Chapter 823 - 695: Vietnam

The artifact recovery business has been running for so long that even without the Information Integration Glasses,

Li Cheng can judge whether an artifact is from the Shang and Zhou dynasty or last week,

just by looking at the shape, decoration, material, and craftsmanship of the items.

Field Law: In the second month of spring, do not cut timber from the mountains and forests or from Yong embankment waters...

Stable Garden Law: In April, July, October, and January, skin the field ox...

Warehouse Law: In the granary, ten thousand stones are a unit and are compared to a household of the Li...

All the bamboo slips are stored in a temperature and humidity-controlled vault, looking ancient and worn, clearly genuine.

Moreover, they are not the kind of bamboo slips excavated and restored from waterlogged tombs on Real Earth; they are meticulously preserved original slips from the start.

Besides the bamboo slips, the vault also houses other items, like measuring tools such as rulers, scales, dou, hu, and such, gold-inlaid script tiger tallies, bianzhong stone chimes, farming tools, crop seeds,

as well as clothing, including pants (full-length crotch pants) and shoes (cloth shoes and straw sandals).

"The Snake-men themselves, they don’t need to wear pants and shoes, why do they collect these?" Mei Wenyi asked in confusion.

"They used to need them."

Gouchen pointed with a sword to a damaged stone tablet placed in a glass display case at the corner of the vault.

Inscribed on it in seal script was:...Qi people Xu Shi and others submitted a memorial, claiming there is a divine mountain in the sea, named Four Realms, where an Immortality Potion exists...The Emperor was delighted and dispatched generals with men and women, ten thousand in total, to cross the sea to seek it...Fearing the alien Qi of that place, they employed magic, transforming their forms to snake bodies...

The amount of information in this passage is exceptionally vast,

even Don Juan, as a European, had heard of the story of Xu Fu’s eastward journey, and he was flabbergasted: "So the Snake-men here are the descendants of the remnant people from over two thousand years ago, during Emperor Shi’s time, who proactively came to Four Realms Mountain?"

"In a parallel world of Emperor Shi. And it’s not two thousand years, it’s estimated to be around seven hundred years from now."

Li Cheng corrected, explaining that the earliest Snake-men remnant came to the Broken Land, breaking off contact with the parallel world of Earth.

The Immortality Potion was never found, and the original immigrant corps gradually transformed into the indigenous people of Broken Land. From nothing, they built a large-scale city.

This is evident from the map on the back of the stone tablet—a Mobius loop-shaped thumbnail of Broken Land,

where various spaces are pieced together like building blocks, its scale slightly smaller than that shown by the Execution Committee.

This proves that over the past few hundred years, the volume of Broken Land has been continually growing.

Following the principle of not leaving empty-handed, Li Cheng took all the tools he could move and, without looking back, beckoned to everyone, "Let’s go."

"Where to?" Mei Wenyi hadn’t caught on right away.

"The Sun-absorbing Chicken was raised by the Snake-men in Broken Land, being both a witness and guardian of the Snake-men. Now that the Snake-men have been wiped out, it’s still guarding Frozen City with the Snake-egg, don’t you find it odd?"

Li Cheng raised his hand to summon an Edge Fighter, "A plausible explanation is that it’s waiting for the Snake-egg to hatch into new Snake-people, to gain some resistance ability, before it takes the young Snake-people away.

Now being forced to flee, it’s likely heading to a place known only to the Snake-men civilization, beyond the knowledge of the Execution Committee.

By referencing the map behind the stone tablet, and adding the residual scent molecules at the space rift, it can be tracked and located.

Everyone, get on the plane."

The Edge Fighter room was inadequate, so Don Juan and Gouchen rode ticket-holders—using metal baskets hanging below the missile pylon.

The group sped through the city’s high areas, passing through space rifts protected by heavy metal doors in pursuit of the Sun-absorbing Chicken.

————

"...It’s my turn! I activate the Field Magic Card, [Iron Battle Spirit Arena], summoning ten battle tops to attack your energy crystal! Your death star is shining in the sky!"

"Not that simple! Near my crystal is an ambushed Vietnamese guerilla squad, and though their combat power is only 700 points, when facing your battle tops with Taobo Battle Team genes, it triggers the Vietnam War passive, automatically raising the Attack Power to 3000! Good Morning Vietnam!"

Inside the Sun-absorbing Chicken’s crop, Maxwell and Su Jie were strategizing with their brains, bragging, and excitedly playing the slum’s most popular [Killing Field Card Chaos].

"...Do you have to be so childish, are you kids?"

Claudia rolled her eyes and then suddenly remembered that Maxwell and Su Jie were indeed actual minors,

Wait, it seems her appearance was also child-like...

"Isn’t this just to pass time idly."

Maxwell shrugged. The three people’s physical forms were all bound in the crop’s mucous membrane, rendering them unable to use any skill items. Feeling idle, they could only play cards in their spiritual form.

While they were chatting idly, suddenly the surrounding meat walls shook; the sun-absorbing chicken outside was decelerating and coming to a halt.

After a brief pause, accompanied by a rumbling sound, a radiant light shot in from the top of the crop. The sun-absorbing chicken opened its massive beak, ingesting a large quantity of trees, soil, and stones into its belly.

During ingestion, it intentionally avoided the palace directly below, dumping the stones directly into its stomach.

Chickens have no teeth, often ingesting small stones to act as grinding plates in their stomach to crush food. This is quite sensible.

The three people trapped in the crop exchanged glances before simultaneously flying toward the top of the esophagus.

The length of the umbilical cord produced by the [Soul Emergence] skill depends on the player’s divine sense strength.

Su Jie’s umbilical cord was only one hundred meters long. With one hand, he grasped the inner wall of the esophagus while pushing upward with the other, lifting Claudia up another hundred meters.

Claudia wedged herself into the esophagus gap, catching Maxwell flying toward her with both hands; like an aerial acrobat in a circus, she swung Maxwell forcefully upward.

Smack!

Maxwell clutched the top of the esophagus, only a final beak’s distance away from sunlight. He also got a clear view of the situation outside.

Outside was a lush forest, with the sun-absorbing chicken continuing to collect stones while scratching the ground with its claws.

Maxwell instantly realized that beneath the forest was likely the entrance to a hidden space rift.

At that moment, loud, intermittent human voices echoed in the crop.

"Hello, this is the Arctic division of the GOC... I’m at the Execution Committee headquarters in the Broken Land, broadcasting to all players..."

The voice came from the walkie-talkie carried by Maxwell, Su Jie, and Claudia.

Su Jie and Claudia, in a panic, profusely sweated, but in their spiritual state, they couldn’t press any buttons; they could only watch helplessly as the walkie-talkie’s diaphragm vibrated, continuously making noise.

"The situation has changed. A squad has identified the cause of the earthquakes... suspected extraordinary lives of Solomon’s 72 Pillar Demon Gods actively damaging the spatial structures in various regions, triggering large-scale collapses..."

"Now, in addition to continuing to induce earthquakes, they are organized in hunting players."

"Players who have amassed enough stars are advised to ascend quickly."

"Players who lack enough stars or can’t gather them in a short period are advised to quit the game directly or head to the nearest Execution Committee residential stronghold and use space items to evacuate along with human residents..."

The rate at which stones fell visibly decreased. The sun-absorbing chicken, noticing the noise in the crop, ceased its actions and gently coughed, ejecting the three wrapped in the mucous membrane onto the edge of its beak.

The bodies of the three human players remained unswoken, but the sun-absorbing chicken, focusing intently through its pupils, seemed to be attempting to gaze upon the spirits of the trio.

A sharp glance, spirits exposed with nowhere to hide, Maxwell’s spirit resolutely raised both hands in surrender, urgently shouting, "Don’t kill us! You want to take these snake eggs to a safe place, right?

I can sign a contract with you, sending you to the planet we are on, to find a piece of peaceful land for you and the hatched Snake-men.

The contract is protected by higher powers and won’t be violated."

Before finishing the words, a sudden change occurred.

A hot wind blew over from the horizon, sweeping down the slope, igniting leaves atop treetops along the path.

Guarding the remaining snake eggs, the sun-absorbing chicken became incredibly cautious, urgently swallowing Maxwell and the other two back into the crop and, without wasting time, cast transformation magic, reducing its seven-meter height to that of a domestic fowl.

Then, it dashed along the ground, blending into a flock of wild pheasants in the forest.

In an instant, the hot wind gathered into a human form; it was a five-meter-tall blue-violet humanoid flame, its right arm cradling three beer-keg-sized metal bombs, embedded with a plethora of stars,

while its left hand grasped a large iron cage covered with cloth.

When Maxwell was seven years old, he had already passed the doctoral exams in archaeology, sociology, and folklore. He recognized that this flame humanoid was indeed Ami, ranked 58th among Solomon’s 72 Pillar Demon Gods.

Swoosh——

The hot wind blew, lifting a corner of the fireproof cloth atop the cage

With spiritual essence arms, pulling the esophagus, crouching in the sun-absorbing chicken’s throat, Maxwell’s pupils suddenly contracted.

The cage housed several shackled figures, including headband-wearing ninjas, programmer-attired Whale Song hackers, and most strikingly, an elderly gray-haired man in a mage’s red robe.

The Bell Tower Guild, Defense System School Grandmaster, Level 37, Merlin.