Although they had experienced the sudden outburst of violence from a wizard apprentice, nobody died, and the people around them quickly calmed down and returned to normal, as if nothing had happened.
It was obvious that this was commonplace for them.
An Luo’s expression also calmed down. He stood quietly in place, lowering his eyes to gaze at the ground.
The wizard apprentice who had lashed out didn’t die. The Old Treeman had bound him with vines, and he had already fallen unconscious.
The Old Treeman didn’t kill him out of mercy but to hand him over to a wizard for experimentation.
Wizards were selfish and lacked any moral sense of good and evil, but they wouldn’t capture civilians for experiments—not because they didn’t want to, but because they couldn’t.
When wizard apprentices advanced to become wizards, a contract was naturally engraved upon their souls, prohibiting them from capturing civilians for experiments.
In the words of the wizards in this small world, this was a law set down by some extremely powerful wizard in the past, aimed at preventing wizards from exhausting their resources.
The truth was slightly different, but not by much.
This law had actually been established by the ancient wizard who created this world as a resource point.
He raised “gu” insects here—fierce competition—and then captured the most outstanding wizards who survived the brutal slaughter to emerge from the small world, using them as slaves. To prevent the slave resources from drying up, he established a series of laws restricting the actions of the wizards in the small world.
Meieruita was the strongest “gu king” selected under this gu-raising system.
In the end, he backlashed against that ancient wizard.
In short, in this small world, wizard apprentices were the easiest experimental materials for wizards to obtain. Of course, some powerful high-level wizards would even capture low-level wizards for experiments.
But for wizards who weren’t that powerful, the best choice was to raise their own wizard apprentices.
Wizard apprentices could manage the wizard tower for wizards, “care” for magic plants and magic beasts, handle trivial dealings and trades with the outside world, and serve as test subjects—they were incredibly versatile.
Moreover, most wizard apprentices in wizard towers had no chance of becoming formal wizards.
Wizards didn’t raise these apprentices with the intention of taking disciples.
Every three years, high-level apprentices had a chance to obtain a recommendation letter to go to the Wizard Academy. This enticing opportunity was enough to make high-level apprentices compete fiercely, work diligently, and even sabotage each other, allowing wizards to smoothly use them as experimental subjects.
But in reality, even wizard apprentices who obtained recommendation letters couldn’t truly leave.
An Luo had originally written a dark, gritty world full of slaughter everywhere, until a reader pointed out that the worldview was unreasonable and that the wizards would eventually doom themselves with such chaos. Only then did he patch it, explaining that the world was so dark because the ancient wizard had deliberately set it up that way for gu-raising.
Other worlds were comparatively normal.
After returning to the apprentice dormitory, An Luo’s mood had gradually settled, but a lingering chill clung to his back, like the aftereffects of watching a horror movie.
The next morning, the Old Treeman would announce the rankings in the lower layer’s hall and take the wizard apprentices who passed the exam to the upper layer.
But An Luo and Meieruita weren’t in a hurry to pack. With spatial wizard artifacts, packing was quick—no need to rush.
“Do you feel okay?” Meieruita asked.
“I’m fine.” An Luo nodded. Although he had heard the sounds, he hadn’t seen the scene from start to finish, so the impact was much less severe. He wasn’t still reeling from it.
Meieruita nodded. After carefully checking An Luo and confirming nothing was wrong, he took out a blue gem and continued engraving runes on it with magic power.
Making witch tools basically involved finding a suitable carrier and then engraving runes on it with mental power.
For example, a one-cubic-meter spatial wizard artifact required at least a dozen different runes nested in layers to form a complex whole, with at least a thousand strokes, all precisely carved onto the chosen carrier using magic power.
Not a single stroke could be wrong, or it all had to be scrapped and started over.
The witch tools Meieruita made had at least three thousand strokes per rune.
The blue gem he held now was about the size of a pinky knuckle.
One of the golden fingers An Luo gave Meieruita was precise imitation, so he almost never made mistakes when engraving runes. He didn’t have to scrap and restart like most wizards.
Meieruita had also tried engraving Chinese character runes, since they had fewer strokes and were powerful, but no matter how he attempted it—writing with a pen or carving with magic power—he couldn’t replicate them.
He couldn’t produce them like An Luo could.
Even remembering them was difficult.
Take the character “fire” as an example: just four strokes, which should be easy to remember.
But due to An Luo’s settings, even if Meieruita memorized it after one glance, he would forget it the next second.
To truly remember it, he had to spend a long time reviewing it daily.
This was the setting, the law of this world. Even as the protagonist, Meieruita had to obey.
An Luo took out a notebook from the drawer, opened the cover, and started drawing.
He drew a crooked computer, then a mouse, a phone, a rice cooker, a desk lamp… whatever came to mind.
Things that were once commonplace might now only live on in memory forever.
An Luo worried that if he ended up spending the rest of his life here—which now seemed very likely—the long years would blur the outlines of these familiar objects in his memory until even he couldn’t recognize them. So while he still remembered, he decided to draw as many as possible.
The dormitory was very quiet, with both of them occupied with their own tasks.
Night soon fell. An Luo put away his pen and, glancing at Meieruita who was still focused on engraving runes, quietly went to prepare dinner.
Over the past half month, An Luo’s ingredients had greatly improved.
He no longer needed to spend so much time dealing with strange smells, saving a lot of time.
Steam rose from the pot, the soup boiled and bubbled. An Luo had a small notebook recording what modern seasonings or ingredients corresponded to magic plant and magic beast meat.
He stared at the words on the notebook. The once-familiar letters gradually became strange after staring too long, like twisted ropes or writhing snakes.
An Luo tasted the soup base and poured in the prepared “hot pot seasoning.”
The decent flavor brought him a bit of comfort.
Sigh, what a unlucky day.
Better eat something good to settle the nerves and compensate himself.
The hot pot steamed invitingly. Eating it warmed his stomach comfortably.
Meieruita’s dipping sauce dish emptied, so An Luo mixed him another bowl.
“What’s wrong?” Meieruita suddenly asked.
An Luo paused, then shook his head. “Nothing, just feels a bit lonely.”
“Lonely?”
“Yeah. Back then, I always went out for hot pot with my roommates. Four of us eating together, the hot pot place crowded and lively.”
Meieruita fell silent for a moment, then stated flatly, “You really want to return to your original world.”
“Yeah.” There was no harm in admitting it. An Luo nodded. “Of course I do, but it feels pretty impossible.”
Forget high-level witchcraft like time and space magic—An Luo couldn’t even grasp Fireball Spell. It seemed hopeless to rely on witchcraft to get home in this lifetime.
Although Meieruita definitely could, An Luo worried that if he saw Earth, he might go, “Oh, not bad,” and then what? Wouldn’t An Luo become the sinner of the ages?
Whatever.
Through the steam, Meieruita’s expression was indistinct. His tone was calm. “Mm, I understand.”
An Luo’s hair hadn’t been cut for months; his bangs had grown long enough to cover his eyes, often brushing into them carelessly.
After dinner, while Meieruita cleared the dishes, An Luo asked, “Meieruita, could you help me cut my hair?”
Meieruita’s hair was medium-length. Long hair was too bothersome, short hair needed frequent trims, so he kept it semi-long—avoiding frequent cuts without it getting too troublesome.
He was casual with his own hair. When it reached his shoulders, he’d just snip snip a few times.
But because his face was so handsome, this semi-long, slightly messy style looked appealing.
It even had an artistic, scholarly vibe.
But on an average person… it might look disastrous.
It all depended on the face.
Meieruita wiped his hands clean and said without asking questions, “Sure.”
An Luo: “Thanks! I’ll go wash my hair first—be right out!”
Meieruita, who was about to fetch the scissors, paused. “Okay.”
The wizard world had no shampoo or body wash, but there was something like scented soap. An Luo found it quite good—no more hair loss after using it.
That made sense. Hair could be a medium for curses. If wizards shed hair like modern people, anyone picking it up could curse them to death mysteriously?
An Luo hadn’t considered this when writing, but the wizards clearly had, and they had countermeasures.
He quickly washed his hair and walked out while towel-drying it.
“Same as before?” Meieruita asked.
An Luo sat in the chair and nodded. “Yeah, yeah. Can you?”
“Mm.”
Meieruita gave a simple response.
The scissors slowly and meticulously snipped off locks of hair. Meieruita didn’t need to think; he simply recalled the scene of An Luo first appearing before him in his complete, true appearance.
