Again 2

When Lin Sheng left the internet café, it was already past six in the evening, and the sky had grown a little dark.

Lin Sheng grabbed something to eat from a street stall, then hailed a taxi and went straight home.

When he got back, his father wasn't there. Only his mother, Gu Wanqiu, was in the kitchen peeling potatoes.

Lin Sheng joined her, and they quickly made two dishes. Then mother and son sat around the table and ate.

Gu Wanqiu asked him about his outing that day. Lin Sheng kept a straight face as he made up a whole string of stories, getting through her questions with ease.

As far as he was concerned, he didn't want his family finding out that he'd joined a swordsmanship club outside.

It was just like how he didn't want to join Sears's so-called company. It was another complicated circle.

Besides, he knew nothing about Sears.

What did he do? What was he like? What was his background? Was he a good person or a bad one? Lin Sheng knew nothing. Was he really supposed to join him just for the money?

Of course not. He needed to think it over carefully.

After dinner, Lin Sheng washed the dishes, then used reviewing his lessons as an excuse to quickly wash up and return to his bedroom.

He worked through two sets of review questions, then started to feel sleepy. He put on his jacket and changed into the sneakers he'd prepared.

He lay down fully dressed on the edge of the bed and closed his eyes to rest.

Valen Temple.

Inside the gray-white temple.

Lin Sheng slowly sat up between the rows of seats and expertly surveyed his surroundings.

The temple was still just as it had been when he left last time.

A reassuring atmosphere hung in the air. The doors and windows were undamaged and tightly shut.

Lin Sheng stood up from the row of seats and checked himself.

He was wearing the black tracksuit and sneakers he'd put on before bed. His weapon—the Elite Rotten Longsword—was leaning against the seat beside him.

He picked up the sword and walked out from between the rows of seats. Without looking at the Prayer Altar in the middle, he headed straight for a small door at the very back of the temple.

He had finished exploring every other part of Valen Temple. The only place left was the storage room at the back.

The temple had a main hall, a secondary hall, a bedroom for the clergy, a kitchen, and a bathroom.

He had searched all of those places already. Apart from a few everyday items, there was nothing else.

Now the only place left was this storage room.

Gripping the sword hilt, Lin Sheng soon reached the storage room and took hold of the slightly cold copper handle.

He pulled it outward.

Creak.

With a faint scraping sound, the gray-white wooden door slowly swung open.

Inside was a small space about one square meter in size.

There wasn't much stored there. All it contained was a carved stone pillar, rather like a stele, a little over a meter tall.

The pillar was gray-white. At the very top was a carving of a crescent moon beside three stars.

Below it were markings that seemed to form a scale.

At the bottom was a line of text.

Lin Sheng leaned closer to read it carefully.

"Test Tower: a stone tower for assessing occupational level. Measures the levels of Temple Knights, warriors, and clerics."

"Test Tower?" Lin Sheng was taken aback. This was the first time he'd seen one.

He had heard people in many Memory Fragments being described as warriors of a certain level, but no one had ever mentioned how those levels were determined.

Or perhaps the Memory Fragments he'd absorbed simply hadn't contained any information about that.

But now, it seemed this little stone tower had something to do with assessing occupational levels.

He walked up to the tower and examined it closely.

Apart from the patterns and markings on its surface, the tower had only two protruding rod-shaped handles, one on each side.

Symbols indicating that they should be gripped were carved along the edges of the handles.

Lin Sheng reached out and took hold of both handles.

For some reason, he seemed to feel an extremely faint trickle of warmth seep from the handles into his palms, then race up his arms and circle through his body.

The warmth quickly flowed back into the tower and disappeared.

Humm.

A faint vibrating sound rang out.

As Lin Sheng watched in surprise, the markings on the front of the tower slowly lit up with a pale white glow.

The whole tower was like a thermometer. From its base, a white line as thick as a finger began to rise.

The line slowly stopped at the mark for level two and remained there.

"Level two?" Lin Sheng's heart stirred. He released the handles.

As soon as he let go, the white line dimmed rapidly, soon fading from sight.

"Does this mean I'm at the level of a level-two warrior now?" Lin Sheng guessed.

He gripped the handles again.

The white line soon lit up and rose to the level-two mark, but the faint warmth he'd felt before didn't appear this time.

"Interesting. I wonder what criteria this thing uses to assess people."

He released the handles and let the line fade away.

Lin Sheng searched around the storage room, but apart from the Test Tower, he didn't find anything else.

Carrying the Rotten Longsword, he returned to the temple's main doors.

This time, he wasn't planning to stay in the safe zone.

There were no monsters or dangers in the temple, so he'd come to regard it as a safe place to rest and recover.

This place is nice, but I didn't come into this dream just to stay in a safe zone.

Lin Sheng gently pulled open the main doors.

The doors parted without a sound, and a frigid, bone-chilling draft swept inside.

Lin Sheng shivered, but still held his sword and walked out of the hall, one step at a time.

Standing at the temple entrance, he could see the streetlights illuminating the city blocks of Black Feather City.

Empty streets. Row upon row of decaying, dilapidated buildings.

In the distance stood a tall, sharp black tower, surrounded by towering city walls that stretched away in every direction.

"This place is like one huge cage," Lin Sheng murmured, his gaze searching for where to go next.

Carrying his sword, he slowly walked to the iron fence around the courtyard and looked across at a mansion directly opposite the temple.

It was a fish-shaped mansion, much like a grand estate.

Its exterior was gray-white, covered in carvings of figures resembling angelic infants. Delicate patterns like wisteria flowers adorned parts of its surface.

Compared with the other nearby buildings, the mansion was much better preserved. Even the wall around its grounds was in excellent condition, with no breaches.

The mansion had three stories, and the doors and windows on each floor were tightly shut.

From where Lin Sheng stood, he could see a dry black fountain in the middle of the courtyard across the street. A white stone stele stood in front of it.

The moonlight was soft, and he could just make out some writing carved on the stele.

He thought about it, then decided to take a look inside the mansion across the street.

It wasn't just because the mansion was so well preserved and might hold something valuable. More importantly, it was the closest to the temple, so it might be relatively safe.

There was one other thing: compared with the other buildings nearby, the mansion was much shorter. Some of its details were also less refined and extravagant than those of the other buildings around it.

Clearly, its owner had held a low status.

In a place rife with danger, low status meant the danger level probably wasn't too high.

Creak.

Lin Sheng gently opened the iron gate and walked out.

As soon as he left the area beneath the temple's circular canopy, he felt a chill run through him.

A faint, bone-chilling sense of danger welled up inside him.

Lin Sheng tightened his grip on the Black Sword, glanced around, then quickly dashed toward the mansion's iron gate.

With a few quick strides, he crossed the street, more than ten meters wide, and soon reached the gate.

He gently pulled at it, and the mansion's iron gate slowly swung open.