Chapter 232 - Get Together, Watch Closer (1/2)

Hao Ning thought that he would be back to the campus of Qingbei University after he came out of the “fake dormitory”. However, the scene in front of him did not seem like a university.

“Where am I?” Hao Ning thought. There was a huge warehouse before him. But it did not look like a warehouse. It seemed like a huge factory. There were a lot of production lines. Yet, all of them were shut down. Some workers walked back and forth. They were busy in adjusting or improving something. Those workers behaved weird as they were indulged in their work without vigor in their eyes.

Looking at the end part of the production lines, Hao Ning found many finished goods lying in a mess. He went closer and looked at them. They were Hunyuan Vat, Yin Yang Sword and some white gloves. Hao Ning had seen some before.

As Hao Ning searching around, Liu Shuai suddenly shouted, pointing to a direction. “Look, Immortal Tying Rope!”

Hao Ning looked at the direction Liu Shuai pointed. Yes. There were several Immortal Tying Ropes at the end of a production line.

“What’s happening here?” Hao Ning and Liu Shuai looked at each other. They rushed to the “production line” producing the Immortal Tying Rope. They saw two big words written on it “Shut Down”.

“Shut down?” Liu Shuai wondered. “Why was it shut down? Was this the production line of the Immortal Tying Rope? Was the Immortal Tying Rope Long Fei bought before manufactured over here?”

Hao Ning got closer to the Immortal Tying Ropes and looked carefully. He found a piece of paper. It looked like a test report, saying, “Unstable – Unqualified.”

“Oh, I see,” Hao Ning nodded. “It must be like this. The Immortal Tying Ropes they manufactured did not pass the test due to instability. So, they decided to give up this line.”

“Make sense.” Liu Shuai understood it too. He added, “that was the reason why the Immortal Tying Rope in Zhang Quan’s pocket exploded. it meant that this was unstable.”

Saying this, Liu Shuai raised his head and looked at other production lines. He found that many lines had “Shut down” on them.

“Weird.” Liu Shuai shook his head. “Why were all production lines shut down including this line? All of them were unstable and unqualified?”

“Hao Ning, Liu Shuai.” Zhou Yuan called both as they were talking. They turned back, seeing Zhou Yuan pointing to one place. They look at it. It was the place where they left the fake dormitory.

Looking back, they found fake Li Yufei and fake Chen Busheng were surrounded by a huge “container” in the open space. The container looked interesting. The sides had metal color and were opaque except the side facing Hao Ning and others. So, Hao Ning and others could see what Yufei and Chen Busheng were doing through this side. Ostensibly, the container seemed to move continuously with the men inside. As the men ran forward, the container seemed to move backward. And, the container could show various scenes for them such as dormitories, stairs or even stars. From their view, it was a real world. However, from the view of outsiders, it was a container wrapped by golden materials and moved itself all the time. For example, to the fake men, they thought that they were climbing stairs. Actually, they were moving to the same place. It was the stairs that were moving. And the materials wrapped in the container were silver metals. It must be the Pandora metal.

“It looks like that Zhou Yuan’s guess is right,” Liu Shuai looked at the happy “fake men” in the silver container, grumbling. “This must be the brain made by ‘Pandora metal’ in a container”.

Zhou Yuan and Chen Busheng ran to him as he was saying. Liu Shuai asked Chen Busheng, “hey, Chen Busheng. Do you still hope that Li Yufei lives in this container now? Even he is the true one?”

Chen Busheng looked at the silver container, saying nothing. He stood there, looked at it, and shook head.

“Yes.” Zhou Yuan nodded. “As you get the truth, you hope Yufei won’t live in a fake environment. You just asked me to create a fake Chen Busheng as Yufei’s company. But you forgot what you did is to make the same fake environment for him. As you know, the fake environment in front of us is made by Pandora metal, and the fake environment you hoped is made by your desires.”

“I know I was wrong.” Chen Busheng lowered his head. And then he raised his head and said, “if I can find Yufei, I will go and face him.”

“That’s my boy.” Zhou Yuan smiled, patting Chen Busheng on his shoulder. “That’s what you should do.”

“Hey, Master moment god, you also need to wake up.” seeing Zhou Yuan “teaching” Chen Busheng, Hao Ning stopped him. “Where are we now? Why is there such a huge warehouse-like this in Qingbei University? And we even don’t know its existence.”

“Because this is, in fact, not Qingbei University.” Zhou Yuan shook his head. After saying so, he realized his description was not correct. He corrected, “specifically, this is not in Pingjing. If my guess is right, we are in Chang’an.”

“Chang’an?” the three cried at the same time. “You said Chang’an, the ancient capital of past thirteen Dynasties?”

“Yes.” Zhou Yuan nodded. “You’re right.” added he.

“How is it possible?” Hao Ning and Liu Shuai shook heads hard. “It will take 2 hours from Pingjing to Chang’an by air. How can we stand in a warehouse in Chang’an without feeling anything?”

“But it is true.” Zhou Yuan curled his lips up with disapproval. “Don’t forget that Yi Pingzhi can disappear on our radar. I guess he must know how to move between spaces. And when we entered the fake dormitory, they use the technology to move the whole fake dormitory from Pingjing to Chang’an. And what you just said was wrong. The place we are standing now is not a warehouse in Chang’an. Here is the place directly below the First Emperor’s Tomb in the outskirt of Chang’an. I guess that they have excavated tens of square meters under the tomb!”

“Excavated? Below the tomb?” Hao Ning and Liu Shuai felt that it was unbelievable. They said to themselves, “you mean, the tomb above our head is the tomb of the first emperor of the Celestial Empire? How is it possible… It is so heavy; how can they bear it…”

“Err…” Zhou Yuan shook his head, “you look up at the roof and look down at the ground. Those are made by the Pandora metals…”

They looked down at the ground but nothing special found. They questioned Zhou Yuan, “how do you know about this?”

“Because Yi Pingzhi is still around.” Zhou Yuan shook his head. “I just searched all his dialogues around when you two were looking at the production lines and when Chen Busheng looked at fake Li Yufei. I also want to say that we could detect Yi Pingzhi’s Spiritual Flying Bugs, but you guys are just standing here, guessing what happened. You are so stupid…”

Liu Shuai and Hao Ning felt embarrassed by Zhou Yuan’s words. Chen Busheng could be forgiven since he focused on Li Yufei. But Hao Ning and Liu Shuai was drawn attention to the production lines and forgot Yi Pingzhi’s Spiritual Flying Bugs. They shouldn’t forget about this. So, they asked in embarrassment, “so what? Where should we go now?”

“No idea.” Zhou Yuan shook his head. “The signal is weak here. That’s all that I know. We have to find them out. Let’s go now.”

They, actually, did not walk. Instead, they were running. Zhou Yuan was right. This place was huge. The four ran along the production lines for a very long time.

Running along the production lines, they found that all of the production lines were written “shut down”. And a few products like Implements were put on the lines at a mess. They recognized some of them, but most of them had no idea.

After a long time, they finally arrived at a blue rice field. There were some words written on the board. It said, “Soul Rice Field”.

Soul Rice Field? They felt curious. They looked at it closer. The scene almost made them vomit. The so-called Soul Rice Field had been divided into many cells with people planted in them. Nine identical people were planted in one cell. When one of them came to age, it would kill himself by cutting its neck with a knife. And then a mechanic arm came and held the soul in hand with white gloves. The arm put the soul into a white bottle. And then the remaining would be sucked away by a sucker underneath it. In a short time, an embryo grew. The embryo might be injected drugs or something as it grew as fast as we could see. The embryo killed itself after it came into age. This was a cycle.

“Well, what are they doing?” Hao Ning never saw a brutal scene before like this. He couldn’t help screaming, “what are they doing?”

Liu Shuai, as a biological student, vomited for a while and wiped his tears. He squatted on the ground, looking at the “Soul Rice Field”, and saying with eyes closed, “they must deceive souls to reincarnate through clone technology.”

“What do you mean?” Zhou Yuan bewildered. He felt disgusting too. He stretched out a finger. Suddenly, a cloud of opaque fog wrapped them, flying toward. They flew for a long time to leave the Soul Rice Field.

“They must decode the system of the nether world and found a bug in the system. That is, the soul coming from a suicidal person would not be chased.” Liu Shuai relieved and said, “so, they cloned people all the time and reincarnated souls into the cloned persons through the system of the nether world. The reincarnation system cannot distinguish which one is a natural person or a cloned one. The system will allocate a soul for the body no matter what. So, they can accumulate more and more souls. As people are cloned, they will share one soul. That means the soul is changeable.”

“Why do they need so many souls?” Hao Ning wondered. “And, do you understand why the nine clones in a cell look the same? Why do they need so many identical souls?”

Liu Shuai looked at Hao Ning, shaking his head, “are you familiar with the bottles containing souls?”

Before Hao Ning said a sentence, Zhou Yuan screamed, “I remember. The bottle is the same as the one containing the soul of Super silver finger. I stole one that day.”

“Oh, I see!” Hao Ning said. That was the reason why persons in the stone-gambling were not afraid of aging. As their souls were too old, they could change their souls by fresh and identical ones in the bottles. And the souls in the bottles come from the Soul Rice Field, a place where people are cloned and killed all the time.

Saying this, Hao Ning cursed, “Xiao Hong and I once guessed that they would make a fake nether world through their technology and harvest souls by some ways we don’t know yet. As far as we know, they don’t have any sophisticated technology. They just used the simplest way by cloning persons. And the cloned people don’t have an idea or ability to think or do anything. They are the same. No thoughts or feelings. They are just cloned people without consciousness from their cradle to grave. They, actually, don’t need them to think. They need them because they are souls. That’s all!” Saying this, Hao Ning sneered. “Who can foretell that they used so advanced technology for their evil purposes.”

What Hao Ning thought, in practice, was more severe than what he said. The picture in which people were “planted” had been watched by Hao Ning in a movie called The Matrix. In the movie, the robots controlled the earth, planted and grew persons on earth. Unexpectedly, humankind had planted and grew themselves on earth before the robots did it.

“That is the reason.” Zhou Yuan said, quivering with rage, “That is the reason why the soul of silver finger I stole looked like an adult. But it wore nothing, and its IQ was so low. Because they were planted in the Soul Rice Field! The cloned people had no contact with the outside from their birth. They, of course, had no IQ at all.”

So far, Hao Ning had understood the whole story. He wanted to say something before he heard a voice from far away. He rushed toward the voice. The rest heard the voice too. They ran along with Hao Ning.

Not for a long time, the voice was getting louder and louder. At the corner, they found Yi Pingzhi was talking with Nezha there.

“Why are they staying together?” Hao Ning wondered. Not long ago, Yi Pingzhi had thought that Hao Ning and others were the companies of Nezha’s. And he killed four fake Hao Ning and others on a narrow road. Why, in a short time, did they both meet each other?

“No, I think this one is a fake Nezha.” Zhou Yuan corrected him, “do you remember we put Nezha’s Spiritual Flying Bugs into fake Nezha. As it is fake, he, of course, will do exactly the way the others want him to do.”

“Mr. Yi.” The fake Nezha said, “is this the workshop of Pure Land of Bliss? Why are there no other guys from the Split Sect?”

“The others are sent out for deployment,” Yi Pingzhi said. “We will deploy Pure Land of Bliss globally. This is our plan.”

“Pure Land of Bliss? Workshop? Deployment globally?” Hao Ning and others could not believe what they heard if they did not see the production lines of the Immortal Tying Rope before. They must consider that what Nezha said was nonsense. However, the workshop they mentioned seemed secretive because it was wrapped by opaque metals. The inside could be seen only through a window near the Nezha and Yi Pingzhi.

Hao Ning and others also wanted to see what was inside through the window. At the moment, Yi Pingzhi’s eyes moved with light coming out of his glasses. Yi Pingzhi frowned and looked at the direction Hao Ning and others standing, “we got companies?”

“They found us?” Hao Ning and others stopped walking and stepped back a little. They looked at Zhou Yuan who also wondered what was happening. He waved his hand, expressing that he did not know it.

“Is Yi Pingzhi’s glasses so powerful?” Hao Ning said in a low voice. “His glasses can see through Zhou Yuan’s Virtualized reality?”

“I don’t know. But we must be careful.” Zhou Yuan stopped his bragging. He whispered, “we’d better listen to them first.” added he.

Yi Pingzhi found that nothing happened through his glasses. So, he continued to say with a smile at Nezha, “Pure Land of Bliss has been the greatest invention so far based on the great prophecy of Heaven Master. Of course, Heaven Master has many ideas. He will have more inventions in the coming days. However, Pure Land of Bliss is the most important material to help us become immortals.”

“Yes, yes.” The fake Nezha nodded.” My uncle tried his best in his life, but he conferred immortals on only 365 persons. And your wish is to make everyone become an immortal. You are our mentor.”

“Thanks for your appreciation. This is not my wish. This is Mr. Fei’s great dream.” Yi Pingzhi waved his hand, disagreeing. “Mr. Fei’s dream is to make the whole world back to the prosperous time of the Celestial Empire, make the Celestial Empire culture standing out from the civilizations, and force all to bow before the regime of the Celestial Empire traditions.”

“Great, great idea!” The fake Nezha applauded. “Mr. Fei’s great dream is beyond our reach. The development in western countries falls into disgusting tricks which are much lower than Pure Land of Bliss we had before in the Celestial Empire period. And as Mr. Fei is talented at everything, he hopes to make everyone in the world become immortals. But I just want to know how Pure Land of Bliss can make a person be an immortal?”

“Do you know soul dopamine?” Yi Pingzhi smiled, looking at fake Nezha.

“Dopa…what?” obviously, fake Nezha heard the word the first time. “I don’t know this word.”

Although Hao Ning did not know what they were talking about, he was sure that Yi Pingzhi and fake Nezha met each other because of something. So far, Hao Ning was not sure what was the thing.

“Dopamine? Soul dopamine?” Liu Shuai screamed. He found that Hao Ning and the others were looking at him, he waved his hand and said, “I will explain it later. We listen to them now.”

“Oh, it is normal you don’t know about it.” Yi Pingzhi smiled. “This is the latest research result based on Heaven Master’s achievement. We found that there is something special in human souls. We called it the soul dopamine now. Human souls won’t stop pursuing something such as truth, success, belief or freedom and others because they have this kind of thing. And, the word dopamine means the hormone in the human body. It seems that the more hormone, the happier human will be.”

“I don’t know about it yet.” fake Nezha smiled. “Please tell me more,” added he.

“Ok. The soul dopamine is much more powerful than the one in the human body.” Yi Pingzhi smiled. “Heaven Master found that it is the critical element to belief seekers. If we give enough soul dopamine to the human body, we can make them pursue something crazily. It doesn’t matter what they are pursuing. The process they pursue is the most important. In the process, beliefs will emerge in human minds. The beliefs will be refined and be an essential part of an immortal. That is the essence of thearchy!”

Saying this, Yi Pingzhi took out a small bottle from his pocket. There was a thing shining golden light contained in it. Needless to say, it was the essence of thearchy Hao Ning, and the others saw before.

“You have seen the Soul Coin Material before.” Yi Pingzhi smiled. “It is used for the semi-finished Implements made by the Soul Coin Engine in the Immortal Tying Ropes. The results were not so good, and some accidents may happen in the manufacturing processes. However, the essence of thearchy…”

Saying this, Yi Pingzhi took a silver metal. “If it is used for the Pandora metal, the Pandora metal will become any Implement you want, such as Yin yang Mirror, Immortal Tying Rope, or Hunyuan Vat and so on!”

After saying this, Yi Pingzhi got a drop of the essence of thearchy on the metal in his hand. He said in a low voice, “scattering Beans as Soldiers!” The metal split into many golden little men immediately. Yi Pingzhi said to them, “Nine Dragons Shield of Divine Fire!”

The little men made a circle in the air and flocked together afterward. They became the Nine Dragons Shield of Divine Fire finally. Yi Pingzhi said again, “rush”. A burning dragon was activated in the Dragons Shield of Divine. It seemed that the burning dragon would burn everything inside into ashes.

“Very good. Very good!” Nezha laughed, clapping his hands. “Now I understand why you always defeated me by your magic power. That is because you have such a powerful thing.”

“Forget it. As you agreed to hunt for souls, the immortal killer sect should be under Split Sect’s control,” Yi Pingzhi smiled. “It doesn’t matter if I tell you the truth.”

“Oh, I see now!” Hao Ning said. “The treasure of Yi Pingzhi made it easy for him to defeat fake Nezha. It even can defeat real Nezha.”

“But…” Nezha frowned. “I can’t understand the relationship between the soul dopamine and Pure Land of Bliss?”

“Well, I just showed what it is and forgot to tell you about the relationship.” Yi Pingzhi stopped his mana, patting his forehead with a smile. “The soul dopamine, originally, is a product in the process of human truth pursuit. There are not too many in the world. And Pure Land of Bliss, as it is attached to the human body, it can force a soul to produce more soul dopamine. And more interestingly, Pure Land of Bliss is hidden in a place that cannot be detected by reincarnation. So, if Pure Land of Bliss can be attached to a soul, it will stay with the soul forever.”

“Bang!” The three in the Virtualized reality sat on the ground, shockingly. Chen Busheng couldn’t understand what they were talking about. Liu Shuai grumbled, “I understand what they want to do now. They do it. They really do it! Oh, my God. I am so stupid. I forget they can do it!”

Hao Ning turned back, looking at Liu Shuai tiredly, “are you…ok? Why do you say so? We have known Pure Land of Bliss ago. Right?”

“What Pure Land of Bliss!” Liu Shuai scolded. “They are producing drugs for souls!”