Chapter 1 The Leaving

The departure of the Wrathful Spirit didn't restore the extra-dimensional space deep underground. Just as the data terminal had said, the spatial structure here had mutated for too long. Now, it existed stably in the cracks of the real world, and even without any external reinforcement, it could be maintained for a hundred years.

It was still an endless snowfield, still boundlessly dark, but the Wrathful Spirit's departure finally made the continuous gale disappear, and the blizzard would no longer rage here. While walking forward according to the direction in his memory, Hao Ren muttered to Vivian beside him, "This place is such a big piece of land. It feels like a waste to just leave it like this..."

Before Vivian could say anything, Nangong Wuyue couldn't help but retort, "Landlord, your occupational disease is a bit too serious, isn't it? You won't even let go of extra-dimensional land? Who are you planning to rent it to?"

Hao Ren started making up stories again, "What if God throws a couple of corps of frost dragons at me someday to calm my nerves? With that lady's mental state, anything is possible. I have to prepare myself to receive tenants according to the standards of *Animal World*."

Becky and Lily were whispering at the back of the group, "I don't remember any frost dragons in that *Animal World*..." "The landlord's head is like a sandbox game; you never know what kind of ideas he'll come up with next."

"Your Frosty Town and Snowfield City aren't of much significance, but some things should indeed be set up here, such as generator sets and lighting equipment," Vivian said, a radiant lightning ball floating above her head. She looked around, making plans for the future. "Perhaps Igor really should organize some manpower to establish a series of small stations and monitoring equipment here... or we can do it ourselves. This space must be under long-term surveillance, especially the rift."

"I'll have the Tortoise Rock Platform manufacture a batch of equipment. That thing is more reliable than man-made cameras," Hao Ren said, looking up at the faint purple light membrane in front of him. "Yes, especially this rift."

The Wrathful Spirit's departure didn't affect the state of this rift; it seemed to be just a simple door, with no power connection to the Wrathful Spirit. It still floated quietly above the stone platform, shining and undulating at a gentle and slow frequency, and emitting bursts of wonderful humming sounds.

"Let's see if these two stones are really keys," Hao Ren muttered, taking out two "Cursed Stones" from his dimensional pocket and placing them in front of the light membrane. "Um... what should I do next? 'Open, Sesame'?"

The light membrane didn't change at all, still surging slowly. Hao Ren felt that his current actions were just like Lily.

"Perhaps we should activate the edges on the triangular device in order," Becky began to guess how to use the two devices with the attitude of a veteran mercenary, "just like how we opened its storage space."

"But it'll take forever to try that," Hao Ren chuckled dryly. "Actually, I've always been curious. If this is really a key, why does it have the ability to store space? These two functions are completely unrelated. Did we guess wrong?"

"Humans are now working hard to research how to make watches that can play videos, write diaries, send text messages, make phone calls, and take selfies. A watchmaker from 1885 would never have imagined why a watch has everything but the ability to tell time—never use the existing framework to guess at a device you don't understand," Vivian said philosophically. "Perhaps it's popular on the Wrathful Spirit's side to design door keys as having a large capacity?"

Hao Ren immediately felt that Vivian's words made a lot of sense—but this didn't change the fact that he didn't know how to use those two small devices.

"Let me guess what it needs: touching the edges, a password, injecting a little mental power... perhaps it also needs to check fingerprints and irises, but I don't think the Wrathful Spirit has those parts," Hao Ren shrugged. "Terminal, can you scan anything?"

"They do have some kind of connection with the rift, and there is an exchange of information, but this exchange is just the two sets of equipment confirming that the other is working properly," the data terminal shot a blue light from its surface, illuminating the two small devices. "Perhaps this machine should increase the scanning intensity to determine how the core of this thing works, but to be honest, it's a bit dangerous: not everything is as strong and durable as Imperial products, especially since it's just a set of door keys made by aliens. Perhaps the core of these two small devices is about to break down, and it's only one scan away from being completely scrapped."

"Then we have to try it," Hao Ren smacked his lips and finally nodded. "Try not to wash away any useful information inside. If it really doesn't work, I'll go to Raven 12345 and ask if there are any better high-tech gadgets."

Under the high-power scan of the data terminal, Hao Ren began to test the working mode of the two small devices again.

Rubbing the edges of the triangular device was effective. Those edges were its control "keys," and the concentric circles on the surface of the other circular device also had a similar effect, except that they required the fingers to be fixed on a certain ring, and according to the monitoring of the data terminal, these two operations had to be performed simultaneously: a delicate combination, requiring cooperation and rhythm like playing a complex musical instrument. Hao Ren had never seen anything with such a strange way of operating. He guessed that the creator of this thing must be a philosophical race—which meant they were very bored.

"Ingenious control method, layer upon layer of encryption, cannot be cracked by conventional information direct reading methods," the data terminal marveled, with admiration in its tone. "Not advanced, but very clever."

Just as Hao Ren was studying with great interest whether these two gadgets could activate the rift, a girl's voice suddenly came from behind the crowd: "You'll break it if you test it like that."

In fact, Hao Ren had just noticed someone approaching. He turned his head and took a look: "Anna? What are you doing here?"

The unexpected arrival was Igor's daughter, Anna. The girl, who had just recovered from her madness, didn't know why, but she had boldly ran to this place. She was wearing a heavy fur coat, and the cold of the dark snowfield made her face look even paler.

Even though the blizzard had stopped, it was not easy for an ordinary person to walk from the entrance of the underground world to this rift.

"How did you get here?" Vivian was even more surprised. "Do you know the way?"

"I... remembered some things," Anna shrank her neck, looking at the rift in front of her with some fear. "The memories left in my mind by the evil spirit... I knew you were here."

Hao Ren and the others looked at each other in dismay: They had known that the Wrathful Spirit had instilled a lot of information in Anna's mind before, but they didn't expect that this information would even include things about this rift!

"You remembered everything?" Nangong Sanba immediately looked excited.

Anna nodded slightly, then reached out to Hao Ren: "Let me see those two keys... I should know how to activate them."

Hao Ren handed over the two "stones," and Anna began to touch the mysterious纹路 on their surface. The latter actually began to emit a slight buzzing sound that seemed to be responding. Hao Ren couldn't help but wonder: "Actually, I've never understood... why did the Wrathful Spirit whisper all those messy things to ordinary people? Does it have an educational fetish?"

"This is not the Wrathful Spirit consciously teaching anything, but a passive and random 'spiritual broadcast'," Vivian said, explaining what she knew or guessed with her arms crossed. "We now know that the Wrathful Spirit is an energy field and a consciousness field. Within the Wrathful Spirit's sphere of influence, you are equivalent to walking into the brain of a pure consciousness being—you will unconsciously hear the thoughts of this being, and even weaker humans will have their memories directly tampered with by this illusory brain. The members of the Andrei family frequently touched that 'key' and were subconsciously regarded as enemies by the Wrathful Spirit. In addition, they lived in the castle for generations, and they were the most deeply affected by the Wrathful Spirit. This is the source of their madness. The Wrathful Spirit has no logic, and it will not consciously tell you anything. The people of the Andrei family just happened to 'soak' in this monster's dream and accidentally heard the Wrathful Spirit's thoughts. Those strange knowledge and inexplicable memories all come from this."

"That is, the data directly copied from the Wrathful Spirit's 'brain'," Nangong Sanba added from the side. "So this copying is random. Every member of the Andrei family hears different thoughts, and the madness varies in severity. And because the scenes seen from the Wrathful Spirit's memory usually have no cause and effect, the victims sometimes misunderstand what they see..."

Nangong Sanba said, nodding at Anna and whispering, "She probably saw the scene of the Andrei ancestor taking a lot of gold from the key, and then associated it with her family's legend of the witch, so she unilaterally believed that her family's wealth was stolen and regarded it as the source of the curse. This aggravated her initial illness."

Just as Hao Ren and the others were discussing the Wrathful Spirit's mental influence on ordinary people, Anna's operation finally produced results.