Chapter 171 Detour

Hearing Bai Haozheng's words, the leaders of the Nisshima Extraordinary Affairs Investigation Bureau, though furious, knew that the other side would not provide any substantial assistance.

They had no choice but to end the video call,

and have their subordinates continue to maintain the connection between the official organizations.

Since the Special Affairs Bureau was unwilling to help, they had to handle the situation themselves.

The good news was that the Special Affairs Bureau didn't say Li Ang was malicious, so he shouldn't wantonly destroy... probably.

The decision-makers of Nisshima briefly exchanged opinions.

On the one hand, they ordered Sesshouin and others to rush back,

and on the other hand, they ordered the agents at the southern end of Honshu Island to continue following Li Ang from a distance, to prevent him from taking excessive actions.

At the same time, steeling themselves, they reported the relevant intelligence to their superiors and parallel departments.

Soon, the entire Tokyo fell into a strange state of suspension.

The glass surface of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building in the Shinjuku New District was completely lowered, turning into black, opaque, explosion-proof glass.

Some tourists who were originally going to visit the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building were also dissuaded by the armed guards at the entrance, on the pretext of a fire drill.

The same was true for the high-level buildings in Chiyoda Ward and other city areas.

Subordinates asked whether to issue a city-wide alert of the highest warning level.

The leader pondered for a moment and rejected the suggestion. "There's no need for that yet."

The people of Nisshima have a strong sense of disaster prevention, and disaster prevention education is universally popularized. Schools, companies, and all sectors of society hold various disaster prevention exercises every year.

Especially after the Killing Game expanded on a large scale, the Nisshima Extraordinary Affairs Investigation Bureau spent a lot of energy establishing a rapid reaction armed force, building shelters, and popularizing knowledge of disaster mutations to the public.

Major mobile phone companies were forced to pre-download an app provided by the Nisshima Extraordinary Affairs Investigation Bureau into their mobile phones.

The public was also required to use it mandatorily—the app could lock the specific address of each citizen, send warning text messages, provide map information and mutation danger zones, and display the nearest and easiest-to-reach shelter.

That Dr. Li Risheng in the white coat was still in the deep mountains and dense forests of southern Honshu, so there was no need to create a city-wide panic.

Moreover, his ultra-long-range teleportation methods, judging from observations, also had a cooldown time.

It would be enough to evacuate when he took further threatening actions.

Besides...

Honshu Island is about 1300km long from northeast to southwest.

If you draw a circle with Li Risheng's current location as the center and a radius of 500km,

most of Honshu Island would be included.

If Tokyo is evacuated, what about Kyoto, Osaka, Nara, and Nagoya?

Should they all be evacuated?

Just like Bai Haozheng said, there was no other choice...

————

Li Ang in the deep mountains didn't know that his sudden visit had thrown the entire Nisshima Extraordinary Affairs Investigation Bureau into turmoil.

Even if he knew, he wouldn't care.

He casually put away the takoyaki packaging bag and suddenly stopped, standing still.

The Nisshima personnel who were monitoring him from a great distance using special telescopes and drones were suddenly startled, their hearts skipping a beat.

"This should be it..."

Li Ang murmured, took out the Xin Yuan (Mind Monkey) staff from the backpack slot, and casually stabbed it into the solid mountain rock.

Then, he injected spiritual energy, turning the Xin Yuan into a miniature tunnel boring machine, and then releasing alchemy through the Xin Yuan.

The mountain soil rapidly liquefied, turning into mud, and creating a downward-sloping tunnel just tall enough for one person to pass through.

Li Ang pushed the Xin Yuan staff and walked into the tunnel, all the way down.

He casually released an spiritual energy shield to block and bounce away the mud constantly dripping from above, thinking about his experiences in the last script mission.

At the end of Yuan Ke Village, the Killing Game lifted player restrictions.

Wang Congshan was sent back to the surface by Li Ang. What she didn't know was that in the last two minutes underground, Li Ang not only covered the entire Yuan Mountain on the exit of the Yellow Springs, but also personally stepped into the edge of the Yellow Springs to take a look.

With the improvement of his power level, Li Ang could no longer completely see information outside of the script mission as he used to.

Outside the edge of the Yellow Springs,

he could see and feel the millions of resentful souls contained within the Yellow Springs.

Yuan Ke Village, a small village, could definitely not provide so many souls. These resentful spirits must have come from other places.

At that time, Li Ang used spiritual energy to protect his mind and carefully peered inward with his divine sense.

He discovered that the entrance to the Yellow Springs was indeed, as the Yuan Ke Village mythology said, located at the intersection of reality and illusion.

The entire Yellow Springs below it was not a physical entity, but rather close to illusion,

like a comprehensive pipeline system connecting to other extremely distant places in the script world.

Li Ang continued to use his divine sense to explore along the Yellow Springs pipeline and unexpectedly discovered that the script world was completely consistent with the real world's Nisshima.

Moreover, the entire script world only had one Nisshima.

Any further and it exceeded the connection range of the Yellow Springs pipeline, turning into a patch of darkness.

This was obviously illogical.

If reasoned with conventional logic, the Yellow Springs system is the foundation of soul reincarnation in that script world, then how could there be places not connected to the Yellow Springs pipeline system?

Did that mean the Americans and British in that script world didn't need to be reincarnated?

Did the Yellow Springs system have household registration discrimination?

"There are two possibilities.

One, my divine sense is not strong enough to see the deeper, Yellow Springs connecting other areas of the script world.

Two, that script world does indeed only have one Nisshima and no other areas."

Li Ang muttered to himself, walking all the way down along the excavated tunnel. "If it's the first possibility, that's fine.

But if it's the second possibility, then that's not good..."

If the script world where Yuan Ke Village was located was only as big as one Nisshima,

and everyone in the world had no objection to this, and didn't suspect why there was an invisible air wall at the end of the sea,

then what exactly was that world?

A temporary box created by the Killing Game?

That's unlikely. Most of the time in the Yuan Ke Village mission was limited to the vicinity of Yuan Mountain, and the player's strength was restricted, allowing players to only move around Yuan Ke Village.

If it was a box created by the Yuan Ke Village Killing Game, there was no need to additionally create an entire Nisshima.

Or was it a fragment of a certain world?

Li Ang took a deep breath. In the mission before last, he, Hohenheim, Liu Wudai and others saw the suspected Su Nisheng who put the entire world into a box.

And in the last script mission, he saw Yuan Ke Village, which was also suspected to be a world in a box.

"The location of the Yellow Springs below Yuan Ke Village should roughly correspond to here..."

Li Ang stopped, and with a casual wave of the Xin Yuan staff in his hand, melted large swaths of soil and rock layers,

excavating an underground space similar to Yuan Ke Village.

Nothing... There's nothing...

Li Ang looked at the huge dark cavern, his eyes shining in the darkness.

No Yellow Springs, no residual souls, and no withered vines infused with divine power that Li Ang had deliberately left in the script world.

On the rock walls of the entire underground space, there were only rock layers of various colors, and solid lumps of earth and stone.

"..."

Li Ang stood there pondering for a moment. Although this trip was fruitless, he didn't feel any disappointment in his heart.

Or rather, he had vaguely guessed that this might be the result.

"The script mission doesn't correspond to reality..."

Li Ang sighed softly, still thinking about the scene he had seen in the Yellow Springs.

As a first-tier player, he had also experienced many script missions explaining the essence of reincarnation and souls.

For example, a long time ago, he assisted Mule, through the method of offsite projection, in that script mission where the afterlife was ruled by dinosaurs.

In that world, five dinosaurs managed the entire underworld, responsible for handling the life and death reincarnation of all living beings.

Another example was the crazy demon Zou Zhengze, who believed that souls could never be freed after death, whom he had seen not long after he became a player—Zou Zhengze could also be considered the first player Li Ang killed.

"Perhaps the dinosaurs and Zou Zhengze were both right about something."

Li Ang thought silently, he had a feeling that the Yellow Springs pipeline system, and the underworld ruled by dinosaurs, both existed reasonably in a certain sense.

After a living being dies, the soul is parsed out of the body,

or it turns into a wandering ghost,

or it goes to some unknown area,

is shattered and recast, and then returns to the present world to be reincarnated.

In the entire process, the Yellow Springs and the underworld function the same way, that is, to recycle souls.

The difference is,

one is restricted by the rules of the world,

the other is human intervention, actively promoted by humans.

"Since the two reincarnation systems both follow the same set of basic theories, is it possible to actively participate in them and intervene?

For example, in the process of reincarnation, intercept a portion of the soul and detain it..."

This thought emerged in Li Ang's mind. He felt that he had vaguely grasped a key clue, but he couldn't connect all the information together.

He stood there pondering for a long time, but still couldn't get an answer.

So he slowly waved the Xin Yuan staff, restored the melted and compressed mud, roughly repaired the cave,

and then returned to the ground along the tunnel.

When he returned to the surface, Sesshouin and others were already waiting on the distant hillside.

Seeing Li Ang come out, Sesshouin smiled gently and said loudly from a distance: "Did Li-san find what you were looking for?"

"So-so."

Li Ang nodded casually, without intending to continue the conversation.

He once again stepped on the invisible steps and climbed into the sky, heading towards the sea, pulling the trigger of the Colt revolver, and his figure instantly disappeared.

The members of the Nisshima Extraordinary Affairs Investigation Bureau who were monitoring from a distance, saw Li Ang completely ignoring them and swaggering away from the encirclement, and couldn't help but feel complex emotions in their hearts.

Absurdity, embarrassment, helplessness, annoyance, and a trace of rejoicing.

Only Qing Xingdeng, Umibouzu, and others standing with Sesshouin were slightly uneasy, and subconsciously glanced at the expression on Sesshouin's face.

This was the first time Sesshouin had been ignored in public.

Even the higher-ups of the Nisshima Extraordinary Affairs Investigation Bureau, and even more senior ministers, officials, and dignitaries,

would be respectful and polite when they saw her, not daring to show the slightest bit of neglect.

Li Ang had the capital to ignore Sesshouin, but they, as subordinates, might be used as tools for venting anger...

To the surprise of Qing Xingdeng and others, Sesshouin did not show a stiff and cold expression on her face. She just smiled slightly, put away the dagger she had been hiding in her palm, and said faintly: "Let's go."

"Where to?"

Qing Xingdeng said subconsciously, and then regretted it.

"Of course back to Tokyo, eat and drink."

Sesshouin said faintly: "Or do you have the ability to catch up with him and make him pay the price?"

How dare Qing Xingdeng and others answer, they all shut up and pretended to be dead.

Although they also knew that at this moment, those bigwigs in Tokyo were probably hiding in underground facilities, panicking and cursing the Nisshima Extraordinary Affairs Investigation Bureau for being incompetent.

Allowing foreign transcendents to come and go as they please, ignoring the border defense system, and treating the entire Nisshima as a public toilet.

This shame and humiliation will probably become a label pinned on the head of the Nisshima Extraordinary Affairs Investigation Bureau for a period of time in the future, and become a hot topic on the player forums.

————

Li Ang walked on and off, and soon returned to the Longqing Group's ocean-going cruise ship and greeted Liu Wudai.

Two of the three ships remained in place, while the other continued to Australia according to the Ark plan to receive the transcendents there.

At this time, the people on the ship didn't know what had happened and were still undergoing blood tests by the medical team.

Liu Wudai knew through the Special Affairs Bureau's channels that Li Ang had just taken a tour of Nisshima, and her mood was slightly complicated.

"Heh,"

Li Ang glanced at the expression on Liu Wudai's face and smiled: "My ability can only teleport one person, and I can't carry too many things, otherwise I would be able to run around with the ship."

"I don't care about that,"

Liu Wudai smiled helplessly. She also felt that Li Ang had changed in some ways after the Yinzhou mutation, "Um... but this is also a good thing,

at least the Ark plan should go much smoother next."

There is no wall that doesn't leak, Li Ang ignored Sesshouin and others, forcibly broke through the Nisshima border, forcing the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to evacuate, coming and going as he pleased.

This news will soon spread,

attracting the world's attention and making the world sigh and envy the privileges of top-level transcendents,

and to some extent, it can also reduce the resistance to the Ark plan.

It just feels like... Li Ang is becoming more and more casual.

"Yeah. Just like that, I'll go to the game mall."

Li Ang said hello, said goodbye to Liu Wudai, logged into the game square, and walked towards the northeast.

The exploration of the essence of reincarnation has come to an end for the time being, but Li Ang has not given up on exploring the essence of the soul and improving his divine power and spiritual energy.

Intercepting a portion of the soul during reincarnation and detaining it is undoubtedly a demonic act, and would definitely be regarded as a villain in literary works.

And in the entire Killing Game, the one who is best at using soul energy is undoubtedly that extremely famous, or rather notorious, Evil Scientist Alliance.