Li Ban followed 9899's signal. Seeing her waving mechanical arm, he quickened his pace and approached.
The Smart Mecha's scanner confirmed there were no other heat signatures nearby.
The two rendezvoused and entered the temporary base 9899 had spent the entire night and morning setting up.
"I set up a few High-Power Batteries," 9899 said. "We can adjust the output voltage at any time to match whatever the machine needs. They aren't the original batteries, though, so they might reduce the machine's lifespan."
"That doesn't matter. As long as it lasts a week, it'll be fine."
Li Ban opened the suitcase and took out the machine, then immediately tossed the empty case into his Cubic Heaven and Earth.
This was to prevent any tracking signals on the suitcase.
As for the reader itself, he had already scanned it with the Smart Mecha. He hadn't detected any signal transmissions yet.
If it had a signal source he simply couldn't detect, there was nothing he could do about it.
He had 9899 connect the power supply to the reader and set up signal jammers all around them.
"Young Master 19, everything is ready."
"Mm." Li Ban, who had been keeping watch nearby, walked over and tested the basic functions. Everything worked perfectly.
Suddenly, he began to strip off his mecha.
He removed the helmet first. Then the back plating clicked open, allowing him to pull his upper body free. Finally, the boots popped open, splitting wide from the rear so he could pull his feet out.
This was the first time 9899 had ever seen Li Ban's true face.
Her mouth slowly fell open.
What a handsome natural human!
Of course, that wasn't what surprised 9899 the most.
She hadn't expected Li Ban—a man who never took off his Smart Mecha in the outer ring of Trash City—to strip off this vital equipment out here in the wilderness.
Did he actually think Trash City was more dangerous than the wilderness?
'Could it be...' A thought flashed through 9899's mind. 'Has Young Master 19 defected to the Ash Alliance?'
Over the past few days, aside from gathering intel on the reader, she had also been discreetly asking about the Shen Family.
To her surprise, she learned that the young master, Shen 19, had been entirely stripped of his inheritance rights.
Yet even after learning this, 9899 had no intention of selling Young Master 19 out.
They had a saying around here: "No matter how poor the rich get, they can still buy a mecha."
Even without his inheritance rights, Young Master 19 was not someone she could afford to offend.
The fact that he hadn't blinked before buying the latest model of the reader proved his card was still flush with funds.
He definitely still had several thousand points in it.
But why would a young master stripped of his inheritance spend so many points on a reader, risking the scrutiny of the Shen Family—or even assassination by his older brother?
Seeing that Li Ban's immediate reaction upon receiving the reader was to leave Trash City and head straight into the uninhabited wilderness, 9899 could only assume that Young Master Shen 19, dissatisfied over his lost inheritance, had defected to the Main Brain's enemies.
She drew a sharp breath in her mind, momentarily tempted to report him.
But then she remembered the mountain of debt she owed the Shen Family, and the fact that they had their eyes on her heart. The urge to report him instantly evaporated.
Given everything she had learned recently about the shameless Shen Family, she believed that if Shen 19—her current protector—was completely excommunicated by the Shen Family, her previously erased debt would miraculously reappear.
And they would undoubtedly brush it off as a "system glitch."
While 9899 let her imagination run wild, Li Ban had completely removed the Smart Mecha and wiped all data inside it pertaining to Shen 19.
"This mecha is yours."
Li Ban's words made 9899's eyes widen again.
"The mecha... for me?" She pointed at her own nose, looking as if she were in a dream.
This was completely different from a corps-issued mecha. Once he transferred the ownership to her, she would be the true owner of this Smart Mecha, holding full rights to use or sell it.
"Mm." Li Ban ignored 9899's shock, continuing to adjust the machine with his bare hands. "Put it on and leave. Go as far away as possible. It would be best if you never returned to Trash City either."
9899 stepped forward and stroked the Smart Mecha's chest plate, conflicting emotions flickering in her eyes.
Finally, she made her decision and let go. "Young Master 19... could I follow you?"
She couldn't go back to Trash City anyway.
But was starting from scratch as an adventurer in the wilderness really any different from struggling in Trash City's outer ring?
She was better off sticking with the young master in front of her—someone who could casually drop hundreds of points on a reader.
"No." Li Ban rejected her without the slightest hesitation.
However, recalling that she had performed decently over the last few days, he offered her a sliver of hope.
"If you don't know where to go, head to the Western Base in the far west. With any luck, our paths might cross again."
9899 felt she understood his meaning. "Understood. I'll head there right now and wait for you."
She didn't hesitate any longer, putting on the Smart Mecha Li Ban had just vacated.
The moment she put it on, she marveled at the sheer quality of a rich young master's mecha. It had so many auxiliary functions it could even connect to the network to play games.
Currently, however, it was disconnected from the network.
9899 knew Li Ban did this to prevent anyone from tracking his activities via the network. She didn't turn the connection back on, instead using the semi-automatic mode as she left the temporary base.
Only after 9899 had left did Li Ban stop his tinkering. He quickly slotted the storage chip containing Gu Yi's Testament into the reader.
The reading slot on the thousand-point reader wasn't a perfect fit for the chip in Li Ban's hand, but it automatically adjusted itself to match the chip's exact shape and size.
Soon, the reader let out a soft hum as it began operating.
Compared to the machines Li Ban had used in the past, the reading process this time was incredibly smooth.
He watched the progress display on the screen slowly crawl from 0% to 10%. Knowing it would take some time, he took out a Spiritual Rhinoceros Fruit, absorbing its energy to cultivate as he waited in silence.
He waited from the fading light of late afternoon all the way into the dead of night.
"Ding!"
A crisp notification chime rang out.
It signaled that the reading was complete.
Li Ban sprang to his feet, unexpectedly feeling a knot of tension in his chest.
"Will it be in here?"
"Will it have the method Gu Yi used to enter the Wizard World and the secret behind his abilities? Will it have the method to create a mental domain Laboratory?"
In an inexplicable state of mind, Li Ban tapped the button confirming the completed reading.
He stared at the somewhat messy lines of text on the testament, his jaw slowly dropping.
[This is probably my first time writing a diary entry, and it might also be my last.
My name is Gu Yi. I was originally just an ordinary college student. My life's dream was to graduate, join an interstellar aviation company, and become the captain of an interstellar warp ship, spending every day traveling through meteorites and starlight.
But the end of the world arrived before tomorrow did.]
The text was somewhat chaotic. Perhaps the reader's translation wasn't entirely accurate, or perhaps Gu Yi had simply been too overwhelmed with emotion when leaving this testament to express himself clearly.
[We thought the apocalypse might be a stellar explosion, or a meteorite impact, or maybe a virus that altered the forms of life, but no one expected the end of the world to be a—Tear.
A torn sky and earth, vanished stars. Every person and object that fell into the tears disappeared forever.
It was as if the data had been hit with a hard delete key.
All we could do was stand in place and wait. Wait to see if we would be the next to vanish, or the one after that...]
"A tear? Isn't that just like the rifts in the Trash Realm? No, wait... that must be what it looks like when a minor world shatters, right?"
Li Ban recalled the first time he and Priest Huangzhi had passed through a rift in the Trash Realm and entered the minor world on the other side.
That world had also been on the verge of shattering. The sky had been riddled with spatial rifts, and unknown shadow monsters had spawned on the ground.
But Priest Huangzhi had said that a minor world like that could still hold on for some time.
Judging by the tone of the testament, however, Gu Yi's world seemed to have torn apart suddenly.
They had likely already entered the interstellar era; they weren't just some unstable minor world.
So why did the end of the world suddenly descend?
The chaotic text continued. Li Ban skimmed past some laments and words of grief, searching for crucial information.
"Got it. Right here."
[A tear appeared right above my head. According to my classmates, if that tear had been half a meter longer, it would have taken my head cleanly off.
Nobody wanted to stay on a track field riddled with large and small tears, but returning to the dorms seemed to lead to the same outcome.
At most, it just meant facing that outcome without an audience.
But after that tear appeared and vanished, I saw a shiny object drop right in front of my eyes.
It was a silver necklace, and the pendant was a twisted ring.
It... seemed like it had fallen right out of the tear.]
Li Ban instantly thought of Gu Yi's second relic.
The Mobius Ring Pendant.
So, did Gu Yi obtain it from a spatial rift?
[When I bent down to pick it up, my vision went black. When I opened my eyes again... I was actually soaking in a river!]
Next, Li Ban saw some content he had already seen before.
Gu Yi briefly wrote about his first expedition into the Wizard World.
But because he understood nothing about the Wizard World, and there were too many survival methods and dangerous elements there, he died very quickly. His soul detached from the Wizard World.
However, his soul didn't return to his soon-to-be-destroyed homeworld. Instead, it entered the Nihility Realm.
This realm wasn't immensely large, nor was it particularly small. It was roughly the size of a normal metropolis.
Only upon entering the Nihility Realm did Gu Yi discover the truth. The elite element "schizophrenia" that he originally thought came with the corpse was actually an ability granted to him by this very realm.
And inside the Nihility Realm, he could look through a massive hole in the sky and see his originally collapsing world.
Everything in this void world could be generated out of thin air simply through his thoughts and intentions.
And so, towering skyscrapers, the sun, moon, and stars, and flora and fauna instantly appeared in the realm—
But there were no people, nor were there any other animals.
No matter how hard Gu Yi tried to construct, describe, or imagine them, he could not make this world give birth to a sapient being.
So he returned to his original world, wanting to see if this place could become a sanctuary amidst the apocalypse.
He could return to his original world at will, and discovered a massive time dilation between the Nihility Realm and his world.
A single minute on the outside was actually equivalent to a year for him inside the Nihility Realm!
The massive time dilation and the miraculous experience of obtaining whatever he thought of made Gu Yi believe he had gained the qualifications to become a savior!
[I thought I was the world's child of destiny, the absolute protagonist of a wish-fulfillment novel.]
But Gu Yi found that he couldn't bring external objects into the Nihility Realm.
Not even a single grain of dust!
[I thought I had become a god, only to realize I was just a person discarded by the world.]