Chapter 57: Because That’s How An Luo Wrote It Part 1

[Once I become a Mid-Level Apprentice and secure the task of leaving the Wizard Tower to recruit new apprentices, I will restore my mother to her youth. She used to love socializing in high society. Now that I have the ability, I can give her a higher title and more wealth. She can start over, play however she wants, and keep as many lovers as she desires. That’s what she deserves.]

This was written in the blank space of the notebook that Meieruita had once obtained. The notebook’s owner had a completely different attitude toward his mother compared to Meieruita’s feelings toward An Luo.

They were polar opposites, in fact.

The notebook’s owner wanted his mother to eat well, dress well, and enjoy herself—ideally with a few lovers to spice up her life, since love was said to make one radiant and happy.

But Meieruita didn’t want that.

He also wanted An Luo to eat well, dress well, and enjoy himself, but the idea of An Luo keeping lovers filled Meieruita with intense disgust and revulsion. He didn’t even want An Luo to get married.

Wasn’t he enough for An Luo?

A hazy image flashed through Meieruita’s mind, pulling him back to that moment in the Underground Laboratory after the soul transfer. An Luo lay on the bed, two buttons of his oversized shirt undone, revealing steaming-hot, pinkish-white skin. The image lingered, impossible to shake.

Words from that deluxe knight novel drifted in like a breeze. Meieruita suddenly felt a tremor in his chest, like thunder rumbling deep underground—low and muffled.

A vague thought bubbled up in his mind, but it dissipated like smoke before he could grasp it.

No matter what, if it was just for physical pleasure, Meieruita could brew potions that were even more unforgettable than real contact. If An Luo needed them, he could prepare several bottles—clean, with no side effects. An Luo wouldn’t need to seek out any lovers.

The notebook owner’s relationship with his mother couldn’t be forcibly mapped onto Meieruita and An Luo. Meieruita knew this well. An Luo wasn’t his real mother; An Luo was this world’s Creator. He had simply dragged An Luo into that role.

Meieruita didn’t know how to handle this relationship. Perhaps his greed wasn’t satisfied. When he had stubbornly slotted An Luo into the “mother” role, it had brought fulfillment, but that satisfaction hadn’t lasted. Now he wanted more, yet the path seemed to have reached its end. He couldn’t take anything further.

Was there any way to go deeper?

He didn’t know.

But it didn’t matter. As long as he grew strong enough—strong enough to stand at the world’s peak like “Traveler Meierita”—then even if he still didn’t understand how to extract more from An Luo, no one else would dare to get there first.

The next day, An Luo opened his eyes to find that Meieruita had already gotten up and left. The outer blanket was folded in half and neatly laid across the bed.

It wasn’t so bad after all?

Mainly because Meieruita had gone to bed late and risen early, and the bed was huge. An Luo had barely noticed.

Soon, Meieruita successfully took on the task of recruiting new apprentices outside.

“We have two months,” Meieruita said. “We’ll head to Solsen City first.”

An Luo didn’t quite catch what Meieruita said. He was too busy looking around.

He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but the air around him felt fresher.

After traversing to this world, he had finally seen its sky.

He glanced back at the Wizard Tower behind them. The stone-brick structure wasn’t particularly tall, but it exuded a mysterious, chilling aura.

A Wizard Tower wasn’t an ordinary building. Every single brick was inscribed with dense runes, but Wizard Towers varied in quality. Beyond material differences, the key was the runes carved into the bricks.

The more complex and advanced the runes, the higher the tower’s potential.

Some powerful Ancient Wizards had Wizard Towers that could house an entire city inside.

Forming a Small World of their own.

As for Meieruita’s Wizard Tower, An Luo remembered him writing about it: Meieruita had spent two thousand years just engraving the runes on the bricks.

Unlike the large stone bricks of the tower before them, Meieruita had used his own refined “Godbone Bricks,” each about half the size of a palm.

Normally, an ordinary Wizard might take one or two weeks to engrave runes on a brick, but Meieruita could do it in a day. Even so, it had taken him two thousand years to complete the tower’s basic framework.

After that, he had spent even more time gradually inscribing various runes inside, collecting rare treasures and forbidden knowledge. His Wizard Tower was truly priceless.

Yet Meieruita neither accepted Wizard Apprentices nor selected an intelligent race to breed within it.

Instead, it functioned like a blend of a library and a museum.

Meieruita did raise some creatures, but never intelligent races, so the biological rearing area in his Wizard Tower resembled a massive zoo combined with a botanical garden and an underwater world.

To most people, such an environment might seem especially lonely and desolate, but to Meieruita, this solitary space was the only place where he truly relaxed.

“What are you looking at?”

Meieruita noticed An Luo’s gaze and turned to look at the Wizard Tower himself. When he had first arrived as a newly recruited Wizard Apprentice, the tower had seemed so mysterious and unfathomable. But now, that awe was gone. Meieruita actually found it rather inferior.

He knew this was the influence of “Traveler Meierita.”

His memories and sealed knowledge hadn’t returned yet, but the things buried in his subconscious were starting to emerge.

As Mid-Level Apprentices, they had no carriage for travel outside. They had to reach the first city, where local nobles would provide one, making the journey easier.

They followed a small path through the forest. An Luo had prepared a charcoal pencil and drew a map as they walked.

“Which way is this?” he sometimes asked Meieruita.

“North,” Meieruita replied.

He watched An Luo hunch over his notebook, the charcoal scribbling across the page, then asked with downcast eyes, “Why are you drawing this?”

“To find my way,” An Luo replied righteously. “My memory isn’t as good as yours. You guys remember paths after one trip, but I need to jot it down.”

An Luo sighed. “Back then, I never had to navigate myself. Even in unfamiliar places, I had GPS. Not like now, stumbling around blind.”

An Luo’s frankness eased the faint suspicion in Meieruita’s heart.

“Don’t worry,” he said simply. “I’ll stay by your side.”

There’s no need to go to such lengths. You’ll never have to find your own way.

The wind rustled the pages. An Luo pondered openly as he drew, but his map was poor—not to scale with real distances, and he couldn’t even distinguish southeast from northwest, using front, back, left, and right instead.

During a midway rest, An Luo sat on a rock, revising his map draft.

This was crucial for him, tied to his future escape plan.

Though this world was an Ancient Wizard’s Gu-Raising World, it was relatively safe overall. Wizards had long lifespans, so the plot spanned a vast timeline.

The same principle: the soul influences the body.

The stronger the soul, the longer the body’s lifespan.

Whether Wizards who fused with Four-Dimensional Creatures’ organs or those who projected their souls into the Four-Dimensional World for enlightenment, their soul strength far surpassed ordinary people.

They lived extraordinarily long.

Meieruita’s escape and revenge against the Ancient Wizard happened far later in the plot. By then, centuries would have passed.

An Luo’s grave would probably be impossible to find.

He drew meticulously, revising while recalling the path they’d taken. Meieruita sat beside him, watching, then suddenly asked, “You said you went to school far from home?”

An Luo hummed in affirmation. “Yeah, several hundred kilometers away.”

He had no idea of the exact distance and just threw out a number.

He knew what Meieruita meant and preempted him: “Someone took me there. I didn’t walk myself.”

In a sense, that was true. Cars had drivers, walking had GPS—never mind that GPS wasn’t human.

Occasionally, he’d ask if Meieruita thought he’d drawn it right. Meieruita marked the distances for each segment.

“Thanks. You’re amazing—remembering all this.”

Meieruita said nothing. He lowered his gaze, took the charcoal pencil from An Luo’s hand, and drew a more detailed, accurate map, complete with nearby landmarks.

Soon, they left the forest around the Wizard Tower. Small villages appeared before them.

As they passed through, villagers watched them with curiosity and tension. Some hurriedly shut their children indoors.

Villages mostly clung to city outskirts. After several, Solsen City’s silhouette emerged.

Solsen City was small. An Luo and Meieruita didn’t rush in. An Luo knew Meieruita’s main goal was finding that dead Wizard’s corpse.

Suddenly, rain fell—a misty drizzle that blanketed everything. Meieruita led An Luo straight to their destination.

The cave hiding the Wizard’s corpse.

Meieruita lit a fire inside. An Luo wondered if it was his imagination, but Meieruita seemed to know the cave’s location in advance. He found it too quickly—or rather, went straight there without searching.

But how could that be?

Meieruita sat across from him, his face calmly impassive. An Luo couldn’t read anything.

“What’s wrong?”

An Luo blurted it out: “I feel like you found it too fast.”

Meieruita’s gray-green eyes met his. He smiled. “Do you?”

The corpse lay deeper in the cave. Meieruita had already stored it in a specialized Spatial Wizard Artifact for later study in the Underground Laboratory. Now, they were just sheltering from the rain.

The rain intensified. Meieruita glanced outside, offered no further explanation, and said, “We’ll probably spend the night here.”

“An Luo, come here.”