Chapter 14: If we could turn back time

Chapter 14

The members of the Administration were divided into small groups and arrived in an orderly manner at the emergency entrances to the various areas.

Although the atmosphere in the control room was still tense, it was back to its earlier well-organized state.

Meanwhile, with the repair of the relevant technicians, a part of the function in the simulation of the actual combat system was finally restored.

A large screen off to the side was still mostly dark, but part of the area was lit up.

It was still impossible to locate the exact position of each trainee, but it was now possible to see exactly how many trainees were left in each area, which at least eliminated the need for a carpet search.

"Fifty-two in the glacier zone, forty-eight in the rainforest zone, nine in the desert zone, and nine in the forest zone ......"

The staff member looked down and read the list, then suddenly gave a slight lurch, "Two in the Scorched Earth District."

"Scorched earth area?" The man in charge pursued.

Is that the area ...... where the abyssal rift is said to be located?

The staff member's expression also hardened as he whispered, "Yes."

Although he knows nothing about combat, he still clearly knows ...... that these two students are afraid of being fierce.

The man in charge took a deep breath and raised a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, his face tired and old.

He said, "You go, and I'll talk to Officer Mu about this scorched earth area thing."

After dictating the plan of action afterward, the head honcho headed for Mu Hang, which was not far away.

Mu Hang whipped his head around and raised an eyebrow questioningly.

Head: "Sir ...... has an unfortunate matter."

He took a deep breath, "I just found out that two of the freshmen are trapped in the scorched earth area as well."

The man in charge hesitated and said, "Do you think there's any chance of them surviving?"

Mu Hang paused, "Maybe."

"...... Anyway, thank you very much." The person in charge sighed and handed over a wristwatch, "Take this, although the GPS inside the map has lost its usefulness, it will tell you if a trainee enters within a hundred meter radius of you."

Mu Hang nodded and took the watch and put it in his pocket:

"I try."

Suddenly, he thought of something and asked, "Those two cadets trapped in the scorched earth area, what were their names?"

The person in charge froze, as if he hadn't expected the other party to ask that question.

He replied, "This ...... we don't know right now, the system hasn't fully recovered yet, we can only know the number of trapped trainees in each area right now, we don't know exactly who is trapped."

Head: "Are you looking for any trainee?"

Mu Hang withdrew his eyes, "No, just asking casually."

*

Lin Yanming kept stealing glances at Shi An, who was walking in front of him.

In the darkness, the pale side of the teenager's face appeared blurry and distant, and only the clear, sharp outline of his jaw could be vaguely seen, looking both familiar and unfamiliar.

Even though he had already walked out a short distance, the burnt odor still lingered on the end of his nose.

Lin Yanming winked.

The aftermath of the fire seemed to linger on his retinas, the dark spots left by the blazing points of light looming in front of his eyes.

He took a deep breath and did all the mental construction he could before finally speaking:

"Shi An ......"

Shi An turned her head and gave a heartless "huh?" He let out a cry.

The expression on his face was so natural that it seemed as if the terrible fire had nothing to do with him personally.

"The one just now ...... your magic, that fire ......"

Lin Yanming racked his brain for adjectives.

"Oh! That!" Shi An showed a dazed expression.

You get it!

You understand what I'm trying to ask!

Lin Yanming's spirits perked up and he looked at the other party expectantly.

Only the teenager in front of him scratched the back of his head in embarrassment and said:

"It's not that I didn't want to take your advice just now, but I really don't know how to do this alone."

Lin Yanming: "......"

You understand shit.

In the moment of distraction, Lin Yanming's feet suddenly stepped out of the air.

He was shocked and staggered a few steps before he could barely stabilize his body, so he almost didn't directly fall to the ground again.

The alternate light source illuminated a small patch of land in front of them.

The soil was a thick, deep pitch black, but without any semblance of moisture, as if it were toasted, and irregular cracked lines spread across the land until it was engulfed in darkness.

Wait a minute ......

Lin Yanming was frozen.

He suddenly realized that he hadn't encountered trees or rocks in what seemed like a long, long time, and that he didn't know when his surroundings had become so empty that it was as if he were walking on a plain without any cover.

Lin Yanming felt as if his brain was unable to function as if it were a rusty gear, making futile cackling noises.

He lifted his head dully, shining an alternate light source into the darkness before him, carefully discerning the path shrouded in darkness before him.

Definitely not a rainforest area.

Much less a forested area.

That just leaves ......

"Time, Shi An." Lin Yanming heard himself say in a fluttering, shaky voice.

Shi An stopped at that and twisted her head, asking without self-consciousness, "What's wrong?"

"Are you ...... sure that you know the way?"

Shi An: "Sure, why?"

"But this, this, I don't think this is the forest area." Lin Yanming said sluggishly.

Surprisingly, Shi An seemed oblivious to his dissimilarity and nodded extremely naturally, "Yeah."

Lin Yanming: "......"

??

What is this?

？？？？？

Lin Yanming was dumbfounded and could hardly believe his ears.

He twisted his head around in a daze, staring dully at the teenager beside him.

Only to hear the other man continue with an innocent, rightful face:

"This is the easternmost area ah, don't worry, I definitely didn't lead the wrong way!"

The easternmost is ......

Class S hazardous area, scorched earth area.

"......"

Lin Yanming feels like he's lost the ability to think.

Shi An leaned in close and reached out and waved his hand in front of his eyes, "What's wrong?"

--What's wrong? What do you say?

Looking at the innocent expression on the other man's face, Lin Yanming felt that he desperately needed a professional CPR.

He wouldn't even be able to speak properly:

"You ...... you ...... east! I said go east to the forested area, no, not this-"

"Eh?" Shi An showed a blank expression, "But I thought we were on our way?"

So you were fucking prepared to come here in the first place?

--That's a hell of a way to go!

Lin Yanming almost had a nervous breakdown.

After a long silence.

"...... Then let's do it all over again," Lin Yanming said slowly and woodenly:

"The current situation is that the simulation of the actual battle does not know what has gone wrong, and now can not contact the outside world at all, and can not use the positioning function, so ...... I now want to go to the emergency exit in the center of the forest area, you, do you understand now?"

Shi An winked and whispered:

"Understood."

His voice was a little lower, "But I don't know how to get to the forest area."

"......"

Lin Yanming felt like he was once again approaching the brink of collapse.

Only to hear the other man continue, "Speaking of which, is it true that there are emergency exits in every sector?"

Lin Yanming : "...... should be in every district."

Shi An: "How about going to the emergency exit in this section?"

Lin Yanming froze.

Rather, ...... is not out of the question?

He looked hesitantly at the teenager in front of him, wondering if he wanted to get on the other man's thieving boat one more time.

Shi An claimed to have gotten lucky that time - not only did they encounter a lion-headed sachem, but they were also mugged by other freshmen.

And the one time he claimed to have a good sense of direction - they came to the most dangerous scorched earth area.

But Lin Yanming had a second thought.

The opponent claimed to be a noob, but in reality, he was deep - maybe he really did have a backhand?

And on top of that, he seems to have run out of other options now.

Holding on to the last glimmer of hope, Lin Yanming, as if determined, raised his hand and wiped his face, saying as if he were dying:

"...... line it."

Shi An narrowed her eyes and smiled happily, "Yeah."

Suddenly, he seemed to think of something and continued, "Oh yeah, going further should take you into an area with poisonous gas, so you'd better wrap yourself in magic first or you might be poisoned to death before you can walk out."

"......"

Once again, Lin Yanming fell silent.

Is it too late for me to regret it?

*

Administration Inside the laboratory.

Zhuo Fu lowered his head and carefully handled the small sample of demonic tissue in front of him.

He already knew about the Ableist Academy.

It was certainly good that the location of the abyssal rift was confirmed, but being inside the school also meant that the abyss would cause no small amount of collateral damage after it spread.

But that's not something Zhuo Fu has to think about.

As the head of the lab, what he needed to do to figure out was why the abyssal rifts had been appearing so frequently lately, and with far more power than usual.

Although the spreading of that crevice in the academy had nothing to do with the not-so-low magic fluctuation in the academy, it could not be denied that this was the first time in many centuries that the Abyssal Rift had been able to develop to this extent.

This makes Zhuo Fu has a sense of crisis.

Suddenly, without warning, the high-precision magic power monitoring meter on the table ticked.

Zhuo Fu was stunned and turned his head to look.

Strange, in order to isolate the outside intervention, the laboratory should have done strict protection and shielding is right, why the monitoring meter will still react like this?

He reached for the monitor watch and stood up, looking for the magic leak.

The hands on the watch wobbled erratically, finally peaking at some point.

Zhuo Fu, raise your head--

Behind the protective layer of glass in front of him, a longsword securely wrapped in cloth was resting quietly in the darkness.

Some kind of invisible hum spread out, as if it were pouring out murmurs in some ancient, unknown language.

Zhuo Fu Nerd: "......"

He almost dropped his jaw in shock, frozen in disbelief as if he couldn't believe his eyes.

Grass ......

What Mu Hang said was actually true.

Inside the college's main control room.

"Drip drip drip drip--" Wen Yao's cell phone rang.

When she picked up the phone, Zhuo Fu's loud voice immediately came from the other side of the microphone: "Where is your boss? I can't get through to Mu Hang! Get him back to me--"

Wen Yao silently held the microphone away from his ear, "Do you have an emergency?"

"Nonsense!" Zhuo Fu said hotly.

Wen Yao replied, "Sir has entered the quarantine zone."

"......" The voice on the other end of the line paused for half a second, "What?"

Wen Yao said, looking up at the emergency access door that had closed just seconds before:

"Just about ...... a minute before you called."

*

The Scorched Earth Zone had almost become a semi-alienated area, with poisonous gases escaping from the abyssal fissures and continually altering the surroundings.

An ominous darkness enveloped the inch-long ground, and an unsettling aura permeated everywhere.

As the space on the ground was alienated and transformed, more abyssal species crawled out.

Lin Yanming felt that he had never seen so many strange, ugly and scary demons in his life.

At first, he was nervous and fearful.

Lin Yanming's muscles were tense and his heart was almost in his throat.

Demons that came from all directions, he had to be constantly alert and ready to make short work of them, but then he realized - he couldn't intervene at all.

Every time a demonic creature comes into sight, Shi An ignites and blasts it.

Simple, brutal and amazingly efficient.

The hot flames reflected red on Lin Yanming's cheeks from time to time, and his expression had changed from shocked at the beginning to calm and numb now.

After all this time together, he was now convinced that Shi An was not being modest.

--The opponent really only knows this one spell.

But ......

That's fucking enough.

Lin Yanming thought woodenly.

Not far away, a pitch-black lizard crawled out of a crack in the scorched earth, but only just showed its head when it was met with a fireball, and after a violent crackling sound, all that was left was a pile of ashes.

The teenager's eyes flicked back from the piece of ash, his pale face emotionally muted as if he had merely crushed an ant.

Beneath the long, dense eyelashes, golden ruddy light darted by.

The Demon Worm cowered in Shi An's sleeve, shivering as he watched the one-sided, merciless crushing.

The word sweep seems more appropriate than massacre.

It was the first time it had ever realized so clearly just how small and inconsequential other magical creatures really were to the fantasy species - far from being a threat, they were some sort of nasty, mood-affecting lowlife.

Devil Worm couldn't help but shiver.

It now realized just how lucky it was to have survived Shi An's hands.

But ......

The Demon Worm suddenly remembered that the last time Shi An had changed extremely dramatically when he had burned down just three demons during the mock test before entering the school, but why, after arriving in the semi-alienated abyssal area and burning down countless demons, he hadn't changed much until now?

It cautiously opened its mouth to inquire:

"That ...... magic dragon lord."

Shi An: "Huh?"

"How are you feeling now?"

Shi An lowered her head and twisted her fingertips, suppressing the excitement in her voice, "Superb."

Very good indeed.

With each demon he burned to death, he felt his power increase a little, like a river flowing a little into a sea that had long since dried up - as if he was using the flames to draw and plunder the energy in the demon's body to help himself regain his original form.

The Devil Worm didn't dare to make a sound.

I don t know if it was an illusion, it felt ...... Shi An answering his own question with a kind of frenzy and pleasantness in his voice that was hard to ignore, as if he had fallen into some kind of floating state.

Like getting high.

Or kill crazy.

They trudged across the dark plains.

Far ahead was lit up a strange bit of crimson, so deep in color that it almost blended with the darkness behind it, a sinuous, thin strip that resembled a wound in the ground, hideous and ghastly, gurgling outward with foul-smelling mucus.

Lin Yanming was shocked.

He subconsciously stopped in his tracks and swallowed hard, "So, what's that?"

Shi An stared fixedly in that direction, seemingly lost in thought.

His eyes were slightly downcast, and the pupils of his eyes under his eyelashes had completely turned into a passionate reddish-gold color, as if molten gold and fiery flames were intertwined, and in the center were thin, narrow, vertical pupils, revealing an inhumanly brutal sense of alienation.

Even without feeling it carefully, he could perceive-

The dank, cold, sinister odor came around silently and enveloped itself tightly.

In that moment, Shi An seemed to be transported back to the time when he was still maintaining his majestic and beautiful dragon form, sitting in a spacious and clean cave with a large amount of treasure, sleeping whenever he wanted ......

"Hey, are you okay?" Lin Yanming's voice came from his ear.

Shi An came back to his senses. The reddish-gold vertical pupils disappeared more slowly than usual, but were eventually replaced by a pitch black.

Looking down at his palms, he looked carnally frustrated.

-Damn it!

There's nothing left! Nothing!

"What's going on?" Lin Yanming came over somewhat nervously.

"Nothing."

Shi An sighed.

He raised his eyes, as if it was an afterthought to remember what the other had just inquired about, and said absentmindedly:

"Oh yeah, the one in front ah, that's why all these things are happening now la."

Lin Yanming: "......"

He couldn't tell if he was shocked by the content of the other man's words, or by the way he spoke so lightly.

Shi An tugged at his sleeve, "Come on, it's not far to the center of the whole area."

Lin Yanming nodded his head and also finally got his spirits up:

"Yes!"

That's great! Going out soon!

It's just a few steps away, what could possibly go wrong-

Rumble--

A faint, low roar came from not far away on the horizon.

The ground began to shake without warning, as if a thousand armies were racing across the plains, bringing with them a certain heavy and horrible sense of oppression.

Lin Yanming was startled and subconsciously looked in the direction the sound came from.

Although the light was dim, he was still able to see that the black, overwhelming, overwhelming, almost suffocating number of demonic creatures - was a tide of demonic creatures.

I grass.

Why is there a tide of demons?

Lin Yanming has officially collapsed.

What's wrong with you? How can there be such playfulness! Can't you just cut him some slack!!!!!

And ...... those demons weren't those ugly and weird varieties that he had never seen before, but proper ground demons, their necks were invariably covered with icy silver white collars, which were flashing with a variety of colors - blue, yellow, and red that symbolized the area boss.

Shi An suddenly snapped back to her senses and exclaimed, "Oops!"

He seemed to snap to attention and reached for his pocket.

A modest sachet was pulled out, bulging with unknown spices.

Shi An whispered to the Demon Worm:

"That ...... I think the abyssal crevice, it also seems to sharpen the sense of smell of the ground demons eh."

Magic Bug: "...... Haha, yeah."

What else do you think!!!

Lin Yanming noticed the small bag Shi An was holding in his hand, and combined with his earlier encounter, he suddenly had a very bad feeling in his heart.

His throat tightened and his voice shook and drifted:

"That one you're holding, is that, what is it?"

"Oh, this one... it's the one the boy stuffed into his backpack earlier."

Shi An scratches her head, "I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it seems like it can attract demons and make them go berserk or something."

Lin Yanming : "........................ ......"

He closed his eyes and took a slow, deep breath, desperately restraining the strong urge to crash headfirst into the ground.

--If he could turn back time, he would go back to that moment when he teamed up with Shi An and punch himself in the face!!!!