Chapter 65: [someone, Feed Young Master Yuan Some Cake!]
The Frog’s meat was very tender, the seasoning tasted just right, and the cooking was perfectly done. In just 15 minutes front and back, five Frogs went down the belly. Master Yuan, who had been hungry all day, finally ate his fill at this moment, truly too satisfying.
“Smells so good! Now I’m satisfied. Next time I have free time, I’ll come again.”
The Game Sprite commented: “Boss, your human body is still a bit weak. Just a mere five Frogs, and you’re already stuffed. You know, the Tiger Demon King can eat a lot of food; the Snake Demon with Universe Within The Belly goes without saying, eating once a year, one meal lasting a year. So appetite is directly proportional to strength. You need to work hard, improve your food intake, and let me enjoy it more.”
“No rush. After completing the reinforcement, my human body will take a step up.”
Yuan Zhu just strolled along chatting idly, and before he knew it, he passed by a shop that looked very lively from afar.
At this moment, a breeze blew, moist and refreshing, making his pores open up. Paired with the satisfaction in his belly, it was very comfortable. The idiom ‘like bathing in spring breeze’ from Earth hometown flashed in his mind.
But on Du Ling Star, there is no concept of four seasons. The entire planet maintains a constant temperature year-round.
Running City, where he lives, has no spring, summer, autumn, or winter, only wind season and rainy season, as well as cool days without rain but also no sun exposure. It’s still considered a livable city.
The only drawback is probably that night is always longer than day, and the lengths of day and night are almost constantly unchanging.
However, the entire northern hemisphere at the same latitude is like this. Even moving to Taixi, it gets dark early just the same.
Suddenly, the dead geography knowledge began frantically attacking Yuan Zhu’s brain.
After he had just absorbed and fused a large amount of childhood memories, developing a sense of identity and familiarity with Running, his brain and soul entered high-energy consumption mode, rapidly absorbing the original body’s fragmented memories.
At this moment, just because he casually let his thoughts wander to Running… no, the entire Du Ling Star has no four seasons.
With this thought emerging, immediately, those dead geography textbooks from his past life began to turn into zombies one after another, crawling out of their graves, launching a DDoS attack on his brain. They packaged knowledge points into streams of information, saturating his brain with top-down strikes.
Fortunately, Yuan someone isn’t a pushover either. He activated Soul Firewall, directly tanking these precious middle school knowledge points and the painful study memories… A large amount of common sense and obscure knowledge surged frequently.
Flashes of illustrations and long-forgotten texts appeared in his mind, including the Seven Wonders of the World such as Buddha Head Outside The Sky, World Spine Vein, Golden Heavenly Pillar, Kunlun Divine Wood, Superstructure… Some were blurry black-and-white photographs, others were illustrations purely imagined by artists, further processed by his childhood self into absurd meme versions.
Among them, Kunlun Divine Wood is a super plant standing at the peak of Geng Continent’s highest mountain, the summit of Kunlun Divine Mountain: the immortal divine wood Peaches Tree.
It is so massive that it cannot be captured by camera at all, and can only be described piecemeal like a blind man touching an elephant through pure imagination.
Its size reaches up to touch the sky, breaking through the atmosphere. From the human world, it cannot be observed at all, only seeing the pitch-black tree shade. Downward, the Peaches Tree from the Kunlun Mountains peak extends aerial roots for thousands of miles, clinging to floating islands, spanning the void and hanging down, forming the spectacle of Reverse Life Trees.
Compared to the Buddha Head floating in space, this divine wood is too close to the human world, too shocking. It is indeed a well-deserved one of the Seven Wonders.
At the same time, Yuan Zhu had recently learned that this tree is the origin of Kunlun Immortal Path. To be precise, the source of Kunlun immortal methods is the Kunlun Immortal Realm created by the entire plant after the Peaches Tree broke through the sky.
Yes, that Peaches Tree, in today’s Taoist classics, is not only recognized as the root of heaven and earth, but also called Jianmu and Elixir of Immortality. In other countries’ classics, the Peaches Tree has multiple names like World Tree, Life Tree…
From ancient times to now, unknown transmigrators from various places on Earth have left behind a large number of chronologically jumbled classics on Du Ling, many of which are mythological stories repeatedly distorted and processed, also pinned on this divine wood.
At this moment, recalling this information, Yuan Zhu was completely stunned.
It’s back, the dead knowledge has all come back!
He originally thought that Du Ling producing a ‘Wu Guan’an’ who single-handedly wrote the four great refreshing novels was already outrageous enough. But immediately he learned that Yellow Heaven was injected into the spiritually barren ancient Eastern country by believers of Taiping Dao who transmigrated from the late Han Dynasty in Du Ling’s ancient times, bringing spiritual food from Earth.
Now that’s great! Earth myths from all over the world have been replicated by Earth plagiarists from different countries, transplanted to Du Ling, and labels stuck on Kunlun Divine Wood. It is both Kabbalah and Yggdrasil, both Jianmu and Peach of Immortality Spiritual Root Elixir of Immortality…
“Fuck, there’s actually an Immortal Realm?! And right outside the atmosphere? But this isn’t scientific! Wasn’t it agreed that the present world has Ascension mechanism, and once polluting energy breaks the threshold, it gets rejected to Spirit Layer? A world tree of this level nurturing an independent Immortal Realm, how can it stay on the planet’s surface? Blatantly existing in reality.”
Yuan Zhu was shocked at this moment, somewhat unable to understand. How is it different from what was said?!
Little Spicy Stick was also nearly crashed by this information shock, equally unable to understand Du Ling’s worldview.
“That’s not right! The Buddha Head is so huge, floating in space, and hasn’t been rejected by Ascension mechanism! And these Seven Wonders, each one is abnormal.” The Game Sprite grasped something and started yelling nonsense blindly.
At this moment, she wasn’t even sure which side she should stand on, or speak for whom.
“No, my brain is a bit messed up. Can you help me block this? These knowledge points are really drilling into my brain wave after wave. I’m fucking about to puke from studying, my head feels dizzy and swollen like it’s going to explode!”
“It won’t explode. It’s just the heart and brain blood vessels’ pumping flow rate overloading, brain overheating causing power drop, heart overworking, brain nerve synapses overoperating… Relax, even if the cerebral blood vessels burst and you suddenly die from blood clot, you can activate Boss Template for automatic health recovery and repair. Boss, you have to believe in your potential. Your vitality is tenaciously beyond your imagination!”
“Hiss…, fuck!”
Yuan Zhu inhaled a cold breath. The first semester’s geography books had also revived at this moment! Several of them at once, grinning ferociously, cornering him in a narrow dead-end alley, each holding a spirit injection rod, emitting ‘jie jie jie jie’ sounds toward him.
“Junior High Geography. Volume 1”: “Accept the irrigation of the knowledge storm! Your struggle is meaningless. I want your knowledge to overflow from all seven orifices!”
“High School Geography. Volume 1” drew out a carving knife inscribed with a ‘grass’ character: “Honestly accept the power transmission, no resistance allowed! I want to deeply carve the knowledge points into your brain, never to forget me!”
“World Geography”: “I’m going to stuff your brain until it explodes with knowledge points! Learn for me! Learn hard for me! Only by enduring the bitterest bitterness can you become someone superior to others. Without studying, how can you get rich? How can you rise above others? As long as it doesn’t kill you from studying, study to death for me!”
“World History”: “Big brothers are right. If you can’t endure the bitterness of knowledge, you’ll endure the bitterness of life! Long pain is worse than short pain. Just endure it! After learning ten more units of knowledge points, I’ll let go. You can handle it!”
At this moment, years of accumulated school memories and classroom knowledge were all poured into the brain in just over ten seconds. Did Yuan Zhu even hallucinate?
Those textbooks seemed to come alive, pinning him down and rubbing him on the ground, prying open his mouth, stacking high piles of high-concentration knowledge compressed into biscuits, bringing them before him, staging a scene of Come, feed Young Master Yuan the biscuits!
The bitter and hard-to-swallow knowledge biscuits exploded in his brain as soon as they entered the belly.
BGM played, Mimi King with dazed eyes blankly looked at the audience, a blue background curtain behind his head with countless formula symbols flying rapidly… At this moment, he seemed connected to Shocking Wisdom!
……
Du Ling Star, due to its rotation axis differing from Earth’s, plus the tricky sun position and angle, has no distinct four seasons.
If Earth’s equatorial zone receives direct sunlight year-round, permanently in hot tropics. And due to Earth’s revolution, the temperate zones of northern and southern hemispheres alternate winter and summer. While Earth’s polar cold zones, due to long-term lack of direct sunlight, remain low-temperature and cold.
Then treat Du Ling as Earth.
Due to the change in the planet’s rotation axis, plus the sun’s weak presence (for the northern hemisphere), it always maintains direct irradiation on the southern hemisphere polar circle year-round, never moving, only varying in distance.
If treating the sun as a lightbulb, it always stares at the bottom of the globe (South Pole) shining. Sometimes close, extra scorching; sometimes far, cooling a bit, not burning through the crust.
Therefore, Du Ling Star’s equator, or Equator Circle, largely overlaps with Earth’s South Polar Circle.
Du Ling’s South Polar Circle suffers the sun’s eternal high-temperature scorching, the hottest area on the entire planet, called Eternal Scorched Land. There, constant high heat, frequent volcanic outbreaks, poisonous gas pervasive, a forbidden zone for life.
So, the North Polar Circle corresponding to Eternal Scorched Land (South Polar Circle) has never received even 1 second of sunlight in its lifetime, permanently in extreme cold and darkness, another life forbidden zone, called Eternal Night Frozen Soil in geography textbooks. There, extremely low temperature, eternal darkness, no photosynthesis, normal creatures unable to survive in Eternal Night Frozen Soil.
Then, the southern hemisphere temperate zone relatively close to Eternal Scorched Land actually isn’t low temperature at all. This area constantly suffers sun irradiation and baking, very high temperature, extremely hot, called (South) Tropics or Hot Belt in geography books, hotter than Earth’s equator.
While Earth’s equatorial belt on Du Ling Star has pleasant temperature, abundant precipitation, called Hot Temperate Zone or Golden Continent Belt, constant temperature year-round, no seasonal changes, also called Eternal Summer, crops growing wildly non-stop… Harvesting endlessly all year.
But quite regrettably, there’s not much land on the Golden Belt, wasting this heavenly gift.
Geng Continent only has a portion near the south barely included in the northern edge of the Golden Belt. While the New Continent where Yuan Zhu lives, due to its strip shape, spans the entire Du Ling Star vertically, with a considerable portion in the Golden Belt.
Scientific expedition explorers once traveled south along the New Continent to the edge of Eternal Scorched Land; then explored north, successfully entering the Eternal Night Belt.
The West Coast where Running is located is already in the northern hemisphere temperate zone range. Here, sunlight crosses the South Hot Belt and Warm Hot Belt (Golden Belt) two major areas successively, energy dissipation severe. Thus temperature and environment are in spring-autumn seasons. Accompanied by wind season and rainy season changes, sometimes chilly, sometimes cool and comfortable.
If continuing north, temperature lower, nights longer… until entering Eternal Night Frozen Soil. Conversely, migrating south becomes more and more comfortable.
However, according to geography books and history books, Du Ling’s social form is not purely influenced by geographical environment. If in ancient times four hundred years ago, naturally move wherever is livable.
But now, supernatural system, deities and other supernatural factors are the key forces determining the world pattern. A mere sun is nothing.
On this damn planet, there are plenty of natural wonders and powers surpassing the sun. For example, on the eastern New Continent, clearly visible on the map, every 7.7 latitude, there is a super huge perfectly circular freshwater lake sitting on the eastern New Continent land.
One after another identical-sized lakes with centers on the same longitude inland, emitting eternal 37.5℃ water temperature, like a super hot spring + underground hot spring warming veins, bringing warmth to the northern harsh cold areas.
This series of lake clusters spanning the New Continent northern hemisphere is called Continuous Lakes. Rich aquatic products in the lakes, surrounding hundred-li areas four seasons like spring… And this wonder doesn’t even qualify for the Seven Wonders of the World.
“Continuous Lakes, Whale Ruins Island, Heavenly Pillar Stele… Can’t take it, can’t take it! Quickly help me block this knowledge.”
Just one casual daydream triggered a brain storm. Yuan Zhu now like an idiot who stayed up all night for two days straight, just walked out of the internet cafe, brain almost can’t turn anymore, everything half a beat slow.
“Boss, you’re really amazing, feeding me so much knowledge residue precipitated in the depths of the soul. If I helped you search and organize memories without affecting your daily life, it would take at least a week. But now, you completed it yourself in less than 1 minute, and it’s integrated mastery, not the paper information I retrieve for you. Human potential is indeed infinite.”
“I nearly died, too uncomfortable. Knowledge School is indeed not something humans can bear!”
The Game Sprite nodded in agreement: “Boss, I checked the exchange info on Knowledge School in Space of Gods. There’s a forbidden path where you can promote by removing the head, gaining stronger knowledge and massively increased power. But that school seems marked as illegal ‘forbidden organization’, called Headless Cultivators Society. Members have no heads! Maybe after removing the head, learning knowledge won’t cause headaches?”
“???” Slow-reacting Yuan Zhu was instantly stunned. Look at the nonsense you’re spouting!
He really couldn’t imagine next mission, Meng Xiyue’s body teleported into Happy Home, but head soaking in school’s formalin at school, not brought along.
“The human body is very magical, right?” The Game Sprite saw her boss keep frowning in pain, so said: “Boss, are you still very uncomfortable? How about going into that shop for a look? It has very interesting stuff inside!”
Yuan Zhu mustered his spirits and looked toward the shop that stood out conspicuously beside the cold and quiet street.
On this street, not many shops choose to stay open at 8 or 9 PM. The few lit ones are taverns, brothels and courtesans, firearm shops, pawn shops, gambling dens…
Only this one is special, a shop.
Beside the shop, several outdoor pool tables were set up. At this time, a group of idle punk boys gathered around the tables, loudly chatting, cursing, playing pool.
On the roadside curb nearby, there were also punk boys in twos and threes, holding glass bottles, chugging a glowing beverage, shouting loudly while drinking, trying to attract attention from a few girls by the pool tables.
This group of punk boys, after drinking the glowing beverage, had their necks and cheeks’ subcutaneous blood vessels exposed in the night glow faintly. It’s some substance in the beverage that binds to red blood cells like alcohol, flowing in the blood, showing the strange spectacle of subcutaneous glowing blood vessels.
This is perhaps a fashion; these punk boys all have faces and necks full of glowing blood vessels, proud of it.
Upon seeing Yuan Zhu approach, facing the oppressive 189cm stature, plus wild untamable arrogant flamboyant highly aggressive looks, and a body of pitch-black high-end custom clothes… This group of punk boys couldn’t help shrinking back a step, then provocatively raised chins, exposing glowing blood vessels, retorting provocatively.
As if saying, you’re so arrogant-looking, so what? Are we not cool? Laozi glows!
Looking at them, Yuan Zhu inexplicably thought of Lu Rang, that kill-matt steampunk rainbow mohawk little thug, and this group of punk boys were totally the same type.
No! Lu Rang dares lip piercings, nose rings, a full body biker studded jacket, wielding pipe wrench, looking like post-apocalyptic wasteland mob minion. Several levels above these punk boys.
Instantly, his affectionate Running hometown filter shattered again, giving a sense of ’18th-tier small city + urban-rural fringe + old industrial city gradually abandoned by the times’ decline.
This city, affected by terrain (basin) unable to expand. Can only sustain relative backwardness, gradually completing replacement and renovation. And long-term bled by Taixi, can only eat Taixi’s eliminated production capacity and industrial garbage…
Talented young people all go to neighboring city working for money. Left behind are these idle punk boys; or Lu Rang types ‘biker.pipe wrench Sword Immortal’.
If not for Yuan Zhu needing to care for his younger brother, the original body’s striving type would have long run to Taixi crazy part-time working. Working King, how could it be undeserved reputation?
Ignoring the punk boys’ mysterious provocation (showing off), Yuan Zhu stepped into the shop. Inside, rows of shelves separated by a long counter table. Want anything, must have attendant fetch, very backward mode, not as good as convenience store.
The attendant looked down at a novel, asked: “What do you want?”
“I’ll look first.” Saying that, Yuan Zhu called the Game Sprite, “Hey, Little Spicy Stick, why did you call me in? All ordinary goods.”
Yuan Zhu glanced over, mostly unfamiliar snacks, cigarettes, and beverage brands. His gaze quickly skipped the weirdly packaged novelty snacks, stopping at the tobacco alcohol beverage area.
Alcoholic beverages nothing special, beer, baijiu, red wine, all available. But cigarettes besides traditional tobacco leaves, various mycelium cigarettes, mushroom cigarettes, spore cigarettes, Chinese medicine health cigarettes… Eye-opening, even aphrodisiac cigarettes?!
As for the alcohol beverage area, even more outrageous. He first spotted carbonated beverages, normal glass bottle sodas, orange juice, apple, no Earth cola, but weird drink like filthy blood as substitute.
Next, beside carbonated area, weak acid beverages, marked with big blood-colored exclamation mark, printed on a white skeleton face. See note, genuine flavored weak acid, ordinary humans drink cautiously.
Next, he saw weak alkaline beverages, same corrosive warning labels like stomach perforation, intestine ulceration, esophagus corrosion warnings. Besides acid-base drinks, there’s an independent area of Spore Drinks.
“Yes yes yes! Right here! That one, quickly buy a bottle.”
Yuan Zhu looked in the direction prompted by the Game Sprite, a bottle of dreamy flowing light purple-red drink, no matter how you look, not drinkable, more like diluted chemical pigment, beautifully mesmerizing.
Yuan Zhu saw the price and was stunned, 3 yuan! This fuck, why not rob? His five Frogs together only 0.5 yuan!
