What Was Going On

"Sandru, Sandru, wake up!"

In his sleep, Liu Zhi heard the voice ringing beside his ear. He struggled to open his eyes, only to find that his eyelids seemed much heavier than before. No matter how hard he tried, he could not open them.

Then the voice continued, "This is your last chance. Make good use of it..."

Before the voice had finished, Liu Zhi let out a loud cry. He felt as if his head were about to explode. Vast amounts of information and memories flooded into his mind. Some of the memories were complete, while others were chaotic; some were reasonable, while others were absurd.

After clutching his head and rolling around for a while, Liu Zhi slowly calmed down. At the same time, he gained a rough understanding of what had happened. The instant he could open his eyes, he spoke involuntarily.

"There's no need for a last chance. That poor Sandru is already out of chances."

It turned out that the situation before him was the graduation examination of a necromancer named Sandru.

This unlucky student, Sandru, had already failed three times in a row. If he failed again this time, then after leaving this world, he would wander forever in the underworld, becoming part of its backdrop.

But no one could have expected that Sandru, proud and arrogant, would lose his reason after his first three failures. He had forcibly activated an even more difficult graduation examination quest. When he was sent into this world, something went wrong, turning him into ashes and giving Liu Zhi, who had crossed over unintentionally, an advantage.

His soul had taken over everything belonging to Sandru, becoming the true controller of this body.

After sorting out the general situation, Liu Zhi had not yet had time to examine Sandru's memory fragments in detail and understand his plan when he was thrown out and slammed heavily onto the floor.

A strong fishy smell of the sea rushed toward him. Amid the swaying, Liu Zhi finally regained consciousness. He saw that he was apparently in a wooden cabin. He had just fallen from a hammock and crashed into the crates piled beside it.

Liu Zhi climbed to his feet and struggled for a long while before finally regaining his balance. However, the ship continued to rock violently, and chaotic footsteps occasionally came from outside the cabin.

Without having time to organize the body's memories, Liu Zhi pushed open the cabin door, and a strange language slipped from his mouth.

"What's happening outside?"

"Pirates. Civilians, go hide below deck. If we lose, offer your cargo to the pirates. Maybe that'll spare your life."

Amid their snickering, several shabbily dressed sailors carrying scimitars passed by the cabin. One of them answered Liu Zhi's question.

Naturally, they did not stop for long. They quickly headed toward the deck, and only one sailor turned his head and said, "Draw your sword and guard your things. If the pirates break in, protect your cabin yourself."

After closing the cabin door again, Liu Zhi grabbed a scimitar commonly used by sailors from beneath the hammock. Only after feeling slightly more at ease did he begin sorting through the body's memories.

The body Liu Zhi was using was also named Sandru. He was a descendant of a noble family, fairly handsome, with a head of inherited blond hair. His family had been so poor that he had sold off all their possessions and boarded a ship heading east, hoping to make his fortune.

This time, he had rented a cabin on the Xise Silver Fleet and loaded it with everything he had acquired over the years, preparing to transport it back to Xise for sale.

This was actually the standard method by which many down-and-out nobles in the seventeenth world turned their fortunes around.

However, this noble Sandru had not been chosen and possessed by a necromancer because his name happened to match that of the necromancer from another world. It was because he had unintentionally bought a strange item while doing business in South America.

That item had attracted the attention of the necromancer Sandru, making him place his final hope in this fallen noble.

After going through all the memories, Liu Zhi hurriedly searched the crates in the cabin. They were all spices and valuables that the noble Sandru had purchased bit by bit in South America.

To keep the goods from being damaged by moisture at sea, Sandru had gone to great lengths, afraid that his assets would suffer even the slightest damage.

At the same time, to protect his cargo, Sandru had brought enough dry provisions and guarded the cabin with a weapon. He never left the cabin, fearing that someone might sneak in and steal his things while he was gone.

If the cabin had not been so small and if he had not brought so many things, Sandru had even planned to open the crates and inventory the cargo every day.

Even without opening them, however, Sandru had a deep memory of what was stored in every crate. This made it much easier for Liu Zhi to search. He moved aside several large crates beside the hammock and took out a small box hidden among them.

This small box contained the most precious item among all of Sandru's belongings. When he opened it, he found various gemstones, all wrapped in cotton.

Carefully moving aside several of the gemstones, Liu Zhi took out a strangely shaped golden pendant.

The pendant was unmistakably in the Mayan style. It depicted the face of the Sun God, with a pair of tiny rubies set in its eyes and a ring of ancient, mysterious hieroglyphs surrounding it.

The object looked extremely old, and it felt warm in his hand.

The moment he picked it up, several thoughts arose involuntarily in Liu Zhi's mind.

He seemed to be able to use it as a medium to contact the dead Inca emperor Atahualpa. As long as he agreed to help fulfill Atahualpa's curse and kill the descendants of the treacherous villain Francisco Pizarro, Liu Zhi could use this treasure to summon the spirit of an Inca hero as his subordinate.

Alternatively, he could obtain the method used by the Inca to train Sun heroes. If not, he could use the item to fuse the spirit of an Inca hero into his own body and gain all of that spirit's abilities.

Turning the pendant over and over in his hands, Liu Zhi felt puzzled. This was indeed a good item, and its three choices were sufficient for any beginning. But that did not mean it was worth Sandru risking his life over. Judging from the fragments of memory Sandru had left behind, his first three graduation examinations had begun with similar choices.

Carrying this doubt, Liu Zhi searched through the memory fragments and quickly discovered some unusual clues.

The pendant seemed to be capable of contacting the dead Atahualpa and conducting some form of communication with him through their souls.

After that, all the clues abruptly ended. Only intermittent fragments remained, containing words like God's Domain on earth, pyramids, and ruins. There was no way to piece them into a complete explanation.

This surprised Liu Zhi. He was just about to follow the method Sandru had left behind for communicating with souls and converse with the soul inside the pendant when the ship shook again.