Master of Kaidan
Chapter 411 Arrival of the Natural Disaster

Chapter 411: Chapter 411 Arrival of the Natural Disaster

Hearing the boss’s muttering, Feng Xue felt a leap in his heart. Drawing on his past life experience as an online fiction practitioner, the phrase "those fools" alone quickly led him to a possibility—

A virtual game world.

Moreover, it was the kind that claimed to be a game but was actually a real world, the kind depicted in tales of the fourth calamity.

Then the question arose—

Was this world the result of a super-intelligent brain evolving into an extremely realistic, data-based world, or was it the type where some great power had pulled modern-day players into an otherworld using black technology, magic, divine status, and such?

And did this world contain characters like transmigrators, reborn individuals, or rebirth players who understood the true nature of the fourth calamity?

While pondering these questions, Feng Xue also began to notice some new issues, namely, what was the structure of this world?

According to Old Li, all the places that the Tower of Babylon reached were standard worlds, in other words, "truly existing worlds," and the existence of True Objects in this world that could be used as the cornerstone for recasting but couldn’t be refined was the best proof of that.

But such a normal world seemed abnormal in Feng Xue’s eyes, because according to Old Li’s words, the standard worlds above the fiftieth floor should all have been influenced by some sort of kaidan by now.

However, this could also be because Feng Xue’s perspective was currently limited to a small village.

After all, for a kaidan, the population itself was a resource. In these small villages with only a hundred or so households, at most a thousand people, no matter how prosperous, the population was fixed. No matter how much effort was put forth, it wouldn’t be enough to generate sufficient cognition.

And a village in the ancient style, as this one appeared to be, wouldn’t likely have the foundation to spread a kaidan.

Of course, there was another possibility—

Those so-called "fools" might not be the traditional fourth calamity but rather a group of kaidan.

However, Feng Xue thought this possibility was not very large. If players were kaidan, first there had to be cognizance of the players. And it seemed unlikely that an ancient world would have any recognition of "players."

While mulling over this in his mind, Feng Xue’s actions didn’t stop. After getting a general grasp of the village’s structure, he left without hesitation. Though waiting here for players to appear was a choice, he felt he still needed to understand this world more.

...

Using the cooperation of the unmanned drone and his mobile phone, which were both phantasmal objects, Feng Xue easily lit up the map of the surrounding area. The village wasn’t overly isolated; following the small river outside the village, there were scattered settlements both upstream and downstream. Along the only somewhat spacious road, Feng Xue walked over a dozen miles before arriving at a county town.

Before he even entered the town, a middle-aged man with a saber at his waist approached him. The man looked unkempt, his face bearing a faint trace of vicissitudes, yet he seemed in good spirits. Calluses were visible on the base and tips of his right hand fingers, and there was a sharpness in his eyes. With Feng Xue’s own Eye Power, the man seemed to be an expert who had cultivated from the outside in.

"Seems like a newly enrolled elementary student from Yan Country... cough cough, or someone on the level of Ke Zhen’e," Feng Xue muttered to himself, then realized that the analogy of a Yan Country elementary student might not serve as a proper benchmark.

After all, for the people of the Yan Country, there were only two definitions: learned and unlearned. Once they started learning martial arts, they could achieve small accomplishments within three months. Strength was only linked to one’s Cultivation Technique, and those babies born after cross training in the fetus by gold element martial arts might even be stronger.

To establish a standard measure of strength for the people of Yan Country, at least one had to wait until the current generation of newborns grew up to adulthood.

While inwardly making a snarky comment about the Yan Country’s martial arts, Feng Xue slipped a bag of salt into his sleeve, side-stepped the approaching swordsman, and soon found that this little county town seemed to have many jianghu travelers.

Swiftly, Feng Xue located an inn that was obviously beyond the spending power of the locals, looked at the "Return Swallow Pavilion" sign, and immediately walked in.

As expected, upon entering, he was greeted by a scene full of sword-carrying martial artists.

Listening to the waiter’s inquiry, "Are you stopping by for a meal or staying at the inn?" Feng Xue picked an empty table and casually threw down a nugget of gold, saying,

"Just bring a couple of your special dishes, and a pot of good tea."

"Right away, sir, please wait a moment!"

The waiter’s eyes sparkled at the sight of the gold, and almost at the same time, Feng Xue felt over a dozen gazes fall on him.

However, Feng Xue didn’t care about that at all, or rather, that was exactly his intention—

Amid those greedy or curious stares, he relaxed the Hermit Power and let out a bit of his "Senior Expert" aura.

Instantly, the whole inn went quiet.

And Feng Xue immediately activated his "Heart of Bright Mirror," as a myriad of thoughts began to resonate in his mind—

"Which senior martial artist is this?"

"He looks to be under thirty. Could he practice the Taoist art of preserving youth?"

"This senior carries no weapons, his hands are white and slender, could he practice some kind of Finger Skill?"

"..."

...

"Oh, not bad, some insights there," he heard various voices in his mind, giving him a certain understanding of the local level of martial arts.

Without touching on anything else, just the attitude of discovering a senior expert was enough to reveal the state of jianghu. If it were a world where everyone was suspected of corruption, the mindset would necessarily tilt toward greed and darkness. But if it were a world where the Righteous Path was truly honored, the mindset would naturally be a lot more tranquil.

And judging from what he could see in the inn, the minds of these jianghu folks tended more toward curiosity, suggesting that the local martial world—or at least the local martial arts—at least, was in a relatively peaceful state.

"Interesting. In this virtual game world, jianghu is so peaceful. Could it be that it’s still in beta, with chaos emerging only after the open beta? Or is it because this is merely a newbie village, so the people’s customs are comparatively simple?"

Feng Xue pondered in his heart, while the jianghu people watched him, he, too, observed these jianghu people.

In the inn, the martial artists were mostly young, the oldest looking only in his early thirties. Their strength was about the level of a second-tier expert in Gold Element Martial Arts, with an occasional appearance of a first-tier expert. But from their demeanor, Feng Xue saw no arrogance, nor did he see any fawning from the people around them. This seemed to indicate that their strength was not outstanding within the entire martial world, even tending toward the lower end, which matched his guess about the newbie village.

The only problem was, he had not heard anything about "fools" from their thoughts.

Not just from them, but all along the way, whether it was street vendors or town guards, there seemed to be no thought given to "fools."

"Is it because the impact of the players is not as great on the town’s residents as on the villagers, or is it because those ’fools’ have not actually appeared in the town at all?"