Chapter 558: Chapter 68: About the Code

Although they were preparing to run, Nora’s family was still here, and the likes of The Azure Longsword couldn’t just up and leave.

So, Nora went to discuss this matter with her parents. Owing to a merchant’s natural sensitivity to risk, Nora’s father Marcus quite agreed with Nora’s suggestion. In the end, they decided to evacuate the entire Lixini Family to Iron Port Town, leaving only the essential business personnel here.

Iron Port Town was located on the western side of the Italian peninsula, an island town that wasn’t even affected by the barbarian invasions—a rare, easily-defended sanctuary. Having operated on the island for many years, the Lixini Family had established their own fishing ports, naval bases, and iron ore factories, thereby achieving self-sufficiency.

Kapaxilin and Nora’s parents left first. Nora herself went to the Church Court alone to discuss matters with her brother, Valian Bishop.

Aske, sitting by the floor-to-ceiling window, noticed that light rain had begun to fall outside again, the skies growing ominously dark.

Huh, did Nora take an umbrella with her when she went out just now?

He was stunned for a moment before he chuckled to himself.

Regardless, a Transcendent would hardly be troubled by something as trivial as rain.

Reflecting on the trip to Solomon City, aside from the sudden Mutant event, it was equivalent to a long vacation, with both body and mind tuned to their optimal state.

Next, before the battle against the Heavenly Disaster of the Undead Spirit, he planned to head south to Sicily to clarify Mia’s origins…

As he mused somewhat boredly, he suddenly felt a faint tremor in Spirituality and witnessed a huge tree erupting from the ground in a distant part of the city.

It was a giant tree of Spiritual Essence, half-transparent, much like the one in Olympia City before. Almost instantly, the tree’s peak surpassed the tallest building in Solomon City, piercing directly into the gloomy clouds above.

As its canopy spread out, the city underneath fell into darkness. Buildings, roads, and people—everything covered by the canopy—sank into a bizarre, semi-transparent state, reminiscent of the color behind the Spiritual Bodies of those afflicted by the contamination.

The Mutant event had escalated!

Aske quickly got to his feet and saw the floor beneath him also turned semi-transparent, rippling faintly when stepped upon. The surrounding walls, furniture, cabinets all turned into a dim semi-transparent hue.

This strange Mutant was even beginning to erode his body, trying to transform him into a similar state, but the Spirituality inside his own Spiritual Body quickly surged and repelled this erosion.

The girls around him also stood up, sensing the anomaly creeping through their bodies. But since they were all high-rank Transcendents above Lv. 10, they successfully warded off the Mutant.

“What’s happening?” Eleanor pressed her hand against the table, causing ripples to emanate from the point of contact.

“We’ve entered a deep Mutant instance,” Aske said, frowning.

In Mutant instances, if certain conditions were met (like killing a set number of enemies), it often triggered a deeper level of Mutation, much like the outer and inner worlds in the previous Mind Mutant town.

Although Aske had long planned to flee, he hadn’t expected the Mutant to accelerate this quickly.

“We need to find Nora quickly,” he sighed.

Everyone hurried to the elevator, pressed the button, but no indicator light came on. Water-like ripples spread from the elevator button, seemingly isolating the elevator behind into another dimension.

They had no choice but to take the stairs down. Upon reaching the ground floor, they saw the golden skull and the butler also standing still in a defensive and vigilant posture, their bodies similarly turned into a semi-transparent state, stationary and numbly mouthing as if they were mumbling to themselves.

Drawing slightly closer, they could hear them chanting some unintelligible incantations, the otherworldly syllables causing slight headaches to listeners.

“Don’t get close to them,” Medea warned everyone, “This seems to be some form of high-Rank pollution. Too much contact could damage Sanity.”

“Can you tell what Rank it might be?” asked Aske.

“I’m not sure, but at the very least, it’s from above Lv. 30,” replied Medea after a moment of silence, gravely adding, “I’ve come across similar accounts in the library of the Seljuk Palace Court. This unapproachably strange state… it should come from the Spirit Realm.”

“The Spirit Realm?”

“Yes, to use the scientific terminology of the Church Court, the Spirit Realm is a sort of high-dimensional space,” Medea explained. “Since the Spirit Realm contains dimensions we can’t comprehend, our eyes cannot distinguish its light wavelengths, and we can only perceive such semi-transparent colors, much like a colorblind person seeing a color they cannot distinguish.”

“By the same logic, our auditory system also can’t discern the frequencies from the Spirit Realm, hence we hear these strange, incomprehensible sounds.”

“What’s more serious is, the extra dimension means an exponential increase in information complexity. Thus, prolonged exposure to the light and sounds from the Spirit Realm can greatly overload our brains, possibly causing permanent damage to Sanity.”

“You mean, we can’t look or listen?” Eleanor asked incredulously, “Do we need to cover our ears and close our eyes?”

“That’s not necessary,” Medea shook her head, “You can look, but don’t try to distinguish what you see; you can listen, but don’t try to understand or remember the sounds you hear.”

“Our brains have a protective system that will automatically filter out visual signals and auditory noise that you don’t pay attention to. Just maintain an unconscious filtering of these details. If you can’t manage that, I can implant a similar thought to prevent you guys from accidentally hurting yourselves.”

“Just to be safe, implant the thought in all of us,” Aske said.

“Okay.” So Medea hypnotized everyone. When it was Eleanor’s turn, she suddenly uttered a surprised sound.

“What is it?” Eleanor asked.

“You don’t need it,” Medea smirked, “Your will protects your brain and Mind Body very well.”

“Is that so?” Eleanor remained expressionless.

The group left the Lysine Building and headed towards the Ratlan Palace. Due to the hypnosis, everyone lost interest in the curious sights around them and simply quickened their pace.

“Aske!” Miel suddenly exclaimed, “Just now, it seemed like something flew past in the sky!”

“Did your Intuitive Ability sense any danger?” Aske asked.

“No,” Miel hesitated to say.

“Neither did I,” Aske pondered for a second, “Let’s continue moving forward and stay vigilant.”

A few minutes later, the group saw Nora suddenly appearing at the street corner, running towards them.

Eleanor moved ahead to intercept, drawing her Longsword as if facing a formidable enemy, while the rest of the girls also prepared for battle—in a Mutant mission scenario, a suddenly appearing teammate is almost always an impostor, like the last time in the Mind Mutant town.

“What are you all doing?” Nora said with a laugh and a cry, yet consciously keeping a distance from the group.

“Are you Nora?” Aske asked.

“Yeah,” Nora said.

“How can you prove it?” Medea asked.

Nora was silent for a moment, then looked at Aske and Medea: “Use a secret code?”

The reason for using a secret code with these two was naturally because there were some pieces of knowledge about Aske that only the three of them knew.

So Aske began:

“Study hard?”

“Improve every day,” Nora replied.

“Court Jade Liquor?” Medea asked with a cold smile.

“One hundred and eighty-one a cup,” Nora answered effortlessly.

“How much did you spend on a recharge today… how much for one recharge?” Aske asked.

“648 yuan,” Nora laughed.

“What’s Aske’s father’s name?” Medea suddenly inquired.

“Achilles…” Nora replied subconsciously, then realized, “No, wait! Doesn’t he have his mother’s surname? So what’s his father’s surname… I don’t know.”

“Consider yourself temporarily passed, stay isolated in the team for observation,” Aske nodded. Medea just smirked.

So, with a wry smile, Nora came over and stayed by Eleanor’s side.