Chapter 182 Library

In the end, Ling Mo never heard Xia Xinyan repeat that sentence again.

A bit regretful.

Moreover, the two of them wandered aimlessly in the city for an entire morning, only to discover nothing.

Well… that’s not entirely true—they did notice that the spire building in the middle of the city was surrounded by high walls and guarded by soldiers along the way, seeming to be off-limits to civilians.

After inquiring a bit, Xia Xinyan learned that the only information available was that this building maintained the city’s normal operation, but what exactly this building was and how it functioned remained a mystery to all passersby.

It was like how everyone knows a phone can make calls, but very few know the actual mechanics behind it.

This odd feeling left Xia Xinyan a bit perplexed.

Aside from that spire, there seemed to be nothing else unusual about this city.

And they hadn’t seen any other players either.

However, this didn’t surprise Xia Xinyan, considering the city was indeed massive, belonging to the category of a super-large dungeon. Even with over thirty players participating in the dungeon, they’d hardly make a dent in such a vast city.

Xia Xinyan wasn’t in a hurry to find others anyway; her plan was to investigate the background of this city.

And for such research, there’s hardly a better place than a library.

The library in this city wasn’t hard to find; in fact, it would be challenging not to find it, as its area rivaled that of a school and was quite grand.

Standing in front of the library’s entrance, Ling Mo expressed his surprise, “Isn’t it just a library? Does it really need to be this big?”

“Maybe it contains the family trees of all the residents in this city,” Xia Xinyan observed the situation at the entrance for a while, confirming that no extra verification steps were needed to enter the library before she led Ling Mo inside.

The interior of the library was much larger than they had imagined; just the hall had nearly a hundred self-service query machines for guests to look up book information. Deeper inside, the towering bookshelves reached over ten meters high, astounding both of them once again.

Watching those silver-white robots fly around the bookshelves, presumably fetching the books selected by guests, made it clear that the technology in this world was quite advanced—at least surpassing that of the real world.

This was something they hadn’t noticed while outside.

Xia Xinyan silently noted this detail and took Ling Mo to an empty self-service query machine to search for relevant books about the city’s background.

Then, as she stared at the search results of over seventy thousand entries, she was momentarily stunned.

—Only now did she realize that her earlier statement before entering the library wasn’t just a joke; among those books, there were even articles tracing back to ancient times, some forty thousand years ago.

It felt akin to asking a stranger their name, only for them to leisurely begin detailing human origins instead.

This stirred within her an inexplicable strangeness.

Do ordinary worlds really have so much time on their hands?

“This library records things quite comprehensively…” Ling Mo was slightly shocked by the results as well, but after rummaging through the materials, he finally found a few books that remotely matched their needs. “Let’s find a spot to read.”

The second floor of the library had a reading room, and at the moment, there weren’t many people there. Xia Xinyan and Ling Mo chose a corner and began flipping through the books.

The content inside was surprisingly dull.

Most of it detailed the current state of the city’s development. While the books contained varied information, it could basically be summarized in one phrase—

A time of peace, with the country and its people living in harmony.

In other words, there was no useful intel at all.

None of the books included any records about that spire, as if it didn’t even exist, and there had been no relevant information found at the self-service query machine, which was quite concerning to Xia Xinyan.

“That spire… could it be the Control Hub from the quest?” Ling Mo pondered about the dungeon’s circumstances. “The game had warned us not to trust any words from the start; perhaps this description of a peaceful era is meant to make us believe everything’s normal in this city, which would make seeking out that Control Hub quite challenging.”

“No,” Xia Xinyan shook her head, “if that tower is indeed the Control Hub, the dungeon wouldn’t hide it this way; it feels… too deliberate.”

Thinking it over, anyone entering this city would likely have the spire as their first impression. As for the Control Hub, the spire’s image matched that very well. A reckless player would probably just blow it up first, leaving further investigation aside.

The game wouldn’t be foolish enough to set up a dungeon like that.

Of course, it was most likely that the Control Hub was located somewhere within the spire, considering its vast area. With the players’ current power, they couldn’t completely destroy it. So if they blew up the wrong area, it would just be a futile effort and complicate things for themselves.

They still needed to find clues.

At that moment, while they were at a loss, a man passing by to a table at the furthest corner accidentally bumped into the table corner. Stumbling, the book he was holding slipped from his grasp.

Xia Xinyan and Ling Mo simultaneously glanced at the cover of the book—

“How to Plan a Perfect Large-scale Explosive Crime Event.”

Xia Xinyan: “…”

Ling Mo: “…”

Noticing their gaze, the man was startled and hurriedly picked up the book, clutching it to his chest. “I was just casually browsing… Don’t think too much about it…”

With that, he dashed back to his table, hiding among his companions and ducking his head as if playing dead.

Ling Mo stood there dumbfounded, “This library even has that kind of book?”

Xia Xinyan took a few seconds to observe that table.

Most of them were young men and women in their twenties. After the previous guy said something, the group often cast glances their way, their expressions varied.

She chuckled lightly, “Mo Mo, do you think that was just an accident?”

With so many empty tables, why did he have to bump into theirs and show them that book cover?

If it were coincidence, it was too coincidental.

Saying this, Ling Mo also caught on, “You’re saying they did it on purpose?”

Xia Xinyan remained noncommittal, “Let’s go check it out; after all, we have nothing else to do right now.”

Aside from the possibility that those people were doing it on purpose, it could also be a nudge from the game system to help them progress through the dungeon.

When players get stuck, the game system can do this—after all, not every player is keen on solving puzzles, so when faced with a dungeon that requires patience, the system can’t just let them hit a wall indefinitely.

If players can’t move forward, the game will push them along.

And there are many ways to guide, like the current “not-so-coincidental coincidence.”

She was curious to see what these people were up to.

   

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