Chapter 537 Chapter 534 My Hometown
Culvert bridge, with a culvert below and a bridge above. The culvert was used as an emergency drainage channel for the sewage treatment plant. It has not been used for many years and has been occupied by garbage. The domestic garbage, construction waste and sewage that have been lying here for a long time have been emitting a long-brewing stench. To be honest, the stench is not strong and is completely tolerable; to be honest, I am afraid it will always smell like this.
The road on the bridge has been in disrepair for a long time, but no vehicles have passed here for a long time, so it still looks very stable now. Zhuang Xuteng looked around and made sure that no one was following him, so he flipped down from the bridge and asked for a relatively clean place among the rubble and bricks. Next, he will try to unlock the blockade left by Dr. Booker and reactivate the shadow world channel.
There are eight "locks" in total, and all of them must be removed. They are: three cement bricks stacked in a triangular shape in the north, clothes painted on the wall with green paint in the northeast, false teeth buried in a small hole in the east, and a heavy stone tied with wire in the southeast...
These things seem to have nothing to do with each other, and they have nothing to do with the "locks" known in common sense, but Dr. Booker used these things to complete the "earth-handed" spell ritual through calculation. Zhuang Xuteng searched carefully and found these things in the shade of the garbage dump in a short while.
"They are all the same as Dr. Booker described. It seems that the shadow world channel he provided may really exist." Zhuang Xuteng can finally put down his hanging heart a little at this time. Although he believes in Dr. Booker's hatred for the company, this alone cannot be regarded as evidence that he has a shadow world channel. Even the whole set of research results that have won the praise of the Lich Master and Morgana cannot directly prove the existence of the shadow world channel.
But the discovery of these eight "door locks" can indeed prove half of the problem: Who would deliberately search, place, and remember eight pieces of garbage in such a remote and uninhabited place?
It took a lot of effort to move these eight pieces of garbage away. Judging from their stable connection with the surrounding environment, Dr. Booker also spent a lot of time to arrange them. All eight locks are still there, so it will be much easier to reopen the door next time. Dr. Booker also considered environmental changes, and the eight locks may be missing one or more due to various unexpected situations, so he also figured out a remedy - blood sacrifice.
In various magic rituals, blood sacrifice is a very common means and the most convenient means. If one lock is missing, 200 units of fresh blood are needed. This blood cannot be stored in advance, and it must flow down while performing the ritual, which is definitely not pleasant.
After removing the locks, Zhuang Xuteng began to arrange the door opening ceremony. It is also a blood sacrifice, but fortunately only 100 units are needed. The remaining ritual supplies include a little nail, some body hair, some distilled water, a candle-sized flame, and a handful of food of any kind.
A handful of food is the most difficult to get. Zhuang Xuteng brought a small bag of rice, which was a trophy from the kitchen of Miles, the elder of the Canghuo Gang. If you go to the supermarket to buy it, you can only buy finished products or semi-finished food: wheat is ground into flour, and rice is made into pre-cooked rice. If it weren't for the need of this ritual, Zhuang Xuteng would not have realized that the raw state of food is not sold publicly...
Focus on the ritual. Zhuang Xuteng either took out the prepared materials or took the materials from his body with a knife, and soon set up a circular magic circle in the corner under the culvert. Then, according to Dr. Buckler's instructions, he placed his left hand in the center of the ritual magic circle and mobilized the shadow energy to input it.
With the rapid loss of shadow energy, the ritual started. An inexplicable small whirlwind was generated under the culvert, quickly rotating around Zhuang Xuteng, and then converging on the magic circle. Zhuang Xuteng slowly pulled out his hand to make room for the whirlwind.
The small whirlwind immediately drilled in, with the top of it sticking to Zhuang Xuteng's palm, becoming a bridge for transmitting shadow energy; its bottom moved in the magic circle, outlining the runes and lines of the magic circle. When the outlining was completed, multiple whirlwinds finally merged into a larger one, forming a channel deep into the magic circle.
Is this the Shadow Realm Channel? Because the company has always been strict with information control, ordinary people have only heard of the Shadow Realm Channel and seen its stick figure level schematic diagram, but have never really seen what this thing looks like. There are no video materials, no paintings, and no accurate and credible descriptions. Everyone's understanding of the Shadow Realm Channel has always remained at: an elliptical portal that exudes a cold atmosphere.
The vortex in front of me is getting bigger and bigger, and the speed is constantly increasing, but the wind has stopped. It no longer exerts influence on the outside world, and the surrounding garbage and dust fall back to the ground. The vortex has expanded to a diameter of two meters, and its middle part is black and gray, with some vague dark yellow light groups flickering. The channel itself exudes a strong reaction from the shadow energy. It shook quite badly at first, but now it has stabilized.
"Dr. Buckel is really amazing. He actually got me a private shadow world passage." Seeing that the passage was stable, he took a deep breath and stepped in.
Zhuang Xuteng's understanding of teleportation was completely based on the knowledge of the stone pillar space of the Lich Master. That kind of teleportation was completed instantly. It felt like closing your eyes and then opening them again, and you would be there without any discomfort. But the Lich Master was a "master", and Dr. Buckel used a crude method, and his level was completely different. Zhuang Xuteng stepped in and immediately felt himself being drawn into a vortex, his body twisting and spinning involuntarily. He was about to scream, but before he could concentrate and hold it back, he found that the surroundings seemed to have become a vacuum, and all the air in his lungs was sucked away, and he couldn't make any sound at all.
The cold feeling stung his skin, as if he had been thrown into a washing machine full of needles, spinning and stirring. Fortunately, this process is not long and is over in less than ten seconds. Zhuang Xuteng stood on the ground covered in sweat, his muscles trembling continuously, and his entire chest was filled with the feeling of shortness of breath. He hammered twice with his fists to restart his lungs.
Slowly standing up, Zhuang Xuteng found that the surroundings were dim. The sky here is shrouded in yellow haze, and the visible distance is only about twenty meters. Looking up, there is no significant change in light and dark above the haze, making it impossible to analyze the position of the sun, or even determine whether it exists. But the bottom of the haze, that is, the layer where Zhuang Xuteng looked directly above him and slightly above him, was always emitting bright yellow light. Because the light sources from all directions come from this level, it definitely cannot be the sun. Zhuang Xuteng felt as if he was standing on the streets of Peicheng shrouded in thick fog, watching the fog illuminated by street lights and neon lights, but he didn't know where he was deep inside.
Underfoot is a piece of hard yellow land, as smooth as a mirror, with few ups and downs, and penetrates under the haze from all directions. Zhuang Xuteng didn't know whether they would extend forever, let alone find it again without landmarks. Behind him, the shadow channel is very unstable. Dr. Booker said that it will take some time before it can be used again, no more than ten minutes at most.
"If I leave here, I may not be able to find him back." Zhuang Xuteng frowned and turned around in a full circle. Without using the Shadow Realm Passage as a reference, it would be difficult to determine "a full circle". "No, in this state, we definitely can't go far rashly. We must first establish a signal beacon..."
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While he was thinking about exploring, he felt the center of his back getting hotter and hotter. Suddenly, a strong desire to vomit came over him, and Zhuang Xuteng vomited it out before he could restrain himself.
Although it was vomiting, it didn't feel like something was in the stomach. What he spit out were some bones, stones and irregular metal pieces. Zhuang Xuteng was sure that he had never eaten such things.
It wasn't from his stomach, but it came out of his body. He immediately guessed what was going on. "Master Lich, do you want to come out? Or do you need me to go to the Stone Pillar Hall to invite you first?"
He heard no answer, but the vomit that began to pulse was one. Those stones, bones and metal pieces gathered together like rabbits hopping in the middle, and then began to extract the sand and gravel on the ground. Only then did Zhuang Xuteng notice that the hard ground was not made of stones, but of salt that had condensed together into lumps.
"Salt Lake? Is this a salt lake?" Zhuang Xuteng read this concept in a picture book when he was a child, and he felt that it was very similar. With the help of salt rolled up from the ground, with vomit as the core, a human figure gradually emerges. It first took on the appearance of a tall adult man, and then the part that imitated flesh shrank rapidly, eventually degenerating into a skeleton. After a long time of fussing, it’s still the Lich Master...
"I'm out, I'm back." Master Lich's voice is still that low and hoarse, with the texture of coarse salt particles rubbing against each other. It raised its hand and pointed at Zhuang Xuteng and said, "You are so slow. It took so many years to finally enter the shadow world."
Zhuang Xuteng smiled and said: "Let's... let's get straight to the point! I didn't expect that you would be able to come out as soon as you entered the Shadow Realm. It seems that collecting and preparing your body and other information are misleading. Master Lich, you Are you planning to burn bridges and kill me?"
"No. I will never do that if it is not necessary - you should know that when I say the words forever, they are heavier than the ordinary literal meaning." Master Lich said: "You are my student , I have been my host for a long time, and you have inherited part of my intelligence, knowledge and wisdom. In this sense, you are my only descendant.”
"Well, I will only call you master, and I won't call you ancestor." Zhuang Xuteng knew that fratricide would not happen, so he joked in a relaxed tone.
"I don't have any unworthy descendants like you. Well...I have lived a long time. In the first few generations, I was closer to them and willing to take care of them. Later, there were too many people, and I no longer treated people with scarcity. Expensive. In addition, I will feel uncomfortable when they die. In the end, even if they come to me, I will treat them as passers-by."
Zhuang Xuteng thought for a while and nodded. "Eternal life is painful."
"No, it's not pain, it's laziness. People can endure pain, but they can't change the nature of laziness. To become a lich, what you need to fight is never not feeling, but getting lazier and eventually becoming a skeleton. I... …Why should I tell you this? You won’t turn into a lich.” Master Lich returned to the Shadow Realm, obviously a little excited and talking a lot more than usual. "Besides, asking you to collect body fragments is not false information. I still need those things. This body made of salt is too weak. It will probably fall off when it flies."
Zhuang Xuteng scratched his head and asked, "Where is the Shadow Realm here?"
"The Red Salt Lake is a famous scenic spot in the north. This is a basin, and there is this kind of haze for about one-third of the year. In fact, when the sky clears, it is very spectacular. The widest part of the entire salt lake is 70 kilometers. Digging down Thirty meters away, it’s still this tight salt sand. The salt here is very bitter and may be poisonous, so don’t eat it.”
Zhuang Xuteng waved his hand and said, "I brought food. I won't eat salt, and I won't lick you, don't worry!"
"You are very excited today and you are making wisecracks one after another. What's wrong?"
"You are finally able to come out. I am happy for you." Zhuang Xuteng applauded symbolically and said, "It must be very boring to stay in the Stone Pillar Hall all the time. You can come out and see your hometown..."
"I don't have the feeling of boredom." Master Lich immediately interrupted Zhuang Xuteng and said, "Boredom is the prelude to laziness. It is extremely dangerous for me and I must always be vigilant. It... is probably equivalent to you suddenly finding that there is no air around you, although You can hold your breath for a while, but you must get out of that state as soon as possible."
"Don't get excited, I understand. However, if you can watch more things, you won't be bored. This is good, right?"
"That's true. Salt Lake... I haven't been here for hundreds of years, and it's still the same here." Master Lich leaned down and rubbed his hand bones made of salt and sand on the ground. "The body structure is different, the feeling is also different, novel - this really makes me happy. Zhuang Xuteng, as a token of my gratitude, I will give you something. Summon that ghost of yours."
Zhuang Xuteng nodded and immediately summoned the ghost, but the sick lady disintegrated before the construction was completed. Zhuang Xuteng immediately understood what happened. He scratched his head and said, "The magic rules on the two sides are different. Please give me some time to analyze it slowly."
Master Lich nodded slowly and said: "Very good, I like your attitude. I'll go for a walk around, and you can just think here for a while. Don't worry, I can find you no matter whether you move or not. Locate this shadow realm channel. Call my name loudly when you successfully summon it, I will be nearby."
Although Master Lich made a guarantee, Zhuang Xuteng would definitely not leave the Shadow Realm Passage. The Lich Master walked into the haze and couldn't see his figure clearly. At this time, the shadow realm channel also stabilized. Zhuang Xuteng used the method taught by Dr. Booker to sprinkle blood on this end, and used another indigenous blood sacrifice ritual to hide and close it. Later, Zhuang Xuteng began to toss in the ghost summoning technique, converting the part that used shadow magic back into necromancy, and reorganized the spell-casting movements. About an hour later, Zhuang Xuteng summoned Miss Sick again, and then called Master Lich.
With a short flash of light, Master Lich came to Zhuang Xuteng's side instantly - teleportation, such a powerful way of movement. Zhuang Xuteng sighed, admired and envied her in his heart for a moment, then pointed at the sick lady and said to the Lich Master: "I think she has become bigger and clearer. Is this an illusion?"
"No, there is so-called shadow energy everywhere here. Of course she will be more physical." Master Lich said: "Order her not to move. I have sorted out the contents of the 73 stone pillars and will engrave them on her body."