Chapter 44

What's going on?

Wen Jing was in a strange state; her mind and body seemed to be separated into two sides. One side was awakening in the blue flames, while the other side was devouring words on a spiritual level.

By the way, the text...

The moment her consciousness turned to the words, a tidal wave surged within her.

Even though she only had instinct left, she still recognized that the inscriptions on the bone fragments were 'writing'.

She recognized the text above.

Wen Jing's journey to this world began at birth, and the first skill she learned was 'Language - Federal Federation Common Language Federation Common Language ', a phonetic script composed of a set of letters.

At this moment, what appeared on this Ancient Wilderness bone fragment was an ideographic character.

Unlike phonetic writing systems, the meaning of ideographic characters does not change due to variations in pronunciation.

Therefore, even though the characters on the bone fragment were not the modern Huaxia characters she used in her previous life, any Huaxia person could easily recognize the meaning of the characters engraved on the bone fragment simply by looking at their shape.

[fire]

In particular, the lower section, which resembled a supporting arc, had been almost completely swallowed up by Wen Jing.

The remaining part is virtually identical to the modern Huaxia for "fire".

The words Xie Ming had spoken in the Introduction to the Ancient Wilderness kept echoing in her mind.

"... Besides the global depth, the academic consensus is that unique traces of civilization existed in the Ancient Wilderness. However, due to another important characteristic of the Ancient Wilderness —'unrecordable'—our research on Ancient Wilderness cultures remains at a very superficial stage."

"As your strength increases in the future, and you venture into deeper regions of the world, you may find some writings and totems that, like these, cannot be recorded, and may not even be brought back to the material universe..."

The Ancient Wilderness script that cannot be recorded in the material universe turned out to be the script from her previous life.

Would she have discovered this sooner if it weren't for the fact that it couldn't be recorded?

Moreover, as her consciousness returned, she immediately recalled the primitive form of writing engraved on bone fragments... wasn't that oracle bone script?!

There are many extraordinary creatures, but no humans in this Ancient Wilderness. Why then are there traces of her past life's civilization?

Layer upon layer of impact, question after question, surged into Wen Jing's mind, until a notification sounded from the panel.

[Evolution successful]

[Digestion V]

[Gained Trait:??? Devour]

Her thoughts were abruptly interrupted. After a moment of stunned silence, she remembered that when she first encountered the degenerate flames, she had invested all her evolution resistance to prevent her Skill Points from being burned.

She hadn't received any feedback and assumed it had failed, but now she's getting a success notification.

Does this new characteristic refer to her ability to absorb text? It actually raised her Digestion level from level one to level five!

With this question in mind, Wen Jing subconsciously looked at the attribute panel.

All attributes have reverted to their values before encountering the Pale Flame, and at the bottom, the Skill Points should be 0, both from the perspective of previous consumption and the recent evolution.

It is pulsating and growing as she devours the mysterious oracle bone script.

Skill Points: 1, 5, 10...

Chapter 44

The change on the panel left Wen Jing incredulous. She tried pausing the devouring action, and sure enough, the numbers on the panel stopped changing.

I devoured the mysterious oracle bone script and actually gained Skill Points!

This scene inexplicably reminded her of the time when she encountered the pale white flames and her Skill Points were burned away.

Therefore, she had previously regressed to her original form because she started consuming the character 'fire' at the end, replenishing her Skill Points, and thus evolved back.

The same logic seems to apply to the missing notification.

Because she was still 'in debt' to Skill Points at the time, she only completed her evolution after her skill points increased to a positive number.

Having roughly figured out the reason for the panel changes, more questions began to arise one after another.

What's the difference between the blue flames and the pale flames in the mysterious altar?

Why do the oracle bone inscriptions hidden in the core of the flames, conversely, increase Skill Points?

What connection exists between the traces of civilization in the Ancient Wilderness and the civilization of her past life?

Wen Jing had various vague guesses, but he couldn't piece them together.

After a moment, she gave up trying to figure out the question that she couldn't answer for the time being.

Well, what's done is done. Let's eat first.

What secrets does oracle bone script hold? We'll keep it inside and study it slowly.

Thus, on a spiritual level, the little insect continued to devour the oracle bone script.

She was like a smearing brush, gradually erasing and disappearing the character 'fire' wherever she crawled.

100, 112, 134...

Time passed second by second, just as Wen Jing was swallowing up the last trace of the oracle bone script.

A crisp shattering sound resounded simultaneously on both the spiritual and material levels, causing the entire altar to shake and twist violently.

The mournful howls of wolves, the sound of the earth shattering, the sound of flames dying out... the sounds and images merged and overlapped, and the world before my eyes was stirred into a jumbled mess.

Wen Jing, who was still searching for a foothold, felt a familiar sense of time travel.

But unlike her past experiences of actively escaping time and space, this time she was rejected by this space-time continuum.

She even discovered that the coordinates of the Gravity Silk stuck in this area had simply disappeared, and their current state made it impossible to leave coordinates again—the mass of this space was also rapidly disappearing.

Wen Jing realized that he would never be able to return to this area again.

This is... the lifeblood of this space?

In an instant, an indescribable regret welled up in her heart: she hadn't successfully hunted the Shadow Wolf yet...

Despite the regret, she didn't delay and seized the opportunity to immediately use algorithms to escape the Ancient Wilderness.

As she moved, she didn't forget to glance at the panel in her consciousness—

The Skill Points finally increased to 285.

Getting rich overnight is nothing more than this.

*

Red Earth Academy Shuttle Registration Center.

The emergency response plan was activated, and warning lights throughout the square flashed rhythmically. Various monitoring and detection devices were turned on to ensure that any disturbance would be detected immediately.

It is now 9:32 PM, more than three hours have passed since the day-night divide.

The staff member glanced at the time, then secretly glanced at Dean Bai pacing back and forth not far away, and Xie Ming sighing beside him.

Dean Bai arrived within an hour of the incident.

Soon after, Xie Ming, who usually spends all his time at the research institute, also arrived.

Although the staff knew that Wen Jing was a rising star among the freshmen, they did not expect that her disappearance would directly alarm these two most powerful figures in the academy.

However, looking at the time, he didn't actually have any expectations for Wen Jing's return.

The longer the emergency situation lasts, the more likely the other party is in grave danger—this is based on his many years of work experience.

If a student accidentally wanders into the Ancient Wilderness night, knowing how dangerous it is, they will definitely try to find a way back immediately.

Those who successfully return usually do so within an hour; he has never seen anyone return beyond that in all his years working at the Red Earth Academy.

Xie Ming: "Stop shaking me, it's making me dizzy."

Dean Bai: "Stop sighing, it's getting on my nerves."

The two spoke at roughly the same time, then glared at each other and fell silent.

Xie Ming stood up and walked around. He regretted it now. If he had known this would happen, he shouldn't have considered the interest. He should have persuaded Wen Jing to use the Empowerment Stone.

Dean Bai sat down and sighed. The scene reminded her of the first time she met Wen Jing. He had also entered the Ancient Wilderness at night and successfully returned. She only hoped that the result would be the same this time.

"Drop--!"

Suddenly, the quiet registration center erupted in a loud blare, and red light illuminated the entire square.

The next moment, Wen Jing's figure appeared unexpectedly on the registration center platform.

Everyone present was stunned for a moment before they suddenly realized what was happening.

"Wen Jing!"

The first thing to arrive at her side was naturally the emergency robot. Having had Wen Jing before, Wen Jing skillfully pushed away the needle on the mechanical claw this time.

"Dean! Mentor!"

Having experienced the ups and downs of the day, and returning to the real world, Wen Jing felt as if she had been through another world when she first saw her two familiar elders.

What was supposed to be a simple journey turned into a thrilling adventure. First, the queen ant controlled the ant nest, then the ant teleported to the Shadow Wolf region.

Although she had gained a lot, the word "fire" still lingered in her mind and wouldn't go away.

Upon seeing Wen Jing appear, Dean Bai and Xie Ming both breathed a sigh of relief, their worries finally put to rest.

The staff members on duty nearby exchanged bewildered glances, their understanding of their professional careers being challenged once again.

Upon approaching, Dean Bai, who had originally intended to give Wen Jing a good talking-to, suddenly blinked and noticed that the other party's expression had become much more composed.

It seems there's no need to emphasize the dangers of the Ancient Wilderness to her anymore; no amount of reminders can compare to experiencing it firsthand.

So she simply reached out and patted Wen Jing on the shoulder. "It's alright, go back and rest."

Seeing this, Xie Ming nodded in agreement and said nothing more.

After all, encountering various dangers in the Ancient Wilderness world is an unavoidable fate for Awakened.

As seniors, even if they hope that those who come after them will not fall before they have grown up, there is actually very little they can do.

*

After saying goodbye to the two and returning to his dormitory, Wen Jing lay on his bed and used his smart device to open the online library, which contained research findings covering all three colleges.