Chapter 859 — The Narrator Project

At first, there was only the endless wind sweeping across the empty fields.

But soon, Yuri sensed a strange presence gathering rapidly—formless and intangible, yet so powerfully present that it drew everyone's attention. It felt as though some colossal being, invisible to the naked eye, had slowly stepped before them all, its body concealed, yet a low, rhythmic breathing and an instinctive sense of oppression radiating from every direction.

Everyone's eyes widened in tension and confusion. Semle reflexively summoned his combat staff; Wendy's brows knitted at once; and Magnum's figure abruptly materialized out of the air. He had not even had the chance to greet Yuri and the others in his booming voice before his eyes went wide toward Gaosong—

A translucent, faint outline had already appeared before Gaoyang, and in the next second it rapidly coalesced into solid form.

It was a gigantic white spider.

She lay quietly upon the flat grassland, a nearly transparent white cocoon of light enveloping her. Grass blades stirred by the wind swayed at the cocoon's edge, surging as if licking at it. And the instant the white spider appeared, Magnum's cry rang out: "By all my ancestors! Mind Storm—"

Gaolan pointed a hand toward Magnum. "Shut up."

A vast surge of mental turbulence slammed instantly into the layers of Magnum's mind. Before he could finish the words "Mind Storm," he exploded on the spot in a burst of brilliant fireworks—of course, two seconds later he was restored and reappeared, immediately clamping his mouth shut and standing obediently in place. It seemed he would not be attempting any Mind Storms for some time.

Gaoyang, having at least shared some battles alongside Magnum, was already prepared.

This sudden little episode jolted the people present back to their senses. After a brief moment of alarm and fluster, Yuri was the first to regain his composure. He watched the spider within the cocoon of light with a face full of wariness. Though he had already half-guessed that this "god" must currently be in a controlled state, he still swallowed instinctively. "Your Majesty, this is...?"

"An Upper Narrator—the preserved portion," Gaolan said, glancing at the Sleepers, who stood as though facing a great enemy. "Relax. He is harmless. Even looking directly at him will not cause contamination—divinity and humanity have both been stripped away and purified. Only a pure mind and 'personality' remain. In essence, he is much like Magnum or Selena."

As he spoke, the transparent cocoon enclosing the entire white spider began to tremble gently. Then, as though gradually waking from a long slumber, the colossal white spider suddenly stirred—and the entire cocoon shattered soundlessly and dissolved in an instant.

The "Upper Narrator" had awakened. Its astonishing limbs scraped aimlessly at the ground twice before it gradually found its balance. It—she—propped up her body, her eyeless head turning through this unfamiliar world. Though she had no eyes, light flowed across the surface of her head, and a feeling of confusion and bewilderment seemed to transmit through that light into everyone's minds.

Almost simultaneously with the white spider's awakening, a black silhouette materialized out of thin air as well—Duvalt, the black-robed old man clutching a battered lantern, appeared at the white spider's feet. He too looked about in bewilderment, and quickly noticed Gaoyang and the others standing nearby.

"Welcome back to the waking world," Gaoyi said with a smile and a nod to them. "I hope this 'slumber' has not caused you too much harm."

"We..." Duvalt finally spoke, hesitantly. He sensed the charged atmosphere around them, yet seemed to pay it little mind; he only murmured in confusion as the battered lantern in his hand flickered bright and dim. "We should have fallen into eternal darkness..."

"We should already have perished," Naretiel, in her white spider form, also finally shook off her confusion. She turned her head and "gazed" at Gaoyang. "What happened?"

"You did perish once," Gaoyang said with a sigh of resignation. "But don't you know? Given the right conditions, data can be 'repaired.'"

"Data repair?" Naretiel's tone carried confusion. "What is that?"

"It's complicated to explain. You only need to know one thing—at the final moment, I 'saved' you," Gaodai said, raising a hand to tap his own head. "An enormous volume of data. But you should know well enough that all the data in the entire sandbox world amounts to nothing much to me."

Naretiel paused, then lowered her head slightly to look at Duvalt beneath her feet. "Duvalt, do you understand?"

The black-robed old man with the battered lantern was staring at Gaoyang with astonished eyes. Suddenly, as though he had understood something, he sighed thoughtfully. "I think I do..."

He remembered what had happened that day—remembered everything he had encountered when he forcibly entered his deified form and attempted to contaminate Gaosong's mind. He had been defeated so swiftly that he had no time to analyze anything. But now, at last, he had the chance to sort through what had happened, and to understand what had befallen him and Naretiel.

"I should have realized long ago..." His expression was complicated. "Contamination is mutual—so of course the devouring of minds can be too... Your memories and soul are vast enough to terrify even a god. We recklessly established a connection with your mind—how could the outcome have been as simple as 'failure'? You... you 'ate' me and Naretiel!"

In an instant, almost everyone's eyes went wide with shock. Even Yuri and Magnum, who had personally experienced the first half of that battle, could not help exchanging glances. Several Sleepers of the Yaoyao Cult now looked at Gaosong with yet another layer of awe. Off to the side, the silent Verodai's gaze grew deeper still, while Hedy wore a thoughtful expression—only Gaoyang remained calm. He glanced up at Naretiel and spread his hands. "And haven't I 'spat' you back out?"

Had Amber been present, she would surely have seized the moment to quip that "spitting it out doesn't count as eating—at most it was holding it in your mouth for a while." But the disgrace of the elves had not come along this time, being busy sorting out public opinion in the wake of the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Holy Dragon Duchy, and so no one was there to pick up on Gaosong's joke.

The atmosphere thus turned rather strange.

As for what had actually happened, it was indeed much as Duvalt had described—except that this was not the first time Gaoyang had "devoured" another mind. He had done so once years ago, when the one he devoured was a Sleepers so recklessly foolish it was almost a pity; the fellow had attempted to invade the consciousness of "Gaoyang Cecil" on the spiritual plane, only to be torn to shreds by Gaosong's vast memory archive and broken down and absorbed. It was precisely thanks to that devouring that Gaoyang had come to possess much of his intelligence concerning the Sleepers, and had ultimately become the "Extraplanar Wanderer" who invaded the mental network.

What he had done to the Upper Narrator was, in essence, much the same as that time—though the difficulty and the scale differed, before the satellite database that brute-forced miracles into being, it was merely a question of download volume.

Gaoyang found it hard to explain the specific principles to outsiders, but he reckoned the people present probably did not need any explanation: they could simply attribute such matters to three great causes—the Xuanmai Sect is awesome / the Extraplanar Wanderer is awesome / the Legendary Pioneer is awesome...