59 Silk Road (End)
◎The master to whom Zhuang Zhou Butterfly truly serves will lead the entire human civilization to destruction.◎
They left.
Just as Zhu Heng turned around, something suddenly moved in the cave space that had long been merged together.
It was the Zhuang Zhou white butterfly painted beside Zhu Heng's portrait. As if it had come alive, it flew away from Zhu Heng's portrait, flew over Helan Dao's portrait, and landed beside Tao Ran, who was sealed within the wall.
It flapped its light wings, penetrated the wall and came to the endless dark space.
It quietly stopped on the right hand that had long lost its life.
The black sky above was suddenly torn open by someone. The crack became wider and wider, and then two people fell down.
The little white butterfly seemed to be frightened by the noise. It flapped its wings and flew into a crevice, hiding itself there.
The two men fell rapidly in front of it, and one of them suddenly raised his eyes and glanced over here. His eyes were as black as a bottomless pool, and an unfathomable light was emitted from the depths of the pool.
The little white butterfly trembled its wings, wondering if he saw it.
The little white butterfly cautiously stretched out two tentacles from the crevice of the stone, and found that the crack above its head was gradually shrinking and was about to disappear.
It turned its head to look at the hand in the wall, then looked at the deep bottomless pit below, and it finally made a decision - it wanted to fly out.
The little white butterfly used all its strength, flapped its wings, and flew upwards with all its strength. Just one second before the crack was healed, it successfully flew to the ground.
There were eight people standing on the ground.
It seemed to be summoned and went straight into one of the people's pockets, stretched out its body, stuck to the surface of a bead inside, and gradually merged with it.
It breathed a long sigh of relief - it could rest for a while.
Zhu Heng frowned and reached out to touch the beads in his pocket that suddenly began to heat up.
It quickly cooled down again, and apart from the sudden burning sensation, there was nothing unusual.
"What should we do next?" someone asked.
Zhu Heng put the abnormality that happened to the bead behind his mind and found a hiding place with everyone: "Hide!"
Although everyone was confused, they still did as they were told. As soon as they hid, they saw Zhu Heng and Helan Dao running past them.
Aren’t these two people with them? Why did they run to the front?
The pastor opened his mouth to speak, but was covered by someone's hand. He glanced at Zhu Heng and Helan Dao who were blocking his way behind him, his eyes widened.
At this time, "Zhu Heng" and "Helan Dao" in front seemed to sense something and looked in their direction.
Everyone has realized that the two people in front of them are not the Zhu Heng and Helan Dao they know.
Everyone held their breath, several hearts beating in unison.
They heard the two people in front of them speak.
"I always have a bad feeling, for example..." The "Helan Dao" glanced around.
Zhu Heng kept staring at the place where the corpse disappeared and interrupted Helan Dao: "You'd better shut up. I don't want to hear bad news now."
…
Everyone watched "them" finish their words and leave. At this moment, the turnstile that was originally in front of everyone suddenly opened automatically. On the sky, a few scattered flying birds, after being dizzy after hitting the glass curtain wall, landed crookedly on the huge clock in the station to rest.
The clock struck seven.
Zhu Heng let go of the pastor and whispered, "Let's go!"
They turned and ran through the turnstiles and onto the platform.
A train was stopped on the tracks. The uniformed conductor put on his hat and got off the train. He stood silently on the platform, waiting for the passengers to arrive.
Zhu Heng recognized that this was the train they took when they came here.
Everyone was welcomed into the carriage. Zhu Heng and He Landao were at the end of the group. Just as they were about to join the six people in front of them, the conductor reached out to stop them.
A hand wearing a white glove pointed to the carriage behind, indicating Zhu Heng and the others to go in another direction.
Zhu Heng looked up at the names of the carriages - one said westward and the other said eastward.
The train conductor wanted them to go to the eastbound carriage.
Zhu Heng understood that it was time to say goodbye.
The six people in front also stopped.
Helan Dao waved to them and said, "Give my regards to Augustus."
They said goodbye to each other one by one and got on the train bound for their hometown.
Zhu Heng and He Landao sat down in empty seats on either side, remaining silent throughout the journey. Half an hour later, the train finally arrived at Central City.
By this time, Central City had returned to normal. The yellow sand had long since vanished, replaced by a clear, sunny sky. The shimmering waters, as clear as blue jelly, enveloped the entire, shimmering Central City.
Looking at the scene before him, Zhu Heng finally felt that the Silk Road copy had ended.
"Congratulations," He Landao said as they got off the car. "You've completed your first official mission as a member of the Central City Archaeological Team. One S-rank dungeon is equivalent to 100 normal missions. However, that's still far from the 500-mission threshold, so it's still a bit difficult for the Central City Archaeological Team to truly accept you. Of the four dungeon missions you participated in before, except for the B-rank "Hundred Schools of Thought", the rest were all A-rank. So, in total, you've only completed 260 normal missions."
Zhu Heng had no interest in doing this kind of math problem. He just asked Helan, "You can explain it so clearly. What level are you in?"
"As for me," He Landao scratched the corner of his eye. "Judging from my public profile, I don't even have the qualifications to enter the central city."
"Public?" Zhu Heng glanced at him.
Helandao put his index finger between his lips and said, "Shh, this must be kept secret."
At this moment, the "General History of the Universe" system is broadcasting some of the latest news to all regions of the universe.
[Oriental player Zhu Heng successfully cleared the S-rank dungeon "Silk Road: Eastern Edition"]
Six players in the Western Region successfully cleared the S-rank dungeon "Silk Road: Western Edition."
[Eastern player Zhu Heng successfully cleared the S-rank dungeon "Silk Road: Western Edition"]
Augustus, the top player in the Western Region, sends his greetings to Zhu Heng, a player in the Eastern Region, and presents him with the Western Region Friendly Player Badge.
These pieces of news were quickly drowned out by the hundreds of messages pushed by the system, but they still caused a collective outburst among players across the field.
The explosiveness of the news increased exponentially, with each bombshell becoming more powerful than the last.
"What's going on? It's considered a lot for the entire field to encounter one S-level mission a year, but this time there are three in a row?"
"Please look carefully, this is a dungeon. Isn't the most incredible thing here that the player in the Eastern region actually completed it alone?"
"Not only did he clear the Eastern version of the S-rank quest by himself, he even crossed servers. I don't know how he got to the Western zone, and the most outrageous thing is, he fucking succeeded!"
"Don't forget Augustus, the only ruthless individual in the Western Region to have completed over ten thousand missions. He's responsible for all of the S-rank missions in the Western Region... Oh no, we should also count those six lucky individuals... But that's Augustus, he actually gifted a Friendship Badge to an ordinary, unknown player from the Eastern Region."
"So how did this Zhu Heng show up? The information about this kind of person should only be accessible to someone with very high authority, right?"
"Who knows... Wait, I actually found his information. His level is even lower than mine? Look, it says that besides this Silk Road dungeon, he's only completed four... four dungeon missions in total!?"
-
The system message was sent to everyone, and Zhu Heng also received the notification. He closed the system message bar expressionlessly and asked He Lan, "Why is my name the only one listed? Do you have to keep even the mission you are carrying out a secret?"
"That's not the case." Helan Dao raised an eyebrow. "I didn't hide it on purpose, but you...they are too low-level to see it."
He sounded so innocent that Zhu Heng wanted to hit him.
"No matter how high your level is, the system shouldn't have even given you a notification, right?"
He Landao said lightly, "Tsk," and then said disdainfully, "The system level is also low."
Zhu Heng: "..." If even the system can despise him, it is likely that it can also despise him.
Zhu Heng asked again: "What about Augustus?"
He Landao answered immediately, "Don't mind him. He's just like that. He enjoys being the center of attention, he's competitive, and he's easily jealous. What friendship badge? I think he's just jealous that you stole his limelight, but he's still pretending to send you a greeting to show off his magnanimity..."
Zhu Heng said calmly, "I didn't ask that."
After a second, he asked again: "Do you know Augustus?"
Helan Dao paused, "... Ang."
"Growing up together?"
Helan said: "...How do you know?"
"I wrote down your previous conversation with them over there. It's the universal language of the galaxy, right? I just realized that my level has unlocked the system's translation function, so I asked it to help translate it."
He Landao held onto a glimmer of hope and touched the back of his neck: "Including the surgeon's?"
Zhu Heng said "hmm" calmly.
So Helan Dao cried out that he had a headache and ran away in pain.
Zhu Heng returned to his room. This time, the shameless man didn't rub his bed. Zhu Heng finally had his own personal space.
He closed the door and took out the bead directly. It seemed to be more lustrous than before, and even though it was not dark yet, it was still glowing.
A beam of light shot out from the bead. Zhu Heng narrowed his eyes and turned his head to avoid it.
This light...
He frowned, stood up, closed the curtains, turned off all the lights in the room, and directed the light from the beads at the wall in front of him.
A projected mural slowly unfolds on the wall.
It looked like what Tao Ran had seen in the cave, and this bead had reproduced it in exact proportions.
However, it only showed the portrait of "Zhu Heng". In addition, the text that Tao Ran had read and the white butterfly were nowhere to be found in the image that Zhu Heng was seeing now.
-
Helan Dao sat alone in front of the window. On the table in front of him was a stack of straw paper covered with white butterflies.
He put down his pen, raised his hand slightly, and a mechanical butterfly landed on the back of his hand.
"You've become more lively," he said. "Have you sensed its presence? After all, you're alive on its breath."
A man's figure appeared in the air.
He had dark brown, medium-length curly hair, a pair of grey eyes with a hint of blue, and three-dimensional features like an ancient Roman milky white sculpture. At this moment, he lowered his head slightly, looked at Helan arrogantly, and said, "You are not kind."
"You came to my territory but didn't come to see me, what does that mean?"
Helan Dao lazily raised his eyelids, then lowered them again: "Hello, Augustus."
The legendary man in mid-air sat down across from Helan Dao. A closer look revealed that his butt wasn't completely touching the stool, but rather dangling a few centimeters in the air. This was clearly not a real person, but merely a projection.
Augustus saw the butterflies drawn on the papyrus and a hint of surprise crossed his face. "Did you really find the owner of Zhuang Zhou's Butterfly?"
"No." Helan Dao denied it flatly.
"I've asked the six of them. For a while, it was Zhuang Zhou Butterfly that was guiding you. Among the eight people present, there must be one person it's loyal to."
Helan Dao pinched the bridge of his nose, took a cigarette from the table, lit it and bit it between his teeth: "Then tell me, who does it serve?"
"Zhu Heng," Augustus said firmly, "It must be him."
"You're wrong." He Landao squinted his eyes due to the smoke, picked up the teacup on the table and moistened his throat, "It's Tao Ran."
"The child named Tao Ran is dead." Augustus said.
"It's Tao Ran." Helan Dao repeated.
"Alright, alright. Whatever you say," Augustus compromised. "However, I still want to remind you that the prophecy says that the master to whom Zhuang Zhou Butterfly truly serves will lead to the destruction of all human civilization."
Helan Dao remained silent.
Augustus checked the time and stood up to leave. "If you really meet him, I hope you... won't be soft-hearted. Remember our purpose? - For all mankind."
Helan Dao pressed the cigarette butt into the cup lid and pinched it off. A wisp of green smoke curled out, and he was as silent as he was at this moment.
After a while he said, "I know."
【Author’s words】
The Silk Road volume is finished! I'll decide what to write about in volume six tomorrow!
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