Amid a thunderous roar, the runes on the hull lit up. Countless Rune Chains wrapped around the entire ship, forming a streamlined protective barrier as the ship began to move.
Like ice thawing, the ship, once utterly silent and lifeless, suddenly became noisy with that roar.
Clack, clack, clack. Heavy footsteps and the sound of armor colliding rang out.
Fang Zheng turned around, watching excitedly as a figure who had been sitting cross-legged on the deck moments ago, clad in blood-red armor, began walking across the deck.
As the figure walked, he muttered hollowly, "This year's spiritual herbs are of good quality. Just a little more and I'll have enough to break through..."
Fang Zheng excitedly stepped forward.
"Hey! Can you hear me? Can you understand what I'm saying?"
An unfamiliar language repeated itself stiffly once more: "This year's spiritual herbs are of good quality. Just a little more and I'll have enough to break through..."
"What happened to you before? Why weren't you moving at all?"
"Wait, what are you—" Fang Zheng, overwhelmed with excitement and standing in front of the Armored Figure, was directly rammed into by him.
"This year's spiritual herbs are of good quality. Just a little more and I'll have enough to break through..."
When a frightening-looking Block Person stood in front of the Armored Figure, he neither stopped nor went around. He simply kept moving. Even though his path was blocked and he could no longer advance, his feet continued scraping against the deck.
At the same time, he kept repeating the same words Fang Zheng could not understand: "This year's spiritual herbs are of good quality. Just a little more and I'll have enough to break through..."
With a thud, the Armored Figure lost his balance and fell to the ground. Yet his feet remained in a walking posture, the armor on his legs scraping the deck with a harsh squeak, squeak.
Watching this, Fang Zheng fell silent. He phased through the deck and looked at the figures below, where things had become lively as everyone carried out their own tasks.
He quietly observed them at close range, watching as they continuously repeated certain phrases.
Even after switching back to Creative Mode and revealing himself, he received no response from them. He placed several blocks in their paths, only to watch them crash directly into them and lose their balance.
Fang Zheng understood at once.
His excitement immediately turned to dejection. "They aren't real people. They're NPCs—some kind of NPCs following fixed movement patterns..."
After leaving the ship, Fang Zheng looked at the countless vessels filling the sky and land, and loneliness and despair surged from the depths of his heart.
I assumed this was a Cultivation World.
But what if it isn't a Cultivation World at all, but a massive cultivation-style game with a closed map and no real Intelligent Life?
Loneliness and isolation gnawed at his heart, leaving Fang Zheng standing there blankly for a long time.
After quite a while, bitter laughter finally came from the immortal Block Person's mouth. "Hahaha... I should look on the bright side."
"At the very least..."
"At the very least, even if this is a cultivation Game World, it still looks far better than that crappy place in the MC world made of pixels and blocks."
Looking at the densely packed Flying Battleships, Fang Zheng laughed. "At least it'll help me kill some time."
"For example, I could try flying one of these ships myself or something. Hahaha..."
With that, Fang Zheng looked down at the battleship beneath his feet, which had gone still once more. He took a lever from the Creative Mode inventory and tried placing it on the ship before clicking it.
At once, the battleship, which had been motionless like all the others around it, suddenly began moving—along with the motionless people aboard it.
Moreover, unlike the other battleships that occasionally moved and slowly began accelerating, this one shot from zero to maximum speed the instant it started moving.
Beneath the automatically activated translucent protective barrier, Fang Zheng stared outside at the objects that had been completely stretched into noodle-like lines by the ship's speed, glowing with red and blue light.
"So it really works..."
"Since the rules of different worlds can interact to some extent, and the blocks I placed before can endlessly produce those Rune Chains..."
"Then there's no reason special items like Levers and Buttons from the MC world wouldn't work too."
"There's no reason they can't function as switches and forcibly activate these game objects."
"Hahaha!" Fang Zheng let out a strained, bitter laugh.
He forced himself to smile. "I should have tried placing a Button or lever directly on the gate earlier. Maybe I could have used it as a switch to force the gate open, instead of spending several days slowly phasing through it."
"Maybe I could even find some means of transportation for getting through the gate."
"Right, where do I control this flying ship's direction?"
"Can my block hands control it?"
Amid the disappointment filling his heart, Fang Zheng tried as hard as he could to make himself a little happier.
"I'm so looking forward to this!"
"If this is a cultivation Game World, then since everything is so detailed, there should be complex storylines and such, right?"
"Trying out those storylines should be fun, right?"
"Where are these Flying Battleships headed in this enormous city?"
"Hahaha..."
"Haha..."
"...Sigh."
Fang Zheng's voice sank.
"If this really is another Game World, a cultivation Game World completely devoid of any normal Intelligent Life..."
"Then even if I strike a Hell Gate frame with lightning again, would it only open a portal to another Game World...?"
"Would I be able to find players like myself in other worlds...?"
"If I can't encounter real Intelligent Life, will I only be able to play house with NPCs like this?"
"If that happens, how long can I keep going?"
The Block Person simply stood quietly at the front of the battleship, watching the surrounding scenery flash past like flowing light, all of it already showing signs of blueshift and redshift.
He stood there blankly, his mind empty, not knowing what he was thinking.
However...
Suddenly, Fang Zheng turned his head and tilted his blocky head. "Who's talking?"
"The Immortal Realm Blockade leaves no path ahead..."
"The Immortal Realm Blockade leaves no path ahead..."
An aged, sorrowful voice came from nowhere, gradually growing louder.
Fang Zheng turned his blocky head and asked in confusion, "Shouldn't it be vacuum around this ship? Sound can travel too?"
But he immediately remembered. "Oh, right. If this really is a Game World, nobody ever said sound can't travel through a vacuum."
Still, Fang Zheng could not understand what the voice was saying at all. "I really can't understand this world's language."
"How long would it take me to learn it? If I can't learn it, then even if I want to play house with NPCs, I won't know what they're saying."
Fang Zheng did not care much at first, but as he continued listening, he grew puzzled—and then excited.
"This sounds like a living person?" He could sense intense grief and despair in the voice's tone.
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