Chapter 841 - 239: Researching the Power of the Human Emperor, Birth of the Ghost Prison

Chapter 841: Chapter 239: Researching the Power of the Human Emperor, Birth of the Ghost Prison

Early spring, the old cottage.

Outside the cottage, apricot blossoms bloom.

A night of spring rain, still cold in the morning.

Li Yuan opened his eyes in the light of dawn, glanced at the empty side of the pillow, then got up, washed himself, and went to the window, resting his hand on the wooden sill, pausing slightly before pushing it open.

Immediately, rain-soaked beads trailed along the window ledge with a "sizzle" and were gone in a moment.

He pulled out a wooden chair to sit down, his clear eyes quietly observing a heap of paper and a single sheet on the table.

...

That pile of paper was the remnants of the "golden character" he had torn up and reassembled after witnessing the "battle between the Human Emperor and the Barbarian King" before. Since last autumn, he had been observing it until now, and finally noted a corner of it.

It was a "wood" character.

But it didn’t resemble the "wood" he was familiar with; instead, it looked like a primitive human’s sketch, a simple drawing of a tree.

The characters beside it weren’t yet clear to him, but he vaguely sensed that the branches spreading continuously were actually all trees.

Logically deducing many such trees would form a forest.

Was the segment flowing with golden light a forest then?

Or did the golden light contain mountains and rivers, and he just happened to see a forest?

And besides the "forest," were there other aspects?

However, he had not yet fully deciphered this "golden character," because he really couldn’t understand the vortex-like character in the middle, just circles that made him dizzy upon a glance.

Li Yuan once used a condemned prisoner in an experiment; he used his connections to clear all people near a certain cell, and then showed the vortex in the golden character to the prisoner, who said he only saw "scribbles like a child’s doodles."

Li Yuan asked him to keep staring at it.

The prisoner giggled and said, "If I manage to make sense of it, might you reduce my sentence?"

Li Yuan agreed.

The prisoner shamelessly demanded he swear to it.

Li Yuan turned to find someone else.

The prisoner hurriedly stopped him, insisting "I trust you, sir," and then grabbed the paper Li Yuan handed him, studying it earnestly by the skylight’s falling sunlight.

The prisoner began looking at it in the morning.

After half an hour, he started to feel inexplicably restless, muttering, "I want out, I’m not wrong, I’m not wrong."

An hour later, the prisoner went into a rage, shouting, "If she just gave me the money, everything would be fine; it’s entirely her fault she died. She could have survived if she gave me the money; why didn’t she? It’s all her fault, it’s all hers!"

Curious, Li Yuan went outside to learn about the prisoner from the guards, finding out he was jailed for "killing his wife." As for why he did it, the reason was simple: the prisoner loved gambling, and any gambler would inevitably fall victim to traps. Eventually, he thought, "Just one win will do, one win to turn things around, to profit," seeking money from his wife. But she refused to let go of her hard-earned savings, leading to the gambler beating her to death while trying to rob her for gambling again. Not surprisingly, the game, which seemed to have a "chance," led to the gambler’s "loss" once more without fail.

Li Yuan, speechless, returned to observe the prisoner undergoing the experiment.

Two hours later, the prisoner was frantically trying to break free from the chains.

By midday, he had snapped his legs from the shackles and began bashing his head against the iron prison doors until he died in front of the iron bars.

Li Yuan retrieved the sheet of paper, stored it away, and instructed the guards to clear the scene and maintain confidentiality before leaving.

The guards returned to the cage, terrified by the gruesome sight, yet they dared not ask any questions since this mysterious man had been ordered from above.

Of course, there was more than one experiment.

Besides the "central vortex," Li Yuan also took the corner "wood" character and showed it to other condemned prisoners for experimentation.

One prisoner had been looking at it within the steel cage for an entire day, yet nothing happened.

Li Yuan switched to another prisoner, but again nothing happened.

These were the three experiments Li Yuan conducted over this period.

The reason for not conducting more was that the populace had just returned to Shanbao County not long ago, so there weren’t many condemned prisoners sent to prison yet.

Li Yuan’s thoughts drifted back, and he picked up that character again, tore it apart, reassembled it, then put it back.

He heard there were a few more condemned prisoners today, planning to experiment again in the next few days.

In his view, if all the forces of this world are unified, then higher data represents a higher realm. The Human Emperor’s eight hundred and ten million in data is a level above the Third Grade.

And the "golden character" he captured was just the tip of the iceberg.

Although he had not yet consolidated the Third Grade, if stronger power was placed before him, he couldn’t help but delve into it.

...

On another sheet of paper were written numerous "strive for self-improvement" and "possess great virtue."

This was his preemptive calligraphy practice for meeting the Emperor.

Since hearing Xie Wei’s account of that day, he guessed the Emperor would come.

He had been preparing for it long before.

Ji Hu was no longer the child of the past, not even an ordinary Emperor, but the Human Emperor.

He possessed terrifying power, though the power didn’t really belong to him; he bore the mission of this historical turning point, steering the era, but were these aspirations truly his own?

Li Yuan couldn’t distinguish it.

He hesitated for a long time before going to meet the Human Emperor.