The giant black dragon, bringing with it an overwhelming pressure, landed in the middle of the black forest.
However, the terrifying presence that could force weak creatures to bow in the outside world failed to frighten off the mindless monsters here.
Howling, they lunged forward like beasts that had starved for three days.
Tail wove through the fighting ranks, darting over to help the moment she saw anyone in danger.
The assassin was exceptionally skilled at harvesting monster heads.
Yet the surrounding noise was rather unbearable for her exceptional hearing.
Twitching her ears, Tail complained, "Why can't the monsters here be as quiet as the ones in the Sea of Monsters?"
Even if the monsters in the Sea of Monsters were so quiet it was a little creepy.
After smoothly clearing out the first wave of monsters, Zhu Yao volunteered to go to Wanghai Cliff to meet the Director.
Out of a hundred meters, Li Ban had already walked ninety-nine. Letting the Director cross the final meter shouldn't be an issue, right?
Thus, Li Ban led the group in quietly setting up their tents.
They had actually requested these very tents from the people at the Black Beast Camp.
They were incredibly suitable for a temporary camp.
Guo Kao stood in front of the pitched tents, looking toward the distant Wanghai Cliff before turning his head to face the direction the cliff overlooked.
"Wanghai Cliff, Wanghai Cliff... what it's gazing at is the Sea of Monsters."
Although he knew he couldn't compare to the Director, Guo Kao, being a researcher and logistics member himself, quickly grasped the purpose of Wanghai Cliff.
"Does the Director stay here to study the Sea of Monsters every day? Is he still trying to find a way to break through it?"
Huinv, who was meticulously wiping down her long saber inch by inch, let out a lazy laugh. The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes carried a hint of disdain.
"He's been researching here for who knows how many years. Regardless, he's only in charge of research, not practice."
Li Ban walked over to Priest Huinv. "Was he here when you braved the Sea of Monsters? Did he say anything to you?"
"He did." Priest Huinv frowned. "He said we would all die inside."
"Don't worry about it," Zhu Yao said as she walked over. "He said the exact same thing to us."
"This Director you're talking about must be a very arrogant person," Tail said, picking her ear. "He probably thinks only his method can break through the Sea of Monsters and reach the spatial rift inside."
"Perhaps," Zhu Yao said. "But to this day, no one has successfully forced their way into the continental rift."
Listening to their discussion, Li Ban also looked toward the Sea of Monsters opposite Wanghai Cliff. "Are you sure there is a spatial rift leading to the outside world within the Sea of Monsters?"
The black and red Sea of Monsters blotted out the sky; it was completely impossible to see whether there was a spatial rift inside or not.
If braving the Sea of Monsters, passing through the spatial rift, and escaping the Recycling Station was nothing but a scam, wouldn't everyone's efforts become a complete joke?
"There really is a spatial rift there," Priest Huinv said. "Every year, the Sea of Monsters expands, and the density of the monsters decreases, revealing the massive spatial rift inside. Back then, we prepared here for over a year. It was precisely because we saw that rift that we became determined to brave the Sea of Monsters."
"The monster density drops, and the rift becomes clearly visible?" Li Ban rubbed his chin. "That should be the best time to enter the Sea of Monsters."
"Yes, there is one day every year when the Sea of Monsters isn't as dense. We waited until that day to officially plunge into it. Unfortunately, even so, we couldn't truly get close to the rift."
"When someone enters a certain range of the rift, the nearby monsters instinctively swarm to the center, defending the rift as tightly as a shield. Heh, toward the end of the fight, you just run wherever the monsters are thickest."
Li Ban pondered, "So before entering that range, we need to find a way to charge forward as much as possible. The further we dash before the monsters wrap around the rift again, the closer we get to it, the higher our chances of success. Flight Technique is suited for long-distance travel, while Shrinking Ground to an Inch has a limited single-use distance. After completing the first blink, we'd probably alert the monsters within range."
He didn't have any ideas for the time being, but he wasn't in a rush to figure it out right now, either.
Just then, Li Ban suddenly turned his head to look at the forest closest to Wanghai Cliff.
Two people were approaching from there.
As the dark silhouettes drew closer, they could clearly make out each other's appearances.
One of the two arrivals was tall, the other short.
The shorter one was sitting in a wheelchair, a blanket covering his legs.
Just below his waist, the blanket abruptly dipped, flattened out, and then draped over the contours of the wheelchair.
Looking at the man's face, Li Ban immediately recognized him.
It was the same man who had communicated with him through illusions at the Swing Vine.
His gaze fell onto the man's lower half once more.
This person—didn't have legs?
Physical disabilities were a very strange occurrence in the Recycling Station world.
Because here, people could freely replace their limbs, surface skin, internal organs, and the like. Whatever was missing could simply be patched up, and as long as one had high-purity water, wounds could be healed.
Therefore, very few people left themselves physically incomplete without undergoing a replacement.
"Why would he be in a wheelchair?" Li Ban murmured.
"I don't know either," Zhu Yao whispered, having stepped up beside Li Ban at the first opportunity. "But he is the Director."
Li Ban had been cautious and hadn't immediately approached Wanghai Cliff, not expecting the Director to come directly to find him.
Moreover, the other party had brought only a single person to push the wheelchair, leaving himself almost completely undefended.
Since the Director had shown such sincerity, Li Ban naturally wouldn't continue hiding in the back.
He took the lead, stepping forward and stopping the others who wanted to go with him.
Li Ban walked up to the Director step by step, realizing that the man pushing the wheelchair had a glassy stare and didn't look like a normal person.
"Pay no mind to Allen. He can only accept simple commands right now and cannot understand instructions longer than five words."
The Director smiled as he spoke, using the language of the Ring World.
The Director sitting in the wheelchair looked surprisingly young, and he bore absolutely no resemblance to the body Li Ban was currently using.
His hands rested on his lap, fingers intertwined, and his expression was calm, as if nothing could ever surprise him anymore.
However, he proceeded to say a sentence that left Li Ban completely bewildered.
"You arrived much faster than I expected. As expected of the one who replaced the existence of another me, your luck is quite good."
"Replacing—another you?"
"Yes. Right now, you—still haven't parted clouds to see the stars, have you?"
Li Ban's power was only approaching that level right now, but he indeed hadn't achieved a true state of parting clouds to see the stars.
"Priests always love to spout ambiguous nonsense. Parting clouds to see the stars, the attribution of faith, slaying the mortal corpse... I can tell you that parting clouds to see the stars is simply breaking through illusions to achieve self-awareness. Since you still don't understand your own origins, naturally you wouldn't know that you arrived in the Wizard World by taking the place of the 'me' from another timeline."
Li Ban's eyes widened in shock, and for a split second, the memories of his past blurred.
He gripped his forehead. "My memories—have fractured."
It was as if someone had taken correction tape to the record book of his life, covering the original content to fill in new text.
Because the color of the correction tape was incredibly similar to the original color of the paper, Li Ban had never been able to notice the discrepancies in his memories.
Now, after the Director's reminder, he finally noticed the slight abnormality in his prior life.
He repeatedly pinched the bridge of his nose, as if trying to use his sheer willpower to peel off the correction tape covering his original perception.
Finally, Li Ban slowly opened his eyes.
"My memories diverged during my 24th year. I didn't resign along with a senior I knew well, but instead continued working at a large corporation. So... so I didn't die suddenly at the age of 25!"
"That senior... that senior was the Director!"
Li Ban looked at the Director in front of him.
"Did you also know all of this?"
The Director sitting in the wheelchair unclasped his hands and spread them to his sides. "Don't think of me as possessing such immense, godlike abilities. I don't know what the other 'me' did. It's just a basic judgment I made based on the fact that, as an entity with an identical shell, your entry didn't cause me to be erased."
"Wait, aren't I using Gu Yi's body right now?"
"The soul has nothing to do with the body. I believe you should understand this very well."
"If the existence you're referring to is the soul and not the body..." Li Ban abruptly took out the reader stored in his Cubic Space. "Then why can your soul and Chen Dong's soul exist simultaneously?"
They had both split from Gu Yi's soul, after all.
"You actually kept Chen Dong." The Director didn't seem displeased by Li Ban's questioning; instead, a smile appeared on his originally calm face. "I thought you would directly destroy his other half of the soul to prevent Du An from continuing to grow stronger."
Li Ban lowered his head and looked at the small reader next to him.
"Is the soul-splitting method Du An used different from the one Gu Yi used?"
"Yes. After all, Du An didn't grasp the high-grade element that Gu Yi possessed: Mental Splitting. His method was cruder, but his resolve was identical to Gu Yi's back then."
Hearing how the Director seemed to regard his original self as a completely different person, and recalling how even Chen Dong wished for Li Ban not to call him "Gu Yi," Li Ban increasingly understood the line in Gu Yi's Testament: "From now on, the person known as Gu Yi will no longer exist in this world."
Complete mental splitting was no different from self-obliteration.
"You still haven't answered my previous question."
The smile faded from the Director's face, though it wasn't directed at Li Ban. "Because the Recycling Station's recycling time starts right after Gu Yi completed his self-splitting."
The recycling starting point was after Gu Yi had completed thousands of self-inflicted mental splits. Did this hold some special significance?
Annihilating the world at the end of a time period, sweeping everything into the Recycling Station, only to let the storyline unfold all over again at the starting point of that period.
Without any special external influence, this world should have played out exactly the same as the previous one.
Li Ban thought of Cat Girl, who still became a Gold Badge assassin, and Priest Qian Que, who still failed to successfully advance to the 8th Tier.
He could understand that the slight differences between the two worlds were due to the addition of himself, an outsider.
Even so, the impact was extremely minor; many events across the two timelines perfectly aligned with each other.
So what was the point of restarting the timeline over and over again?
And what kind of roles did the Great Wizards who governed the world's rules play in all of this?
While Li Ban was lost in thought, the roars of monsters echoed from their surroundings once more.
"I have answered the questions you used to test my sincerity. I believe it is time we head to Wanghai Cliff for a formal discussion. There are too many existences that could disturb us here."
He glanced at the reader. "Furthermore, I imagine Chen Dong would also very much like to join our conversation."
"Alright." This time Li Ban didn't hesitate and agreed to the Director's proposal.
As it stood, they were not enemies, and both sides had demonstrated the necessary sincerity. It was time for a frank and open discussion on more profound topics.
Continuing to test each other wouldn't yield the desired results; it would only deepen their suspicions and cause their potential cooperation to fracture.
Li Ban turned his head and looked at the team members who were watching them without coming closer. "Everyone, deal with the monsters and pack up. We're heading to Wanghai Cliff."
"As for dealing with the monsters, I can assist."
The Director spoke to Allen behind him: "Ring the bell."
Allen's expression remained wooden, but he very skillfully unclipped a strangely shaped bell from his waist.
The bell was entirely pale white, and the handle on top looked remarkably like an arm bone.
Li Ban caught a glimpse inside; there was no clapper inside the bell.
Allen gave his hand a gentle shake, and a hoarse, barely audible roar drifted out from within the bell.
Li Ban noticed that the monsters closing in on them from all sides immediately ceased all movement.
It was as if even the mindless monsters would lie dormant in the presence of a higher-tier existence.
"What is that thing?"
"The closer one gets to the Sea of Monsters, the more peculiar the monsters become. I've stayed here for a very, very long time; it's quite normal to have gleaned a few special harvests."
Li Ban was quite interested in the bell in Allen's hand. If they could carry that bell while plunging into the Sea of Monsters, things would be a lot easier, at least in the beginning.
He wondered what conditions the Director would demand to trade the bell.
Li Ban invited the Director to ride Dila with them to Wanghai Cliff.
Walking from the clearing to Wanghai Cliff would take at least half an hour.
However, the Director merely told them to board the giant dragon themselves; his Allen was also a Priest.
The group took only five minutes to pack up the tents they had just pitched, and then they took to the sky on Dila's back.
"Head home," the Director simply instructed. A pair of massive wings made of light energy suddenly sprouted from the back of Allen, who was pushing the wheelchair. From a distance, he really looked like an angel out of a fairy tale.
Expressionless, Allen lifted the Director along with the wheelchair, allowing him to sit in it at a relatively comfortable angle without having to worry about falling out.
This set of movements flowed like water; it was incredibly well-practiced, an action he had likely performed countless times.
"Whoa!"
Dila, Ed, and Tail exclaimed at the same time.
With Allen leading the way, they flew straight toward Wanghai Cliff.
During the flight, whenever flying monsters approached, Allen would temporarily free up a hand and shake the bell, causing the approaching monsters to flee in panic.
"That bell is amazing. It has an elemental feel to it, but I don't detect any spiritual rhinoceros fluctuations." Zhu Yao looked at the bell in Allen's hand, feeling quite puzzled.
"That is power belonging to the monsters." Huinv pursed her lips, a deep vertical crease forming between her brows. "But what makes me even more curious is that guy called Allen—just what Tier of Priest is he?"