Chapter 77: The Half-Skull Passed from Hand to Hand

Chapter 77: The Half-Skull Passed from Hand to Hand

When Du Xiaoran heard me admit that I had an innate sensing response to the Myriad-Dimensional Brain, his worry visibly melted into something like joy. That meant my existence mattered to him—mattered a good deal. Exactly how much, only he knew, and he clearly wasn’t about to say.

I didn’t see how I could help him get the thing back. Pu Liuqian had already taken it—that much was plain. If we wanted it, we’d have to go ask her for it, steal it, or take it by force.

Was any of that even possible?

That was why I was a little baffled.

Seeing that I hadn’t caught up to his good mood, Du Xiaoran didn’t bother explaining. Instead he said, “Want to go back to that base with me? Take another look?”

“So you admit it was your base?”

“Admit it? Not even if you beat me. Admit it, and Pu Liuqian will skin me alive.”

“Then why go back? There’s nothing left in there. The patrol team won’t have left anything worth taking. Besides, I heard Pu Liuqian order them to keep watch on the place—anyone caught there gets hauled in for questioning.”

“You, in your current state, worried about getting caught? This body of mine cost a lot more than yours, and even I don’t mind risking it. What have you got to lose?”

“Fine, if you put it that way, I’m not scared either. Let’s go.”

I flapped off toward the raided base, Du Xiaoran close behind. The moment we’d both burrowed into that pile of junk, he pecked me sharply from behind.

“This way.”

I turned and followed him straight into the sewer beneath the debris.

A pigeon, squeezing through a sewer—feathers and all? Not exactly a smooth fit. But Du Xiaoran moved through it with obvious familiarity, and as it turned out, there was a narrow path inside, sized just right for a pigeon body. Clearly, this was the real way in and out of the base.

Then what was that other pipe route for?

That night, the two scout pigeons had slipped in with practiced ease—not their first time, certainly. They must have found that passage only after watching and tracking Du Xiaoran. Otherwise, who would ever guess the entrance was a pile of junk?

But once inside, that other pipe had been obvious—visible the moment you got inside. Had Du Xiaoran left it there on purpose?

If the route he was leading me down now was the true one, that other pipe had to be a maze route.

But that decoy had led straight to the Myriad-Dimensional Brain’s storage room. Wasn’t that just handing the thing to Pu Liuqian on a plate?

None of it added up.

I followed close behind Du Xiaoran, walking the narrow path inside the sewer for a long stretch. Who would have thought a sewer could hide a path like this—built, it seemed, for pigeons exactly our size.

After many twists and turns, we came at last to a fully sealed room, small, and clearly treated against detection.

Only then did Du Xiaoran fly up onto a piece of equipment and tap it awake.

A panoramic map bloomed across the wall behind it, a single bright point glowing somewhere on its surface.

I moved closer to study it. It looked like a full map of the Elite World—Hua City and Ouluo City both marked, along with mountains, rivers, and seas. I’d never visited the other cities shown, but I could still make out their locations.

What did that bright point mean?

Du Xiaoran came over and gestured at it. “That point marks where the Myriad-Dimensional Brain is right now. I’ve watched it for two days. It hasn’t moved once, which means it’s already been put into storage there—in Yaxi City.”

I asked him to zoom in; the detail was too fine to make out.

He adjusted the view, closer, then closer still, until I could see the building itself, and even the exact floor.

“Where is this?”

“That is where the core supercomputer terminal is located. The Shadow Pavilion Building.”

“The core supercomputer terminal? Then where is the supercomputer’s main body?”

“The core supercomputer’s main body is three thousand meters underwater on the seabed. No ordinary person could ever reach it.”

“And the Shadow Pavilion’s members—are they down there too?”

“Where, exactly, I couldn’t tell you. Only people inside the Pavilion know that.”

“Did you hand the Myriad-Dimensional Brain to Pu Liuqian on purpose?” I asked. “That pipe route above the junk pile—I’m starting to think you left it there deliberately. And the clue that led them to it—you leaked that too, didn’t you? That’s how they got it so easily. What are you playing at?”

Du Xiaoran sighed. “You really do have to know everything, don’t you? Doesn’t that wear you out? Fine—you’ve guessed it. I wanted Pu Liuqian to carry the Myriad-Dimensional Brain into the Shadow Pavilion herself, because I can’t get it there myself. I’ve studied that thing for years, and my final conclusion is this: only the core supercomputer can interpret it. Relying on ordinary scientific instruments to study it is simply impossible.”

“And you’re not worried the Pu family will just keep it for themselves?”

He turned to face me. “You already asked me the right question earlier—why would the Pu family take it at all? To study it themselves, or just to keep others from studying it? My answer is the latter. They have no intention of studying it. And since they won’t, and we can’t, think it through: how am I supposed to get the Myriad-Dimensional Brain anywhere near the core supercomputer’s terminal to unlock its secrets? The only workable path is to let Pu Liuqian carry it there for me.”

“And then?”

“And then, we infiltrate the Shadow Pavilion—slip in, or force our way in—and use the quantum core supercomputer to crack the Myriad-Dimensional Brain’s secrets. What else would we do?”

“God, you really don’t lack nerve, do you? Aren’t you afraid this is just tossing a meat bun to a dog—gone the moment it’s thrown, never coming back? What makes you think you can infiltrate or break in?”

“Obviously I can’t. But you can. This gamble of mine still beats leaving the thing sitting at home, going nowhere. As long as the Myriad-Dimensional Brain and the supercomputer’s terminal end up in the same place, there’s hope of cracking it—no matter who does the cracking. But keep the two apart, and no one will ever manage it.”

“So maybe you don’t care who cracks the secrets of the Myriad-Dimensional Brain. You only care that it gets solved. Is that it?”

“Yes and no. Like I said, the Pu family probably has no intention of solving it at all. They just don’t want anyone else to.”

“So this isn’t just reckless—it’s trying to bargain with a tiger for its skin. Do you know what the Shadow Pavilion is? A dragon’s pool, a tiger’s den. Feng Du alone sits at rank thirty, and who knows how many other experts are in there. If the Pu family won’t crack it, no one will. You’ve handed it straight to them—where’s the hope in that?”

“My hope,” Du Xiaoran said, “is you. You’re my greatest hope.”

I laughed, more out of disbelief than amusement. “Me? You actually think I could get in there, beat the Pu father and daughter, then sit down and run the core supercomputer to crack the Myriad-Dimensional Brain myself? Are you dreaming?”

His expression turned grave at once. Pigeon body or not, I could feel the weight of it.

“I’m not joking,” he said. “I mean every word. That half-skull sat with me for years, and the moment you appeared in front of me, I felt something certain settle in me. To be precise—from the moment you crossed back from the virtual world into the real one, I was already planning this. Remember the Spirit-Calibrating Ruler?”

“Of course. It said my consciousness body thickness was heaven-defying.”

“That’s exactly why I made up my mind. What the ruler showed was real—your foundation in force of consciousness truly is heaven-defying. No second person like you exists, as far as I know. That’s the key to unlocking the Myriad-Dimensional Brain. It has to be you.”

Hearing him say it like that, I couldn’t joke anymore either. “My ability’s still nowhere near enough,” I said, serious now. “To enter the Shadow Pavilion, I think my basic ability would need to surpass Feng Du at the very least and reach above rank thirty. And Pu Xuande—his research ability might be weak, but his martial power probably isn’t. I’d guess forty to fifty. Without a solid way to escape, there’s no contending with people like that. And even getting into the core supercomputer’s control room quietly, running the super-core to crack the Myriad-Dimensional Brain would still take time—time that demands real strength to protect it. Pu Liuqian’s skilled in mind arts besides. Sneaking past her isn’t realistic. It would have to come down to a straight confrontation.”

“I’ve thought through everything you just said,” Du Xiaoran said. “I’m not sending you now. Even if you had the strength today, it still wouldn’t work. The Pu family isn’t one person—it’s the entire Shadow Pavilion group. And they already know you can sense the Myriad-Dimensional Brain. They’ll be preparing specifically to deal with you. Handing over the half-skull was a move I laid down in advance. What comes after depends on the three of us—you, me, and the resistance—working together.”

“You’re not part of the resistance,” I said. “Why help me at all?”

His voice turned unusually solemn. “I’m not helping you. I’m helping myself. I’ll tell you the truth. That Myriad-Dimensional Brain lived beside me, day and night, for nearly ten years. Its hold on me has sunk into my bones. I can’t pull free of it—it’s gone too deep. Cracking its secret has become the one mission of my entire life. I even suspect that everyone who has ever held it, across this past century, has been marked by it the same way. That’s why it kept surfacing, kept changing hands, passing from owner to owner. Every time, someone would crown it a sacred object, treasure it like a prize—and every time, it would vanish again, only to resurface in someone else’s grasp. A hundred years of that cycle. It wasn’t until AI and the core supercomputer emerged that anyone who touched it was finally offered a chance at survival. Zhang Zirui happened to be the last person to appear.

“When Zhang Zirui first handed the skull to the quantum core supercomputer, it wasn’t out of curiosity. It was a mission the Myriad-Dimensional Brain laid on him—one he had no power to refuse. But the process broke off midway, when the power and equipment couldn’t keep pace, and Zhang Zirui, acting on pure instinct, snatched the half-skull back. He failed the mission it had given him. So he had to die. It looked, on the surface, like guilt and self-blame over losing the skull. In truth, it was very likely a curse from the Myriad-Dimensional Brain itself. No one persecuted Zhang Zirui to death. He took his own life.

“I’ve gone through the records. Every single person who ever held the Myriad-Dimensional Brain, if they failed to understand it, died under mysterious circumstances. Abandoning it, losing it, destroying it—none of it mattered. So this half-skull has always been caught in a loop, like a drum-and-flower game passed hand to hand: surfacing, vanishing, surfacing again, vanishing again. I only understood this once I truly held the thing myself. And the only way free of it is to crack it, and help it find its true owner.”

Damn.

Some treasure this was. This wasn’t a treasure—it was a disaster star, a giant calamity.

Whoever held it died. Whoever held it became its slave for life. And it would not rest until someone finally handed it the owner it was searching for.