Life Game In Other World
Chapter 1106: Eye of the World Fragment, Ancient Mist (Extra-long - , seeking monthly pass)

Chapter 1106: Chapter 1106: Eye of the World Fragment, Ancient Mist (Extra-long Chapter, seeking monthly pass)

After several hours of intense ’friendly negotiation,’ the three major organizations finally reached a basic consensus.

The first and second matters mentioned by Li Cheng, as well as the third matter of establishing a Church, did not face much opposition.

After all, with ’Hao Yi,’ a B-level Transcendent present, even the World Tree and Moonlight could not interfere with the establishment of ’K’s Church.

Moreover, Li Cheng supported this matter as well.

Although they still harbored wariness toward the Divine Being ’K,’ they had to admit that it was with the aid of ’K’ that they were able to save the real world on several occasions, so they were willing to extend goodwill toward ’K,’ or at least toward ’Hao Yi.’

The focal point of the debate was whether, if ’K’ could truly bestow power to aid the three organizations in handling weird events and contamination incidents.

Then to whom should this ’Knights’ organization, established to deal with weird and contamination events, belong? And whose commands should they obey when dealing with contamination?

Everyone agreed on the establishment of the Knights and did not object to the Knights being stationed within the territories of the three major organizations.

After all, the frequent weird and contamination events had nearly breached the organizational structure of the three organizations; their existing Transcendents were utterly incapable of handling all contamination events.

Since these contamination events could spread and infect others, a small gap could potentially lead to a complete collapse, so they were more than willing to have the Church assist in cleaning up the contamination.

But likewise, they hoped the Church was only there to ’help’ rather than ’replace’ them.

And so, new problems emerged.

If the Knights supposedly belonging to the Church were actually controlled by the three major organizations, would they still be considered the Church’s Knights?

Of course, He Ao didn’t particularly care about this issue.

His plan was to have the Knights offer ’Sacrifices’ and ’Grace’ to the City of Rong Guang and the maid doll.

Such sacrifices, once made, would mean a portion of their power would be extracted by the maid doll, and that part of the power could be directly transferred to him.

In other words, as long as the Knights were operational, he would consistently siphon off a share of their power.

Additionally, the power of Grace was entirely sourced from him; if he disliked a particular ’Knights’ group, he could directly cut off their supply of Grace.

Naturally, he wasn’t actually going to completely hand over the Knights to the three organizations.

Firstly, he needed to maintain basic control over the Knights; once the organization grew too large, it was inevitable that some would try to use this power to seize benefits and cause bloodshed.

That would turn the Church into another Rong Guang Society.

Secondly, if he appeared too eager to agree, the three organizations would become suspicious of his ulterior motives.

Therefore, ’Hao Yi’ and the three organizations engaged in intense ’friendly exchanges,’ eventually establishing a fundamental ’cooperation principle.’

First and foremost, the Church Knights were, in principle, subordinated to the Church, with its headquarters to be established in the currently directly controlled ’Newland City-State’ by Hao Yi.

The ’Archbishops’ responsible for various regions would be dispatched by Newland City-State and receive direct orders from Newland City-State.

Below the Archbishop, a Bishop would be established for a certain region; all Bishops would be recommended by the local area with at least three candidates, chosen by the Archbishop, and then submitted to the headquarters for the final decision.

Bishops must originate from the local Church; once confirmed, they cannot be dismissed without headquarters’ approval.

If the local Church lacks sufficiently qualified personnel, the locality may recommend several Church personnel, and the Archbishop selects an Interim Bishop from them to serve until qualifications are met.

The Interim Bishop can be dismissed by the Archbishop directly.

All Church organizations are only allowed to guide the faith in ’K’ and must not interfere with the local order.

Along with the Church organizations, Knights’ organizations will be established in each region; local Transcendent organizations will share intelligence with the Knights, which only deal with contamination and weird events, and not other matters.

In principle, the Archbishop is the highest authority of the local Knights; the members of the local Knights will be recommended by the local area, screened by the Bishop, and the confirmed candidates handed over to the Archbishop, who will make the selection and finalize the list.

All appointments will be reported to Newland headquarters, which will give final approval and grant the status of Knights’ members.

If the Archbishop finds the candidates unsatisfactory, they can send back the selections, requiring the Bishop to reselect.

If selections are rejected three times, both the Archbishop and the Bishop with returned nominations must report to Newland headquarters.

The headquarters will decide whether to dismiss the Bishop and recommend a new candidate, replace the Archbishop, or directly finalize the candidate list.

In summary, the entire principle is this: localities control candidate recommendations, the Church controls personnel appointments and dismissals.

Of course, there are still many ’negotiations’ in the details.

For example, the Bishop’s recommendation requirement being ’Church personnel with the necessary qualifications’ is pointless during the early stages of Church establishment when there are no qualified individuals.

All Bishops in the early stages will definitely be ’their own people’ recommended by the localities.

However, as the Church develops to a certain extent, this will become a means to limit local recommendation power; people who have worked in the Church for many years are likely to have some recognition of the Church, and these will need to be gradually changed.

Still, to prevent localities from acting recklessly early on, those without qualifications are ’Interim Bishops,’ whom the Archbishop has the autonomy to appoint or dismiss freely.

"""

This effectively expanded the Archbishop’s power, allowing the early Archbishops to ’check and balance’ the local authorities to prevent them from stepping out of line too much.

Under such regulations, the local authorities would definitely have a significant influence on the Church in the early stages, turning the Church into their ’aid’.

And at the same time, they would support the Church as much as possible in exchange for this aid, to strengthen their own power.

In the later stages, the Church would inevitably break free from their control and gradually become ’independent’.

He Ao had almost explicitly laid out this idea, and everyone could understand it.

But with this, the three major organizations were instead put at ease.

The future is the future; first, let’s get through the present.

After all, these are just the early rules which are always in the process of being ’perfected’.

Of course, as a price, with the deepening cooperation with the Church, the three major organizations would definitely be influenced by the Church in return.

After all, ’cooperation’ is mutual.

But that too is a matter for the future.

Further detailed principles and regulations still need to be further negotiated.

The current rudimentary rules still have many loopholes.

However, this is not something for the people in this meeting to consider.

There will later be specialized negotiators sitting together to discuss more detailed regulations.

By the time the meeting completely ended, the sky had already darkened.

As the crowd dispersed, the meeting room was left with only He Ao, ’Hao Yi’, and Li Cheng.

Li Cheng was also preparing to pack up, but He Ao suddenly spoke up to stop him.

’Hao Yi’ on the side handed a piece of paper with two patterns drawn on it to Li Cheng.

"Is this some kind of writing?"

Before He Ao could speak, Li Cheng looked at the patterns on the paper and asked in confusion.

Then he looked down at the two patterns, his gaze falling on the first one, "I think I’ve seen this pattern somewhere."

"Ah?"

Before He Ao had a chance to explain, he heard Li Cheng uttering these words and was momentarily stunned.

The first ’pattern’ was actually written in the language of the Original Federation’s First District as "196 Research Institute".

The second ’pattern’ was written in the language of the Second District.

"Where did you see it?"

’Hao Yi’ looked at Li Cheng and asked in a low voice.

"It was probably the second time I entered the ruins,"

Li Cheng thought for a moment, seemingly considering how to describe it, and after a brief pause, he looked up at the two men and continued, "Do you know about a ’High Tower’ in the ruins?"

"Mm."

’Hao Yi’ nodded.

"That pattern roughly appeared in a facility about fifty kilometers north of that High Tower,"

Li Cheng said calmly, "That should be a research facility mainly underground, the surface building has collapsed, but the underground structure should be intact. There are many dangerous creatures below, probably several layers deep. But at that time I had just become a Transcendent and only made it down to the second sub-level,"

He paused for a moment, pondering, and then said, "The fragments of the Eye of the World, that’s what I found in that facility."

"Eye of the World Fragment?"

He Ao looked up at Li Cheng.

The first time he saw the term ’Eye of the World’ was in a book in the dungeon world that recorded the Talent Sequences periodic table.

After that, he also saw ’Eye of the World Fragment’ in the internal documents of the Research Institute, which the Research Institute defined as an item that could keenly sense Extraordinary Power.

However, he had not completely linked the dungeon world’s ’Eye of the World’ with the Main World’s ’Eye of the World Fragment’ because essentially the languages of the two worlds did not match, and many things could not be precisely translated.

Even the same Extraordinary Item might have different names in the Main World and the dungeon world.

But here, hearing Li Cheng mention this ’term’ once again, he suddenly realized that these two might indeed be the same thing.

"Yes, what you’ve seen,"

""

Li Cheng smiled and said, "Do you still remember the Talent Testing Room?"

"The place where you test your Talent Sequences’ names and their levels?"

He Ao paused slightly, quickly recalling the first time he tested his ’Talent’ in the Main World.

It was a room in Xidu, filled with Mithril, where at the depth of the room, sealed a thumb-sized grey crystal fragment.

When he saw that crystal fragment, he acquired a kind of higher-dimensional perspective similar to when the Blood-Moistening Jade Pendant is activated, able to read the transcendent information on himself.

It was also then that he learned the power of Martial Arts in the Talent Sequences system was referred to as ’Kingdom’.

Only at this moment did he suddenly realize the extraordinary nature of that crystal fragment.

At least to his knowledge, a fragment of a B-Tier item couldn’t achieve this extent.

Could it be a fragment of a high-tier item? Just casually displayed there? Available for everyone to see?

Moreover, when Li Cheng had just entered transcendence, the channels to relics should have been very fragile, perhaps only accessible by F-Tier transcendent beings, but Li Cheng brought a ’high-tier item fragment’ over?

"Yes,"

Li Cheng nodded, "I found three fragments in total, one large and two small. The large one is in Beidu, and the small ones, one in Xidu, one in Dongdu. We fixed up three ’Talent Testing Rooms’ to place these three fragments,"

He introduced softly, "Besides testing Talents, the large fragment has a special ability, which is the random sensing of relic openings. The closer it is, the easier it can sense them, so we can always detect the channels to relics appearing over the nearby open sea in advance."

"I see."

He Ao nodded slightly, vaguely feeling he had forgotten something, but again couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

Just as he was about to move on to another topic, an orangish-gray glow flashed across his vision.

He immediately raised his head and said with some uncertainty, "President, what tier does the Research Institute consider the ’Eye of the World Fragment’ to be among the extraordinary items?"

"Just an ordinary item?"

Li Cheng paused, pondering and said, "The World Tree and Moonlight also have similar items that can detect the names of Talents, but they are slightly different from ours, ours have some additional functions."

"Then what is your own feeling about what tier the item could be?"

He Ao pressed on with his question.

"What tier?"

Li Cheng was slightly stunned, with flickering electricity passing over his fingertips as he seemed to fall into a brief recollection, "Apart from making sure of my Talent when my promotion was unclear, I rarely look at those fragments. But if I have to say, based on the influence of that fragment, it makes me feel like..."

His voice gradually slowed down and his tone became more serious, "That thing is probably at least an Angel Tier item fragment, a very dangerous Angel Tier item!"

He quickly came to his senses and looked at He Ao, whispering, "There has been some sort of ’disconnect’ in our cognition,"

"Hmm."

He Ao nodded softly.

At that moment, he suddenly remembered Yang De once mentioned the word ’Eye of the World Fragment’ during a conversation, but he did not pay too much attention to it.

Even when he saw the related information about this fragment, he just glanced over it briefly without paying much attention and moved on.

But ’Eye of the World’ is a term mentioned in that ’manuscript’ that introduced the periodic table of Talent Sequences. In any case, whether there is a translation error or not, he should not be so ’unmoved’ by it.

Moreover, high-tier items themselves transmit information; the ’Eye of the World’ might in itself be a high-order term.

It’s like a person whose neighbor’s uncle is the President of the country. He sees the other party on TV every day, and sometimes greets him in the morning.

But when he greets this neighbor in the morning, he doesn’t think of him as the ’President of the country’ and even forgets that the other is the President, seeing him just as an ordinary neighbor uncle, without a hint of fear.

Yet when he sees this Uncle President on TV, he naturally realizes the high status and power of the President, feeling awe in his heart.

He knows the ’President’ and the ’neighbor’ are the same person, but at every opportunity of meeting, he fails to recognize the other as the ’President’.

This is an invisible cognitive disconnection.

And from the beginning, it has influenced everyone in the Research Institute.

"When did..."

He Ao started speaking and then paused abruptly.

This ’fragment’ is used for viewing ’Talents’, and only after viewing Talents can one decide on a codename.

Meaning, every ’Transcendent’ in the Research Institute, whether official or specially invited, has seen that fragment.

From that moment on, every viewer was ’influenced’.

He Ao and Li Cheng became aware of the issue not because the influence had disappeared, but because both of them possessed angelic artifacts and had already come close to angels, allowing them to ’contend’ with this influence to a certain degree.

Before this moment, they hadn’t even noticed anything amiss.

"This must be some kind of ability that deliberately makes us overlook it,"

Li Cheng’s expression had turned utterly grave; he was clearly aware of how this fragment was affecting people, "It’s very strong. Perhaps we can now be aware of its issues, but once we get back and our attention is diverted, its influence might gradually take over again, causing us to overlook its nature,"

He picked up his cellphone, quickly typed out a message, and sent it, "I’ll have Liu shut down the Talent Testing Room first, to prevent anyone from entering."

"Mhm."

He Ao nodded lightly.

After waiting for Li Cheng to send the message, he looked at him and asked in a low voice, "Director, do you think it’s dangerous?"

"It’s definitely dangerous,"

Li Cheng sighed, "But as far as we can tell, it doesn’t seem to be our enemy. Otherwise, it had many opportunities to summon a Divine Being when we were very weak and destroy this world. For now, all we can do is monitor and research to understand what it really wants to do."

"Yes,"

He Ao nodded, and then, appearing pensive, he asked, "Director, how did you manage to bring it out of the relic passage in the first place?"

"I don’t know either. At that time, the relic passage only allowed Transcendents of F Energy Level to pass through,"

Li Cheng sighed and rubbed his eyebrows, "I just thought it was a common Extraordinary Item at the time. I even thought I had struck it rich, to be honest. I can still remember how happy I was then."

"In some ways, you indeed stumbled upon a treasure."

He Ao said with a smile, then pondered for a moment, "If it could pass through the relic passage, either the Eye of the World Fragment itself really has a low Energy Level and is just invoking powerful energy to disrupt us, or it has some special way to pass through the relic passage."

"Perhaps,"

Li Cheng nodded, "I’ll continue to base my research around it."

He smiled, "Who knows, we might even get to uncover some of the secrets of the relic passage because of it."

Then he glanced at the papers on the table and looked toward Hao Yi, "So, you’re looking for these for...?"

"For something this Research Institute might be studying."

’Hao Yi’ took back the papers and smiled, "Thank you, your information has been a great help to us."

"Don’t mention it, as long as it helps,"

Li Cheng laughed heartily, "Compared to the information you’ve given us, this is nothing. I remember our previous agreement did include an obligation to provide you with relic information.

However, back then the Research Institute wasn’t fully established, and we didn’t have the means to record all the information. So, it wasn’t included in the materials I gave you. If you didn’t come to me today, I might really have forgotten about it."

Then he paused for a moment, slowly stood up, "Alright, I need to go back as well. You guys talk."

"Yes, alright."

’Hao Yi’ nodded lightly.

Even though Li Cheng appeared nonchalant, it was clear that he took the issue of the ’Eye of the World Fragment’ very seriously and was in a hurry to handle it.

"By the way,"

Li Cheng, who was ready to leave, turned back to ’Hao Yi’, "The trial medicine formula you asked us to research has resulted in the first batch of trial medicine. You’re welcome to come and have a look when you’re free."

"Good!"

’Hao Yi’ responded with a nod.

······

After sending off Li Cheng, the conference room became quiet, and He Ao stared at the empty table, falling into a brief silence.

The countdown in the bottom right corner of his field of view showed three days left.

That was the day the next dungeon world instance would open.

Research Institute 196 ··· Underground Level Five ··· Eye of the World ··· Relic Passage ···

The ancient era’s mist seemed to be gradually lifting a corner for him.

However,

He Ao looked down at the cellphone on the table,

There was one problem now; what emblem should be used for the Church?