The shop Song Shiyi found was located in the south of the city, near the centre of the city, where taxis were parked all around and many drivers dined there.
The name of the restaurant was ‘Roadside Restaurant’, with a faded light red signboard and noisy shop door, but the price of the food was moderate.
Most of the diners were busy workers who worked late into the night, and everyone ordered two small dishes here after work to fill their stomachs and take a short break.
Song Shiyi and Isabelle sat in a corner, and in front of the two of them was a large plate of braised fat intestines, a seaweed soup, and a plate of bok choy.
“How’s the flavour?”Song Shiyi looked at Isabel.
“Tasty.”
Isabel chewed and gave her evaluation.
Song Shiyi seemed as if she was relieved and her complexion relaxed, “Although the flavour is a bit heavy, but with the seaweed soup and green vegetables, you won’t feel greasy.”
“I don’t know why, but I always feel that Miss Mary is very similar to me in some ways ……”
She seemed to have thought of something and stopped the topic.
Song Shiyi turned to say, “Miss Mary, I wonder, is your companion interested in joining the committee? If one becomes a member of the committee, quite a few things would actually come in handy. Moreover, the Committee isn’t all law enforcement, there are also administrative organs, housekeeping and research positions with relatively stable work and rest.”
“The committee is organising the province’s provincial exam in March this year, so why not give it a try if you don’t hate it.”
Seeing that Isabel didn’t reject it outright, Song Shiyi took out a folded paper document from her bag, “There are relevant notes on it, so you can refer to it.”
Under Lu Yao’s remote gesture, Isabel put away the paper and asked, “What happened to your apostle, Ming Chai?”
“It went missing.”
Song Shiyi spoke under her breath, but her face was devoid of worry.
She wiped her lips with a tissue and said with a straight face, “The thing is like this.”
“About half a month ago, the committee gave me a mission to track down a target.”
Isabel asked, “If I may interrupt, weren’t you dealing with Wasteland Seven?”
“The overlap of Wasteland Seven ended a long time ago.”
Song Shiyi explained, “The degree of overlap was very light, it was just the forces of the rules entangling and acting on each other, creating a short-lived effect. If it was a truly localised bordering and breaking of the wall, the reaction brought about would be far more than that.”
“Where was I? Oh, the target is rather special, it has excellent hiding abilities, and …… you know about the tiger people on the internet? You know how to surf the net, right?”
Isabel nodded.
“That’s the one.”
Song Shiyi’s face became serious, and her lips pursed habitually, “Don’t look at its appearance as if it was a graffiti on a plane, but it comes from another High Realm Dimension world called Dragonhost.”
Lu Yao at the remote end said in his heart, it was really related to the Silkworm Bush.
It was true that whenever an event associated with the simulator occurred, the committee would act.
Listening to both sides, he was prepared to hear what the committee side had to say about the Dragonhost Pillar Bush.
“You know about the Nine Harvest Pillars, right?”Song Shiyi asked.
Isabel clumsily took a bite of rice with her chopsticks and shook her head.
“That’s the prop that Silkworm Bush is looking for, the prototype of the bronze god tree of Shang, a first-class cultural relic in the Sanxingdui Museum.”
Song Shiyi chucked up a piece of fatty sausage, “The Nine Harvest Pillar is a mythological wonder and a special passageway erected between the Dragon Host and Earth. About 6,000 years ago, dragons existed in this world, and after the disappearance of the Nine Harvest Pillar, dragons could no longer come over from Dragonhost.”
“According to the relevant information and records collected by the committee, the Nine Harvest Pillar was destroyed by the Dragonhost.”
Lu Yao’s heart stirred.
This was different from what Silkworm Bush had said.
Isabelle just listened quietly.
“And the Tiger Man …… it’s real name is Silkworm Cong, the same name as the ancient Shu Kingdom’s ancestor king Silkworm Cong, a special life form that existed in this world a long time ago, and the guardian of the Nine Harvest Pillar.”
“For some reason, after the Nine Harvest Pillars disappeared, the Silkworm Bush stayed behind.”
“It looks like a two-dimensional painting, that’s just a state after downgrading, and in the face of epochal change, the force of rules will have less effect on it.”
“Ming Zai and I are precisely tracking the Silkworm Bush.”
Lu Yao said through Isabel’s mouth, “Then the video on the internet …… was deliberately put up by you guys?”
“Hmm.”
Song Shiyi licked her lips, “Since not all players have liaison and interactions with the committee, by doing this, the committee is also hoping to draw their attention and give them a reminder.”
“It’s a pity that Silkworm Bush’s counter-surveillance is so strong that we didn’t get any effective feedback.”
Lu Yao thought to himself, [Advanced Camouflage] was indeed a very useful skill.
When Silkworm Bush sneaked into the house, he didn’t even notice it himself.
“Ming Zai has a very keen sense of perception, it found out that the Silkworm Bush was infesting the city and tracked it all the way. In order to be able to find Silkworm Bush’s other bodies, it descended the dimensions like Silkworm Bush and entered the flat face world.”
“Then Ming-chan lost contact with me.”
Song Shiyi sighed, “I can feel that its Flame of Faith is still there, but I just can’t tell its exact location. It should be the effect caused by the descending dimension.”
Isabelle feigned surprise, “Other bodies? The silkworm bush has many bodies?”
“Right. It has split itself into many parts.”
Song Shiyi put down her chopsticks, “Normally it appears on various planes in the form of the simplest lines so that it consumes the least and moves the fastest. Unless it reaches the ideal state of complete confinement, it can go anywhere.”
“The Silkworm Bush’s complete body includes a lot of memories and information, and that dense information is split off from its body into different shells, such as into [Characters], [Major Events], and [Mission Orders]…… like data files of different disciplines, which are stored separately by it. ”
“In this way, even if it dies, important information is retained.”
“After the Silkworm Bush died, the backup body it left behind would activate, and through a piece of the body, it was able to carry on the important information and orders from before.”
“If the Silkworm Bush has a hidden dangerous purpose, it would be a great threat to the human order on Earth today, so the committee needs to keep it under close surveillance to avoid unforeseen risks.”
Lu Yao combined the Silkworm Bush’s and Song Shiyi’s statements and had a clearer perception of the Silkworm Bush.
It stripped and cut out its important memories and stockpiled them into a single database, walking in the simplest and easiest form, not revealing any secrets even if it was caught.
Upon death, it could resurrect itself from another alternate body, like a bionic human that constantly replicated itself.
This series of abilities, again immortality and self division, would make one feel uneasy just by its mere existence.
Lu Yao rolled up his sleeves and said to the strange graffiti on his wrist, “I have a question.”
After a while, the Silkworm Bush’s voice came into his head.
“It’s true that I have many bodies, each storing different memory contents, and they are all under the Nine Harvest Pillar. But since that explosion on the Nine Harvest Pillar, all the bodies were destroyed along with the Fish Eider and the others.”
“If I could, I would also like to remember those detailed pasts, then I should be able to find my way back to the Dragon Lodge.”
The two parties had their own arguments.
Lu Yao didn’t have enough information to back them up, and it wasn’t easy to make a judgement.
The only thing he could be sure of was that the Silkworm Bush was indeed a bit desperate, and the Committee valued order extremely highly, and would never allow it to operate freely in human society.
At the restaurant, Isabel said, “Where did Ming go missing?”
“Right about a hundred metres from here, I was about to come here for a meal that day, when suddenly Ming-chan said it had found something, and it went ahead and tracked it down.”
Song Shiyi fished out her mobile phone and was about to scan the code for the bill.
“I’ll do it, last time it was your treat.”
Isabel pulled out cash this time and went to the front desk to pay the bill.
Leaving the restaurant, Song Shiyi led Isabel to the opposite side of the street.
There was a community activity place there, decorated with ping pong tables, space walkers, twisting machines, big spinning wheels, and other exercise apparatus. Some elderly people were walking and moving around.
Song Shiyi said, “I can’t find it when Ming Chai chases it here.”
Isabel looked around.
To the left of the activity area was a public toilet, to the right was a pathway, and continuing along the pathway was a kindergarten.
Isabel went to the public toilet first and looked for it, to no avail.
Then she followed the street all the way into the kindergarten again.
The walls of the kindergarten were painted with a variety of colourful pictures, and on one of the walls was the sun, and in the middle of the sun was a small sparrow.
Continuing to look closely one could see that it was moving, that is, its movements were extremely sluggish, as if it had been slowed down dozens of times, and it was struggling as if it had fallen into the water.
“Ah, Ming-chan, there you are!”
Song Shiyi exclaimed in a slightly pompous manner, “I told you not to run around, how worrying.”
She reached behind her and grabbed a white cloth, rubbing it gently against the wall, shaking the cloth, and the sparrow Ming Zai flew out of the cloth. The bird landed on her shoulder and shivered.
“If you weren’t there, I definitely wouldn’t have found Ming Zai so quickly.”Song Shiyi thanked her.
“Luck.”
Isabel was succinct: “I’m leaving first.”
“Let’s meet again next time when you’re free.”
“Say again.”
Looking at Song Shiyi’s unwilling gaze, Lu Yao was basically certain that she was just looking for an opportunity to ask Isabelle out for dinner.
She couldn’t be looking at Isabelle’s high rank and wanting to poach the apostle, right?
Lu Yao was wary.
This time, he also gained something, not only did he further understand where Silkworm Bush came from, but he also used the [Spell of True Vision] to check Ming Zai’s panel.
……
[Apostle LV72] Patchbird – Ming Zai
Life value: 17777/177777
Mana: 4911/4911
Damage: 120
Defence: 81
Speed: 23
Astrology
Divine the evil and good fortune by astrological signs, with a certain probability of success.
Fire Elemental Mystery LV22
In the fire can continuously restore life value, attack with fire elemental damage, can reserve a large amount of fire element (72/22000).
[Mouthful of Heat]
Hungry for heat, can directly absorb heat.
[Eye of Insight]
Can see through a lot of hidden information.
[Tian Guan Huo Zheng LV5]
[Bird’s Exclusive Ability] Transforms into a Tianguan Huozheng, appearing in the body of fire and drawing in all the surrounding fire elements for its own use. The range and effect is related to the ability level.
……
This sparrow is truly extraordinary.
Lu Yao thought to himself.
When dealing with Song Shiyi in the future, he would have to keep a close eye on this sparrow.
