Chapter 64: [Someone, feed Master Yuan a cake!] (Please subscribe!)

The frog meat was exceptionally tender, the seasoning was spot on, and the heat was managed to absolute perfection. In barely fifteen minutes, all five frogs were polished off. Master Yuan, who had been starving the entire day, was finally full. The satisfaction was simply immense.

"So delicious! I'm completely satisfied now. Next time I have free time, I'm coming back."

The little sprite commented, "Boss, your human body is still somewhat weak. A mere five frogs and you're already stuffed. You must know that the Tiger Demon King can eat massive amounts of food; not to mention the Snake Demon, who possesses the [Inner Universe], eating only once a year, but that single meal lasts the entire year. Therefore, appetite is directly proportional to strength. You must work hard to increase your food capacity so that I can enjoy myself a bit longer."

"No need to rush. Once the enhancement is complete, my human body will undergo a significant leap forward."

Yuan Zhu strolled along leisurely, chatting as he walked, and before he knew it, he passed by a store that looked very lively from a distance.

At that moment, a breeze blew by—moist and refreshing, causing his pores to relax. Combined with the sense of fullness in his belly, it felt utterly wonderful. The idiom from his hometown Earth, 'bathed in a spring breeze,' surfaced in his mind.

Yet here in Duling, the concept of the four seasons did not exist; the entire planet maintained a constant temperature year-round.

In Ningrun, the city where he lived, there was no spring, summer, autumn, or winter. There were only the wind season and the rain season, alongside cool days without rain yet shielded from the harsh sun—quite a livable city overall.

The only drawback, perhaps, was that the night was forever longer than the day, and the duration of day and night remained almost strictly constant.

However, across the entire Northern Hemisphere at the same latitude, it was the exact same story. Even if one moved to Taixi, darkness fell just as early.

Suddenly, his dormant geographical knowledge launched a frantic assault on Yuan Zhu's brain.

As he had just absorbed and fused with a massive amount of childhood memories, generating a sense of belonging and affection for Ningrun, his brain and soul entered a high-energy consumption mode, rapidly digesting the fragmented memories of his predecessor.

Right then, simply because his thoughts drifted and he thought of Ningrun... no, of the fact that the entire planet Duling had no four seasons—

The moment this thought arose, those dormant geography textbooks from his predecessor began to mutate like corpses crawling out of graves, launching a DDoS attack on his brain. They packaged various knowledge points into streams of information, delivering a saturation-style cudgeling and灌顶 (empowerment) to his mind.

Fortunately, our friend Yuan was no pushover. He activated his [Soul Firewall], taking the precious middle school knowledge points and painful study memories head-on. A vast array of common sense and obscure knowledge surfaced repeatedly.

Flashes of illustrations and ancient texts crossed his mind, including the Seven Wonders of the World: [The Buddha Beyond the Sky, The World's Spine, The Golden Pillar, The Kunlun Divine Tree, and The Hyper-Construct]... Some were blurry black-and-white photographs, while others were simply illustrations imagined out of thin air by artists, which his younger self had then reprocessed into absurd, abstract memes.

Among them, the [Kunlun Divine Tree] was a super-plant standing proudly at the highest peak of the [Heng Continent], atop the summit of Mount Kunlun: the Undying Divine Flatpeach Tree.

It was a tree so immense that it was utterly impossible to capture with a camera; one could only describe a tiny corner of it blindly through pure imagination, much like the blind men feeling the elephant.

Its dimensions reached up to touch the heavens, piercing the stratosphere. It was entirely unobservable from the surface of the mortal world, where one could only gaze up at a pitch-black canopy. Downward, the Flatpeach Divine Tree extended ten thousand miles of aerial roots from the summit of the Kunlun Mountains, clinging to floating islands and spanning the void as they drooped downward, creating the miraculous spectacle of inverted trees.

Compared to the [Buddha Head] floating in outer space, this divine tree was far too close to the mortal realm, and far too shocking. It was indeed a well-deserved member of the [Seven Wonders].

At the same time, Yuan Zhu had learned shortly before that this tree was the source of the [Kunlun Immortal Path]. To be precise, the source of Kunlun's immortal arts was the 'Kunlun Immortal Realm' created by using the entire plant after the Flatpeach Tree broke through the sky.

Yes, in contemporary Taoist scriptures, that Flatpeach Tree was not only recognized as [The Root of Heaven and Earth], but also bore names such as [Jianmu (Building Wood)] and [The Herb of Immortality]. In the scriptures of other nations, the Flatpeach Tree held multiple designations including [The World Tree] and [The Tree of Life].

Throughout history, unidentified transmigrators from various nations and locations across Earth had left behind a massive volume of chronologically disordered scriptures on Duling. Many of these heavily distorted and reprocessed mythological stories had also been pinned onto this divine tree. It was simultaneously Kabbalah and Yggdrasil, functioning not only as Jianmu but also as the Flatpeach Spiritual Root and the Herb of Immortality...

"Damn, there really is an immortal realm?! And it's right outside the atmosphere? But that's not scientific! Didn't they say the current world possesses an [Ascension Mechanism] where once pollution energy breaks through the threshold, entities get repelled to the [Spirit World Layer]? How can a World Tree of this magnitude, which nurtures an independent immortal realm, linger on the surface of the planet and appear so blatantly in reality?"

Yuan Zhu was utterly shocked at that moment, finding it somewhat incomprehensible. Why was it completely different from what was promised?!

Little Spicy Strip was also nearly crashed by this influx of information, equally unable to make sense of Duling's worldview.

"That's not right! The Buddha Head is so huge and floats in outer space, yet it hasn't been repelled by the [Ascension Mechanism]! And these Seven Wonders, none of them are normal!" The little sprite managed to grasp onto a fragment of thought and started howling wildly with nonsense.

At that moment, she wasn't even sure which side she should stand on or whose behalf she should speak for.

"No, my brain is a bit chaotic. Can you help me block this out? These knowledge points really are drilling into my head in waves. I feel like I'm about to study myself to the point of vomiting; I'm dizzy and my head feels like it's going to explode!"

"It won't explode. It's just that the pumping speed of your cardiovascular blood flow is overloaded, your brain is overheating causing performance to drop, your heart is beating beyond capacity, and your neural synapses are running in overdrive... Rest assured, even if your cerebral blood vessels burst and you suffer a sudden thrombotic death, you can still activate the [Boss Template] for automatic HP regeneration and repair. Boss, you must believe in your own potential. Your vitality is far more tenacious than you can possibly imagine!"

"Hiss... Holy crap!"

Yuan Zhu drew in a sharp breath of cold air. The geography textbooks from the first half of the school year had also come back to life! Several of them all at once, wearing grim smiles, cornered him in a narrow dead end. Each brandishing a spiritual injection rod, they emitted chilling laughter at him.

《Junior High Geography. Volume 1》: "Accept the irrigation of the knowledge storm! Your struggle is meaningless. I'm going to fill your scholarship to the brim until it spills out from your seven orifices!"

《Senior High Geography. Volume 1》 drew an engraving knife inscribed with a profanity: "Obediently accept this technique transmission, no resistance allowed! I am going to carve the knowledge points deep into your brain, and you are never, ever allowed to forget me!"

《World Geography》: "I'm going to stuff your brain until it explodes with knowledge points! Study for me! Study your ass off! Only by enduring the bitterest of hardships can one rise above others. Without studying, how can you make a fortune? How can you stand out? As long as studying doesn't kill you, study yourself to death!"

《World History》: "The big brothers are right—if you can't endure the bitterness of studying, you'll have to endure the bitterness of life! Better a short pain than a long one, just bear with it! Learn ten more units of knowledge points and I'll let go. You can survive this!"

At that moment, years of accumulated study memories from his schooling days, along with the knowledge learned in classrooms, were poured entirely into his brain in the span of just over ten seconds. Yuan Zhu even began experiencing hallucinations.

Those textbooks seemed to have come alive, pinning him to the ground to rub his face in the dirt, prying open his mouth, and stacking high plates of steamed buns compressed from high-concentration knowledge right in front of him, staging a live reenactment of [Come, feed the young master Yuan his bun!]

The bitter, hard-to-swallow knowledge bun exploded in his mind the moment it hit his stomach.

BGM played. Mimi Wang the cow cat stared blankly with vacant eyes, looking dazedly at the audience. Against the blue background curtain behind his head, countless formula symbols flashed by rapidly... At that moment, he seemed to have connected with [World-Shaking Wisdom]!

...

Because Duling's axis of rotation differed from Earth's, coupled with the tricky angle of the sun's position, the planet lacked distinct four seasons.

If Earth's equatorial zone constantly received direct sunlight and remained permanently in a high-temperature tropical climate, and due to Earth's revolution, the temperate zones of the northern and southern hemispheres alternated between winter and summer; while Earth's polar frigid zones, lacking long-term direct sunlight, remained low-temperature and cold—

Then, treat Duling as Earth.

Due to the shift in the planet's rotational axis, combined with the weak presence of the sun (relative to the Northern Hemisphere), the sun perpetually maintained a direct radiation position over the Southern Hemisphere's polar circle without ever moving, fluctuating only in distance.

If the sun were regarded as a lightbulb, it stared unwaveringly at the bottom of the terrestrial globe (the South Pole) to shine its light. Sometimes it drew closer, scorching intensely; sometimes it retreated slightly, lowering the heat so as not to burn through the earth's crust.

Consequently, Duling's equator—or rather, the [Equatorial Circle]—largely overlapped with Earth's Antarctic Circle.

Duling's Antarctic Circle endured the eternal, scorching heat of the sun, making it the hottest region on the entire planet, dubbed the [Eternal Scorched Earth]. Scorched by high temperatures year-round, plagued by frequent volcanic eruptions and filled with toxic gases, it was a forbidden zone for life.

Therefore, the Arctic Circle corresponding to the [Eternal Scorched Earth] (Antarctic Circle) had never received even a single second of sunlight in its entire existence. Permanently plunged into extreme cold and darkness, it was another forbidden zone for life, referred to in geography textbooks as the [Eternal Night Frozen Soil]. There, temperatures were extremely low, darkness was eternal, photosynthesis was impossible, and normal organisms could not survive in the eternal night frozen soil.

Next, the temperate regions of the Southern Hemisphere, which were relatively close to the [Eternal Scorched Earth], were actually not cold at all. This region, subjected to the sun's relentless radiation and baking year-round, experienced very high temperatures and intense heat. In geography textbooks, it was called the [(Southern) Tropical Zone] or the [Torrid Zone], making it even hotter than Earth's equator.

Meanwhile, Earth's equatorial zone corresponded to a region on Duling with pleasant temperatures and abundant rainfall, termed the [Warm-Temperate Zone] or the [Golden Continent Zone]. With a constant temperature year-round and no seasonal changes, it was also called [Eternal Summer], where crops could be planted endlessly, harvested continuously from the beginning of the year to the end.

Unfortunately, however, there was very little landmass located along the [Golden Belt], wasting this heavenly bounty.

The [Heng Continent] only had a small portion near the south that barely managed to be included in the northern fringe of the [Golden Belt]. As for the [New Continent] where Yuan Zhu lived, because of its strip-like shape spanning vertically across the entire planet Duling, a considerable portion of it fell within the [Golden Belt].

Explorers from scientific inspection teams had once traveled south along the New Continent, reaching the edge of the [Eternal Scorched Earth]; later, they explored northward and successfully entered the [Eternal Night Zone].

Ningrun, located on the west coast, already fell within the range of Earth's Northern Hemisphere temperate zone. The sunlight here had traversed two major regions—the [Southern Torrid Zone] and the [Warm-Torrid Zone (Golden Belt)]—resulting in severe energy dissipation. Consequently, the temperature and environment hovered around spring and autumn conditions, alternating with wind and rain seasons, sometimes chilly and at other times cool and comfortable.

If one continued moving further north, the temperature would drop even lower and the nights would grow longer... until entering the [Eternal Night Frozen Soil]. Conversely, migrating southward would make things increasingly comfortable and warm.

However, according to geography and history books, Duling's social structure was not solely determined by geographical environment. In ancient times four hundred years ago, people naturally migrated wherever was most livable.

Today, however, extraordinary systems, deities, and other supernatural factors were the crucial forces shaping the world's landscape. A mere sun counted for little.

On this cursed planet, natural anomalies and majestic forces far superior to the sun were aplenty. For example, in the eastern part of the New Continent, one could clearly observe on the map that every 7.7 degrees of latitude, a colossal, perfectly circular freshwater lake sat upon the land of the eastern New Continent.

Lake after lake of identical size, their centers aligned along the same longitude, emitted an eternal water temperature of 37.5°C. Acting like a super-underground hot spring network, they brought warmth to the freezing northern regions.

This chain of 'lake clusters' spanning the northern hemisphere of the New Continent was known as the [Continuous Lakes]. The lakes teemed with aquatic life, and the surrounding region for a hundred miles enjoyed spring-like weather year-round... Yet even this wondrous spectacle was not grand enough to enter the [Seven Wonders of the World].

"[Continuous Lakes], [Whale Ruin Island], [Pillar Monument]... I can't take it anymore! Help me block out these pieces of knowledge!"

Just a casual reverie had triggered a round of brain-storming. Yuan Zhu now felt like an idiot walking out of an internet cafe after pulling an all-nighter for two days straight. His brain could barely turn, and everything he did was a beat too slow.

"Boss, you're truly amazing, cramming so many knowledge residues settled deep within the soul right into my face. If I were to help you search and organize these memories without affecting your daily life, it would take at least a week to sort out. But now, in less than a minute, you completed it yourself. And you've mastered them thoroughly, not just as flat information retrieved by me. Human potential really is infinite."

"I almost died. It was so agonizing. The [School of Knowledge] is truly not something humans can endure!"

The little sprite nodded in agreement: "Boss, I looked through the Gods' Space redemption materials regarding the [School of Knowledge]. Among them is a forbidden path where one can ascend by removing their own head, gaining even stronger knowledge and a surge of power. However, that school seems to be marked as an illegal 'forbidden organization' called the [Headless Monks Guild]. None of the members have heads, you see! Perhaps if you took off your head to study knowledge, you wouldn't feel any headache anymore?"

"???" Yuan Zhu, whose reactions were currently a beat slow, froze instantly. What kind of nonsense are you spouting?!

He simply couldn't imagine a future scenario where, during the next mission, Meng Xiyue's body was teleported into the [House of Happiness], while her head was left soaking in formaldehyde back at the school because she forgot to bring it along.

"The human body is amazing, isn't it?" Seeing that her boss was still frowning in pain, the little sprite suggested, "Boss, are you still feeling that uncomfortable? Why don't you wander into that shop over there? There are some very interesting things inside!"

Forcing himself to pull it together, Yuan Zhu looked toward the shop that stood out so abruptly beside the deserted street.

Along this street, there were very few shops still operating at 8 or 9 in the night. The few with lights on were mostly taverns, pleasure houses, gun shops, pawnshops, or gambling dens...

Yet this particular shop was somewhat unusual—it was a general store.

Outside the shop, a few open-air pool tables had been set up. At that moment, a group of idle punk youths had gathered around the tables, chatting loudly, swearing, and playing billiards.

Along the curb nearby, clusters of other punk youths held glass bottles, guzzling down a fluorescent beverage while drinking heartily and shouting noisily, attempting to attract the attention of a few girls gathered around the pool table.

After gulping down the glowing drink, the subcutaneous blood vessels in the necks and cheeks of these punk youths exposed to the night air faintly glowed. This was due to a certain substance in the drink that, much like alcohol, bound with red blood cells and began circulating in the bloodstream, producing the bizarre phenomenon of glowing subcutaneous blood vessels.

Perhaps this was fashionable; this group of punk youths each sported glowing veins all over their faces and necks, taking immense pride in it.

Upon seeing Yuan Zhu approach, faced with the oppressive aura of his 189 cm height, his wild, untamed, aggressive and striking appearance, and his high-end custom black attire... the punk youths couldn't help but recoil a step before defiantly lifting their chins, flashing their glowing veins, and returning his hostile glare.

With an expression that seemed to say: So what if you look fierce? Are you as cool as us? We glow in the dark!

Looking at them, Yuan Zhu inexplicably thought of Lü Rang, that steampunk rainbow-crested punk hoodlum. These punk youths were cut from the exact same cloth.

No! Lü Rang at least dared to wear lip rings, nose rings, and a punk spiked jacket while wielding a pipe wrench, looking like a minor grunt from an apocalyptic wasteland. He was several tiers above this bunch of punks.

Instantly, the nostalgic filter of his Ningrun hometown shattered once more, leaving him with the desolate feeling of an 'eighteenth-tier small town combined with a rural-urban fringe, slowly being abandoned by the era.'

Affected by the terrain (being situated in a basin), this city could not be expanded. It could only maintain a relative state of backwardness while undergoing piecemeal renovations and replacements. For years, it had been sucked dry by Taixi, left to consume only the obsolete production capacity and industrial garbage discarded by Taixi...

Talented young people had all gone off to neighboring cities to work and make money. What remained were either these idle punk youths or folks like Lü Rang, the 'motorcycle-riding pipe-wrench sword immortal.'

Had Yuan Zhu not needed to take care of his younger brother, his predecessor—that ultimate grind-driven overachiever—would undoubtedly have fled long ago to Taixi to hustle through crazy part-time jobs. The title of King of Part-Timers was not earned for nothing!

Ignoring the punk youths' baffling provocation (flaunting their glow), Yuan Zhu stepped into the store. Inside, rows of shelves were separated by a long counter. If you wanted anything, you had to ask a clerk to fetch it for you—a very backward model inferior to convenience stores.

The clerk lowered his head, glanced up, and asked, "What do you want?"

"I'm just looking." With that, Yuan Zhu began calling out to the little sprite, "Hey, Spicy Strip, why did you drag me in here? These are all just ordinary goods."

Yuan Zhu swept his gaze across the shelves, which mostly held unfamiliar snacks, cigarettes, and beverage brands. His gaze quickly skipped past the bizarre novelty snacks in quirky packaging and came to a halt in the tobacco, alcohol, and beverage section.

The alcohol wasn't particularly special; beer, baijiu, and red wine were all present. But the cigarettes included not only traditional tobacco leaves, but also various mycelium cigarettes, mushroom cigarettes, spore cigarettes, and traditional Chinese medicine health cigarettes... which was a real eye-opener. There were even virility-enhancing cigarettes?!

As for the alcoholic beverage and soft drink section, it was even more heaven-defying. He first spotted carbonated drinks—fairly normal glass bottles of soda, featuring orange and apple flavors. He didn't see Earth's Coca-Cola, but there was a murky green, eerie novelty drink serving as a substitute.

Next to the carbonated section was the weak-acid drink area, marked with a large, blood-red exclamation point printed over a white skull face. According to the warning label, this was genuine flavored weak acid, and ordinary humans should consume it with caution.

Following that, he saw alkaline drinks, bearing the same corrosive warning labels warning of stomach perforation, intestinal ulceration, esophageal corrosion, and the like. Aside from the acidic and alkaline beverages, there was also a separate section dedicated to [Spore Beverages].

"Yes, yes, yes! Right here! That's the one, hurry up and buy a bottle."

Following the direction pointed out by the little sprite, Yuan Zhu looked over to see a bottle of purple-red beverage radiating a dreamy, flowing luminescence. No matter how he looked at it, it didn't resemble anything fit for consumption; rather, it looked like a diluted chemical dye—stunningly gorgeous and intensely eye-catching.

Yuan Zhu checked the price tag and was instantly dumbfounded. It actually cost 3 yuan! How was this daylight robbery? All five of his frogs combined had only cost 50 cents!