Chapter 1557: Phantom City
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Lin Huang had imagined many images of how the phantom city might look like inside. However, it looked nothing like his imaginations when they really entered the phantom city.
It was completely different from other places in the abyss. It was an extremely bustling, massive city. There were even skyscrapers that were very similar to the human world.
If not for the various creatures of all shapes and forms on the streets, he would think that he had returned to a grade-A foothold in the gravel world.
“There are so many people?” That was what confused Lin Huang the most.
The reason being the gatekeeper obstacle alone was enough to block most people for getting in.
“In reality, there are little outsiders in the phantom city. Most of them are local residents,” Virtuoso explained, “A portion of the residents and the buildings here are made by the possessor of the castellan’s seal, while a portion of them were created by the phantom city automatically.
Hearing that explanation, a term popped into Lin Huang’s head instantly – NPC.
If he looked at the phantom city as a RPG, then these local residents were undoubtedly the world’s NPCs. To Lin Huang, the outsider, he was the player.
“So how do they differentiate the player, I mean the outsiders and local residents?” Lin Huang almost asked the difference between players and NPCs.
“There’s no proper way to do that,” Virtuoso shook their head and smiled, “However, under usual circumstances, those with exaggerated form and style have a high possibility of being an outsider. However, such a determination method isn’t 100% effective.”
“I supposed the castellan’s seal you’re after is in an outsider’s hand?” Lin Huang asked again.
“It’s not as simple as you think…” Virtuoso shook their head, “Indeed, there’s a real living thing required to activate the castellan’s seal to build the phantom city.
However, the castellan’s seal might not be a complete piece, but a couple of fragments. As long as we’re able to gather them into one, we can activate it as well. If that’s the case, the fragments might be in the hands of a few different people.
Also, the castellan’s seal must stay inside the phantom city, but the seal’s possessor might not. There might be a possibility that the person might get a local resident to take care of the castellan’s seal. After all, many of the local residents are characters the person created, whereby he knows who is the one that he can trust the most. Therefore, the castellan’s seal wouldn’t be 100% with an outsider.”
“So what’s your plan?” Hearing Virtuoso’s explanation, Lin Huang figured the mission might be much more difficult than he imagined.
“If there’s a castellan in this city, there’s a certain chance that the castellan’s seal is with the castellan. Even if it isn’t, he definitely knows something about the castellan’s seal.
If there’s no single castellan, but a group of people managing, we look for the few who have the highest position among them. Even if we can’t find the castellan’s seal directly, we should be able to find some intel that’s useful.
The thing I’m most worried about is that there’s nobody managing the city, or the manager is just a puppet, whereby nobody knows who this phantom city’s creator is…”
Virtuoso raised a few possibilities, “No matter what, the first thing we need to do now is to gather information. Gather as much as we can, gather information about this phantom city.”
“Do we split up?” Lin Huang asked.
He asked that as the efficiency of gathering information would be higher if they split up than three of them staying together.
“I agreed with splitting up,” Saber9 nodded.
They were no longer in the foggy swamp. They did not have to worry if they were lost.
The three of them had different styles of conduct. Naturally, they would use different ways to gather information in order to obtain more sources. Theoretically, although they would gather many repeating information at the same time, the amount of information would be greater.
“We’ll split up for two days. During the two days, gather as much information as we can. Hold back even if we find out something important. Do not be rash to move on to the next step.
We’ll meet under the highest building two days later. We’ll discuss our strategy after organizing the information each of us obtained,” Virtuoso soon came up with a plan.
Lin Huang and Saber9 agreed.
Subsequently, the three of them split up and went toward the direction they chose.
Lin Huang chose to move cautiously after breaking away from the team and being alone.
After all, nobody knew if there were any Lords in this phantom city.
According to Virtuoso’s description, if the possessor of the castellan’s seal was a lord-level powerhouse, he could create lord-level local residents, as well as setting the city’s entrance authorization to lord-level.
If there were really Lords in this phantom city, not only that would mean the chances of the three of them obtaining the castellan’s seal was pretty slim, if would also mean that they were in an extremely dangerous city.
One must know that the outsiders in the phantom city were the equivalence to players, they did not have a second life. Players could be revived after death. However, outsiders would really die if they died in the city.
Even though Lin Huang could substitute death with his imperial monster, facing a Lord’s Odylic attack, he would not be able to be revived.
Meanwhile for Virtuoso and Saber9, although they had the technique of saving their lives their Primordium left behind that could defend lord-level attacks, there was a limitation to that.
Lin Huang was cautious as he had his guards up on the possible Lords in this city.
He did not sense any Divine Telekinesis’ detection, so he was being extra careful not to spread his Divine Telekinesis.
He looked around, there were creatures of all forms and appearances around him.
There were abyssal creatures, Bug Tribe monsters, Immortal Tribe and Protoss…
His odd getup in black robe looked the most ordinary among the crowd, so he did not attract any attention.
He was relieved sensing there were no eyes staring at him.
He soon had his eyes on a cafe nearby. He frowned slightly.
‘There’s even a cafe here?!’
This phantom city was highly similar to a human city. That made him have a faint suspicion that the possessor of the castellan’s seal was a human. Or maybe that person stayed in the human world for a little while.
He walked to the cafe and sat under the umbrella in the al fresco area. He ordered a cup of coffee.
Very soon, a lady attendant with rabbit ears brought his coffee.
If he was somewhere else, Lin Huang might not be able to hold back and to look at a rabbit-eared lady attendant. However, he had seen many creatures of various forms, so the rabbit-eared lady in front of him looked ordinary now.
He did not forget what he was here for when the rabbit-eared lady served the coffee to his table. A gush of red glow flashed through his eyes when he locked eyes with the lady attendant.
He managed to read the lady’s memory during that mere moment.
He did that by borrowing Grimace’s Ocular Skill Rule.
However, the rabbit-eared lady did not notice that. She merely put down the coffee with a light smile on her face and left.
Meanwhile, Lin Huang picked up the coffee and began to retrieve the information that was useful to him from the memory he read…