Good morning, junior brother.

After leaving that shady shop, the first thing Gu Tao did was rush back for a full-body checkup. Only when he found everything was normal did he finally let go of the anxiety he had been holding onto. Although he was extremely curious about that unknown world, he didn't want to inexplicably take on some bizarre task.

He, was a man with a mission.

"You really didn't analyze anything from that image this morning? Was it a hallucination?"

"It was not a hallucination. If it were a hallucination, it wouldn't contain such a huge amount of information. Normally, a human brain-generated hallucination would not have an information volume exceeding 1T, but the image from earlier reached 2P. I have started analyzing it frame by frame to see if I can decipher any underlying information."

"So, even our technology can't fully decode it?" Gu Tao frowned. "It seems the history of civilization in this world is really interesting."

Gu Tao and his assistant had studied the memory imprint images aboard the spaceship for the whole day. Although they came up empty-handed, Gu Tao had watched the short film no less than three hundred times. He had to admit it was really exquisite. Each frame was like a three-hundred-megapixel landscape painting that he yearned to use as wallpaper when projected.

After fussing with his assistant for a day, Gu Tao was genuinely tired. He leaned back in the pilot seat and fell asleep just like that. However, in his drowsy state, various colors started appearing before his eyes, then slowly coalesced into images. Once again, strange scenes unfolded in front of Gu Tao. This time, though, he was still in first-person perspective, but instead of a splendid palace in front of him, it was a hideous monster.

The monster looked bizarre, at least he had never seen it before, and his entire body was bound and unable to move by vines. The five-tailed monster paced back and forth in front of him, seemingly at a loss.

'It seems hesitant to approach for now.'

Gu Tao knew he was dreaming, but could a dream be this real? He could even smell the rank stench coming from the monster not far away, and the feeling of being restrained and oppressed was quite clear. He could feel the numbness and weakness in his hands and feet as the blood circulation was cut off.

While he was daydreaming, the monster in front of him suddenly let out a scream and charged at him with its mouth wide open. After a few impacts, it felt as though a protective barrier in front of him had been broken, and then he felt a sharp pain in his chest…

"Damn it! Don't eat me!"

Bouncing up from his seat, Gu Tao felt a cold sweat all over his face. He was breathing heavily, as though he had been drained of strength. But after seeing his surroundings clearly, he let out a long sigh of relief.

"That was really bad luck."

Muttering to himself, he stood up to grab something to eat, but just after walking a few steps, he suddenly felt a pain in his chest. Instinctively touching it, an intense tearing pain erupted from his chest, causing him to collapse to the floor, unable to stand due to the agony. The pain triggered the warning system to engage, but the alarm quickly shut off when it was determined the pain was self-inflicted and such conditions were only classified as disease.

"Medical bay! Open the medical bay!"

Clutching his chest, Gu Tao ran into the medical bay and lay down. Blue light bars scanned back and forth over his body, and the pain in his chest was quickly alleviated. The suffocating feeling also disappeared, and after a bit of calming down, he exhaled and said, "Report the checkup results."

"According to the scan, no external injuries were found, but your nervous system has autonomously determined that you have sustained damage, with your brain issuing pain signals. In accordance with the protection laws, you need to be isolated here for a week for observation, to check for any neuro-viral infection."

Gu Tao looked down at his chest, where three claw mark-like traces had appeared, swollen and inflamed, but this wasn't caused by an external injury—it was a problem with neural transmission, with automatic feedback from the brain causing the physical anomaly.

And if nothing was amiss, this painful area was exactly where he had been torn at by the beast in his dream...

"Pull up the images from the dream I just had."

The images formed gradually before his eyes. Although the dream had felt long, most human dreams don't last more than five minutes, Gu Tao was no exception. The imagery from the dream lasted only three minutes and eleven seconds, but those three minutes and eleven seconds vividly made him feel pain, real physical pain.

"What is this beast?"

"No matching target found. However, according to pictorial data retrieval, this creature closely resembles a mythological creature from ancient legends."

Satania pulled up a close-up of the monster from the dream, and next to it appeared an image of an ancient scroll: "With five tails and a single horn, a slender form, leopard-like body, and a reddish hue all over, it is likely to be a mythological creature named Zheng."

"Mythology…" Gu Tao pursed his lips. "Starting now, run a comprehensive scan of my body data and wake me up immediately if any abnormalities are found."

To test his theory, Gu Tao closed the hatch of the medical capsule, then input the command for the sleep-inducing gas. In a few minutes, a strong sense of drowsiness swept over him, and he once again fell into a deep sleep.

This time, how long he had slept, he wasn't sure, but he knew he was dreaming again—this time, not of monsters, but of an erupting volcano. His viewpoint was seated at the edge of the volcano's mouth, seemingly in a meditative pose, and the immense heat and thick smoke within the volcano once again made Gu Tao experience an excruciating pain.

Lava slowly welled up, and the scorching sensation came again, but this time he was monitored by the system, so he was actively awakened as soon as the lava touched his calf.

After waking up, his leg indeed felt scalded; though no blisters had formed, the burning pain was incredibly intense and clear.

"Shall we enter the comprehensive virus detection phase? Nanobots can repair the nerve damage."

Gu Tao slowly opened the hatch of the medical pod and sat up with a grave expression, "No need, I have a good idea who's causing trouble. What time is it now?"

"Seven o'clock in the morning and three minutes."

After briefly tending to the painful area, Gu Tao returned to that shady establishment as quickly as possible, but by this time, Xin Chen had already gotten up. He was sitting in a chair, fanning himself with a hand fan while guarding a small stove. On the stove was a purple-red clay pot, letting off a fragrant aroma as it simmered.

"Junior brother, good morning."

Xin Chen looked up with a smile, his face beaming as he regarded the visibly angry Gu Tao.

"What on earth did you do to me?"

"Senior brother made you seafood porridge. Have breakfast first."

Actually, Gu Tao didn't want to waste words with him, but that guy's stubborn temperament was really annoying. Additionally, the pain had drained a lot of his energy. Now, ravenous, Gu Tao subscribed to the principle of 'if it's free, it's for me,' and devoured the entire pot of seafood porridge on his own.

The taste was not bad... no, it was actually fantastic.

"Okay, I'm done eating, now give me an explanation. I'm not afraid to tell you, my number one rule is to protect my safety. If I feel threatened, your trouble will be greater than mine!"

"Calm down, junior brother," Xin Chen said with narrowed eyes and a smile, "Even if you kill me, or even destroy the Earth, it won't solve the problem."

Gu Tao sat on a stool, staring at Xin Chen, "Do you realize that you're a jerk?"

"It's a necessary evil. You'll forgive your senior brother in the future," Xin Chen sighed, "Besides, pain won't kill you. It's the final conviction of our ancestors being passed on to you as they made their ultimate sacrifice. The agony you're experiencing is less than one percent of what they endured."

"But what does that have to do with me?"

"It has to do with you now, you've voluntarily accepted the inheritance," Xin Chen brought over a bowl of noodles from the kitchen, topped with a few slices of meat that looked quite appetizing. As he ate, he continued, "The ancestors simply have high hopes for you, that's all. Don't let down the martyrs, and don't let yourself down."

"Don't think I can't deal with this!"

To resolve it? Well, it wasn't impossible – just return to the treatment pod every day, or sleep in an exoskeleton. The system's built-in healing capabilities would allow him to spend each day comfortably without suffering, but that would be... extremely inconvenient. His mission was not yet complete, and if he really did that, even if he eventually uncovered the essence of this thing, it would take a significant amount of time.

"How will you solve it? What do you think this is, a punishment? You have accepted something from the very earliest ancestors of this civilization, something fundamental. As long as you stand on the Earth, there is no other way. This mountain, this water, this land, this wind, the air you breathe, the scenery you see, without exception. You say you come from a higher civilization, so I ask you, are all the people of your higher civilization so weak?"

Oh my... Xin Chen, you nitwit, your eloquence is surprisingly good.

Gu Tao looked at the handsome young man before him in surprise, then glanced at the noodles in his bowl and swallowed hard...

"Junior brother, are you hungry? I can make you some noodles to eat."

"To hell with your stupid noodles," Gu Tao spat.

Xin Chen was taken aback, then suddenly burst out laughing, "Your local adaptation is even better than your senior brother's. I've only started going online these past years and learned these jokes."

Gu Tao sighed deeply and sat down on the doorstep's stone, "Why am I so unlucky to encounter a thing like you... Just tell me, how do we solve this?"

"Stay here, do not leave. In the future, we, as brothers, will together restore the glory of the Taoist lineage."