Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Now that the young man was left alone in the office, he locked the door and turned around to look at the rare radiant and enchanting sunlight in winter through the window. Thinking that this was not the right time, he walked back to his desk and turned his computer on before casually browsing through the new online articles and waited for the arrival of the night.
All of a sudden, a headline of “The US Voyager No. 1 is recruiting the first batch of permanent residents for an outer planet” that sounded like a joke on today’s current events made Zhang Lisheng narrow his eyes. He was originally feeling desultory but now, he was suddenly all ears.
He clicked on the news and read ten lines in one glance:
“The Associated Press News — Live the rest of your life permanently on an outer planet! It may sound like a fantasy, but it’s genuinely true. At 10.30am today, the US National Space Agency and the non-profit research institute ‘Near-Earth Research Center’ has held a press conference in Washington and publicly announced that they’re openly recruiting brave US citizens to participate in the ‘Outer Planet Permanent Residence’ project that only has a one-way ticket. A series of selections and training will be conducted two months later among the volunteers, 100 men and 100 women will be selected to become the first interstellar immigrants of Earth and will be permanently migrated to a near-Earth planet. These pioneers will build the first permanent human settlement on this to-be-determined near-Earth planet. Norton L. Dopp, the co-founder of the ‘Outer Planet Permanent Residence’ project stated that he has started to prepare for this bold plan 20 years ago. NASA, along with many experts and Nobel laureates from other space technology companies believe that the space technology the humans currently mastered is able to send astronauts to a near-Earth planet to settle down there…”
After the young man finished reading the news, he was dumbfounded for a moment before continuing to read the comments below the news.
Nearly half of the comments in the comment section were as such:
“If this is not an April Fool’s joke on a Christmas Day, then the NASA must be preparing for a blatant massacre…”
“I was still complaining about how crowded the traffic was yesterday and to think that today, I’m already living in a sci-fi era of interstellar immigration! Oh! How inspiring is this! I just don’t know whether I’m in a dream right now or whether I’ve turned into a madman…”
“IMHO, it’s better to change this new title to ‘Recruiting for Fools for the Electric Chair!’ I actually voted the government that increased the budget for such an absurd NASA! This is so f*cked up!”
— and even more skeptical comments after that.
However, many people also expressed half-truthfully that they were willing to take the risk of a one-way trip to the outer planet and become the first epoch-making interstellar pioneers for humanity.
“Outer planet? I think they should call it the supernatural realm! Using such a wangled method to recruit for the first batch of immigrants…such a reasonable and legal method! The brains of the politicians in the US are really…” After reading the news several times, Zhang Lisheng muttered to himself in a dumbstruck manner.
This prompted him to have a premonition that the true era of innovation was about to come. All of this was not because of the emergence of the supernatural realm but because of the human’s intrinsic greed instead.
As the meaningful smile of the indigenous wise man Tubalin suddenly appeared in his mind, and also the last words that he told the young man before they parted, “The bookmark would be placed into reality one after another. All the best when the book is laid,” the young man felt inhibited all of a sudden.
As irritability and ruthlessness flashed in his eyes, he whispered to himself, “I already understand what it meant by ‘the bookmark would be placed into reality’ but what does it mean by ‘when the book is laid’? Sh*t! If I had known that things would turn out to be like this in the first place, I would have killed that crazy old man when I first laid my eyes on him! In that case, everything might not have happened now…”
As he was lost in his thoughts, time continued to pass second by second. It was until when Zhang Lisheng had stared into the computer’s monitor with an unfazed gaze till he began to see white that his brain snapped back to reality in pain. It was already dark outside and the office lights had automatically lit up already.
Looking at the afterglow of the sunset outside the window, the young man shook his head tiredly and no longer pondered over those unanswered questions. After making a black pepper steak for himself and finishing it, the sky was already dark.
Now that the dark night that he was waiting for had arrived, Zhang Lisheng wiped his greasy mouth with a paper towel. Breathing a sigh of relief, he comforted himself. “Right now, the most important thing now is to be strong! As long as I’m strong enough, I can cope with any unexpected surprise that is to come…”
Then, with his thoughts, he commanded Mountoad that was hiding in the blood that pooled up into an ocean under the factory for more than 40 days to turn invisible and leap to where he was.
Seeing the size of the wizard gu’s body that had grown to become the shape of a white gourd, it was now dyed entirely in red by the blood, and how its toad skin and its mangy corns that were originally blooming into the shape of flowers had now turned to look like ancient Chinese coins that were round on the outside but square in the inside, the young man could not help but smile.
Sensing that the feeling that was given out by the Mountoad crouching on the office’s carpet was the kind of horrible and chilling feeling that was akin to a dormant, long-accumulated active volcano that was about to erupt soon, he looked out of the window and noticed that the night was clear. Right away, he muttered, “Looks like Mountoad’s transformation doesn’t need a stormy environment like Crocodragon. Then, it must be…”
As Zhang Lisheng was speaking, the wizard gu crouching on the floor suddenly opened its mouth wide. Its mouth, along with the holes inside the coin-like spots covering its entire body began to suck in the air in an “szzzz…” sound as its body began to swell.
The young man was stunned. He realized that it only took a few seconds for the wizard gu’s body to expand into the size of an office table. Hastily, he cast the spell “connect” in desperation and commanded Mountoad to turn invisible, before soaring through the clouds into the big ocean.
Thanks to the omniscient power — skim the water and breeze through clouds, cruise the sky and caress the draft — he obtained after the Crocodragon transformed into a wyrmdragon that allowed a fast flying speed, Mountoad soon flew and dived into the Atlantic Ocean which was more than ten kilometers away from the coastline.
At the bottom of the sea, the wizard gu continued to devour the air without restraint. Slowly, it actually formed a vortex-like cyclone on the sea surface that parted the seawater as it howled, transforming it into the eye of the tornado.
Countless amounts of air were swept into the wizard gu’s body as the raging wind became wilder. In just a short period of time, its body had expanded to nearly the size of a building that was ten-stories tall.
The continuous rapid gushing of the airflow finally started to make Mountoad’s body, that had mastered the omniscient power “expand, shrink” to be unable to take in anymore load. Its scarred thick skin began to be badly mutilated, it seemed like its body would soon be split into several pieces.
“So the way Mountoad transforms is actually like that! But still, I hope that this will only be regarded as a normal tornado by the others and not attract any attention of the public…”
As Zhang Lisheng stared at the vague dragon-like whirlwind outside the window and felt the predicament the wizard gu was currently in, he was hit by a pang of realization before smiling wryly. After shutting off the office’s light, he pushed the French casement window open on the glass wall.
The cold night wind breezed into the room, lowering the temperature in the room by at least four or five degrees. The young man recoiled and sat on the ground before taking a deep breath. All of a sudden, a mouthful of black fog was spat out of his mouth.
Nourishing his wizard gu with his blood essence was the only technique that Zhang Lisheng knew, by a twist of fate when he was on the verge of death, that could help the wizard gu to transform. As the fog transformed from tiny beads of blood that floated out of his mouth, it slowly extended and flew outwards to Mountoad that was more than ten kilometers away in a line of succession, despite its faintness.
Afterward, similar to Crocodragon’s case, Mountoad’s wounds on the skin healed as it was being nourished by its owner’s blood essence. Afterward, its body continued to expand and once again cracked, which was healed again by the nourishing of Zhang Lisheng’s blood essence. This repeated itself again and again.
The only difference from Crocodragon’s transformation was that right now, the young man had already made a breakthrough to the Rank-6 Wizard. Even though he did not transform, his wizard power had already gone through some fundamental change compared to the level of Rank-5 Wizard. Even though his energy was also almost exhausted and his body was also worn to become skinny when he was nourishing Mountoad’s transformation with his own blood essence, at the very least, there was no longer any sign of danger.
As time passed by, Mountoad in the ocean had already inadvertently swollen to the size of a mountain! The hurricane on the sea surface had also turned to become a situation where four to five giant tornadoes were entangling with each other. Even Zhang Lisheng who was far onshore could hear the roaring of the raging wind clearly.
However, at this moment, the boy paid no attention whether the typhoon caused by the wizard gu’s transformation would attract public attention or not. He only felt that his body’s depletion had already caused his entire body to be so numb and painful that was already intolerable for a normal person. If this continued to go on, he would probably torture himself to death.
Right at this time, the red coin-like spots on the body of Mountoad, that was in the bottom of the sea, began to gradually change into blue-yellow colors in an interleaving manner.
By the time the color of the spots had completely changed, the typhoon on the sea surface came to an abrupt end. The seawater parted by the whirlwinds roared and collapsed, drowning the wizard gu that was gradually shrinking in size.
Sensing that Mountoad had finally completed its transformation at the most critical moment, Zhang Lisheng lied down on the carpet in relief.
Panting heavily, he shut his eyes for a long time to attain some mental composure. Gradually, he rose from the carpet and shut the window carefully, before taking a few steps back to his office desk. Leaning on the desk to stabilize himself, he commanded the wizard gu eagerly to turn invisible so that it could soar right towards him from the sea.
When he looked at it once again, Mountoad was completely different from before. Its body size had expanded to the size of a hound. Its outer skin was covered with scales with blue-colored round dots that were outlined with khaki-colored squares. Only three of its four limbs remained, with the two short front claws bending on the ground like usual. However, there was only one lonely hind leg supporting the middle of the stomach.
“This is the look of the ancient strange creature — the Money Toad. ‘Devour the earth and sky, resize itself as it might’.” Looking at the wizard gu, Zhang Lisheng muttered the hieroglyphs appearing in his mind, “Orbicular sky and rectangular earth, orbicular sky and rectangular earth… So the things that are on Mountoad’s back are not coins but the image of heaven and earth instead! In that case, the legend of the boy mocking the Money Toad and taking the coins on its back… Wait a minute! Why am I thinking about this in the midst of transformation?”
After saying so, the young man chuckled soundlessly and slowly closed his eyes, before spitting out the air in his stomach in long succession.
Half an hour later, he finally spat all of the air out of his body. With his chest deeply sunken, he opened his eyes and finally took a good look at Mountoad by his feet, as his mind outlined an agile and clear Demon’s image while he began to inhale softly.