Chapter 153
Chapter 153
At the center of the Imperial Observatory stood a massive pitch-black stone tower, sheer on all sides and over a hundred zhang tall.
The tower had no windows. Inside, a total of 1,872 narrow stone steps wound their way upward.
A cutting wind swept past the top of the tower. At its spire, old and new strips of red cloth were woven into a net, from which countless golden bells hung.
When the wind passed, the bells rang, as noisy as a thousand cicadas shrilling in summer.
Most people could never have endured such a racket.
On a worn-edged rush mat, an old man sat alone at the top of the tower.
Hurried footsteps sounded from below, climbing higher and higher.
The old man lifted his eyelids and snapped, “Xiao Yi, what are you panicking for?”
The bells here were far too loud. The newcomer did not hear what the old man said.
A young man in a loose robe with wide sleeves ran up to him and shouted, “Master, all the pearls held in the dragon mouths of the Nine-Dragon Instrument have fallen to the ground!”
The jingling bells swallowed most of the young man’s voice.
The old man remained seated cross-legged on the rush mat, his hands forming the Taiji Meridian Seal, calm and unruffled.
He scolded his useless disciple, “Pearls falling from the dragon mouths? That must mean the Abyssal Depths are about to open. What year does it not open? Why are you panicking?”
“Just order the Jade Balance Army and the Spirit Mountain Iron Guards to be careful and defend against Monstrous Beast incursions.”
The golden bells atop the tower were practically a wall of noise, so the old man also had to shout at the top of his lungs.
“No, what I mean is-” The young man called Xiao Yi tried several times to cut in, but he was no match for his master’s booming voice. He hopped anxiously beside him, practically scratching at himself in frustration.
At last, finding an opening, he yelled, “No, Master! I mean all nine pearls in the dragon mouths have fallen!”
Just as he shouted, the wind happened to stop.
With the wind gone, the bells fell silent as well. His cracked, hoarse yell echoed through the air.
“All nine pearls have fallen-”
“Fallen-”
The old man seated on the rush mat froze for several seconds.
Just when Xiao Yi thought his master had fallen asleep, the old man scrambled up from the ground in a flurry.
“Damn it, why didn’t you say so earlier?!”
No longer caring about maintaining any sort of dignified posture, the old man charged down the tower like a madman. “Go summon the Great General!”
The old man was surprisingly agile. Before he had even finished speaking, he had already vanished, leaving only one sentence drifting back from afar: “Tell him the gate has opened.”
…
Outside the Box, in the underground research institute of the capital.
An old Webster wire recorder from the last century was running smoothly.
A complex Slavic language, full of rolling consonants, clicked and meshed like precision gears.
“Investigation into legacy projects of the former Northern Land Federation.”
“Rokholovich Discontinuity ultra-deep drilling, codename-Core Telescope Project. By the time the Northern Land Federation collapsed and the project was halted, this deep-drilling program had reached a vertical borehole depth of 14,000 meters.”
“It is currently the deepest known borehole, intended to explore the earth’s core and…”
At that moment, the voice from the recorder was interrupted by a sudden, piercing alarm.
Click. The recorder was stopped, and the lights came on.
There were around a hundred people seated in the room.
Many of them exchanged surprised looks, not knowing what had happened.
Someone pushed open the door, entered, and whispered a few words into the ear of the meeting’s chair.
The bald old man immediately lost his composure and stood up. Without so much as a word to the others, he trotted out of the conference room.
He took the elevator straight down to the sixth underground level.
As soon as the elevator doors opened, the old man rushed to the electronic display.
“Have the coordinates been confirmed?”
A researcher beside him reported, “Five minutes ago, every recorded gate coordinate around the world showed abnormal movement.”
“But the strongest fluctuation index among them was in our country’s Yunlan City.”
The researcher could hardly conceal his excitement. “This fluctuation is very similar to what happened twenty years ago.”
“The lost Key has reappeared in Yunlan City!”
The old man slammed his fist hard onto the monitoring console. “No wonder. No wonder things have been happening there again and again.”
He raised his voice and asked, “Is Old Chen in Yunlan City right now looking for the Huodou?”
“Notify him about this immediately.”
He was about to say more when a young man in gold-rimmed glasses came running over.
“Country M is calling. They demand that we share our data and intelligence with them.”
The bald old man froze in disbelief, then was so furious he almost laughed. “Tell them to get lost! Why didn’t they share their data on Pennsylvania’s Flaming Sevenfold Gate with us?”
The bald old man had only cursed a few times when even more calls came in. They were all from countries that had detected abnormalities, all demanding data sharing.
The bald old man indulged none of them. With a flick of his tongue, he cursed them back one by one in eighteen different languages.
…
World in the Box
The temperature difference in the Chixia Desert was extreme. After the sun went down, the sky turned a deep violet-blue.
There were no stars tonight, only an ancient moon hanging high overhead.
A wind carrying a bone-deep chill howled past the pointed tent.
A Migu Flower hung from the top of the tent. Beside a stone-built fire pit, orange-red flames licked at the bottom of a pot.
The pot bubbled and gurgled, and the aroma of stewed food drifted out.
Qin Ying had no idea that her press of a button had caused such upheaval in two worlds.
She sat on a small stool, a fresh sheet of parchment for recording spread across her knees.
Han Lie lifted the heavy door curtain with his elbow and quickly slipped inside so the cold wind would not blow in.
“How are Aman and the others? Is their tent warm enough?” Qin Ying asked, looking up slightly.
“They have fermented wine mash to drink and warm themselves. They’ll make it through the night without issue,” Han Lie replied, setting down the clay basin in his hands.
Inside was clean water for Qin Ying to wash up with. They did not have the miraculous stone basin from the Blackstone Tribe here, and on Han Lie’s way back with the water, a shell of ice had already formed over the surface.
Qin Ying glanced at it, then moved her small stool aside a little to make room for him to sit by the fire pit and warm himself.
Just then, a bubble rolled up in the pot hanging over the fire.
What simmered inside was brown rice and meat from some unknown beast.
Han Lie had also washed the small handful of chrysanthemum-green-like vegetables, chopped them fine, and tossed them in to cook.
They released a fragrance completely different from chrysanthemum greens, somewhere between parsley and dill.
This was said to be a kind of porridge often eaten in the Jade Balance Army.
Qin Ying did not interfere with Han Lie’s cooking at all.
For someone with a strong curiosity, trying new ingredients and foods was a pleasure in itself.
Han Lie placed the clay basin, now capped with ice, beside the fire pit to thaw.
Seeing Qin Ying pick up a wooden bowl to ladle herself some porridge, he hurriedly took it from her. “Careful, it’s hot.”
With him around, Qin Ying did not even need to lift a finger.
Since even the job of ladling porridge had been taken from her, she could only sit to the side and wait to eat.
Han Lie placed a small half bowl of thick porridge in her hands.
Then he looked at her with a faintly expectant gaze.
Qin Ying picked up the small wooden spoon, blew on it to cool it, and took a small taste.
It was slightly salty. The roughly hulled brown rice had an ordinary texture, and the diced meat inside was rather coarse as well.
But the chopped greens sprinkled through it had a refreshing, distinctive aroma, leaving the gamey beast meat without the slightest rank smell.
Qin Ying’s eyes widened slightly in pleasant surprise.
“What is this vegetable called?”
Seeing that she liked it, Han Lie let out a breath of relief.
Compared to Qin Ying’s world, everything here was rough and crude.
His eyes shone as he answered, “It’s called Qinglü. If you like it, I-I’ll find a way to get a breeding beast and raise it.”
Build an animal pen, catch two young beasts, raise them for three years, and then they could grow vegetables.
He was enthusiastically planning out a breeding area, but Qin Ying accurately caught the key phrase. “A breeding beast? Shouldn’t it be vegetable seeds?”
Han Lie replied, “The army raises Tuocui Beasts. A small patch of land can be cultivated on a Tuocui Beast’s back, and the vegetables grown there are exceptionally fresh and tasty.”