In the Recycling Station, people could alter their appearance at will.
So, even though Allen possessed blonde hair, silver eyes, and sharp, deep-set facial features, Li Ban couldn't confirm if his true identity originated from an Eastern-leaning world.
Therefore, when Priest Huinv guessed whether Allen was a Priest and what Tier he might be, Li Ban wasn't all that surprised.
He was far more curious about the abilities Allen displayed, which severely clashed with the general atmosphere of the Recycling Station.
They followed the angel-like Allen and landed at the very top of Wanghai Cliff.
Looking from afar, there had been nothing here but a barren mountain peak.
But as they drew close, Allen set the Director down, stepped forward, and gave a light knock. The air before them rippled like water.
Soon after, the massive head of a monster appeared out of thin air.
"An Invisibility monster!" Priest Huinv instantly recognized the creature's species.
"I've made some modifications to the monsters," the Director replied calmly. "If you want to live and work among monsters long-term without being disturbed, the best method is to make them think you're a monster too."
While they were speaking, Allen had already stepped up and opened the monster's maw, revealing a metal door inside.
Allen pressed his index finger against the door's fingerprint scanner, and it automatically opened.
Energy!
Everyone gasped inwardly.
Li Ban had already formed his own suspicions before coming here. After all, even the secret room at Cliffside Camp used the energy converter provided by the Director.
"This research of yours could completely revolutionize life in the Recycling Station." Guo Kao hugged his arms tightly, terrified of accidentally and impolitely touching the Director's belongings. "Why haven't you promoted it?"
"Because the cost of widespread promotion would far outweigh the benefits."
Guo Kao furrowed his brows. He wanted to ask more but feared prying into the man's secrets, so he suppressed his curiosity, planning to try and understand once they became more familiar.
Li Ban, however, knew exactly what cost the Director meant.
It was living, breathing Priests.
Once this method was fully made public, those once-lofty Priests would likely become the enemies of the vast majority of ordinary people and spirit practitioners.
Furthermore, Priests were incredibly scarce. In a place like this where supernatural might was suppressed, they would likely be forcibly stuffed into glass cylinders to serve as "energy bases" for various camps.
But the cost the Director spoke of definitely didn't stop there.
Passing through the door hidden within the transparent monster's head, they entered a passageway leading underground.
The tunnel slanted downward, and at regular intervals, a new metal door would appear.
The Director stopped in front of the third door. "Allen, open the door."
Allen released his grip on the wheelchair and stepped up to open it.
This door used an ordinary lock, and the key Allen used was his own pinky finger.
"I still have a few matters to discuss with Li Ban alone. The rest of you guests, please rest on the third floor."
"How long will you be talking?"
"Can I go out for a walk?"
"An hour, or perhaps all night." The Director first answered Zhu Yao's question, then turned to Tail. "No, you cannot.
"But you may leave Wanghai Cliff."
Tail pursed her lips and took the lead, following Allen into the room.
Seeing Li Ban nod, the others also filed inside, one by one.
Standing at the doorway, Li Ban swept his gaze across the third floor and was surprised to find that it looked exactly like a floor in a high-end hotel.
Before him was a semicircular foyer with exquisite floor tiles and wallpaper. There were even decorative paintings of varying styles hanging on the walls.
In the center sat a sofa set large enough to seat ten people, draped in dust covers.
On the crystal coffee table rested two pitchers of pure water and dozens of beautiful glass cups.
Lining the outer perimeter of the hall were small rooms with open doors. From where he stood, he could see the beds, desks, and chairs inside.
"Did you move someone's entire hotel over here?"
"Whenever a progression run is destroyed, I end up with quite a few extra guests here. And only when the newly arrived batch in the Recycling Station finally settles down does my place grow quiet again."
With just a few sparse words, the Director summarized the despair-filled lives of countless people.
To the people of the Recycling Station, he truly was like an emotionless bystander and recorder.
Li Ban closed the door. For some reason, he didn't want Zhu Yao and the others to hear the Director's assessment of them.
"Do you need me to push your wheelchair?"
"I would appreciate it." The Director didn't stand on ceremony.
Li Ban pushed the wheelchair and continued down the steep slope.
On such a steep incline, even with a seatbelt strapped across him, the Director's body still involuntarily slid forward.
He actually looked a bit disheveled in this state.
Especially for someone like the Director, who gave off such an imposing aura.
Yet the Director's expression didn't change at all; he didn't show the slightest unease over his own physical inconvenience.
His calmness wasn't just directed at others and the outside world—it applied equally to himself.
Li Ban chuckled softly. "If you went to the Wizard World and became a Priest, I imagine your journey of heart cultivation would be incredibly easy to complete."
"That would be meaningless as well."
Meaningless?
In other words, in the Director's eyes, achievements as a Priest were also meaningless?
"Is it meaningless unless you become a Great Wizard?"
The Director glanced back at Li Ban, a slight ripple appearing in his calm eyes. "A Great Wizard is meaningless too."
Li Ban's heart sank. What the Director sought was even more difficult than he had imagined.
"A Wizard Lord?"
The Director just looked at him without speaking.
"...The Final Wizard Lord?"
The Director finally smiled, though the smile didn't reach his eyes. It was as if he was telling Li Ban: You guessed right, but there's no prize.
Li Ban also fell silent. He continued walking downward until they reached the sixth door, where the Director finally signaled him to stop.
Afterward, the Director used his own pinky finger as a key to open the heavy door.
Behind the heavy door was yet another door, with a corridor of less than two meters separating the two.
Once they both stepped inside, the Director closed the outer door from within.
Then, he opened the second door using the same method. This time, Li Ban felt a fluctuation of spiritual rhinoceros.
Astonishingly, the door beyond the second one was the very same third door Li Ban had familiarly seen at Cliffside Camp.
A door seamlessly connected to the entire room.
"This innermost room was originally a bank vault," the Director explained. He then opened a hidden panel on the door, revealed a control screen inside, and punched in a string of numbers.
"Your defenses here are extremely tight, but if I used Shrinking Ground to an Inch, couldn't I just come straight in?"
"Come in and see." The Director didn't answer directly. He simply opened the door and wheeled himself inside.
Li Ban followed him into the room that used to be a vault. Just as he was about to look up and observe this seemingly empty, bare-walled square room, the heavy door shut behind him.
In an instant, Li Ban felt as though he had lost all control over his body.
He tried to speak, but he couldn't even twitch his tongue.
He couldn't blink; he couldn't even roll his eyes.
Even his breathing stalled.
Only his mind was racing at high speed.
"Don't be nervous." At that moment, the Director's voice echoed in Li Ban's mind. "This is my Mind Domain Construction Platform."
Mind Domain Control Platform?!
To think he would actually hear this term again after leaving the Ring World.
The next second, his vision went dark, then flared bright. He transitioned straight from that metal room into an incredibly familiar Laboratory.
"This is... the Laboratory!"
Li Ban stepped forward. Turning his head, he spotted over a dozen Experimental Capsules.
Hundreds of screens glowed overhead, each displaying a different location.
With his current mental faculties, Li Ban quickly spotted familiar scenery on a few of the images—including the Swing Forest.
"Three months ago, this was where I spoke with you from." A man wearing a white lab coat and gold-rimmed glasses walked over.
He looked exactly like the Director from moments ago, except he hadn't lost his legs and wasn't sitting in a wheelchair.
This was the true sight Li Ban had seen in the Swing Forest.
He walked over to an Experimental Capsule and stroked the transparent hatch.
A middle-aged man lay inside the Experimental Capsule, but Li Ban knew this wasn't a real person.
Just like the Experimental Capsules outside and the surrounding mechanical equipment, he was purely manifested by the Mind Domain Construction Platform.
And the Mind Domain Construction Platform was incapable of creating life.
Right as Li Ban was preparing to leave, the man lying in the Experimental Capsule suddenly opened his eyes!
Following that, the transparent hatch slowly opened, and the life-support fluid inside rapidly drained away.
The middle-aged man sat up from within, looking somewhat exhausted.
He first glanced at Li Ban without saying a word, then turned to the Director beside him.
"The plan failed. In the end, we couldn't get within a hundred meters of the rift."
The Director's expression remained placid. Without any excess emotion, he nodded. "Understood. The record is complete. Do you have any new ideas?"
The middle-aged man opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. "I want to rest for a bit."
"A complete rest, or a short break?"
"Just a short break is fine. I can still hold on."
"Alright."
After the Director spoke, the middle-aged man lay back down.
The Experimental Capsule then sealed back up, and the man closed his eyes.
Witnessing this scene, Li Ban was shocked beyond measure. It was as if he had genuinely returned to the Laboratory.
It was just that the attitude of the "Director" in charge of the Laboratory was completely different from that Leader.
He wasn't arrogant, strict, or cold-blooded, yet an indescribable chill still rose in Li Ban's heart.
He looked at the Director. "These people... they're all you?"
"Yes. In my iteration, I acquired the high-grade element: Mental Fission. These are all individual entities that I've split from myself. However, I haven't split as many times as Gu Yi did, so I'm still able to maintain my own existence."
Li Ban nodded.
The Mind Domain Construction Platform couldn't create life, so the Director chose to split himself into multiple entities to conduct some sort of experiment.
"Simulations related to the rift? You're trying to find a way to escape the Recycling Station."
"No, I have no intention of leaving the Recycling Station."
The Director stepped forward and raised a hand.
The metal floor beneath their feet suddenly extended outward, and everything around them shifted three meters outward, leaving an empty space in the center.
The floor then rose up. Like building blocks, it gradually shifted and reassembled, forming a metal coffee table and two silver-white sofas.
"Please, sit." The Director gestured to the opposite sofa before taking a seat himself. "We need to have a proper conversation. And don't worry—here, you and I both have plenty of time."
The Director hadn't just made the coffee table and chairs appear out of thin air because the Mind Domain Construction Platform needed to follow basic rules; otherwise, the brain could easily fall into confusion.
And having "plenty of time" meant that due to their brains operating at high speeds, the flow of time inside and outside differed.
Just like in the Ring World, where a year equaled one minute on the outside.
There really was no need to rush.
Li Ban walked over to the other sofa and sat down.
Although it was a sofa morphed from a metal floor, its surface felt delicate to the touch, and its padding was perfectly firm yet soft. Aside from a faint metallic sheen, it was identical to a real sofa in every other way.
"Sometimes, I feel like the Mind Domain Construction Platform is catching up to a Great Wizard's wizard embryo."
The Director seemed a bit more animated in this place. He smiled and asked, "What would you like to drink? We have nutrient fluids here that can simulate all kinds of sensory stimuli."
"...Do you have cola-flavored ones?"
The Director tapped the table. The surface slid open, and two glass bottles rose up.
One was pure, transparent white; the other was a translucent dark brown.
That slightly transparent, dark brown liquid looked exactly like the cola in Li Ban's memories.
Not only did it simulate the appearance of cola, but there was even a spherical ice cube floating inside.
Li Ban picked up the glass and took a large gulp, savoring the delightful sensation of tiny bubbles popping against the tip of his tongue.
"This really brings back memories."
The Director, on the other hand, drank only pure water.
This was his Mind Domain Construction Platform. He had spent an unknown amount of time here and had long since tried every sensory stimulation that interested him.
Quietly waiting for Li Ban to set his glass down, the Director also put down his own cup of water. "You are the guest, so you may ask first."
Li Ban leaned back into the sofa, relaxed, though his mind didn't loosen up in the slightest. He laced his fingers together and, after a moment, asked, "First, can you confirm which iteration's Director you are?"
The Director smiled. "I am the Director of the first iteration, but I am not the original body."
The Director was actually from the very first iteration? That meant ever since he entered the Recycling Station, he had never disappeared during the batch erasures. It wasn't different Directors passing down the same Wanghai Cliff.
It had always been him.
Wait, he said he wasn't the original body. Does that mean he considers himself a clone?
"How did you do that?" Li Ban couldn't help but ask.
The Director didn't say, "It's my turn now"; instead, he answered naturally.
"Within a year of entering the Recycling Station, I noticed a few clues and used a special method to continuously broadcast a single piece of information outward. At first, I couldn't be sure if it would work, but after experiencing a few batch erasures, I was certain that it was operating steadily."
This time, he simply explained without prompting from Li Ban.
"To prevent any leaks, I won't tell you what that special method is. But I can tell you the content of the message being broadcast."
"The Director can only die; he cannot be deleted."
A look of realization dawned on Li Ban. "So, all the subsequent iterations of the Director chose to die before entering the Recycling Station!"
Thereby ensuring that the Director from the first iteration could continuously exist within the Recycling Station!