking out most of the still-gloomy sky. Dim light leaked down through the fragmented gaps, casting gray, hazy specks of light onto the layered leaves.
Remote, quiet, valueless—perfect for concealing oneself.
Jiang Zhaoye glanced down at his watch. On Xiao Ling's screen, the small red light dot was blinking to the east of the city, at a distance of about... Jiang Zhaoye had Xiao Ling estimate it, and the straight-line distance was roughly a dozen li.
"Xiao Ling, pull up the language data logged last time under codename 'Hanyu'."
"Understood. Language data for codename 【Hanyu】 world retrieved for you. Current language pack progress: roughly two hundred basic vocabulary words, roughly thirty sets of common sentence structures, mostly written terminology for scriptures and cultivation techniques. Performing simple daily communication is somewhat barely manageable. It is recommended to continue supplementing language material to improve communication fluency."
Jiang Zhaoye perfunctorily grunted twice in agreement. As he strode toward the red dot's location, he instructed Xiao Ling to assist him in practicing the local "foreign language" through audio clips looping in his earpiece along with real-time translations.
"Many thanks."
"May I ask..."
"How should I address you?"
"Excuse me... pardon me..."
"Just passing through..."
He read along, his pronunciation twisted and vocabulary stiff, but it was already much better than when he had come last time.
Last time he was completely illiterate and had to rely on guessing body language the whole way. This time, he could at least squeeze out a few proper words.
Along the way, there were still poor strangers whose corpses lay exposed in the wilderness. Jiang Zhaoye deliberately ignored them, practicing his foreign language while pressing forward with his head down.
Jiang Zhaoye emerged from the woods and stepped onto the dirt road where he had met the child, passing sparse and abandoned ridge paths, crossing dried-up mud pits, and traversing a stretch of wilderness. The road under his feet finally turned from dirt into a relatively proper roadway... showing traces of horse dung and wheel ruts.
He stepped onto the hardened yellow soil and went straight ahead for another distance until a city wall, distant like a mirage, finally came clearly into the view of this visitor from another world.
Jiang Zhaoye couldn't help but stop in his tracks.
A grand, dark-yellow giant city stood silently beneath the gray, hazy sky. Vast, ancient, and majestic, it pressed down together with the gloomy world, catching one's breath.
Coming back to his senses, he couldn't help walking closer eagerly.
Only then could he visually see that the city walls were built extremely high—a full several dozen zhang—stacked layer upon layer with pitch-black boulders... They were not stacked completely neatly; some areas were grayish-yellow stones, while others were bluestones, as if having undergone countless repairs across long years, their uneven stone surfaces covered in marks of wind erosion and rain.
Dry grass stems grew in some of the cracks, and in a few places, a corner had even collapsed, revealing the mottled rammed earth inside.
Thick dust gathered at the base of the walls, and dilapidated shacks and straw mats were scattered around the corners, almost forming streets and alleys. Shadows of people moved bustlingly among them, looking as if they had settled here permanently.
Displaced refugees cluster in shacks, living attached to the outer wall.
Jiang Zhaoye suddenly remembered this sentence he had read in digital ancient texts... and suddenly felt that it might have been the author's literal description.
He raised his head, his gaze sweeping carefully across a section of the wall.
Having awakened his spiritual pupils, his vision was now exceptionally good.
He could clearly peer at the structures upon it. Watchtowers stood at regular intervals along the wall, but they all looked somewhat dilapidated, their wooden structures leaning sideways, with some of their roofs even decayed, teetering as if they might collapse at any moment.
Walking closer, there was a fairly wide moat in front of the city, but most of the riverbed had dried up, leaving only a layer of murky muddy water at the bottom that emitted a faint, indescribable stench.
Searching along the area where people gathered, Jiang Zhaoye saw the heavy city gates, seemingly constructed from huge timber, their surfaces clad in iron plates that had largely peeled off, with round gate studs covered in rust.
Several squads of soldiers wearing worn leather armor stood at the gateway, leaning on spears in hand, their expressions numb, scrutinizing those entering and exiting with downright harsh gazes.
Yet Jiang Zhaoye felt a surge of surprise and joy.
Those people—the soldiers and passing pedestrians—for the most part looked no different from humans on Blue Star. At most, their mental state was inconsistent, with a higher number being emaciated, but the group whose clothing was neat and complete were basically indistinguishable from Blue Star humans, rather than having big heads and tiny bodies like that child...
Thinking of this, a touch of sadness suddenly welled up in Jiang Zhaoye's heart.
He looked at those among them with ruddy complexions who could even be called plump, then turned to glance at the shacks at the foot of the wall... The people inside those were actually more like countrymen to that child.
At this moment, Jiang Zhaoye clearly realized that these were actually all the same—people of the same country, or even the same area; it was only hunger that made the refugees look unhuman.
To a middle school graduate who had learned the concept of human unity since childhood, such a gap was absurd and terrifying.
So tragic.
Putting away his stray thoughts, Jiang Zhaoye stepped onto the bridge spanning the moat. The bridge was made of a mix of stone and timber, its surface full of potholes. As Jiang Zhaoye walked along, the bridge creaked the entire way, making the kid, who had never seen such sights before, feel flustered inside.
Only then did he notice that quite a few refugees were actually gathered before the city gate as well.
Their condition was somewhat better than those in the distant shacks. Though dressed in rags, at least their clothes covered them completely; though emaciated, one could still clearly tell they were human.
One could still see the vital energy belonging to human beings in them.
These people with signs of vitality—some squatted by the base of the wall, some lay in the dried riverbed, and some leaned on walking sticks by the roadside, their eyes filled with hopeful anticipation as they looked at the passing pedestrians.
They were like being blocked outside the city by something invisible, able only to gaze longingly at that city gate.
As Jiang Zhaoye walked closer, he happened to hear a fierce, harsh shout from the city gate, startling him into a tremble.
Then he watched as a soldier delivered a flying kick hard into the chest of a man in ragged clothes. The scrawny man flew through the air, tumbled several times in the dust, and lay lifelessly face down in the mud for a long time, unknown if he was still alive...
Xiao Ling's voice came from the hidden earpiece a moment later: "Current city gate guards: fourteen, none possessing psionic fluctuations, tentatively judged as ordinary humans. Guard speech translation: 'Where are your papers? You want to enter the city without papers? Get lost!'"
Jiang Zhaoye shuddered again.
Dumb AI, imitating people's tone so vividly when it shouldn't.
So... so fierce.
Jiang Zhaoye glanced at the man on the ground, whose fate was unknown, feeling a bit heavy in his heart. His mouth beneath the mask opened as if to say something, but seeing the soldiers' sturdy builds, the spears in their hands, and their sheer numbers, he ultimately didn't say a word. He pulled at the pitch-black hood of his cloak, lowered his head, and silently backed away to one side.
Mingling on the outer edge of the crowd, he silently turned up the setting on his cloak's concealment circuit, looking at this city with a tangle of mixed feelings in his heart.
It looked vast and heavy, exuding a sense of vicissitudes accumulated over time, as if it had stood here for hundreds or thousands of years and would continue to stand like this forever.
Yet it was also very old, battered, and backward, as if it had walked straight out of history's trash heap, emitting an unsettling stench.
Jiang Zhaoye let out a sigh, looked down at the location of the watch hidden under his long sleeve, and pressed it through the fabric. Xiao Ling's voice sounded in his earpiece: "Based on the locator signal, the target is located in the southeastern direction inside the city, approximately three li from the city gate."
Jiang Zhaoye knitted his brows.
The child was inside the city?
This piece of information, which he originally hadn't paid much attention to, suddenly became striking at this moment.
They were actually inside the city? How did a child who had almost starved to death get in? Although cruel, normally speaking, it was far more likely for the child to be curled up in some corner outside the city right now.
Rate on N.U.
