The Road Home

It was another dull, tedious day.

Still, they had found more today than yesterday—

Inside one crate, they had discovered a trove of products made from Otherworldly Beasts. These would be the earliest such artifacts ever unearthed anywhere in the world; none had been found in the previous Cubes.

Otherworldly Beasts did not seem native to this planet. No trace of their evolution could be found. It was more as if they had appeared out of thin air, and not very long ago.

But exactly when had they appeared, and where had they come from? No one had a definite answer yet.

Another miserable day came to an end.

Nearly everything stored inside the Cube had been processed and shipped out, but the Sage Ancestor Secret Realm—the spatial stone—was still being analyzed. Barring any surprises, the secret realm should contain more treasures, more closely tied to Emperor Shengzu. That was part of their work too.

For now, it was all grunt work.

Once everything had been moved out, they would have to make a more detailed inventory. Sorting the books and checking them against historical texts would be the real technical work.

They had to be patient. No rushing.

That afternoon, a Ninth Tier heavyweight and a specialist team from Jade Capital had arrived and gone into the Cube to investigate. Word was that the Ninth Tier expert had found nothing, and the team had found no difference between this Cube and the others.

After coming out, Chen Shu had paid attention to them, but he had not dared ask too much. All he had heard from Professor Liu was that the Ninth Tier expert's surname seemed to be Meng.

Someone among the strongest people alive.

Who would not be curious about a Ninth Tier expert?

That night.

It was the same dream, the same place, the same voice:

"When I lift my head to gaze at the bright moon?"

"What?"

"When I lift my head to gaze at the bright moon?"

"What are you trying to tell me?"

"When I lift my head to gaze at the bright moon?"

"The spring wind blows, and they grow again."

By then, Chen Shu remembered what had happened the night before. The voice had switched to another poem. It sounded like some kind of password, or a signal.

No wonder he hadn't copied down poetry. He'd been saving it for a reason.

Chen Shu still did not answer. He was a little afraid that if he supplied the next line, whoever was behind this might think yesterday's had simply been too hard for him to remember.

The next morning dawned bright and clear.

Chen Shu rose early and carried a bowl of noodles with pickled vegetables and shredded pork over to the three professors. In a low voice, he asked, "Professors, did you have that dream again last night?"

"Sounds like you did too."

"What about that one?"

"Which one?"

"The Ninth Tier one."

"Yes."

"Does he remember it?"

Professor Shi shook his head gravely. After a moment, he added, "The specialist team doesn't have a clue either."

"Oh," Chen Shu said, frowning as well.

He did not know much about the team from Jade Capital, only that they were all mid-tier cultivators at minimum and specialized in dealing with influences on the mind. Whether ancient power lingered or an array was at work, such things rarely escaped their notice.

Emperor Shengzu's power had plainly surpassed the Ninth Tier, surpassed the limits of this world, surpassed what people ordinarily believed possible.

On the third night.

Chen Shu had just finished dinner. Though it was midsummer, the night beside the lake was still a little chilly. He put on a jacket and sat outside the tent, gazing at the moon and thinking quietly.

Moonlight lay like frost, reflected in Mirror Sea. Across the water, scattered city lights glimmered beneath the rolling mountains beyond.

Mirror Sea was so quiet at this hour.

It was gentle, too. The unbroken downpours had ended only a few days ago, leaving it hopelessly muddied by the runoff. Yet in just those few days, its waters had turned clear again.

Chen Shu looked back at the Cube halfway up the mountain.

Even under such bright, pure moonlight, it remained a patch of dark gray. Beauty Mountain, meanwhile, stood out beneath the moon, sharply defined, cold, and startling to behold.

Had the Sage Emperor gazed at the moon like this back then?

Chen Shu toyed with the Crystal at his chest and tipped his head far back.

The bright moon rises over the sea; at the ends of the earth, we share this hour.

A pity they did not live in the same era. A pity that, as far as he knew, no one in this world could live that long. Otherwise, even knowing that a fellow countryman was somewhere unknown, watching the same moon and bathing in the same moonlight, would have offered him some comfort.

This planet's moon was a little larger than Earth's, though not by much. Earth's moon sometimes looked large and sometimes small; at its smallest, this world's moon looked about as big as one of Earth's uncommon "supermoons," and at its largest, a bit bigger still.

The patterns of craters and mountain ranges on its surface were different, too.

Chen Shu had realized long ago that his fellow countryman had spent his entire life searching for the road home.

After all, having to spend the New Year away from home during the pandemic had been infuriating enough. Not letting a Chinese person go home at all? That was torture on a monumental scale.

From certain historical records, Chen Shu knew Emperor Shengzu's circumstances had been rather different from his own.

Emperor Shengzu had crossed over directly into an adult body with all his memories intact. He had been an adult suddenly stranded in a foreign land, unable to return home, and he had spent the rest of his life longing for it.

Chen Shu was different.

He could not even say when he had arrived in this world. Perhaps he had come while still in the womb, or perhaps when he was very, very young, before he could form memories. Nor had he possessed all his memories of his previous life from the start. They had awakened bit by bit as time passed and he grew up.

And that process had not been linear.

He had also grown up in this world, with a fairly complete childhood and memories that ran deep.

It was hard to say which world he felt he belonged to more. Yet like Emperor Shengzu, he badly wanted to find a way back.

That did not mean he had to return to Earth to live.

In Chen Shu's view, the people in the novels he had read who were desperate to go back had, to some extent, wanted to return home in glory.

He certainly had no desire to show off like that.

But he had to go back and take a look, didn't he?

Whether he chose to go back was one thing. Whether he could was another. If he wanted to return but could not, the thought would never sit right with him.

The night deepened.

Some of the colored lights along the far shore went out.

Chen Shu took one last look at the bright moon overhead, then turned and went back into the tent. Professor Chen was already asleep.

Chen Shu went to sleep too.

That city beneath the snowcapped mountain... was it on Earth?

Chen Shu saw the scene again. Looking carefully, he found himself on a low hill outside the city. A small town lay at its foot, with a national highway running through its center. Unfortunately, he could not move around here; the scene was more like a painting. Otherwise, he would have gone to look farther afield, no matter what.

Perhaps Emperor Shengzu had often come to this hill to gaze at the distant ranks of high-rises.

"When I lie awake at night and hear the wind and rain?"

"Iron horses and icy rivers enter my dreams."

The voice abruptly stalled. It seemed to snag like a rusted mechanism—or perhaps it, too, had held its breath for a moment when someone answered the verse.

"In a dream, I forget I am but a guest?"

"And steal a moment's joy."

"I send my sorrowful heart to the bright moon?"

"To follow you all the way to Yelang in the west."

"I send my sorrowful heart to the bright moon?"

"...To follow the wind all the way to Yelang in the west."

The whole world seemed to stop. Not a sound remained; even the air stood still.

Then Chen Shu heard someone speaking to him, as if right beside his ear. Yet it did not quite sound like a voice. He could put no label on it—young or old, male or female, clear or resonant. He simply felt that someone was speaking to him:

"I regret meeting you this way, my fellow countryman.

"We must come from the same place.

"I know the Crystal follows a fixed loop. It will inevitably return to Earth, but I don't know whether the next person it brings here will be from my homeland. Since you've managed to hear this message I left behind, it seems I was fortunate after all—

"Many years later, someone from the same land as me has come to visit.

"If instead you've cracked the mechanism I left behind, I'm terribly disappointed.

"Unfortunately, I can no longer go back.

"But I've found the direction home for you—

"Avoid using the Crystal to teleport whenever you can. The energy inside it is extremely precious.

"And you must reach Transcendent Grade.

"I'll leave the exact method in your mind. You'll be able to access it when you reach First Grade.

"But to prevent the mechanism I set up from being cracked by a more advanced future age, I split the most crucial part of the Array Core and placed the pieces in seven stone tablets. The Cubes containing those tablets are arranged across the land in the shape of the Big Dipper. Assemble the pieces in order; either direction will do, but you mustn't mix them up.

"Simple enough, right?

"Oh, and one more thing—

"I don't know how talented you are, or whether your cultivation has gone smoothly, so I've left you a few things. Consider them a gift from someone who came before you.

"I hope you'll still find them useful.

"And finally—

"By the time you hear this, I'll be dead."

The scene shattered into countless pieces, then dissolved into motes of light.

Chen Shu's eyes flew open, and he woke from the dream. His dreams from the past three nights were now perfectly clear in his mind. Then other scenes gradually appeared before his eyes.

They showed eighteen spaces of varying sizes:

Some held books, priceless natural treasures, all sorts of classical Spell Artifacts, ancient works of art, and more. Clearly, they showed no signs of having been opened;

Some were stocked with modern military equipment and supplies;

One held a small elite unit;

One contained a Sky Carrier;

One housed a research base;

And another appeared to contain a model of a city;

What were these?

The Sage Ancestor Secret Realms inside the Cubes?

Some had already been opened and cracked, and were now in use by the militaries of various countries.

Others plainly had yet to be unearthed.

Chen Shu soon sensed a strange connection gradually forming between him and all eighteen secret realms. They were slowly becoming his—even those supposedly deciphered by various countries, though they clearly had not been deciphered completely.

Poetry as a password?

Elder, besides disliking foreigners, you apparently looked down on the illiterate too.

Very well.

But, my fellow countryman...

You didn't expect it to be the year 5020 by now, did you? Your secret realms have already been opened!

Chen Shu did not dare claim a single one of the eighteen secret realms, including those that had not yet been unearthed. He had no idea when the Cubes containing them might be unearthed.

Just then, faint sounds came from Beauty Mountain in the distance. The military was still working through the night to analyze the secret realm. Perhaps something had reacted inside it, and they had noticed.

Chen Shu made his decision on the spot and immediately stopped the process himself.

When Chen Shu woke again, he heard nothing about any trouble the previous night. Professor Chen did, however, come over with a bowl of noodles and ask in an even tone:

"Your results come out today, don't they?"

"Yeah."

"And you submit your university choices today too?"

"Mm. At the same time."

"Then take the day off. The secret realm hasn't opened yet, and the things outside it aren't all that closely connected to Emperor Shengzu. Come back once it opens. We'll need your opinion to identify and catalog a lot of the objects and records inside," Professor Chen said. "Go home, check your results, think it over carefully, and submit your choices."

That was a tactful way of putting it.

Clearly, this Cube was different from the others. After so many anomalies, Professor Chen was no longer comfortable having his son stay here.

Professor Shi, beside him, nodded in agreement. “Your choices are important. Listen to your father, Xiao Chen, and take a break. There'll be plenty we need you for later. But I have to put in a word for us: Jade Capital's history department is the best in the world. Give it serious thought.”

Professor Liu could not hold back. “Ling'an Academy's history department has ranked first for the past few years.”

"I will."

Chen Shu agreed.

He was feeling rather worn out anyway.