Night of Despair-Chapter 211 - : Confusion 1

Chapter 211: Confusion 1

He walked out of the passage.

Yu Hong hastened his steps and stopped by the fence.

The headlights flickered a few times and went out.

The car door opened, and a somewhat familiar figure jumped out.

“Mr. Yu, it’s been a while since we’ve seen each other. I’m pleased to see you still in good health,” said Shu Cheng, wearing a fully enclosed metal helmet, as he pulled up the visor to reveal a familiar and submissive smile.

He bowed slightly toward Yu Hong.

“This time, according to your additional requests, we have brought all the collected relic runes. We have not compared them to see if there are duplicates; you’ll need to check them yourself.”

“Where’s the dictionary for translating the relic texts?” Yu Hong’s translator urgently needed this item; he was unsure if the Night Text was the Yingshan Script mentioned by Aurora City, but he decided to try it first.

After all, even if it wasn’t the Night Text, having the translator master the Yingshan Script would add a capability, avoiding inconvenience when needed.

“We have collected everything, all the photocopy materials are here, you can read them on your computer,” Shu Cheng said as he pulled out a dual-port USB drive from his pocket, one end for the computer, the other for the phone.

“And here’s the list of supplies.” He patted the back of the armored vehicle.

“Hold on, I’ll unload.”

Yu Hong took the USB, went forward, and opened the van, inside of which lay several black containers.

He casually opened a few to check; inside were various types of food, medicinal herbs, metal blocks, and so on.

“Not bad, wait for me for a moment.” Yu Hong, with a box in each hand—big boxes that weighed several hundred pounds but felt as light as cardboard boxes—easily carried them back to the camp and set them down.

The ground bore deep footprints, causing a slight stiffness in the smile on Shu Cheng’s face.

“Though I’ve seen it several times, each time I am still amazed by Mr. Yu’s superhuman strength,” he couldn’t help but remark.

“Have you tried the Inner Qi scriptures?” Yu Hong asked.

“Of course, but as you know, the people at the institute think that there really isn’t any Inner Qi; it’s all just your illusion. You mistake your natural talent as the effect of Inner Qi. The so-called Inner Qi scriptures and visualization charts are essentially tapping into abilities you already possess,” Shu Cheng responded.

“I figured as much,” Yu Hong shook his head internally. The exclusive Inner Strength techniques from Black Mark weren’t easy to master; otherwise, the world wouldn’t be totally unaware of the existence of masters of Inner Qi.

“Actually, before the Black Disaster, everyone also watched martial arts novels and TV series, but in real life, no one really saw masters of Inner Qi like you,” Shu Cheng explained gently.

“Alright, this is for you,” Yu Hong said as he moved a large box of Radiation Hand Grenades from the stone castle. “With the production line, these are much quicker to make. Here are the three hundred agreed upon.”

The production line, after dissecting and optimizing the initial designs from Black Mark for the Radiation Hand Grenades, had managed to replicate the designs exactly.

Thus, the Radiation Hand Grenades Yu Hong produced here no longer needed Black Mark’s involvement, except for the luminous stone dust process.

Shu Cheng opened the box, took out one, and pulled it near a detector.

Puff.

Invisible radiation burst forth; the detector displayed a value over six thousand.

“Good quality. The transaction is complete, good luck to you,” Shu Cheng bowed slightly, placed the box back into the vehicle, closed the van, and sat in the driver’s seat.

The vehicle started up again.

“Wait, here’s another parcel for Lin Yiyi’s Team Two, a personal gift from me. Please give it to Minister Xin; I’ve already told her it would be brought over,” said Yu Hong as he carried out a smaller wooden box.

“No problem. Thank you for your generous support to the investigation team,” Shu Cheng saluted him from the driver’s seat.

“That’s all I can do,” Yu Hong said, setting the box on the vehicle.

The car slowly turned and drove along a cleared path through the woods, heading toward the distant Black Fog.

Dragon lizards acted like guards on both sides, occasionally dispatching a newly revived shadow.

The Black Fog churned, and soon, the vehicle vanished from sight.

Yu Hong sighed, turned, and walked back to the stone castle.

Inside the warm upstairs hall.

He took tools and opened each box.

Clicking sounds continuously resonated.

Four boxes in total were laid out in a row before him, from left to right.

The first black metal box contained densely packed dried fruits and vegetables, all packaged in bags, sealed well for easy usage.

The second box contained various dried medicinal herbs—ginseng, ganoderma, licorice, eucommia, and a plethora of other items, each box filled with rare and valuable medicinal materials.

The third box held various square metal blocks of gold, silver, copper, iron, aluminum, titanium alloy, and more, each a separate sample.

The fourth box contained a radar. Its shape was like a large black bullet head, as thick as a large watermelon and as tall as an adult’s leg; it was stuffed with ample white foam paper around to prevent shaking and damage.

“Now that I have everything, once the Black Mark reinforcement ends, I can install the radar to detect anything within a few dozen kilometers! Gray City already utilizes satellite detection; mine detects just dozens of kilometers around, primitive in comparison.”

Content inside, Yu Hong cared not if anything was amiss, such as a computer potentially having various hidden backdoors; a sweep with Black Mark would clear everything.

He closed the boxes and stored everything in the underground cellar of the cave.

Then, taking the newly acquired USB, he went to the main control computer of the production line in the basement.

He turned on the computer, inserted the USB.

A square screen quickly popped up with a prompt for removable storage.

Click-clicking the mouse.

Soon, photos of the relic Yingshan Script appeared one after the other.

The photo file contained over a hundred images, and Yu Hong noticed that each was several hundred megabytes in size. The clarity was very high.

He immediately took off the translator he was wearing and began to move it across the screen from the back, directly sampling.

“Do you want to add a new language for unknown text samples?” the sweet female voice of the translator gently sounded in the basement.

“Huh?” Yu Hong furrowed his brow. “Isn’t it Night Text?”

He carefully examined the script style of the symbols, wanting to compare them with the Night Text, but he had no recollection of the Night Text from his memory.

After thinking, he responded directly.

“Add new language, name it: ‘Ancient Mountain Script.'”

“Added, sample scanning is in progress… please wait.” The translator began working rapidly.

Yu Hong mechanically entered each image one by one. He continued to listen to the progress updates given by the translator.

“Current progress 12%.”

“Current progress 24%.”

“Current progress 47%.”

The prompts repeatedly resounded.

Finally, when the scanning of the images reached halfway, the progress hit one hundred.

“Current progress complete, the text portion of Ancient Mountain Script has been mastered. Please supplement the voice part.”

Yu Hong picked up the translator and put it on. He then continued to look at the images of relic script on the screen.

Something miraculous happened: everywhere his gaze fell on the Ancient Mountain Script, a sweet female voice automatically sounded in his ears translating it into Chinese.

“Rule 43 of the Sealing Base: one, do not use raw stones during the seal reinforcement period.”

“Two, no loud noise within the base.”

“Three, when night and day alternate, the sealing effect is weakest and defenses must be strengthened.”

The sourc𝗲 of this content is freēwēbηovel.c૦m.

“Four, no fighting or bloodshed in the base.”

Yu Hong slowly scanned the images.

With the translation, he suddenly understood most of the content in these photos.

The reason it was only most was that many photos had text that was already incomplete—broken and fragmented, irrelevant to the translation.

From gray dusk to the black night, and then to the next morning around 7 a.m., Yu Hong had been sitting in front of the computer, carefully reading all the photo content.

With the help of the translator, he perhaps understood the content depicted in the photos even better than the experts in Aurora City.

The photos consisted of regulations for the Sealing Base, praise poems for some sealers, as well as the construction history and reasons for the base itself.

Of these, the last category was most helpful to Hong.

“No wonder it’s called Ancient Mountain Script… It appears that before the present world’s human civilization, there was a human era known as the Ancient Mountain Civilization. They too encountered the Black Disaster but used their military power to resist it for a long time.

They even built a large number of various sealing bases to contain the worsening Black Disaster.”

Yu Hong quickly flipped to the rune images.

“The core of Ancient Mountain Civilization was the energy rune system, the Ancient Mountain Array.”

The new rune photos contained more than ten images from different perspectives; most were symbols he had already mastered, but there were four he had not.

Yu Hong carefully sketched them with a charcoal pencil, preparing to test their effects later.

“But the Ancient Mountain Civilization eventually disappeared, unable to withstand the invasion of the Black Disaster. Aside from a few remaining relics, all other traces were completely erased. And now, it is our turn, the current human civilization, to face the Black Disaster….”

After viewing the last photo, he did not look at the subsequent photocopied dictionary as the translator no longer needed it.

Turning off the photos, Yu Hong, with his simulation of the four new runes, left the basement.

He returned to the first level of the cave. He pulled out the mysterious Daoist Scripture and the little booklet from the Black Ship.

‘If the script on this is not Ancient Mountain Script, does that mean that the civilizations destroyed by the Black Disaster were not only the Ancient Mountain Civilization but also the civilization of Night Text?’

“What exactly is the Black Disaster, and what does it signify?”

Doubts and mysteries rose in his mind. Mastery of the Ancient Mountain Script informed him where these symbols originated, but since the Ancient Mountain Civilization itself left little information about the Black Disaster, it increased the mysteries in his mind.

Mastering Ancient Mountain Script hadn’t brought much change to his life.

It was instead the practice of Thunderbolt Leg Technique, finally reaching the last layer, that led to a new breakthrough.

Days later, a Sub-Safety Zone.

The surrounding forest area of the camp had mostly been destroyed by previous battles and explosions.

The originally dense mountain forest was now largely a scorched and barren slope.

No grass, no bushes, only black soil.

Yu Hong, wearing a breathing valve, stood alone outside the fence, motionless.

After being stuck on the fifth layer of Thunderbolt Leg Technique for several days, finally, this morning after breakfast, just as he was about to go out for a bathroom break and was halfway there, he suddenly remembered that he had wanted to integrate the traction rune into his Inner Qi practice but had been unable to try because of one thing after another.

Now that his cultivation was stuck, it was a good opportunity to test its effects.

Thinking so, he did it.

After using the bathroom, he quickly went to the sub-safety zone, put the atomic lamp aside, and began to weave the shape of the traction rune within the Dantian with his Inner Qi.

The traction rune, unlike other runes, is one of the few fully enclosed symbols without any loose ends.