Mystical Journey

After chatting with Celine in the hall, Garen sent her away. When he had finished his meal, he went back to his room to cultivate his training method. Currently, all that he was cultivating was the Energy Machinist’s training method because Crouched Eagle Talon could not be progressed as it required an Exclusive Mech to produce resonance degree.

He lived this lifestyle for nearly two years. Every day, he would calculate the Energy Machinist’s Level Three training question bank.

Sitting cross-legged alone in a cultivating room, Garen meticulously calculated a large number of computational models displayed on the wall while constantly using Willpower to repeatedly stack them. In this horrific process of complex computation, he could feel that his Willpower had gradually changed and become better in calculating. The Willpower that emerged from the Energy Machinist Imprint was completely different from that of Crouched Eagle Talon’s Willpower.

Crouched Eagle Talon was entrenched in the arms, almost like two groups of cold Blackboard air current. Using his inner vision, Garen could easily identify it.

The Energy Machinist’s Willpower was a kind of vague air mass in which its shape was indistinguishable. Sometimes, it was round and other times it was a square. However, more often, it was a distorted, irregular air mass which was transparent on the inside. Without looking carefully, its presence could not be noticed at all. Moreover, the Energy Machinist’s Willpower was located in the void at the back of the head and not in the human body at all.

This totally overturned all the knowledge that Garen had previously learned about Willpower training method.

In the white room, Garen sat cross-legged and closed his eyes slightly. Behind the back of his head were two seemingly transparent spiky masses which were floating about. They were emitting a faintly transparent gas that was drifting upwards.

“Intelligence has reached eight points. From henceforth, to raise every one point will need sixty potential points. Currently, the remaining thirty points are not enough. I must find the Staff of Absolute Yin as soon as possible!”

He had been searching for the whereabouts of the Staff of Absolute Yin in recent years. Through various channels, he managed to find a clue. However, because he had to get his Exclusive Mech done for the time being, he could not spare his time to go look for it.

With the ongoing war between White Light and Blackboard Region, there could be extremely dangerous encounters everywhere in the radiation belt which made it far more dangerous than before.

After practicing calculating for a while and feeling a little increase in the Energy Machinist Willpower, Garen was satisfied and opened his eyes. But he realized that time had flew past and it was almost eight at night. It was already dark outside. Looking through the window, he could see a black shuttle-shaped battleship patrolling in the sky not far away. Its surface was covered with a lot of flashing lights.

Garen let out a breath. He took out a black key from the pocket of his shirt. There was only one tine on the key. No matter how he looked at it, the key was too simple and did not look like it was used to open a door. What kind of door could be opened with just one tine? That would not be able to keep the thief out at all.

Every time he finished practicing calculating, he would take out this key to carefully check and scrutinize it. Intuition told him that this key was not a simple object.

Through the tines of a variety of sophisticated instruments, Garen realized that the material of this key was very solid and basically, there was nothing that could destroy it.

Holding the key repeatedly in the palm of his hand, suddenly, Garen froze. He held the lower end of the key and put it upright in front of his eyes, examining it carefully.

Every detail of this key had been fully engraved in his mind in these few years and he was extremely familiar with it.

But now, this key actually had an additional super tiny black diamond pattern, only the size of a grain. It looked complicated, making him dizzy.

Garen gazed at this pattern carefully. It looked like many flower patterns superimposing on one another. It also looked like a lot of weird symbols combined in a pile, giving a mysterious and ancient feeling.

As he focused his attention on this pattern, suddenly, a white light burst out from the pattern. It split accurately into two beams and shot into Garen’s eyes.

Woom…

Garen felt a kind of inexplicable dizzy feeling in his head. His vision went white and he only felt a spinning sensation in his head and his upper body became very heavy.

His eyes were covered with white light and nothing could be seen. Only his ears could hear the subtle sound of the air tearing, as if he was flying at a high speed, but his skin did not feel any real airflow.

After he had slowly adapted to the spotlight caused by the white light in front of him, he did not know what was going on but found himself standing in front of a small white wooden door. There was a flower-like intricate pattern carved on the wooden door, except that Garen had never seen this flower before.

“Welcome to the Federation of Energy Machinists”, a crisp girl’s voice sounded from the door.

“This is the place where Energy Machinists can communicate with one another. The area you are at is Mother Planet a54 area; the number of people is 789. You are the 790th newly added official Energy Machinist. Please keep your identity key well. If it is lost, please go to the Central Academy Energy Machinist Division to replace it. Thank you for your cooperation and I wish you a pleasant time.”

The female’s voice faded.

The door in front of Garen opened with a bang.

Outside, a somewhat lively square with a fountain pool appeared in front of him. The people coming and going were dressed differently. They did not look like they came from the same place but looked more like a mixture of different ethnic groups of various nationalities. Their skin complexion varied from white, black, yellow and red with a variety of shades. Garen even saw two human beings with two lizard tails, squatting at a stall and bargaining with the stall owner.

A burst of lively voices flooded the door, making him a little surprised.

As he attempted to walk through the small door, Garen tucked away his key and looked at the sky and the surroundings.

The sky was a very ordinary blue sky with white clouds, but there was no sun. Still, it was very bright but he could not tell where the light came from.

Around was a medium-size circular town structure, surrounded by ordinary single-storey houses that were neither too high nor too low. Beside the houses hung different patterns of gray-brown cloth, fluttering slightly with the breeze. What was very strange was that when Garen looked at these fabrics, he could recognize the meaning of the fabric patterns. These fabrics were the names of various shops.

“Can you not block the road?”

A voice sounded from his right. It was a dark-skinned woman with a white headscarf. She was tall and thin and looked emaciated, almost comparable to a mummy.

Garen was stunned and made way for her, watching the woman walk through him and head towards a shop on the left.

He just so happened to be standing at the left side of the stairs to this shop.

“Is this place an illusion or…” Garen frowned and carefully distinguished his body.

Soon he discovered that the core of Living Secret Technique was missing from his body. His Soul Seed had also disappeared. It was apparent that this place was purely a virtual community.

“Real illusion simulation?”

He began to imitate other people and went one round past the circular shops of the town. There were many people entering and exiting the shops, but the flow of people was even greater at the street vendors. The fountain square in the middle of dozens of shops was densely packed with little stalls. It seemed that over time, there were more and more people setting up stalls.

Garen tried to walk towards the main door of a shop.

However, he found that a transparent barrier was blocking him. A bald man beside him strode up the steps and gave a contemptuous look at him.

“You have no money and still want to enter the shop?? Stupid.”

Garen was not angry, as if he had not heard him, but continued to explore everything here.

He began experimenting with all the dozens of circular shops around the square but found that he could enter none of them. And over time, some shops would suddenly disappear in a flash. After that, other shops would automatically move closer to one another like wooden blocks to expand themselves and fill in the gap left by the previous shop.

“How magical”, Garen tried to break the corner of the wall of a shop but found it to be extremely hard and could not be damaged. It seemed that the rule imposed here was firmly regulated so that it could not be destroyed.

“This brainless man is still here, how retarded. He actually wanted to pull off the wall stone here?” That bald headed man just happened to walk out of the shop, followed by a beautiful woman with a charming face. The two were cuddling tightly together, almost like they were merging into one.

Garen gave him a glance and ignored him.

“How does the Federation even have this kind of country pigs? How annoying to look at.” Baldhead started to curse arrogantly.

Another thin red-skinned man was about to enter the shop at this time, but was pushed to one side by him.

“Go away. So f****ing frustrating to see Red Ghost.”

The red-skinned man was silent and did not dare to reply.

Baldhead swaggered his way out and headed towards another shop.

Garen looked up at the cloth of this shop, Intelligence Point.

Obviously, a place to sell intel.

He tried to go in but regretfully, that transparent light screen blocked him.

“Don’t waste your energy. Without money, you cannot enter the shop. This place will automatically detect the money you have on you.” The red-skinned man who had been pushed away just now, smiled bitterly and told Garen, but he did not enter. Instead, he walked over to the side of the steps to the shop where Garen was at.

“Are you here for the first time?” His Universal language accent was very standard. Clearly, there was some kind of language translation system here.

“Yeah.” Garen nodded. “May I ask, what is this place actually?”

“The more you come, the more you will know.” The red-skinned man whispered. “This is a small trading market of the Federation of Energy Machinists. It is a virtual market that only trades knowledge and technology, known as a knowledge market. However, there will be an item market that will be held in real time. There will truly be many people at that time and you can directly trade real items there.”

“Knowledge market? Item market?” Garen frowned. “Is this place convened by that Energy Machinists whatever federation?”

“Of course, all Energy Machinists will be automatically issued a guide key from the guide to enter this virtual world and conduct various transactions. This is where the true secret of Energy Machinists lies. Only Energy Machinists are able to enter here. There isn’t any way for others to get in and out.” The red-skinned man explained softly, “This is your first time in here and you didn’t even have your tutor with you. Be cautious when you trade so that you don’t get cheated.”

“Who are the people involved in the market here? Are they from the same area?” Garen continued to ask since it was difficult to meet someone who was willing to answer him.

“No. The people here could be from anywhere. Some of their appearance may not even be true. There are expensive face-changing tools that can allow people to modify themselves. The people here might be from nearby planets, star regions, or even Energy Machinists from space ships caravans who are passing by. Anything is possible.” The red-skinned man shook his head and said.

“Thank you for your explanation. I haven’t asked for your name yet.”

“Olse, my name is Olse. There is still a long list of surnames behind it but there is no need to bring it up. I’m an Energy Machinist of a caravan that is passing by here, only Level Three.” The red-skinned man smiled ruefully. “Level Three Energy Machinist is considered the lowest degree of level here.”

“I’m Garen. It can’t be true. Level Three is actually the lowest level?” Garen said. He had worked hard to practice calculating for two years and until now, he was only Level Two, not even close to Level Three. And this person in front of him actually said that Level Three was the lowest level at the bottom.

“Indeed, it’s like that. What to do? I do not have a good Energy Machine Imprint. The one I am using is the lowest grade Wasp Imprint. Its auxiliary calculation is only three times and it can only create the lowest level of Investigating Wasps”, Olse smiled bitterly again. “The higher grade Energy Machine Imprint is too expensive. Our caravan gathered all the funds and only managed to buy me such an ordinary imprint. Energy Machinist is simply a money-burning profession.”

“Energy Machine Imprint? What is that?” Garen heard about this for the first time.

“What? You don’t even know what Energy Machine Imprint is!?” Olse’s expression this time instantly turned bizarre. “What kind of tutor did you really have? Without the support of the Energy Machine Imprint, don’t even think that that our Energy Machinist’s computing power could enter the third level!”

Garen was slightly shocked. Sure enough, he had always felt that he was probably missing something. He did not expect that the facts had completely confirmed his conjecture. Indeed, what he lacked seemed to be something that was absolutely indispensable to an Energy Machinist – an Energy Machine Imprint.

“Come come come. Let’s go and have a drink first. I really admire you. Your tutor didn’t tell you about the basic knowledge before letting you in here”, Olse shook his head helplessly.

The two went in front of one another to a tavern-like shop at the edge. Olse paid for Garen so that he could finally enter the shop.

Inside the tavern was very large. A vast area like that of a football field was filled with white tables and chairs of the same size. They were sparsely occupied as the people sat far apart, even their voices were not heard. Clearly, there was sound insulation.

The two found a seat by the wall and sat down. Olse then knocked on the table.

“I want two ale. Hot.”

With a whoosh, two hot cups of light brown ale immediately appeared before the two, all of which were large cups and there was a lot of bubbles overflowing out of it. When the bubbles were about to drop onto the table, they immediately disappeared.

“Thank you.” Garen nodded. There was no waiter here so it seemed that there was an automatic program controlling everything.