The Creatures That We Are

Chapter 1067: Formula

Li City, March.

Dawn saw a gentle breeze sweeping over the new growths, carrying the pleasant fragrance of osmanthus flowers. The city was only arousing. Everything seemed brimming with life.

An eye-catching four-passenger race car sped along a quiet street, breaking the serenity with the stimulating engine revs. Then it slowed and stopped by the Fifteenth Highschool.

“Alright! Let’s just stop here!”

In the backseat, Gao Xinxin, dressed in spring uniform, released the seatbelt.

“Why don’t we drop you at the entrance?” Gao Yang asked from the passenger seat. “So that you won’t be late.”

“I have five minutes. I’ll make it!” Gao Xinxin hopped out of the car with a canvas slung onto her back. She hopped twice and brushed her fringe before striding toward the entrance.

Gao Yang popped his head out of the car window. “Remember to have breakfast! Or you’ll have stomach problems.”

“I get it, I get it!” Gao Xinxin jogged away, looking small and fragile in the white uniform.

Gao Yang watched her go, still worried. “The brand of Absolute Barrier...”

“It’ll still work for another two days. Don’t worry. No one’s hurting her.” Wang Zikai interrupted him irritatedly. “Stop nagging. It’ll only annoy her.”

“I’m worried about her.” Gao Yang disagreed. “What’s wrong with being worried?”

“The method has to work for her!” Wang Zikai said. “Think about it. She suddenly dropped out of school and came back just as suddenly. People would talk. To make things worse, you insisted on driving her every day.”

Wang Zikai flipped his hair. “Look at this car, and we hot guys. If we appear at her school’s entrance every day, what do you think other people will say about her?”

Gao Yang blinked at him. “You’re right.”

“Aren’t you a certified womanizer, bro? You should know how girls think. Why do you have no tact when it comes to your sister?” Wang Zikai started the car. “Is it because you care too much about her?”

Gao Yang was getting suspicious. “Where did you learn all these from, Wang Zikai?”

“Ha?” Wang Zikai let out a stiff laugh, feeling exposed. “You think I have to learn from someone? My IQ and EQ combined is over 800 at the least!”

Whoa, you even know what IQ and EQ are?

Gao Yang only needed a moment to figure out the answer. “Liao Liao?”

Wang Zikai’s smile stilled. He stepped on the accelerator and pretended not to hear Gao Yang.

...

It had been two months since Qilin’s death.

There was no longer a civil war amid awakeners, and no casualties that would come with it. Peace finally returned. They began to plan their next steps.

Their number one question was: is there a doorway out of the Mist World?

According to Zhang Wei, Qilin was certain that there wasn’t any.

Not only so, Qilin seemed to have glimpsed God through the Miracle Rune Circuit with the power granted by Eidos. He saw an “index”, through which he found out that there was no hope or an escape from this Mist World.

Thus, Qilin resolved to create an eternal homeland for humanity, stripping everyone’s consciousness from their body and placing it in a spinning top consisting of the twelve Rune Circuits, gathering all consciousness into a collective. Provided the spinning top never stopped, the collective consciousness of humanity would not fade; that was his idea of immortality.

Almost everyone disagreed with Qilin’s plan after learning of it, and they felt a belated fear—they would rather die than lose themselves and become trapped in an unknown cage as part of a limbo of consciousness.

It was Qilin’s onesided claim that there was no door, though. At least Dragon seemed to believe firmly that the Gates of Closure existed, and he had devoted his life to opening the Gates.

However, Dragon was still hibernating.

War Tiger visited the hibernation chamber every week to nag at Dragon, but the man didn’t show any signs of waking up. If not for the chamber displaying his vitals, War Tiger would’ve suspected that he had died.

Still, War Tiger didn’t dare to open the “coffin” when Dragon hadn’t woken up on his own; for one, he unconditionally followed Dragon’s order, and for another, waking Dragon up by force came with a great risk.

To conclude, the firm denier of there being a door died, while the firm believer of there being a door slumbered. The rest knew not who to believe, and they were left confused and lost.

Yet there were things they could do. After collecting the twelve Rune Circuits, Gao Yang and War Tiger sought out Dr. Jia to study them.

They first confirmed that the twelve Rune Circuits belonged together as one entity. When placed together, they formed a circle automatically and hovered, slowly rotating counterclockwise like a gear.

Dr. Jia called it the standby mode.

Then there was the on mode.

Picking one of the Rune Circuits as the core, and the other eleven Rune Circuits would transform accordingly as the components, quickly assembling into the corresponding form. To activate on mode, though, an awakener with one of the top twelve Talents must manipulate the corresponding Rune Circuit.

When Gao Yang injected some of Absolute Defense’s energy into the Guard Rune Circuit and pushed it to the center of the gear, the other eleven Rune Circuits converged toward the Guard Rune Circuit and formed a three-by-three Rubik’s cube.

Gao Yang tried to study what it did, but the cube didn’t seem to do anything.

They speculated that Gao Yang’s Absolute Defense might have to reach level 8 for him to establish a deeper link to the artifact.

Then Gao Yang did the same thing with the Time-Space Rune Circuit as the core, and the Rune Circuits transformed into an old clock without clock hands.

He tried different things and didn’t get any results.

After more tries, they had found other forms the Rune Circuits took:

The Damage Rune Circuit as the core with War Tiger’s Killing Expert injected resulted in an old javelin.

The Buff Rune Circuit as the core with Qing Ling’s Limitless Evolution injected resulted in a double helix structure resembling human DNA.

The Poison Rune Circuit as the core with Gregor’s Pestilence injected resulted in a black mask.

With the Psyche Rune Circuit, Qilin had assembled a spinning top before Gao Yang. Now that Qilin was dead, and no one had comprehended Eidos yet, they couldn’t recreate it.

Similarly, since awakeners with the top Talent of Knowledge, Miracle, Element, Summon, Life, and Support Rune Type were either dead or unconscious, they couldn’t trigger the corresponding form with the Rune Circuits.

Those with the bottom Talents, such as Lucky, Confidence, Grumpy, and Strange couldn’t trigger a transformation, either.

That was the result of one week of experimentation.

According to the results and data collected, Dr. Jia came up with a few possibilities, one of which had won the others’ approval—well, Dr. Jia’s hypothesis had left everyone speechless because none of them understood him. It was Gao Yang who translated it into layman’s terms for them.

Suppose the Mist World was a math problem, and the twelve Rune Circuits were numbers and symbols. Different people could come up with different formulas to get different answers.

Put aside how he did it, Qilin, with Eidos, glimpsed a divine secret through the Miracle Rune Circuit, leading to him picking one of the formulas. That required him to use the Psyche Rune Circuit as the core and the other Rune Circuits as the components to create an ever-spinning top.

Then Qilin would execute his way of saving the world through Eidos.

Perhaps it meant that the other artifacts created by using one of the other eleven Rune Circuits as the core were each a different formula that would lead to a different answer.

Each answer would be one way of saving the world.

Simply put, there were twelve possible solutions when facing the Mist World. No one knew if the answers were right or wrong, success or failure.

And there would be no such judgment to be made. There was no one right way to do things. It was about personal choice and belief.

Qilin was proof of that. What he believed to be right was the wrong answer to others.

Everyone agreed with this hypothesis.

Then they held a few meetings. Gao Yang and War Tiger came up with a detailed plan for what they should do.