Chapter 562: Hope and Despair
“I’ll find a chance to go back, no matter what!” Under the eternal warm sunlight of the Despair Wasteland, a middle-aged man gritted his teeth and pointed at the sky, declaring.
As one of the hundreds of Human Federation spies left to infiltrate Earth, trying to gather intelligence on the Land of White, his identity was exposed by a traitor after years of feigning normalcy as an ordinary person.
After refusing to confess, his consciousness was transferred to this virtual wasteland, while his body was placed in a life-support pod, the wasteland becoming his prison.
In the Despair Wasteland, one could grow tired, hungry, and feel pain, but never die.
On this desolate land, devoid of anything, the prisoners could do anything, yet solitude was the eternal theme; they heard no human sound.
“What is it that you cling to now?” The System displayed a line of text.
The Land of White was actually quite lenient with these individuals; as long as they confessed everything they knew and chose to remain there, all their past would be wiped clean, and they would gain full citizen rights to live as ordinary people in the area.
“Freedom!”
“Is there any meaning to that?” Another cold line of text appeared. “To live freely in hell.”
“...” The System did not respond further.
“I will persevere until the day hell shatters!” the middle-aged man shouted, and immediately resumed scratching and drawing on the ground.
Life in the Despair Wasteland was utterly boring. Only the eternal sun shone overhead; there were no books, no newspapers, no internet, and no people—all sources of information had been cut off.
Yet, in this virtual world, one needed not strive for survival, thus it was incredibly easy to fall into a state of utter idleness.
To combat the boredom in his heart, he could only rely on his sole remaining memories, trying to create something.
Drawings on the dirt, poems on the dirt, essays on the dirt, novels on the dirt...
“Chapter five hundred and seventy-eight...”
Unable to do anything in the wasteland, and it being a virtual world where not eating or drinking posed no issue and even death was impossible, to persevere and not be overwhelmed by boredom, the middle-aged man continuously wrote the stories in his mind.
Using a stone as a pen and the ground as paper, he painstakingly carved stroke by stroke.
“For a belief, to what extent can a person go?” Bai Mo glanced at the Despair Wasteland where the man resided.
He didn’t actually care about the small bits of intelligence the other party supposedly possessed; as long as he was willing to expend Spirit Energy, he could even use the Sky Net to trace back all of the other party’s experiences from birth to the present. For an ordinary person, there was no such thing as ‘confessing’ or ‘not confessing’.
Bai Mo was simply particularly interested in willpower, because he knew that to overcome Daoization, a powerful will was absolutely indispensable, which was why he allowed this stubborn fellow to persist.
“If you still haven’t given up by chapter two thousand, I’ll grant you a stroke of good fortune.” Looking at the prisoner engrossed in carving, Bai Mo recalled many years ago when he was still an ordinary person who chased novels daily, and seeing authors who delayed updates, he would wish to lock them up and force them to update.
The time flow in the Despair Wasteland was three to one compared to the outside world; ten years of slumber in the outside world was equivalent to thirty years spent in the wasteland.
Hundreds of Federation spies were imprisoned in the Despair Wasteland, all of whom had undergone special anti-interrogation training; pure physical pain would hardly make them confess.
However, the vast majority of these people eventually broke down mentally amidst this painless, endless boredom, crying out and confessing everything in exchange for a chance to leave this land of despair.
Steel warriors like the middle-aged man, who had persevered until now, numbered no more than a dozen in total.
...
“Praise the God Body, praise Spirit Energy!” In room 404 of a certain building, Lin Yuedong, who had recently awakened from slumber, joyfully spun around, holding the young girl in his arms.
“My transfiguration spell has finally been realized!”
The innocent young man who once vowed to research transfiguration spells to turn his little female cat into a cat-girl, after more than a decade of unremitting effort, became an expert in this field, and during ten years of slumber in the virtual world, he had discovered a mature path.
This Spirit Art of transfiguration involved the combined operation of multiple Spirit Energy systems throughout the entire body; the difficulty of developing it was immense, no less than some terrifying forbidden arts with destructive power, which was why it took him over a decade of tinkering to achieve even this small result.
Of course, there were also cost-effectiveness factors; apart from him, few others had any interest in toiling in such a mundane field. After all, transfiguration not only didn’t increase combat power, but even drastically reduced output in various aspects.
“Twelve hours.” The young girl held in his arms said, wrapping her arms around Lin Yuedong’s neck in a rather unpracticed, ambiguous gesture.
“Twelve hours of what?”
“My transformation only lasts for twelve hours at a time, you idiot!”
“How can that be? My calculations can’t be wrong!” he exclaimed, still retaining his youthful appearance after applying through the System, a look of utter disbelief on his face.
“The Spirit Energy in my cat body is limited, your model assumes infinite Spirit Energy! You idiot, idiot, idiot!” The girl, still accustomed to her cat form, originally wanted to land a flurry of ‘meow-punches’ to his face, but forgot she now had human hands, and failed.
“Lemme see, see.” An overly excited Lin Yuedong even accidentally blurted out the dialect he learned as a child, pronouncing ‘kan’ as ‘kang’.
He held the cat-turned-human girl, turning her over and over, examining her from top to bottom, habitually pondering the areas for improvement.
“Cat ears, tail—normal. It’s just the cat fur on the wrists and ankles that still needs to go...”
“What do you mean, ‘cat ears, tail normal’?” the girl chided angrily. “Isn’t that just your twisted sense of fun?!”
“Come on, put on your dress. Don’t let the neighbors think I’m a pervert.” Lin Yuedong carried the girl, who had just transformed from cat to human and hadn’t had time to get dressed, and set her down on the sofa, then skillfully retrieved a floral print dress from a dark corner of the wardrobe.
At the small of the dress’s back, a thoughtful little slit had even been made to accommodate the tail.
“This must be a popular style from over ten years ago, right? How long have you been meticulously planning for this day...?” As for the word ‘pervert,’ the girl was already too weary to even retort.
“My dearest Chocolate, it’s been eighteen years. I spent eighteen years going from a clueless, good-for-nothing university student to the current president of the Demonic Beast Transfiguration Research Society.”
“Forty-year-old single cat-loving uncle, truly disgusting for an otaku.” Chocolate, her face blooming with a smile, delivered a critical hit to Lin Yuedong.
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