Monster Paradise

It only took a moment for Lin Huang to finish reading the information he had retrieved from the memory of the rabbit-eared female attendant. However, he was not able to glean very much useful information.

The rabbit-eared lady attendant was an ordinary person with no cultivation base at all, so her memory contained no information about cultivators.

“Do ordinary people in this city have no idea at all that cultivators exist?” Lin Huang frowned slightly.

This was something he had previously not anticipated. Based on his earlier assumptions, there ought to be many cultivators among the local residents. Besides, a small-scale battle caused by even the slightest of conflicts would cause anomalies people could see.

However, in the rabbit-eared lady’s memory, to the authorities, most of these anomalies were accounted for as weather phenomena. A small number of these strange happenings were regarded as man-made flying machines.

There was almost nothing useful to Lin Huang in the rabbit-eared lady’s memory, apart from a simple map, some common sense, and knowledge of this current world.

“It looks like I’ll still need to find a cultivator first…” Lin Huang drummed lightly on the table with the fingers of his left hand, raising the coffee cup to his mouth with his right hand and taking a sip.

After a moment of thought, he released colorless and formless Leech Pods from his body that dispersed in all directions.

He did not dare to use Divine Telekinesis rashly just yet, but he could use Leech Pods. This was because it was hard for Leech Pods to be discovered without the use of Divine Telekinesis.

Of course, he did not disperse them in a wide range. Instead, he manipulated the Leech Pods to within a five-kilometer radius around him.

After all, the wider the area that the Leech Pods spread to, the higher the possibility of encountering a powerhouse. Furthermore, his current objective was to gather information. He did not want to attract unwanted trouble before officially taking action.

Lin Huang drank his coffee casually, silently monitoring the real-time images that the hundreds of Leech Pods sent back.

Within five minutes, he noticed a few individuals he suspected might be cultivators.

Since he did not use Divine Telekinesis for detection, and these individuals had no energy fluctuations emanating from them at all, Lin Huang could only make basic speculations based on the images the Leech Pods sent.

To use Lin Huang’s own words, to observe someone’s essence, qi, spirit, and so on was actually a purely subjective matter.

After locking onto these several potential individuals, Lin Huang thought to himself for a moment and abandoned the idea of appearing in front of them directly. Instead, he controlled a few of the Leech Pods to infiltrate the suspected candidates’ bodies.

There were a total of four individuals who were infiltrated by Leech Pods. However, only one of them was a real cultivator, while the remaining three were merely ordinary people.

Lin Huang felt slightly embarrassed to have discovered this from the Leech Pods.

However, he was thick-skinned enough and soon recovered from his embarrassment. He began extracting the information that the Leech Pod had retrieved from the cultivator’s mind.

This particular cultivator was a Silt Monster.

This type of monster was a creature that took the form of a lump of dark-brown mud—it had no distinguishable essence, qi, or spirit on it at all. Essence, qi, and spirit aside, even if Lin Huang were to stand right in front of it, he would not be able to locate its face.

The reason he locked onto this monster was purely that it was the only Silt Monster within range of his hundreds of Leech Pods.

This Silt Monster was a Virtual God rank-7; Lin Huang finally managed to extract some comparatively useful information from its memory.

In this phantom city, the ratio of ordinary people to cultivators was 9:1. The cultivators mingled with these ordinary individuals, living in the normal world.

What made Lin Huang more curious was that in this Silt Monster’s memory, the lowest combat strength among the cultivators in this world was that of Virtual God. There were no cultivators below god-level. Individuals below Virtual Gods were ordinary people; there was a huge gap where mid-level cultivators would be.

Moreover, since the beginning of time, ordinary people were completely cut off from any information about cultivators in this world.

Ordinary people did not admire cultivators, nor did they idolize them. They had no idea that cultivators even existed.

Even if these ordinary people witnessed something about cultivators occasionally, they would forget about it automatically.

Meanwhile, for cultivators, it was an unspoken rule that their skills and divine abilities should not be displayed in front of ordinary people, much less attack them.

The Silt Monster had no idea why exactly they could not attack ordinary people. However, from the information in its memory, it was clear that something bad might happen if they killed normal individuals.

Therefore, ordinary people and cultivators had lived peacefully thus far in this odd state of co-existence.

Lin Huang thought such a social structure was rather interesting, although it was clearly an artificial construct.

What piqued his interest even more as he read the information was that he realized this city was different from any other cities that he had seen.

“There’s an inner world that’s like an inverted image…” As Lin Huang mumbled softly, the curiosity gleaming in his eyes grew even more.

He had retrieved a rather special bit of information from the Silt Monster’s memory.

At the moment, he was only looking at the surface of the city. Meanwhile, hidden underneath the surface, the city possessed another side.

As soon as one passed through a certain door, cultivators could enter this inner world within the city.

That city was exactly the same as this one. However, there were no ordinary people, only cultivators.

There were markets for trading for all sorts of items and channels to obtain various kinds of information. Not only that, killings and battles could happen at any time…

Compared to the peace and quiet of the surface world, although there was a certain order in this inner world as well, what emerged more frequently was the unbridled growth of madness and desire.

The cultivators fought bitterly in the inner world, but as soon as they returned to the surface world, they blended into the circles of ordinary folk.

Life was at peace in the mortal world.

Lin Huang even quietly speculated that the holder of the castellan’s seal of Phantom City might be a person with a split personality.

After reading the Silt Monster’s memory, what disappointed Lin Huang more was that he did not find out anything about the castellan’s seal, or the holder of the castellan’s seal.

The Silt Monster’s memory was completely blank as far as this information was concerned.

Although there was no direct clue to the castellan’s seal, Lin Huang did not feel defeated. At the very least, he had now discovered the existence of the inner world, as well as how to enter it. Finding more clues was only a matter of time.

After all, the Silt Monster was merely a Virtual God. It was considered the lowest form of existence in this phantom city. If Lin Huang were to view Phantom City as a game, the Silt Monster would be just a minor creature in it.

Going by a game designer’s way of thinking, they would not store very much important information within a minor creature by the roadside.

Following common game design practices, the more powerful the monster, the more information it would contain.

Furthermore, this game even had a new, hidden map now, which would undoubtedly allow the players to gain more rewards.

Lin Huang was not at all worried about obtaining more information later.

From the Silt Monster’s mind, he retrieved the closest coordinates to the inner world’s entrance. With no hesitation, he disappeared in a flash…