Chapter 417 — Dipping In Again
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 3
All the bishops lowered their heads. "Yes, Your Holiness. As you command."
"Then let us move to the next topic—Project Zero..."
...
The brief dizziness receded like the tide, and before Gao Yang's eyes appeared the splendid, magnificent palace walls and halls of Phantasm Nexus, along with the "citizens" of the Sleepers strolling at their ease along the broad walkways.
It felt to him as though a very long time had passed since he last entered this dream world—though in truth, only a few days ago he had come in once to check on Daniel's progress in his studies.
The real world was full of affairs; the newly conquered South still needed to be built up little by little. Gao Yang had scarcely any spare time to concern himself with matters beyond his own territory. Even when he did find a moment to "go online," it was always in and out in a hurry.
Fortunately, today was a little less busy, and he finally had time to spend a while in this dream world.
The scenery of Phantasm Nexus was much the same as ever—it seemed forever this splendid and magnificent, forever this tranquil and serene. Nothing about it suggested that astonishing volumes of data were coursing behind the city of the Mystic Vault, nor that its builders were in fact a band of notorious heretics. But to Gao Yang, for the time being, these things did not matter much—until the situation in the South was stabilized, he had little time to spare for what these cultists were up to.
At most he could find the time to drop by Phantasm Nexus and confirm that this lot of Sleepers were not cooking up any great mischief aimed at the South.
Gao Yang made his way with practiced ease to the city's central district, found the crystal node connecting to the deep-layer network data, and began browsing at random through the Sleepers' network. He had looked through only a small portion of the information before a smile crept onto his face.
He saw that the flow of information in the Sleepers' network had become far more orderly than before, and that a crude thing—conceptually akin to a "search engine"—was now running. And when he searched for recent information on the construction of the psychic network, he saw the name "Bishop of Nightmares Daniel" at the end of many documents.
That "student" of his seemed to be doing quite well.
With a sense of no small amusement, Gao Yang began searching the psychic network—now much easier to use than before—for what he needed. The first thing he did was to look for intelligence on Project Zero—and naturally, he still could find nothing at all.
Even using the special "backdoor privileges" to pull records from the deeper layers of the database, he could not see any intelligence on Project Zero.
It seemed this project truly meant something extraordinary within the Church of Eternal Night; even Daniel, already promoted to Bishop of Nightmares, had no way of getting his hands on anything of that sort for the time being.
Gao Yang felt no particular regret over this. His interest in Project Zero was merely routine and a touch of personal curiosity. Upon finding no progress on that front, he simply skipped over it and began searching the psychic network for information concerning himself.
After entering "southern Ansul," "Gao Yang? Cecil," "Vagrant from Beyond," and other words as search keywords, a great mass of intelligence surfaced almost instantly before Gao Yang's "eyes"—
"Southern Ansul plunged into war! Terrifying Vagrant from Beyond in head-on clash with southern noble factions!"
"Ten thousand slaughtered in a single day at Brokenstone Ridge—the coalition of forty-odd nobles collapses in an instant!"
"The Vagrant from Beyond's army destroys Earl Peibo's fleet on the Whitewater River..."
"Formidable Vagrant from Beyond continues to hunt down the routed noble soldiers."
"The South shall welcome a new sovereign..."