Chapter 119: In Search of a Visit
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Without much hesitation, Ye Chong decided to stay for a while. The reasons were simple - first, he was going to search for the great doctors in this area; second, the training method of the mentalist discovered by Shang required much exploration - a tranquil environment would be necessary to achieve both of these. The outside world was pretty disturbed these days, though Ye Chong did not fear any of those incoming raids, he would prefer a bit of silence for the moment.
So calmly, he stayed at Nan Nan’s place, with these 2 quests in his mind which revolved about the horrible illness in him. He must stay, especially when the quests could take a long duration, be it finding out the great doctors or the breakthrough in the mentalist’s methodology.
Mu and Shang were fully charged way back. The first thing Shang got was a lecture about responsibility from Ye Chong, in detailed, vigorously after he rebooted. Sigh, what a headache to Ye Chong!
Practically Nan Nan’s family was of 3 members - her grandfather, Brother Hei Zi and Nan Nan herself. Ye Chong had rarely seen her grandfather showing up at the living room, although the elderly seemed to be in the pink of health. He always seemed to be somewhere else. The problem was the elderly appeared a little haughty sometimes, unlike Hei Zi who acted gentle and sincere the whole time.
Ye Chong was recollecting the information obtained from Shang’s private interrogation on poor Mr. Yin.
Mentalist was sure a mysterious occupation… Most of the information contained jargons passed from the past generations. An ordinary person might not be able to understand the gist of being a mentalist even after being bestowed with such decent information filled with foreign terminology. Fortunately, Shang’s own databank was vast in information, so a majority of the terms could be clarified; while the undefined terms, certainly Shang would have to get it somewhere else, for instance, from Mr. Yin’s head…
Mr. Yin was in such a misfortune. It could have been the worst day of his life. Mentalist treated the foundation of their mentality as the root; the meaning of their life. And because of Shang’s "special" interrogation, everything was pulled out of his head through his mouth, which caused severe damage to his mentality in the end. The drastic drop in his psychic ability was in expectation.
Well, Ye Chong was not a psychological analyst. He knew nothing about the man’s mind. Only Shang could voice his opinion as loud as he wanted and even Mu expressed helplessness in this field.
Hence, based on what he had learned from Shang’s digging of Mr. Yin’s brain, he began his mentalist training.
The catch was, information could never replace experience completely. That probably could clearly define the problem both Shang and Ye Chong faced currently. They might have sufficient information on the techniques, but Ye Chong still had to bear the process of being the lab rat while experimenting the techniques. He did not mind being one however.
The foundation of being a mentalist begins with meditation - technically, breathing and meditate, which was what Ye Chong was doing at the moment. To make his respiration slow yet profound in a certain rhythm while maintaining a state of emptiness in his head, the mentalists called it "Wu" or some addressed the state as "Kong Ming*".
The breathing part was rather simple to Ye Chong. He was so used to adjusting his breathing in desired patterns. This requirement was achieved rather quickly and effortlessly.
The Kong Ming state though… It was challenging… He realized it was difficult to think about nothing in his head. In spite of that, Ye Chong did not give up straightaway. He tried for the next few days and on the 10th day of the practice, he started to get the gist of it.
According to the information acquired, a talented person would usually achieve the state of emptiness on their first attempt while the less-talented kinds could get it on the 2nd or 3rd day of training… For those who could not even get it after 3 days… they… they could never be a candidate for mentalist.
Although the information sounded discouraging, Ye Chong did not bother - whether if he was a candidate for mentalist or he was never one to begin with, it did not matter. He only hoped that he could ease the pain when the symptoms were triggered again with one or two techniques learned from the mentalist’s mastery. That was the whole point of his continuous training.
Mentalist solely relied on mental training to develop the potential in mankind. In addition, coming from that unlucky Mr. Yin, apparently there was a closely related branch off the mentalist occupation - the "mentalist pilot" they called it. Unlike mentalist, a mentalist pilot was obliged to undergo mental training as well as physical training.
Moreover, according to this man, it seemed like the mentalist pilot held the actual authority in the Orbits. They were the true elites as they shouldered the duty of guarding the safety of the sanctuary. Every mentalist pilot happened to be an ace pilot and they owned mechs modified by themselves.
Well then, if that was the case, Feng Su should be a mentalist pilot too. Ye Chong could still recall the pain when dealing with her like it happened yesterday. So he was well aware of the strength of a mentalist pilot.
The progress of his spiritual awareness training was sluggish and barely effective. It would take up to ages if Ye Chong would like to master those advanced techniques mentioned in the information at this rate. Ye Chong did not throw a tantrum of impatience however, as he understood deeply that being impatient and acting impatiently would not help hastening the progress at all. So what was the point of being all restless and agitated? Such a typical Mu mindset fixed in Ye Chong’s head.
Ye Chong would meditate routinely at night and he would spend the days looking for the great doctors with Hei Zi, who wholeheartedly assisted him in this with compassion. Nan Nan’s grandfather was ever-going, he was always busy with something. Hei Zi could only accompany Ye Chong half of the day as he had to spend the remaining time on doing tasks given by Nan Nan’s grandfather, though Ye Chong had the slightest idea on what they actually worked as.
As he was meditating, he heard two footsteps - one was heavy and the other was lighter - obviously those were from Hei Zi and Nan Nan.
He tidied his clothing - his own clothing was burnt way back. And because of that, he was wearing Hei Zi’s clothes instead. Hei Zi’s body was known to be much bulkier, so the clothing felt oversized on Ye Chong. It was not much of a concern to Ye Chong however, he folded the sleeves and the extra portion of the clothing. As long as the clothing would not affect his action, oversized or not, it did not matter, even though Ye Chong looked like a freak in it…
On the other hand, Nan Nan was on cloud nine. She was often at home alone and was forbidden to head out. It used to be her life crisis to remain like this but then she met Ye Chong, who could stay by her side at home while in the morning she could head out with Brother Hei Zi and Ye Chong. Even if Ye Chong was heading out alone, he would get her along. "Good big brother! Good Brother Hei Zi!" giggled the little girl, which was peculiar to her grandfather for how he actually felt easy of letting his granddaughter go out with this stranger.
"Big brother!! Big brother, are you ready? Brother Hei Zi and I are ready! Come out! Let’s go play! Let’s go play!" The little girl had already started shouting in excitement ahead of time. Her bubbly voice rang refreshing like the dews in the dawn - sweet and living.
Ye Chong pushed the door open. "Big brother!!" Little Nan Nan hurrahed as she skipped her way to Ye Chong clumsily upon seeing him finally leaving the room. Ye Chong quickly grabbed her before she fell. At about 1 meter away from Ye Chong, little Nan Nan squeaked excitingly as she jumped and Ye Chong lifted his arms and held her up in the air. He put the little girl over his shoulders. "Hehehe!" Little Nan Nan chuckled as her mushy hands gripped the collar of his shirt to avoid falling.
Hei Zi smiled at Ye Chong sincerely as usual while they headed out.
"The doctor is called ‘Dr. Lu Caite’. He lives at the boundary of Zeuth area. It is quite far from here. I am not really familiar about this doctor… I think I need to ask around once we arrived there." Hei Zi was not the kind who spoke too well on lengthy sentences. He went silent after a brief explanation.
"Mhm," Ye Chong also shut his mouth after a monosyllabic response. One could imagine the scenario when 2 concise-talkers hung out together.
As the journey would be consuming this time, they could only use mechs to rush their way there.
"Good mech!" Right when Ye Chong deployed Yu Di, Hei Zi responded with his eyes lustered, "Though the material was… normal," his words trailed off…
Normal? What did he mean by normal? Other than the mechs at Black Coves and FMPA, Ye Chong was confident enough to claim that Yu Di had the best material. Or did it mean Hei Zi’s mech used a way better material than this?
"Ugly mech! Ugly big brother’s mech!" criticized Little Nan Nan as she spat her tongue out.
"Hah!" And Hei Zi deployed his mech too.
Well, Hei Zi’s mech looked quite normal… it was a humanoid mech. The material was really an eye-opener however, as most parts were made out of materials Ye Chong had never seen before. It was the same black mech but it was not the sparkling black metallic texture he used to see on Black Cove’s mech. The material of Hei Zi’s mech looked like something he knew but it was not something he knew at all. Yes, it looked like some sort of reformed material, yet the marks on the surface looked like it was wholly natural, which was really amazing to Ye Chong.
Hei Zi grinned the moment he saw how Ye Chong’s eyes were all glued on his mech, "The master made it for me!" That master uttered in Hei Zi’s mouth was none other than Nan Nan’s grandfather.
"What material is this?" asked Ye Chong as he went touching the surface. Both strength and ductility were fair!
"Ye." Mu’s voice echoed in his head, "This is a strange material. It is my first encounter of such peculiarity. It did not seem to be artificial. The stats were all-rounded perfections. It is an impeccable material to build a mech!"
Well it was simply because Shang had hit his time so he had to switch with Mu. What a relief to Ye Chong.
"Most of these are from the skeletons of the Giant Black Whale." As he identified the interest in Ye Chong towards his own mech, Hei Zi explained, "They are very ductile."
Giant… Black Whale? Skeleton? You made mech with skeletons? That was really new to Ye Chong.
He wanted to inquire more about this "skeleton-hidden-in-mech" sorcery but Hei Zi was already hopping into his cabin. Eventually Ye Chong had to inhibit his curiosity as he brought Nan Nan into the cabin, starting off their journey.
The mechs moved extremely fast. It did not take them long to hit the boundary of Zeuth.
They kept their mechs into the dimension after they had landed successfully.
"I had only came here a few times before," mumbled Hei Zi. "Not really sure here. Dr. Lu was someone I heard from gossips. We need to ask around."
"Mhm," and again, a simple response from Ye Chong. They had been through various places, meeting up with countless great doctors at the area, but none of them could identify Ye Chong’s illness in the end. Ironically, some of them even assumed that this was a stupid prank pulled off by these irresponsible, immature youngsters as they angrily abandoned the two bewildered men, waving their sleeves restlessly home.
Asking the way became the mission for little Nan Nan, simply because she dealt the most damage to motherly females. And it worked like a charm, in no time they had gotten the exact address for Dr. Lu, thanks to the kindest enlightenment from this momma on the street. They reached the said address fast.
"Is it here?" pointed Ye Chong at one house surrounded by quite a number of mechs.
There were 5 mechs surrounding the corners of this house. It looked like a war could brew anytime…
"That should be it," Hei Zi sounded a little unsure…
"Antsient…Rock Sutreeet.. Seven Paive Tree," Little Nan Nan was reading the address, which was "Ancient Rock Street-753". She tried reading it carefully and then declared it proudly, "It is here! We found it! We did it! We did it! We did it! Hurray!"
But what were those mechs doing here? Ye Chong and Hei Zi looked at each other in dismay.
Translator's Thoughts
Jstoryz Jstoryz
Wu 无 - State of nothing - You become the void, you get blended into the space.
/ Kong Ming 空明 - Spiritual Awareness.
A state achieved during meditation where one withdraws oneself from the physical space and feels the space spiritually. Your mind looks empty 空, but your mind is well-clear 明