Around 2 PM, Cheng Yan finished her nap and walked downstairs. Rubbing her sleepy eyes and yawning, she said, "I'm going back to get a change of clothes first, and I'll come back to take over the shift later... Huh?"
She looked closely and saw Cheng Yun slumped over the counter, fast asleep without making a single sound.
He looked as dead as a doornail!
Cheng Yan sighed helplessly, walked straight across the lobby, pushed open the glass door, and headed outside.
The scorching late-June sunlight made her frown involuntarily. She raised a hand to shield her forehead and scanned a Mobike bicycle to ride back.
Hardly had she left when Old Mage happened to be walking back from outside carrying a shopping bag. Remembering his recent shopping experience, Old Mage still wore a slightly embarrassed expression.
He glanced at Cheng Yun, who was sleeping slumped over the counter, and took the clothes upstairs. When he came back down, Cheng Yun had already woken up, and his complexion looked much better than before.
"Oh, you're back," Cheng Yun greeted.
"Mmm." Old Mage nodded, fished a few bills from his pocket, and handed them back to Cheng Yun. "This is the change from buying the clothes. I'm returning it to you."
"Uh, you don't need to..." Cheng Yun glanced at the bills and was momentarily stunned.
Good grief, he seemed to have given Old Mage four hundred yuan in total—summer clothes were cheap, after all, and he wasn't rich! Yet Old Mage had brought him back over three hundred and fifty yuan in change...
"Where on earth did you buy these clothes?" he asked.
"That city seemed to be the capital of your country, called Yanjing. Then there's a place called Xizhimen, and there's a market over there. I saw quite a few people squatting there picking out clothes. Since they were so popular, it must be pretty good, right?" Old Mage said.
"Yanjing!!" Cheng Yun checked his watch, then continued staring at Old Mage in disbelief. "You went from Jinguan to Yanjing in two hours?!"
Old Mage smiled faintly and said, "Indeed. You slept for two hours, and your spirits seem much better than this morning!"
"Is that so?" Cheng Yun blinked, stopped dwelling on it, and sighed. "It's probably related to taking a nap just now. Right, before I fell asleep, I kept repeating the first step of the meditation method. Every time I finished meditating, I felt a little tired, but immediately after, I felt my energy and vitality become much fuller. This is normal, right?"
"... " Old Mage was silent for a moment, then broke into a somewhat sheepish expression. "It's been far too long, I've almost forgotten most of it. But the results should prove some things."
"Then when my sister wakes up and comes down to take over the shift, let's continue learning the next step!" Cheng Yun said with some excitement. "Right, what is this set of meditation methods called?"
"Ah, let me think... It seems to be the Iron Horse Kingdom's Elementary Student Basic Meditation Method, Seventh Set, Simplified Version." Old Mage's single sentence instantly extinguished all his expectations.
"... " Cheng Yun.
As if seeing the blank daze in his expression, Old Mage quickly added, "However, I've optimized it. The meditation method is much more scientific than the one promoted back then, and the effects should be even better."
"Back then... I suppose..." Cheng Yun couldn't help falling silent. "The Iron Horse Kingdom is that kingdom that expanded to Yan Lake a few centuries ago, right? Does it still exist?"
"It does." Old Mage affirmed the sturdiness of this ancient kingdom. "Though it seems to have been reduced to a third-world country."
Cheng Yun squeezed out a forced smile at Old Mage, immediately got up, and walked out from behind the counter. "Keep an eye on things for me, I'm going upstairs to see if Cheng Yan is awake."
Just as he was about to head upstairs, he saw Cheng Yan wearing a sun hat, pushing open the door and walking in from outside while carrying a large watermelon. She looked at him and said, "Awake?"
"Uh, when did you go out?"
"Just now," Cheng Yan said, casting a light glance at Old Mage.
"Then you watch the front, I'm going upstairs to rest."
"Wait!" Cheng Yan called out.
"Huh?"
"I brought you some melatonin and sleeping pills, the ones I bought before and didn't finish." Calmly, Cheng Yan took one half of a watermelon that had already been cut in two, placed it on the counter, stuck a spoon right into the middle of the crimson flesh, and shoved the other half into the beverage refrigerator. Then she fished out a small bag and tossed it to him. "The melatonin dose is 5 mg, try taking one pill first, take two if it's not enough. Better not take the sleeping pills unless it's an absolute last resort, it was so hard for me to get a prescription for even this many."
"Alright." Cheng Yun took the medicine and went upstairs.
Old Mage followed calmly right behind him, while Cheng Yan stood inside the cash register counter, looked at their backs, and yawned.
In the node space, Cheng Yun sat cross-legged.
"Lord Mage, I think we can study the space-time nodes first, and then use the remaining time to learn the meditation method," Cheng Yun said as he raised his head to look at Old Mage, having already lost most of his interest in that set of 'National Primary School Broadcasting Calisthenics'.
"Alright." Old Mage smiled without saying much. "Then today, let's first study how to distinguish the energy recovery status of travelers and props."
"Okay!" Cheng Yun remained seated on the ground.
It had been proven countless times before that Old Mage's experiments didn't require physical coordination from him, and in this space, whatever posture he held or whatever location he occupied was completely meaningless.
With a wave of his hand, Old Mage produced that oversized wizard staff once more and tapped it twice against the ground—aside from making Old Mage look more like a mage and matching some of his habitual movements, this exceptionally flashy staff seemed to serve no other purpose.
"Let's establish a standard first, temporarily dividing it by percentages, and then break it down into energy scales later... I can clearly perceive the total energy and existing reserves of myself and the scroll, and you also possess a certain degree of perception regarding living beings and objects entering this space. Then it's very simple—just confirm which part of the sensation you perceive is related to our energy, find its changes, and map them into the standard."
"Got it!" Cheng Yun said.
"Most of the previous experiments involved me sharing my research results with you; this time it's your turn to share your results with me." Perhaps Old Mage would never have any use for this research result in his lifetime, but he simply possessed a paranoid pursuit of knowledge.
"Got it!" Cheng Yun said.
"Now I will help amplify your perception, and you must remember every single sensation you can feel."
"Got it!" Cheng Yun said.
An hour passed.
"Let's set this research aside for today, it's not something that can be completed in a short time. Let's move on to our next research project." Old Mage tapped his staff again. "I took some time to think about it last night. Although I haven't had time to list out formulas for analysis and verification, I feel that your control over this space should go far beyond this. I think we can try exploring in this direction."
"Got it!" Cheng Yun said.
"You really are... sigh!" Old Mage shook his head. "Then let's begin."
"Got it!" Cheng Yun's expression was vacant.
He felt as though he had returned to the past, back in high school.
Teacher: Since sinB(sin2A+cos2A) = √2sinA, right?
Cheng Yun: Mmm.
Teacher: Therefore sinB = √2sinA, right?
Cheng Yun: Mmm.
Teacher: Now the result is out, right?
Cheng Yun: Mmm.
Teacher: Then what is the result?
Cheng Yun:...
About an hour and a half later—
"Alright, let's stop here for today," Old Mage said with a smile. "You actually learn meditation quite fast."
Sitting on the ground, Cheng Yun put away the meditation aid card and felt as though he were already a broken man.
He looked up at Old Mage without moving, asking instead, "Lord Mage, I'm actually quite curious, do gods exist in your world? I seem to have heard you use the word demon."
"Gods? What is a god?" Old Mage looked at him and smiled helplessly. "In the beginning, gods were merely an answer in people's hearts, their purpose being to explain what this world and life looked like. Tracing it to its root, they were simply a tool imagined by people to fill cognitive blanks and eliminate inner fear and panic."
Cheng Yun was stunned. "And then later?"
"Later?" Old Mage's expression grew even more helpless. "You must understand, any god in the broad sense does not exist, and any god in the narrow sense is no god. We mages understand this better than anyone. Because in the long course of our world's development, far too many races and individuals who either claimed to be gods or were once revered as gods have been pulled off their altars by leaps and bounds in magical technology."
"I see!" Cheng Yun frowned. "Then what kind of world is your magical world?"
"Our world?" Old Mage revealed a trace of a smile. "To be frank, the background of our world is quite different from this world of yours! The difference lies in the nuances of subtle rules, so we don't have natural science, nor can we easily nurture natural science, because long before natural science, we already had magic. We possessed a feudal era far longer than yours; those primitive-style wars of ours lasted for tens of thousands of years. Later, the development of civilization changed everything, including magic and spellcasters..."
"Magic is no longer used to cast Fireball spells, nor does anyone group spellcasters into mage battle regiments anymore... We began using magic to manufacture weapons, create cities, build grand bridges spanning canyons and highways cutting through deserts, and use magic to propel us out of our planet to explore our plane..." Old Mage looked at him, noticing he seemed somewhat engrossed in listening, and couldn't help finding it mildly amusing. "Yet child, these are ultimately just external differences."
"Aside from differences in background, the rise and fall of cultures, wars flaring up and gradually subsiding, and realms being established, rising, and then heading toward ruin—kindness, greed, order, violence, rules, desires, these are always much the same!" Old Mage looked at him and said, "People living in two different worlds are actually doing much the same things. I've noticed that people in this world of yours also love using a metaphor: the wheels of history. Do you know why that is?"
"Why?" Cheng Yun asked. "Isn't it because the wheels will crush everything to pieces? Leaving everything behind in the past?"
"Because a wheel is a circle, repeating endlessly." Old Mage traced a circle in the air with his hand, and white lines emerged, gradually evolving into the shape of an ancient carriage wheel before spinning forward abruptly. "When the wheels of history roll forward, even as they press on, they merely change the era's background to stage the exact same story!"
"Is... is that so?" Cheng Yun narrowed his eyes, watching the spinning wheel.
He did not argue, nor did he have the heart to ponder how to refute it, even though if he wanted to, he could always pick out flaws.
Old Mage had already lived for twelve hundred years.
A thousand years might not sound long, but to an ordinary person, it was no different from an endless, distant road. Thus, ordinary people could perhaps never imagine what a spellcaster who had lived for a thousand years was truly like—how he thought, what experiences and insights he possessed, whether he was wiser than our imaginations, or hopelessly pedantic.
Cheng Yun didn't want to think about it because he was very sleepy.
The experiments with Old Mage had helped him a great deal, and he had also learned the second, third, and fourth steps of the meditation method from Old Mage. Old Mage said they should be able to suffice for the time being, and he wanted to go back and sleep to test them out.
To avoid any accidents, before going to sleep he ordered takeout for Old Mage, setting the delivery time for six o'clock.
Events proved that this move was very wise, because he slept straight through until eleven o'clock at night without dreaming or suffering from insomnia. When he woke up, he felt so refreshed that he almost wanted to scream out loud.
Insomnia was terrifying!
It was also his first time realizing that getting a good night's sleep could actually feel this wonderful!
It was a pity he was a bit hungry.
As Cheng Yun stumbled his way down from upstairs, he saw Cheng Yan being pestered at the cash register by a clean-cut, sharply dressed young man of around twenty.
Cheng Yun's sleepy eyes flew wide open.
Before you continue