Fortress of the Mind

Ghost Gizzard had become even more foolish and blindly obsessed.

The moment he was released, he charged in one direction.

Endless Summer could not stop him. Before long, Chicken Gizzard returned on his own as a tattoo after going beyond the thousand-meter limit.

"What's wrong with you?"

Endless Summer tried several times, with the same result every time. When pushed too far, Chicken Gizzard even shouted, "Let me go! I've thought of the solution! I can definitely undo it!"

But it was useless. As soon as he went more than a thousand meters away from Endless Summer, he automatically returned to his back as a tattoo.

"Brother Xia, didn't you know his mind was twisted by Tangle?"

Only then did Wu Zhong realize that Endless Summer had not known about this.

"Tangle?"

Endless Summer thought for a moment, then remembered something and said in frustration, "How did he get infected by that thing?"

"I had him take you to Containment Room 013!"

There was no doubt that Ghost Gizzard, in this state, was basically useless.

He no longer followed orders. The moment he came out, he wanted to find Tangle.

Wu Zhong glanced at Yang Chunsha.

Endless Summer said gravely, "It doesn't matter whether she hears it. Just say it!"

"Ghost Tattoo is the only Calamity Relic I possess. Is it just ruined like that?"

When Yang Chunsha heard "it doesn't matter," she felt no joy. Instead, she was horrified.

She covered her ears and ran away. "I'm not listening, I'm not listening. Go ahead and talk, I'll be leaving."

In a flash, Endless Summer stepped on her and pinned her to the ground. "Stay put!"

This dark tunnel was that woman's home turf. If she vanished, Endless Summer would not be able to find her either.

She might even use earth magic to block the passage and trap Wu Zhong underground.

That was why Endless Summer would not let her get too far away.

Buzz! Endless Summer's entire body shuddered. Purple light illuminated the surrounding rock walls, while streams of slurry coated the rocks in every direction. In an instant, everyone was surrounded by a magnificent purple landscape. This was clearly also meant to block Night Wanderer's hidden surveillance.

Wu Zhong glanced at the woman lying on the ground with her ears covered and told Endless Summer everything that had happened at Unit 985 Base.

Endless Summer was utterly shocked after listening. "Chicken Gizzard didn't take you out?"

"Chicken Gizzard went down the moment he showed up?"

"You got out alone just because I told you, 'Take the pipes from Containment Room 013'?"

Wu Zhong nodded. "Yeah. Other than Gu Yue and a few hidden sentries later on, I didn't encounter anyone else."

"It was all thanks to you, Brother Xia. You drew everyone's attention away. And without your intel, I never could have shaken off the tracking dogs."

For the first time, Endless Summer studied Wu Zhong with complete seriousness. "This isn't just a matter of my intel. You... you really are one of those rare kinds of people..."

Wu Zhong blinked, not understanding what he meant.

Yang Chunsha, however, trembled and muttered, "So that was the way to counter the Laughing Grenade..."

An ordinary civilian who did not even know how to use a gun had escaped Unit 985's Containment Room, dealt with hidden sentries, and shaken off tracking dogs with just a few pieces of intel and the simple ability to weld doors shut.

Was this really his first contact with Calamity Relics? He had even undone the Laughing Grenade on his own after being hit by it?

Wu Zhong looked down at her. "It was very simple."

Yang Chunsha froze, then covered her ears and shouted, "I didn't hear anything! I didn't hear anything!"

Endless Summer lifted his foot and took out something like a pill, stuffing it into Yang Chunsha's mouth. "Get up. From now on, he's your big brother."

"If you don't listen to him, or if you run off without his permission, I'll remotely detonate you no matter where you flee."

Yang Chunsha's mouth was filled with bitterness. She had no idea what she had swallowed, but there were countless terrifying things in the Calamity Realm.

She could only nod with a miserable expression.

Wu Zhong pointed at himself in astonishment. "Huh? Whose big brother? Me?"

"She can even use magic. I can't do anything."

Endless Summer patted his shoulder. "Don't sell yourself short. You're far more capable than that woman."

"She merely knows magic. You, on the other hand, are a natural Container. You only lack the means for now."

"You will eventually gain all sorts of means, but your trait of deciphering Calamity Relics in a crisis is exceedingly rare."

Wu Zhong said, "What kind of trait is that? I just had a sudden flash of inspiration."

Endless Summer sighed. "That flash of inspiration is exactly what so many people can never achieve."

"Once people have encountered enough Calamity Relics and gained enough experience, they may learn certain tricks for dealing with them. But how much experience is enough? Sometimes, experience can get you killed instead."

"Ask her yourself what happens when someone is hit by an unknown negative effect..."

Yang Chunsha adjusted her glasses. "Either you despair, or you die... If you're lucky, you'll still end up imprisoned or crippled."

"That's why I never dare take missions involving unknown Calamity Relics, no matter how generous the reward."

"Because those missions are really issued by others to lure greedy people into risking their lives, using their lives to gather intelligence for someone else."

"The Laughing Grenade is actually one of the better ones. It's Unit 985's signature weapon. I personally saw a Silver-ranked expert get taken down by a grenade and an Air Shield, then dragged away by firefighters like a dead dog..."

"There's actually a bounty on the platform for information on countering the Laughing Grenade. It's worth 300 bits."

"But nobody dares take it, because it means offending Unit 985. It means directly confronting the containment force with the strongest overall capabilities in the world. Or infiltrating Unit 985 to uncover their secrets."

"No matter what method you use, one mistake could bring the containment force down on you in full, raising the difficulty to the maximum."

"But you? You tested it on yourself, had a flash of inspiration, and cracked it. Whether it was luck or something else, testing it on yourself may look like the simplest method, but it is also the hardest and most dangerous route to a solution."

"Almost all intelligence on Calamity Relics with negative effects was obtained through countless people risking their lives."

By the end, she sounded deeply bitter.

She might earn a lot of money, but she spent a lot too.

She only wanted to muddle through life. She never dared take high-level missions.

Even a mission like today's, escorting a powerful person during an escape, was already extremely dangerous. Yet here she was... one slip-up, and she had fallen into Endless Summer's hands. What a tragedy.

Wu Zhong pondered. "Is it really that difficult? If people hit by the Laughing Grenade are captured and their crimes do not warrant death, they have to be cured eventually, right?"

"In that case, they would naturally know the solution. Unit 985 must have some oversight that lets someone upload the information to the Mercenary Club. For example, uploading it in their sleep."

Endless Summer smiled. "You think it's that simple? Kid, Unit 985 has memory-erasing methods."

Wu Zhong suddenly understood. Memory erasure? Oh, then never mind...

Endless Summer looked at him. "Still, now that I think about it, you actually have mental resistance—no, even a Fortress of the Mind... I never expected that."

"Mental resistance? Fortress of the Mind?" Wu Zhong tilted his head.

Yang Chunsha could not help interrupting. "The Unit 985 soldiers and that ghost were both mentally twisted by Tangle, but you weren't. You must have some kind of mental resistance effect on you."

Wu Zhong touched his face. "I actually have a second trait?"

Endless Summer shook his head. "Not exactly. It should be part of your door-welding trait."

"Absolute traits cannot be viewed one-sidedly. They have two sides, perhaps even many sides."

"Like the Ever-Thirst effect I mentioned before, whether something is negative or positive is merely a human judgment. Traits themselves do not distinguish between benefits and harm."

"Blessings lean on disasters, and disasters hide blessings. That is common among Calamity Relics. A single trait with multiple facets can often produce miraculous effects in unexpected fields."

"In your case... my guess is that the instant you gained this trait, you welded shut your own 'heart door.'"

At those final words, Wu Zhong's entire body shook.

What? A heart door?

"Of course. The heart door is also a door!"

There was delight in Endless Summer's voice. "Strictly speaking, it is called the Door of the Mind. Combined with the fact that only you can destroy the doors you create and others cannot break them..."

"Your Door of the Mind has thus blocked outside corruption. It is equivalent to a Fortress of the Mind, stopping mental distortion."

Wu Zhong pondered. "But the Door of the Mind can still have cracks, right? It isn't as though the passage is completely blocked. Can mental distortion not enter through them?"

Endless Summer shook his head. "Mm, don't view conceptual things through physical reasoning."

"As I understand it, this should be a purely conceptual door. It isn't that your mind has literally been molded into the shape of a door. Do you understand what I mean?"

Wu Zhong thought deeply. "You mean the Door of the Mind is invisible and intangible, detached from the mundane world. It exists on a conceptual level."

"It is called a door because people believe that entering someone's heart requires passing through some kind of gateway. Hence, the Door of the Mind."

"At its core, it is merely human imagination and metaphor. Since it is a metaphor, it represents a definition, a concept."

"So its form does not matter in the slightest. What matters is its function and the meaning of its existence."

"And the meaning of its existence is 'guarding the gateway to the mind.'"

"My absolute trait has actually activated and created this 'meaning of existence' called a door... What I welded shut was a setting."

Endless Summer had not expected him to think it through even more clearly than he had. He clapped his hands. "Yes, yes, yes! That's exactly what I meant."

He was immensely gratified, and his eyes shone with excitement.

Mental resistance traits were extremely rare, while a comprehensive Fortress of the Mind was rarer still.

Yet Wu Zhong possessed a Fortress of the Mind with virtually no cost. He was practically a priceless treasure.

Endless Summer continued, "Perhaps you cannot use other conceptual doors. But your own mind is naturally something you could use from the start."

"That is why, on the day you inexplicably gained your ability, you automatically gained the Door of the Mind."

"It feels normal to you, so you cannot sense it. But when outside forces interfere, it displays the traits of the Absolute Gate."

Wu Zhong murmured, "Absolute Gate... Is that the name of my ability?"

Endless Summer shrugged. "Names are given by people. We can't just keep calling it door-welding."

"In any case, your trait should be able to create all kinds of absolute doors. The doors you create on the physical level are only pseudo-invincible, but on the conceptual level of the mind, they are truly invincible."

"Because concepts have no distinction between hard and soft. They only exist or do not exist."

"Just as you said, what you welded shut was the concept itself of 'guarding the gateway to the mind.' It is metaphysical, not some object with the shape of this or that."

Wu Zhong scratched his head. "Truly invincible? The Laughing Grenade nearly killed me."

Endless Summer was stunned, then burst out laughing. "Oh, come on. The Laughing Grenade isn't mental distortion. It only forces you to laugh physically. Your conscious thoughts weren't affected in the slightest."

Wu Zhong tilted his head. That was true. His mind had been completely clear. Otherwise, he would not have calmly figured out how to undo it.

With an expression that said be grateful for what you have, Endless Summer said, "A Fortress of the Mind like yours is already the closest thing I know to perfection."

"Even people with more powerful Fortresses of the Mind pay some price. For example, being completely unable to sleep because their minds can never rest."

"You understand absolute traits. That's just how they are. When they appear in humans, they manifest rigidly and without regard for anything else."

"No Calamity Relic was tailor-made for humanity, so naturally they do not care about human judgment."

"But you are different. You welded shut a conceptual metaphor created by human civilization within your own heart. Naturally, that makes it nearly perfect."

"For example, you can still normally accept natural hormonal influence, neural influence, external stimulation, and emotional stimulation. You will not resist them."

"But you will automatically resist unnatural, unreasonable, conceptual mental distortion."

"This is the most perfect Fortress of the Mind. It has no cost, and therefore no presence, which is why you only discovered it now."

"Unless you encounter a Calamity Relic with higher priority, you are immune to all mental distortion."

Wu Zhong pressed on, "What level of Calamity Relic can invade my mind?"

Endless Summer shook his head bitterly. "Who the hell knows? Calamity Relics have no levels. A may take priority over B, B over C, and yet C may also take priority over A."

"When I say higher priority, I might mean some thing whose mechanism happens to include 'specifically breaks Doors of the Mind.'"

"For example, 'You're fine if you don't have a Door of the Mind, but if you do, you're guaranteed to be affected.' Where are you supposed to argue with that? You know how it is. Calamity Relics can be all kinds of bizarre bullshit."

"That is why I said there are no fixed rules for Calamity Relics. You can only gain true knowledge through practice."

"You will only know what you are not immune to after trying it."

Wu Zhong's face twisted. "Wouldn't trying it mean dying?"

"If it is an extremely terrifying negative effect, wouldn't that be gambling with my life?"

Endless Summer spread his hands. "It is gambling with your life. The Calamity Realm is full of danger. Who hasn't gambled with their life?"

"Don't gamble lightly, but when there is truly no other choice, you have to gamble whether you want to or not."

"Unless you're someone like her, a hopeless bum just muddling through."

Even as he spoke, he still had to take a jab at Yang Chunsha. She merely wore an indifferent expression.

After figuring out why Ghost Gizzard had become useless, Endless Summer was also helpless.

"Fine, fine. If Ghost Tattoo is ruined, it's ruined. I'll think of something later."

Endless Summer fell into thought. He could not find Night Wanderer now, and his ghost assistant was useless.

Wu Zhong needed the ability to protect himself, so Endless Summer could only tear off part of his biological armor.

Purple light gathered at his chest, where some living thing seemed to be moving.

Endless Summer reached in and pulled. Pain crossed his face as he carefully tugged at it, as though he were tearing apart one of his own organs.

Only after a long while did he remove that lump of purple slurry and press it directly against Wu Zhong's right shoulder.

At the same time, Endless Summer's purple armor reassembled. His right arm disappeared, revealing an ordinary arm.

"Argh!"

Wu Zhong was wracked by intense pain as the thing instantly invaded his entire arm.

He felt as though his arm had been thrown into a meat grinder and chewed apart. Cold sweat covered his forehead from the pain.

"Endure it! This is my biological armor's right arm. I'm lending it to you," Endless Summer said solemnly.

Wu Zhong gritted his teeth and said nothing. He could only endure it.

After a while, the situation improved. The pain was gone.

His right arm looked no different from usual.

But Wu Zhong could sense a living thing hidden within his flesh, connected to his nerves.

With a thought, a mass of purple slurry seeped out and spread across his right arm like countless tiny tendrils, forming a shimmering purple armguard.

Bang!

He tried punching the rock wall. A dull cracking sound rang out.

A fist-sized crater exploded into the stone, and his entire fist sank into it.

The recoil struck him, but most of it was dispersed. His arm merely trembled, his shoulder jerked backward, and his body staggered through half a turn.

Whoosh! Boom!

With another thought, purple light gathered in his palm and shot out, blasting an even deeper hole into the rock.

Wu Zhong bent down, picked up a piece of shattered stone, and squeezed it into powder.

"This arm has two tons of grip strength. Its material strength is ten times that of special alloy steel, and it can also disperse roughly a ton of recoil."

"The Purple Molten Bomb packs the energy equivalent of ten kilograms of TNT, but it doesn't explode. Its power is concentrated on corrosion and melting."

"Use it as you see fit. It's my primal force being drained anyway."

Endless Summer's casual introduction left Wu Zhong thrilled.

Yang Chunsha was practically drooling, her gaze thick with envy.

Wu Zhong said, "It drains your primal force? Then I'll use the Purple Molten Bomb sparingly. It's enough to deal with the Night Wanderer anyway—its power is overkill."

Endless Summer chuckled. "No need to be stingy. I'll lend you part of the bio-armor. The energy consumed by what you wear will be the real drain."

"As for the Purple Molten Bomb, fire away. You won't be able to use them all up. If I inject one Bitcoin's worth of energy, it can charge seven thousand shots!"

Wu Zhong's eyes widened. Seven thousand shots?

Yang Chunsha said somewhat sourly, "What did you expect? One Bitcoin's worth of energy is a lot."

"Before Bitcoin was invented, the Calamity Realm used TNT equivalent as its unit. One kilogram of TNT equivalent was 'a little over one point of multiversal force.'"

"Later, they discovered that Bitcoin could increase its holder's multiversal force, so the standard was changed."

"One Bitcoin under the new standard is equivalent to 77,000 points of multiversal force under the old one."

There was no small measure of pride in her voice.

"You think my twenty Bitcoin of primal force is little? I train hard almost every day, and I also keep studying that otherworldly magic to improve myself further."

"Many Awakened I've encountered only have a few tenths of a Bitcoin of primal force, or even just a few hundredths."

"My twenty Bitcoin of primal force came from seven years of living paycheck to paycheck and training tirelessly."

Wu Zhong was initially stunned. Indeed, Yang Chunsha was not weak.

Carving out such a vast dark tunnel and pushing five kilometers underground in an hour was no small feat.

But then Wu Zhong jabbed, "Didn't you have more than sixteen Bitcoins? So after seven years, you trained up less than four Bitcoins?"

"..." Yang Chunsha's face turned purplish-red.

Endless Summer burst into laughter and vanished in a flash.