[Game Is Upgrading]

[Game Is Upgrading]

After talking with Yan Songlin, there was not much time left. Xu Zhi did not really know whether her Spirit Vessel would disappear or turn into a corpse once her consciousness withdrew from it, but she did not want to "log off" in front of those two.

So she said goodbye to Yan Songlin and used her last few minutes to hide in an empty house, waiting for the Spirit Vessel's time to run out.

Her previous experience with the Spirit Vessel had ended abruptly, so Xu Zhi did not know what it felt like for the time to end normally. Now, she finally found out what it was like to leave the Spirit Vessel naturally.

It was like her soul was being pulled away. Her consciousness blurred for an instant, and before returning to her real body, she saw the Spirit Vessel turn into fragments of ash, as though burned away by a great fire, and scatter through the air.

"So that's how it is."

The next second, her consciousness returned to her real body.

Xu Zhi opened her eyes and once again felt the "heaviness" of this body. Yet her mind was incomparably clear. Without that constant agitation interfering with her, even her thoughts seemed to move much faster.

If she had to choose between the two, Xu Zhi still preferred her current state.

She checked the time. It was not yet six, so she picked up the game console expectantly, wanting to see whether her two familiars had found anything.

Before long, she saw Doggie suddenly freeze in place, as if it had caught a scent in the air. Then it bolted madly toward the southeast. In a cramped corner surrounded by heaps of discarded trash, Doggie pushed aside the debris blocking its way and found the "treasure" hidden within.

It was a black plant about a meter tall, resembling a shrub. Calling it a plant did not seem quite right, though. It looked completely lifeless. Its branches were pure black, like some kind of stone. It had no leaves, and among its densely forked branches hung several scattered black fruits.

Xu Zhi counted roughly four of them.

[Unbelievable.]

[Your luck really doesn't seem like that of an ordinary person. How surprising.]

[Perhaps luck is also part of your talent.]

The narrator had lamented Xu Zhi's luck three times in a row, which was enough to show just how rare the thing Doggie had found was.

Xu Zhi had Doggie pick all four fruits. The instant it plucked the last one, the "shrub" snapped apart section by section like crumbling stone and vanished into the soil.

An idea suddenly came to Xu Zhi.

If the weakest little branch could only bear one fruit, and a shrub could bear four, then could there be black trees?

How many fruits would those bear?

She still did not know exactly what these fruits were, but Xu Zhi had some guesses.

She had never seen this kind of fruit during the day. The only few times she had seen them had all been in the morning, after midnight had just passed, when the power scattered throughout the real world—as the narrator had described it—returned to nothingness. Only then could she find black fruits.

And these fruits contained a great deal of energy. So Xu Zhi guessed that they were connected to those things that could not be looked at directly at midnight. Perhaps they were what those things left behind. Once time passed, the fruits disappeared, which was why they could only be collected in the morning.

Of course, those were only Xu Zhi's guesses. Though she felt there was an eighty percent chance she was right, times had changed. Things beyond her understanding appearing now were perfectly normal, so she did not dare guarantee that matters were exactly as she imagined.

Over the next hour, her two familiars found nothing else. Still, Xu Zhi was already very satisfied with these four fruits.

After recalling Little One and Doggie, Xu Zhi did not immediately send them back out to hunt. She intended to do something rather bold.

With both familiars back at her side, Xu Zhi felt much safer. She instructed them, "Don't run around. Stay by my side."

Then she took a black fruit from the inventory. Without much hesitation, she swallowed it.

It barely had any texture.

It was like eating a blueberry without any flavor.

But the instant she swallowed it, a sensation like raging flames burning through her body erupted from within. Her vision doubled, and faint, intermittent noises like flapping wings appeared by her ears.

A candle flame seemed to appear in the distance. The moths from the illusion entered the real world, and Xu Zhi could no longer distinguish the boundary between illusion and reality. She seemed to become a moth herself, wanting to throw herself into that scorching fire once more.

It was not an illusion. She could truly feel as if her body were being scorched by blazing fire.

But she had clearly not yet touched that distant candle flame.

In her daze, Xu Zhi suddenly thought, would a moth reborn through fire be reborn?

Then she shook her head and muttered as if she had lost her mind, "No."

Only phoenixes could rise again through nirvana. Moths would only burn to death, and she was not a phoenix. She was a moth.

With those thoughts, Xu Zhi seemed to grow increasingly convinced that she was a moth. Her mission was to reach the candle flame and die as an offering.

Something wasn't right.

"Woof! Woof!"

The two barks rang beside Xu Zhi's ears like the tolling of a bell. The sound shook the surrounding moths until they blurred, and some of Xu Zhi's rationality returned in that instant. She began to doubt her identity as a moth.

"I haven't even reached the fire yet. Why am I so hot?"

It was as though she were being burned alive.

"Am I really a moth? Why am I not flying? Where are my wings?"

Xu Zhi seemed bewitched at that moment, having lost her mind completely. Even her train of thought had become strange.

When her short-circuited brain linked those two questions together while she felt the pain of her body burning, Xu Zhi suddenly felt that she understood everything. She had found the answer, so she declared with certainty.

"Of course. I'm not a moth."

"I'm the candle flame that's burning!"

No matter what kind of twisted logic had led her to say that, the instant the words left her mouth, everything around her seemed to freeze for a moment. Xu Zhi's awareness of herself rapidly returned, and she woke up completely.

The burning sensation inside her body faded. Xu Zhi realized that her memory was somewhat hazy. She could not quite remember what had happened between eating the fruit and suddenly waking up.

She only vaguely remembered that she had nearly lost her mind, and Doggie's barking had awakened her.

Was that right?

Anyway, Doggie had done a great job today. No matter what, it deserved something good to eat.

Xu Zhi picked up the game console, preparing to take out the remaining black fruits from the inventory and share them with Little One and Doggie. To her surprise, words she had never seen before appeared on the screen:

[Game Is Upgrading]

[Estimated Time Required: 2 Hours]

"The game can upgrade too?" Xu Zhi stared at the words in astonishment. This game could upgrade too???

"But why did it suddenly start upgrading?"