In the extreme north, on the vast ice fields beyond the Stone Fortress Dungeon.
“Hiss—! So cold!”
“Seriously… It’s been ages since I felt this kind of bone-piercing chill. If only we’d brought along a Heating Pujis!”
Two mushroomborn rubbed their nearly frozen arms, sitting atop a crude cart.
The cart was piled high with all sorts of magical materials. Pulling it were two rows of hardworking Sled Pujis, bounding tirelessly across the snow.
Their destination was a small open-air testing ground built against a steep ice wall.
This was a site Lin Jun had deliberately chosen for testing dangerous Abyssal magic.
It was remote enough, utterly desolate, and the surroundings were already covered by his sprawling Mycelium Carpet.
Even if something went wrong, there would be enough buffer zone to handle it calmly.
Xinghuo had arrived in advance and was already drawing a complex magic array on the ground with gathered materials.The Abyssal magic books obtained from Margas had contained only abstruse, high-level spells that Lin Jun could barely skim through.
But after picking up many more basic Abyssal tomes in the Stone Forest, Lin Jun finally understood one thing: no wonder Abyssal magic had failed to develop!
Its most defining feature was that every Abyssal spell had to be cast through a complete “ritual.” There was no such thing as something like a casually instant-cast Fireball.
And the complexity of Abyssal rituals, along with the long list of taboos, far exceeded other schools of magic of the same level.
Take the “Servant Summoning Ritual” Lin Jun was preparing to attempt now: an entire book, of which only one quarter explained the required materials and array setup, while the remaining three quarters were filled with endless precautions, warning signs, and failsafe measures!
For example, beyond the core materials of the array and a low-grade contract scroll, the ritual required an additional “Disruption Array,” ensuring that the caster could forcibly abort the ritual at any moment before completion.
The book also recorded many similar safety measures, every word seemingly steeped in blood-soaked lessons from predecessors.
Sacrifices were also a strict requirement of the ritual—and they had to be healthy, conscious, vibrant intelligent beings.
Their role was to “block the Abyss’s erosion” at the ritual’s critical moment.
In Lin Jun’s view, these sacrifices were essentially “human buffers” meant to absorb corrupted information streams until they collapsed, sparing the caster from the direct impact.
However, this time Lin Jun had no intention of using sacrifices.
Every living intelligent creature—even those collected dregs of society—was, in his eyes, valuable talent. He wouldn’t waste them so casually.
Besides, Lin Jun intended to collect and analyze that “garbage data” himself. Without sacrifices, he could kill two birds with one stone.
The most infuriating thing about Abyssal magic was that even if you prepared everything down to the tiniest detail, the results were still full of massive uncertainty.
The book he held listed dozens of abnormal signs that required immediate disruption of the ritual, each making the scalp prickle and the success rate for a “normal” casting seem utterly hopeless.
At the end of the book, bold text declared:
“The Abyss grants no boons, only equivalent exchange. Every scrap of power you gain rests upon the ashes of sacrifices and the risk of your own collapse. No one is exempt.”
Beneath that was a different scrawled note, like a remark from a former owner:
“They are not knowledge, but curses made manifest… Yet the power is real…”
What nonsense.
After the preparations were complete, Lin Jun sent the mushroomborn away. A group of Pujis emerged from the Mycelium Carpet.
Through them, he checked every detail of the array once more, ensuring no errors.
Then, several Pujis willingly crawled onto the magic nodes that should have been occupied by living sacrifices and sat quietly.
Finally, a spellcasting-designated Pujis activated the array.
Pitch-black magic patterns flared to life, glowing with ominous light.
Almost at the instant the array activated, Lin Jun felt the flood of chaotic “garbage information” again!
【Arm length: 1.2 meters, four-fingered structure】
Through the haze, its emerging outline looked like… a ball of yarn?
A tangled, writhing bundle of threads?
This form wasn’t listed among the seven “safe” shapes in the book, but neither was it on the blacklist of forty-two “dangerous” forms.
An unknown form. According to the book, the safest choice now was to abort immediately.
But Lin Jun didn’t. Because he had already seen its status panel:
【Species: Shadow Insect (Scrapped)】
【Level: LV3】
【Skill: Shadow-Melt LV1】
The “yarn ball” was actually a mass of intertwined insect bodies. They twisted, slowly merging into the shadows cast by the stone walls, albeit sluggishly.
Before it could completely vanish, Lin Jun used the pre-established contract link to forcibly drag it back out of the shadow.
But his attention was no longer on the summon itself.
“Scrapped”? Damn it—he’d suspected before that this information resembled discarded data. Now it was confirmed!
Could it be that this world really was nothing more than a game?
Then who were its “developers”?
Those so-called lofty gods spoken of in legends?
A sick feeling welled up inside him. If this world truly was a predesigned game, then who was he?
A player trapped within, unaware?
Or an NPC who only believed he had free will, while his fate had long been scripted?
And what about Gray["Little Black"], Norris, Piglet, Shou…?
Were they nothing more than lines of data, given rich backstories but ready to be reset or deleted at any moment?
Such a detestable thought—worse than being sun-dried to death…