When the baby saw Zhou Wen walk into the valley, he loosened his grip on Zhou Wen’s trousers and skipped ahead.
The valley wasn’t deep. After walking less than half a kilometer, they reached the end. The baby pushed aside the grass in front of the mountain wall and revealed a hole half the height of a person.
If you want me to enter, I definitely won’t burrow in it, Zhou Wen thought to himself as he watched the baby vanish before him.
Zhou Wen waited for a while but the baby didn’t appear. Instead, he heard Li Xuan and Wang Lu who had followed his tracks.
“Zhou Wen, that baby ran away on its own. What are you doing here?” Li Xuan asked curiously when he saw Zhou Wen standing in front of a mountain wall, not fighting any dimensional creatures.
“I met the baby. He led me here and then burrowed into the hole himself,” Zhou Wen said as he pointed at the hole in the grass.
Just as Li Xuan was about to say something, he saw the baby poke his head out of the hole. He seemed to be dragging something with both hands, his face flushed red from the strenuous activity.
After pulling a few times, the baby finally dragged something out of the hole.
The three of them stared at the thing that the baby held onto. They saw a vine or root of some unknown plant. The baby pulled the vine out with all his might. It was taut as if there was something very heavy attached to it.
Seeing this, Zhou Wen reached and helped the baby pull the vine out. He was immediately alarmed. He originally imagined that it was because the baby had limited strength which made the pulling difficult. However, when he tried, he realized that it was very heavy. Despite using all his strength, he was barely able to move it forward.
They pulled the vine out by more than a meter but still failed to see what was inside. Wang Lu and Li Xuan came forward to help, and the four of them finally pulled the vine out. They saw something tied to the other end of it.
“What’s this?” Li Xuan looked at the item they had pulled, but he couldn’t tell what it was. He turned to look at the baby.
The baby gestured as it made all kinds of utterances, but the trio still didn’t understand what he meant.
Zhou Wen carefully observed the thing tied to the vine. It looked like a huge walnut that was about the size of a soccer ball. Its exterior looked like a walnut, but it seemed as though it was made of dark gray metal.
“Is this thing a walnut?” Li Xuan tapped the hilt of the Thundergod Sword on the item twice. When he heard a metallic sound, he looked at Wang Lu and asked, “Wang Lu, do you know what this is?”
Wang Lu also shook her head. “It looks like a walnut to me as well, but I’ve never heard of metal that looks like a walnut.”
As the three of them were studying the object, the baby pointed at Zhou Wen and then at the walnut as it garbled.
“Do you want to give me this?” Zhou Wen asked the baby with a guess.
Seeing that Zhou Wen finally understood, the baby hurriedly nodded.
“Alright.” Although Zhou Wen didn’t know what it was, it appeared to be quite important. Since it was a free gift, it was a waste not to accept it.
However, the thing was just too heavy. Zhou Wen summoned the Mutated Stone Chi. The few of them worked together to move the metal walnut onto its back before letting the Mutated Stone Chi carry it back.
After the trio walked out of the valley, the baby looked at them from afar with no intention of following them.
“This little fellow is rather interesting but too bad it’s a dimensional creature.” Li Xuan shook his head.
Although there were people who raised dimensional creatures, dimensional creatures were different from Companion Beasts. They weren’t able to completely control their actions. Once they were allowed to enter human society, any problems would result in serious consequences.
Therefore, the League maintained an opposing attitude towards rearing them. There was just no clear rule that forbade their rearing.
Zhou Wen had reared the antelope and chick secretly. Thankfully, the other students and teachers always believed that the antelope had been brought out from Mount Laojun and wasn’t aggressive, so they ignored it.
As for the chick, most people believed it was Zhou Wen’s Companion Beast.
When the trio returned to school, the sky was already dark. Mainly because the walnut was so heavy that the Stone Chi couldn’t run fast while carrying it. All they could do was walk slowly.
After returning to his dorm, Zhou Wen carefully took the walnut down and placed it in the living room. Then, he took out his mysterious phone and snapped a picture of it. He wanted to know if the mysterious phone could tell what it was.
However, he was quickly disappointed. The mysterious phone didn’t respond, indicating that it wasn’t a dimensional creature. It was likely a native product of Earth.
“What is this thing?” Zhou Wen took a few photos and sent them to Wang Mingyuan who was extremely knowledgeable. Perhaps, he knew what it was.
Wang Mingyuan was surprisingly free. After a while, he replied Zhou Wen with a message.
“You can’t confirm it just by looking at photos. Once I’m done with the research on hand, you can bring it over. I’ll help you to study it.”
“Teacher, how’s your research progressing?” All this while, Zhou Wen wasn’t very clear what Wang Mingyuan’s research was. All he knew was that he was studying what lay below Dragon’s Well and that it was likely a study of the white dragon.
Zhou Wen was originally worried that White Dragon would kill Wang Mingyuan if he angered it.
However, after experiencing the might of the paper slip, Zhou Wen felt that his worry was unnecessary. A person like Wang Mingyuan wouldn’t easily put himself in danger.
“The progress is going quite well, but I’ve encountered some snags. At the moment, I’m trying to think of a solution.” Wang Mingyuan sighed and said, “Currently, there are signs from other parts of the League that the chance of dimensional creatures breaking out is rapidly increasing. If it continues at this rate, it might only take another few years before the dimensional zones no longer have any restrictions on dimensional creatures, or rather, they will be very weak. When the time comes, humanity’s situation will be much worse than when the dimensional storms first happened.”
This wasn’t the first time Zhou Wen had heard such words. In the past, An Sheng had also mentioned this to him, but he didn’t make it as clear as Wang Mingyuan.
“Teacher, will the dimensional zones’ restrictions really fail in a few years?” Zhou Wen asked.
“It won’t exceed ten years. When the time comes, the restrictions on the dimensional zones will definitely fail,” Wang Mingyuan answered with certainty.
“Only ten years?” Zhou Wen felt that Wang Mingyuan wasn’t someone who would randomly say things. If he said ten years, the chances were very high that it was the case.
“In fact, ten years refers to the point when the restrictions on the dimensional zones are completely lost. And during this period, the restrictions of the dimensional zones will constantly decrease. Humanity doesn’t have ten years.” Wang Mingyuan paused before suddenly asking Zhou Wen, “Little Wen, if you are made to choose between pain and death, which would you choose?”