56 Silk Road 16
◎We are players from the Eastern region of "Universe History" and accidentally crossed servers.◎
"What happened?" Wang Kunshu asked in surprise outside the surveillance screen.
"It's a cycle," Xu Wenjun said. "They will continue to cycle endlessly through these seven worlds."
"Is there no way to crack it?"
"I'm afraid it's difficult." Xu Wenjun stared solemnly at the new "Zhu Heng" and the new "Helan Dao" on the screen as they tossed the so-called token to their past selves. She watched this cycle repeat itself, and suddenly a realization struck her. She murmured softly, "No wonder the system doesn't recommend executing..."
"What are you talking about?"
Xu Wenjun turned his eyes and looked at Wang Kunshu: "Look at those keepsakes. Do you find any problems?"
"What's the problem?" Wang Kunshu was a little confused. "Aren't these all goods we export westward along the Silk Road?"
Xu Wenjun asked again: "Why do we export these things?"
"Sell them for money," Wang Kunshu said. "Exchange them for spices, jewelry, and other things, and continue selling them for money."
Xu Wenjun snapped his fingers. "That's it. They used goods from the East to pave the Silk Road, layer by layer, but they didn't encounter a single merchant from the West, and they didn't receive a single piece of Western merchandise. However, the Silk Road was by no means a one-way passage. Without the mutual exchange of goods, it would be nothing but a useless road. This is why they are stuck in this cycle, unable to escape."
Wang Kunshu's eyes widened. "So, unless there's a similar group of people on the other side of the world also completing the same dungeon quest, and they meet up with us on the way east, completely opening up this Silk Road, then our dungeon quest can succeed, right? But our people are stuck in a loop, unable to break out. Does that mean this dungeon is unsolvable? What about Helan Dao, Zhu Heng, and the others trapped inside?"
The members of the Song team burst into tears: "Team Leader!"
Xu Wenjun took a deep breath and said, "Don't worry. We still have a variable."
Everyone in front of the screen followed Xu Wenjun's gaze and looked at the surveillance screen that recorded Tao Ran's actions.
"Him?" Wang Kunshu's tone was full of suspicion.
"I've been wondering why Tao Ran's side quest appears in this dungeon. Side quests are rare in our previous missions, and while it doesn't appear Tao Ran has done anything on this side quest," Xu Wenjun explained, "he was brought in by that bead, so I'm confident he'll play a crucial role at some critical moment in the future."
"bead?"
"You should still remember the bead in the puzzle copy of Confucius that accompanied Confucius on his last journey," said Xu Wenjun.
Of course, it was also the bead that brought Tao Ran to the copy of the Hundred Schools of Thought, and it was also the bead that fell out of the eyes of Zhu Heng's clay doll.
"So do you think it's time for Tao Ran's branch line to take effect?" Wang Kunshu asked.
"I don't know, let's take a look first." Xu Wenjun pointed at the screen and said, her finger suddenly hovered in the air, and her movement froze - an earthquake was occurring in the cave where Tao Ran was.
The amplitude of the vibration was not too large and only lasted for a few seconds, but it was enough to wake up all living creatures in the cave except Tao Ran.
A flock of glowing white butterflies woke up from their slumber, shook off the dust on their wings, and flew out from the deep corner of the cave.
At the moment the butterfly took flight, Liu Qiao'er was standing at the dock of Quanzhou Harbor. She suddenly looked up at the sky and saw a white insect flying past. It was so fleeting that no one on the dock noticed it, but Liu Qiao'er still saw it and whispered excitedly, "Butterfly!"
A little further away, Zhang Qian was sitting in the tent that trapped him in the Western Regions. A butterfly flew by, but he didn't pay much attention to it at first. But when the butterfly disappeared, he suddenly stared at that place without moving - he had never seen a butterfly in every previous cycle, and suddenly a creature outside the cycle appeared. Could it be that this time, the cycle was finally going to be broken?
In the ruined city on the top floor, Helan Dao, shot in the body, lay facedown on the ground. His right hand trembled slightly, and a mechanical butterfly emerged from his palm. As if summoned, it flapped its wings excitedly and flew to the back of its owner's hand, as if trying to wake it up.
Xu Wenjun saw all of this and exclaimed softly, just like Liu Qiaoer, "This is... Zhuang Zhou Butterfly!"
However, Tao Ran in the cave obviously did not know what Zhuang Zhou Butterfly was.
He was startled, but after seeing that it was just a group of harmless butterflies, he patted his chest and let out a long sigh.
The butterfly flew all over the room and hit the inner wall of the cave. Its body instantly melted and decomposed into countless small white light spots, and finally disappeared into the air.
It turns out that these are just images left here, not real butterflies, Tao Ran thought.
He was so engrossed in watching that curiosity drove him to the corner of the cave where the butterfly had flown out, where dust was falling. Tao Ran looked up and saw some strange lines on the cave wall.
Tao Ran was stunned. There was actually a mural here?
Brushing away the dust, the paintings on the inner wall revealed their true appearance. Tao Ran, upon seeing the contents of the murals, instinctively covered his mouth, nearly screaming, and broke out in a cold sweat.
A hand, trapped in a painting, suddenly appeared before Tao Ran's eyes. It drooped limply, as vivid as a scene frozen in time, even the tiny hairs on the backs of the fingers were clearly visible, with extreme lifelikeness.
Tao Ran couldn't help but reach out and touch it. It felt smooth. It was indeed a painting, not a real hand.
At this moment, the hand suddenly trembled. Tao Ran took two steps back in fright, but found that he could not stand steadily and fell to the ground.
He immediately realized that it was not his hand that was shaking, but the cave itself that was shaking again.
The wall was affected by the earthquake waves and began to crack from the base of the lifelike wrist in the painting. Then, a real living hand passed through the stone wall and appeared in front of Tao Ran.
Tao Ran was so scared that his stomach started to ache slightly and a scream broke out of his throat.
-
The tremors coming from deep within the earth shook Zhu Heng back to consciousness.
He was not dead, the bullet he had fired was aimed at his left chest. After a brief period of shock, he was awakened by the movement on the ground.
Zhu Heng thought of Helan Dao and tried hard to open his eyes to see his injuries, but was interrupted by a tearing sound beneath him.
He saw a crack in the ground, and the crack was getting bigger and bigger before his eyes. He had a bad feeling, groped on the ground, and grabbed Helan Dao.
Out of the corner of his eye, Zhu Heng saw the "other Zhu Heng" who had shot them running back toward the waiting hall. He tightened his grip on He Lan Dao, and the gap finally widened to the width of a person. Zhu Heng and He Lan Dao fell into it together, and then the gap immediately closed up, and the ground was smooth and flat, as if nothing had happened.
Zhu Heng felt a sense of weightlessness, and a knotted feeling in his abdomen. The wound on his chest healed at a speed visible to the naked eye as he descended rapidly. The blood that kept flowing upwards became less and less, and finally disappeared.
Helan Dao woke up when someone pinched his palm.
Zhu Heng felt relieved a little. He opened his eyes facing the howling wind and found that it was pitch black all around him and there was no bottom below. He didn't know how long he would continue to fall like this.
His gaze suddenly paused for two seconds not far ahead, and something flashed by.
Zhu Heng looked up at the place he had just passed. If he was not mistaken, it looked like a hand.
It hung limply, sticking out from a dark wall. Its skin was pale and bluish, obviously a dead person's hand.
What is that? Whose is it?
Zhu Heng was thinking when he suddenly touched something beside him. He subconsciously opened his five fingers and grabbed the thing - it turned out to be a flower, a half-dried flower that was about to wilt.
He loosened his grip and dropped it.
Then his eyes were suddenly enveloped by a dazzling sunlight, and he had to close his eyes. His back touched something soft, which was probably a bed.
There were people beside the bed. Apparently, they were frightened by Zhu Heng who fell from the sky. There was a clanging sound, and everyone in the room picked up pots and pans and looked at the two people on the bed with vigilance.
Zhu Heng took a moment to adjust to the sunlight around him. When he opened his eyes, he first saw the azure sky and fresh green grass outside the window, with a few white clouds slowly drifting by. The bright sunshine shone on the flowers on the roadside, on the silver altar, and on the glittering glass cups and earthenware jars under the beams. Various frankincense floated in the air.
Someone behind him snorted softly, and everyone in the room turned their heads in unison, looking in the direction of Helan Dao, who had just woken up behind Zhu Heng.
Zhu Heng then turned around and met the eyes of the group of people in the room.
Besides the two Orientals, there were six people in the room, both men and women, with a mix of black, white, and brown skin, and a variety of eye and hair colors, clearly Western in appearance. Their clothing was also bizarre, dating from different eras.
"Oh..." Helan Dao rubbed his forehead and made a low sound. Then he stuck half of his head out from behind Zhu Heng and spoke a string of ghost words.
The six people in the room were stunned and their guard dropped immediately.
Zhu Heng said, "What language did you just speak? Why can they understand it?"
"The universal language of the galaxy," Helando said, "but these people are not Level 3 civilization humans, so they can't understand this language."
"So what's going on?"
"The galactic universal language is spoken to the system. No matter where the language is, the system can use the universal language as a basis and simultaneously interpret it for them in their own language. Even the dialect accent can reach the most authentic standard."
Zhu Heng asked: "So what did you say to them?"
"Nothing, just telling them we're players from the Eastern region of 'Universe History' and accidentally crossed servers."
Helando continued speaking, exchanging a few words with the six people in the room in the universal language of the galaxy. He introduced them to Zhu Heng: "There's a priest here. The one in full armor is a medieval knight. The man in a tweed suit holding absinthe is a British writer. The woman in a green uniform is a surgeon. The one wearing a crown is the eldest princess of a small European kingdom. And the one blowing bubble gum is a high school student."
Zhu Heng nodded, his eyes quickly sweeping over them.
"They said this is an ancient city-state named after Alexander the Great, who ruled over the empire of Alexander. Their six-member team's mission is to find a way to the east. But now, they have been trapped here for a month."
Zhu Heng was about to ask what trapped them when suddenly the sky outside the window darkened and the whole sky was covered with dark clouds. A few faint flashes of lightning struck down, and a city floating in the air appeared in the clouds.
"That's it," Helan Dao said. "The sun you saw just now was just artificial light. This is the real sky. This city hanging above their heads appeared a month ago. It has firmly trapped this ancient city-state. No matter how they move, they cannot escape the shadow of this city. Even the sun is fake, let alone finding the way to the east."
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