For the native inhabitants, this batch of goods should be quite a fortune.
Except for Lina, who stayed by Su Ziyu's side because she found it disgusting, everyone else was searching inside the cave for loot they could take away. The currency they used should also be gold and silver; Su Ziyu saw Rote carefully stash away three or four items that seemed to be gold and silver coins in his pocket. Ever since he was pushed down in the village, Su Ziyu had been secretly observing this guy, and his intuition told him that Rote was very likely the one who pushed him. The cave was not small, and it didn't seem like only one Ghost-faced Monkey lived here. Su Ziyu took a few steps forward, avoiding the corpses on the ground, and reached out quietly to touch the statue of the Evil God. Upon a closer look, the statue was actually quite crudely made, but for some reason, he felt intense fear and horror upon the first glance as if it had come to life.
The one-eyed man seemed fascinated by the eyeball on the statue, which wasn't made of stone or flesh but felt like a creepy Eye Gem.
Before he could dig out the eyeball from the Evil God statue with a dagger, Su Ziyu touched the statue with his hand and felt a cold chill. In an instant, he was a bit dazed, standing stiffly in place, and countless data streams flashed through his consciousness. As someone working in the gaming industry, he was quite familiar with data codes, although the symbols in the data stream were incomprehensible to him; he did feel like he was looking at primitive code, a bizarre twenty-seven-based code.
The source of all this was the mysterious golden hourglass, with its special runes having many similarities to the codes in the data stream.
"What is this?" Su Ziyu felt a bit out of control of his body.
Then his vision went black, and his consciousness came to a dark void, where little specks of light appeared around him, resembling a brilliant galaxy surrounding him. The golden sands gradually spread in the void, looking like planets, and he had the illusion he was observing a micro-universe.
"Acquiring Root Power... Activating Quantum Terminal... Rebooting Space-Time Monitor System... Connecting Terminal Tower Spirit... Reboot Failed... Connection Failed..."
An incomprehensible cold mechanical voice rang out.
Then came many chaotic noises, like some eerie whispers mixed with a sound as irritating as fingers scraping foam plastic, making Su Ziyu feel uneasy and as if his head would explode just after listening for a moment. But at this moment, a gleam appeared in front of his eyes, and then a beautiful female figure with azure blue hair appeared before him. With a gentle wave of her hand, all the eerie whispers and harsh noises disappeared. She looked calmly at Su Ziyu before her and said, "When you see this residual image, I should have already failed. Successor."
"My name is Diana... from Atlantis..."
The woman in front had an almost perfect visage, a perfection that seemed unnatural, as though there were no flaws, like someone intricately sculpted to the utmost level. Su Ziyu didn't know how to describe it because it was too beautiful, so beautiful that he thought such a perfect woman shouldn't exist in the world.
The woman's figure blurred slightly as if missing some information, and she continued, "The Hourglass of Time will continue to drift you along the river of time, but no matter where it takes you, it will lead you to seek out those indescribable horrific beings..."
"I hope you can survive... find the root... or divinity... these powers will help you... The quantum terminal can integrate artificial intelligence or upgrade Tower Spirits... I will provide you some assistance..."
"Finally."
"Be wary of those Ancient Gods! They are absolutely not to be trusted! ..."
Some special information was transmitted into Su Ziyu's mind, and before he could ask anything, the nearly perfect female figure before him dissipated into a data stream. When he came back to his senses, he was still in that eerie cave, and the one-eyed man had just pried the Eye Gem off the statue. Everything that happened in that instant seemed like a hallucination, but the only difference was that he felt a connection had formed between him and the mysterious Hourglass of Time.
"Alright. Let's head back," Lina suddenly said.
The entire cave seemed plundered by robbers, and all the valuable items had been taken out. Even the already rotting bodies had been searched one by one, which made Su Ziyu somewhat disbelieve that ordinary people could do such a thing. The village's residents were very peculiar, remaining unflustered in the face of corpses.
As they exited, Su Ziyu was feeling dazed, his brain somewhat fatigued from accepting too much information at once.
"Was there just one of these monsters?"
"I don't know? The one we killed was the same as last time; it even had the scar from last time on its foot."
Su Ziyu suddenly realized he could understand the language of these native inhabitants. He opened his mouth to say something but realized that although he could understand, he couldn't speak their language. What had just happened was not an illusion. He had indeed activated some special system on him, something beyond his comprehension, at least on the level of quantum computing. The immense data stream with its unique twenty-seven-based algorithm, constrained by the times, the only thing Su Ziyu could associate it with was quantum computing, which was something that might appear in the interstellar era, reportedly the key to unlocking true artificial intelligence.
The words of the native inhabitants were translated by this system into a language that Su Ziyu could understand.
He tried using thoughts to connect with these data, but the information he obtained was extremely scarce.
"Name: Su Ziyu."
"Race: Human."
"Biological Level: Tier One."
"Ability: White Crow Swordsmanship (LV0) [Not Initiated], Time Acceleration LV2 (Spiritual Energy)."
"Attributes: Physical Enhancement LV1."
"Source Power Value: 1."
"Divinity Value: 0."
This simple data panel reminded Su Ziyu of the mobile games he had worked on before. If technology advanced to a certain level where artificial intelligence could be universal among everyone, turning a person's educational achievements into data evaluation and statistics and converting them into skills, eventually creating a personal terminal data panel would probably look like what he saw now.
Though the abilities displayed might be academic achievements: architecture, biology, engineering, medicine, tooling, welding, and so on.
That 1 Source Power Value should be what Su Ziyu acquired when he touched that Evil God statue, which serves to enhance certain abilities of oneself. However, the only thing he could seem to enhance was the [White Crow Swordsmanship]. Su Ziyu had no knowledge of swordsmanship before, so this ability was undoubtedly the swordsmanship Lina had recently been teaching him. Like allocating attribute points in a game, Su Ziyu placed one Source Power Value into it, and immediately he felt like he entered a dazed state, his consciousness sucked into a pitch-black enclosed space. Subsequently, he involuntarily kept practicing the White Crow Swordsmanship in this space, with some sword techniques Lina hadn't taught him automatically appearing in his mind.
He almost couldn't control himself at all, only passively accepting this training. Complex data streams affected his spiritual senses, allowing him to clearly feel the changes in his body's breathing, heartbeat, bones, and muscles during movement.
This reminded him of the learning machines in science fiction novels, devices that could directly instill knowledge into the brain through virtual reality, except what was happening before him was even more remarkable.
One hundred thousand times.
Su Ziyu practiced that set of sword techniques in that peculiar space one hundred thousand times, from initial passive training to later active adaptation, barely feeling the passage of time. When he came to, he found himself still in the cave, only two steps behind Lina, which meant that everything had happened in less than a second. However, he already distinctly felt that he had mastered the White Crow Swordsmanship, easily able to perform its techniques.
Thinking speed.
It is said that the computing speed of the human brain can surpass time. Su Ziyu couldn't comprehend everything, but he knew this thing was outrageously powerful.
"Are you alright?" Lina stopped to wait for Su Ziyu for a moment.
Since entering the cave, he had often stood startled as if frightened. Lina, looking at Su Ziyu's slightly pale face, assumed he was scared and instinctively protected him by her side. Rote seemed to hold a bit of disdain, but a tinge of jealousy flickered in his eyes. Seeing a pretty boy scared of corpses, he couldn't understand why Lina was so good to him. Besides good looks, what other advantages did he have?
.........