Genius Chapter 18: Congratulations

Chapter 18: Congratulations

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Karai

The view was elevated suddenly, and with Array Master’s position, the hanging position conveniently provided a clear view of the entire stone stele.

Su Mo also casually grabbed a stone for support, slightly adjusted his position by leaning on his arms, barely relieving some weight, but in reality, most of his weight was still pressing down on Array Master underneath.

Yu Zhen asked, “Need further adjustment of position?”

“…” Su Mo hesitated, then said, “No, thanks.”

This was Su Mo’s first time sitting on someone’s arm and being brought to such a high position, and this height had already exceeded that of lightness skills. Apart from minor lightness skills, the ability to ascend relied entirely on one’s own skills, not to mention that the area was a no-fly zone according to the map.

He glanced down slightly, comparing his body size with Array Master’s. Truly, it was a holographic game. Did he not adjust something properly when creating his character? Why was someone else’s physical fitness so much better than his?

Su Mo added, “If your hand gets tired, just say.”

“No.” Yu Zhen replied shortly, “You’re very light.”

Su Mo said, “…Okay then.”

On the other side, with the perspective of the live broadcast room, ClearWind and ScarletFruit were still sitting at the entrance of the cave. ScarletFruit looked at the situation below and began to hesitate, “The landing spot below is so small, it’s like testing the legs of a homebody like me.”

ClearWind said, “It’s okay. We have physical training classes usually, and besides, our body data has been adjusted in the game. You’ll be fine, believe in yourself.”

ScarletFruit replied, “I don’t really feel like moving. I’ll try if I can support them from here.”

[Are you two just slacking off?]

[This is the Apocalypse mission, guys. Can you promise to put in a little effort?]

[It’s frustrating. These two have no ambition at all. While others are clearing levels, they’re still chatting.]

[Huh? Where’s Array Master and Summoner? Why don’t I see them here?]

“How come we’re not working hard? The bosses asked us to stay up here and provide support, didn’t they?” After ClearWind finished speaking, he noticed the barrage of messages. “Them? Let me check… Huh, why did they go over there?”

The perspective in the live broadcast room changed as ClearWind moved, now directly facing the central platform of the stone stele below.

The cave was spacious, with the larger areas filled with pools of water and scattered rocks. The surface of the central platform was uneven, with only the stone stele towering high, engraved with strange runes they couldn’t understand. The scenery was beautiful, but the camera’s capture gave it a creepy feeling.

ClearWind quickly moved the camera away, then accidentally caught sight of two people hanging on the cave wall. From his angle, those two looked like they were hanging together in mid-air, motionless.

He froze.

The live broadcast room chat also froze.

“ClearWind, cast some light with the illumination scroll.” The voice of UnchainedWanderer came through the voice channel, and a marker appeared below the cave.

“Oh, right.” ClearWind took out the illumination scroll, then hesitated. Wait, why did they need light if they were hanging together?

[What are Summoner and Array Master doing?]

[They’re probably checking the high spots. That inscription on the stele must be a problem.]

[Array Master is lifting Summoner’s height so they can see the stone stele clearly.]

“At this height, a newbie, huh? How did they jump up there?”

Su Mo lightly leaned against the stone wall to relieve UnchainedWanderer’s pressure, his gaze falling on the clear inscription.

The inscription was in ancient Chinese, which surprised Su Mo. For the sake of player comprehension, all text in Celestial Horizon had been in the universal Star Alliance script up to now. This was the first time he had seen such complete ancient Chinese characters in the game.

His parents had been archaeologists specializing in ancient Chinese studies, and half of the books in their house were ancient texts. Before his parents encountered trouble during their exploration of the starry skies, ancient Chinese history had always been his bedtime stories, and he had learned ancient Chinese under their influence. This was also the first time he had seen ancient Chinese inscriptions used so accurately in grammar. Under the replication of ApexMind, they were even more precise than some Star Alliance publications.

Thanks to the correct grammar and wording, Su Mo found it less difficult to understand.

“In the beginning of heaven and earth, when spiritual energy was created, it was called the Celestial Awakening.” Su Mo slowly read out the inscription on the stone stele…

The initial part of the inscription described the beginning of the Celestial Horizon continent, during the period known as the Celestial Awakening, when spiritual energy permeated the continent and almost all cultivators could ascend to the heavens and traverse the earth, akin to gods. People could become gods, strong individuals were numerous, and it was an era of survival of the fittest, where the strong were revered, until the strongest opened the door of the Celestial Awakening, isolating the spiritual energy and bringing decline to that era.

Su Mo suddenly stopped reading at this point.

Yu Zhen asked, “What’s wrong?”

Su Mo furrowed his brows slightly. “There’s a contradiction here. It says the decline of spiritual energy was caused by the fall of the Celestial Awakening door. Then why did they want to open this door? If, as you said, we’re doing this task to open the seal of the Celestial Awakening, then have you considered what happens after it’s opened?”

With one high and one low, they exchanged glances as they spoke.

Finally, Yu Zhen spoke first. “Have you finished reading?”

“Oh, yes, I have.” Su Mo snapped out of his thoughts. “The first half is about the background of the Celestial Awakening task, and the latter part mentions something about the cave, saying this place is the seal point of the Celestial Awakening, but it doesn’t mention anything about the mechanism. We still need to go down and take a look.”

Yu Zhen led Su Mo to jump down from the high point. After landing smoothly, he lowered Su Mo from his arm.

At this moment, Su Mo accidentally touched his arm.

“Sorry.” Su Mo curiously looked at Yu Zhen’s arm. Underneath the fabric, there seemed to be very well-developed muscles. “How did you adjust your data? I didn’t have this option when I created my character.”

When UnchainedWanderer wore the array master’s robe, he looked neat and slim, not particularly muscular, but the muscles on his arms were as hard as stone. Su Mo exercised regularly himself, but his physique was not as good as others’, with only thin layers of muscle on his body. Even in reality, his physique couldn’t match those tall and muscular peers, and even in the game, his physique was slightly leaner and shorter than others’.

Yu Zhen said, “You can adjust.”

Su Mo was speechless.

“Thanks, but do not be envious.” Yu Zhen hesitated slightly, unusually talkative. “What I meant was adjusting the data. When creating a character, you can adjust the surface data of your physique, but other body data depends on the allocation of character points.”

His personal physique was S-class, which had some influence on attribute allocation in the game, but in this global game, real-world skills and abilities wouldn’t be overly suppressed.

Su Mo was slightly surprised. “You can adjust surface data…?”

Then why didn’t he notice when he created his character initially?

“Yeah.” Yu Zhen said, “If you didn’t enter advanced adjustments when creating a character, the system will default to modeling your character’s appearance based on your physical data.”

Su Mo was speechless. He had suffered because he hadn’t played holographic online games before.

[What are they talking about?]

[Livestreamer, could you go down and take a look?]

[Just now, there was another announcement. The leaders of the exploration group cleared the hidden map of the Cloudscape. They said that this Misty Cave seems to be the last task of the Apocalypse.]

[What? The last one! The last task of the Apocalypse is actually in the newbie area.]

[Fuck, could they try harder? Am I about to witness the first clear team?]

ClearWind had been watching from above, but the viewers in the livestream kept urging him to go down. He was in a dilemma and had to ask, “Brother, do you need any help down there?”

The two people below didn’t respond to him and instead walked towards the stone tablet.

ClearWind said, “Okay, it looks like they don’t need much help.”

The livestream chat was in chaos. The progress of the Apocalypse exploration was being advanced by the entire server. It was said that the top players of the game formed an exploration group, which gathered the top players from various leaderboards of Celestial Horizon. When the Apocalypse was announced at level 70, these players dedicated themselves to unlocking the tasks. And just now, the hidden map Cloudscape was successfully cleared. The leader of the exploration group, the number one warrior of Flaming Thunder Mountain on the Celestial Horizon professional leaderboard, ‘CloudTraveller,’ announced that Misty Cave would be the final task of the Apocalypse.

More and more people joined the livestream, and even many well-known players entered one after another.

At that time, it was 5 PM in Capital Planet’s District C, and the number of viewers in ClearWindIsHere’s livestream had reached 5 million.

“Did you guys finish?” Apple entered the voice channel of the exploration group and found about thirty people gathered inside. “Is it really the last one?”

The number one warrior, CloudTraveller, said, “Yes, before we cleared it, we got a map in ancient Huaxia script. After giving it to Kawaii for translation, she said the location was near Misty Woods. Also, the rewards we received for clearing it were strange. Some people’s rewards were common in the newbie area, so it should be hinting at something.”

“We were careless, we should go for the final task, it would be safer.”

Kawaii was an array master, and in real life, she was a researcher at an archaeological institute with knowledge of ancient Huaxia script. Her translations were generally accurate, even more so than automatic translators.

“Did ReturnToSimplicity go too?” FireworksAndLanterns asked, “The other day Xiao Er was asking me about momo, asking if I opened an alt account.”

Apple said, “I’m watching the livestream. UnchainedWanderer should be Zhen-ge’s alt account, but he didn’t respond when I @’d him.”

CloudTraveller followed the link Apple sent and entered ClearWindIsHere’s livestream. He paused slightly when he saw the livestream perspective, “What’s with the perspective?”

“The livestreamer didn’t follow them down,” Apple explained. “Zhen-ge and that summoner went down, but the perspective is too far to see clearly. However, the inscription on that stone tablet should be the key, but Zhen-ge doesn’t know much about this kind of script, not sure if they can clear it.”

The exploration group was all watching. Although ReturnToSimplicity had mixed in with an alt account, the situation of a four-person clear didn’t look promising in their eyes. Zhen-ge was strong, but carrying three others was very difficult. Initially, there was some chance, but now that they knew this was the final task, even fewer people were optimistic.

CloudTraveller frowned, “Where’s Xiao Er? Ask him what’s going on.”

Under everyone’s urging, 25000 quietly appeared in the exploration group chat, saying, “Do you think I don’t want to ask? Zhen-ge muted me! I’ve sent over a hundred messages and he just ignored me.”

Apple laughed heartily, “It really is him. I knew that array master’s moves looked familiar.”

CloudTraveller looked at the situation in the livestream. From the livestreamer’s perspective, the cave looked extremely eerie. Both the layout and the atmosphere exuded a deeply unsettling feeling. This feeling had been present ever since they started clearing the Apocalypse series tasks. Although previous maps also had sinister and terrifying elements, this was the first time they encountered an entirely dark map like the Misty Cave.

The tall stone tablet and the deep water with scattered rocks beside it created a bizarre sense of dissonance in the cave’s terrain.

Su Mo walked back to the vicinity of the stone tablet. As he approached, he suddenly noticed a difference in the inscriptions.

The cave had complex lighting, and with the illumination scrolls, the overall brightness was white. However, when he got extremely close to the stone tablet, the color of the inscriptions changed subtly. The stone tablet was a bluish-gray, and the inscriptions were a dark, dull red. Up close, some characters near the bottom were slightly redder than the others.

Su Mo walked back and forth, and his expression quickly changed.

Yu Zhen noticed his strange behavior and asked, “What did you find?”

“There’s something wrong with the inscriptions,” Su Mo confirmed the positions of certain characters. “Start, seal, demon…”

He read them out one by one, reordering the sequence of the characters, and tapped the lantern staff on those characters. At this moment, the inscriptions on the stone tablet eerily started to glow.

Following his guessed sequence, after he finished tapping, the inscriptions on the entire stone tablet became increasingly crimson, as if blood was flowing and emerging from the bluish-gray surface, especially certain words, which turned glaringly red.

A deep, ancient voice resonated throughout the cave, “The Apocalypse unsealed, demons unleashed.”

In an instant, the confined space of the cave expanded infinitely, resembling an endless secret cave. The originally calm deep pool began bubbling ominously. The inscriptions in the center of the stone tablet completely cracked, and the bubbles in the deep pool exploded like bombs one by one.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

From within the stone tablet, dark green mist spread and condensed into a shape before everyone’s eyes. At the same time, a bright red announcement popped up in front of all online players of Celestial Horizon.

A massive gate stood among the clouds, with the heavy voice reverberating globally. [The Apocalypse unseal progress corrected to 99%. The Gate of Apocalypse countdown begins. Challenge successfully completed to unlock.]

Boom—— With a loud boom, a massive countdown timer appeared above the giant gate, [The final dungeon of the Apocalypse, Misty Sea Realm, has been cleared. Welcome players momo, ScarletFruit14, UnchainedWanderer, ClearWindIsHere to Misty Sea Realm. Challenge difficulty adjusted based on player participation, Misty Sea Demon comprehensive level: 38, overall rating: S-class]

The highly distinctive electronic voice of the ApexMind resonated in the ears of all players, like warning tones striking directly in their brains, [Dear challengers, I am delighted that you have dedicated your time and effort to the Apocalypse. You are now entering the server-wide unseal countdown. Please accept the challenge letter from the Gate of Apocalypse. This is a challenge concerning the fate of the entire server.]

[Fuck, what challenge letter?]

[This is the ApexMind’s voice, right? It’s my first time hearing it in a holographic game.]

[What does this mean? Isn’t the Apocalypse about unlocking levels? How did it turn into a server-wide challenge?]

[Server-wide fate???? I’m dumbfounded, what’s going on?!]

The countdown was set to exactly 3 hours.

[A 3-hour challenge?]

[What the hell? What’s the reward?]

Meanwhile, all players in ClearWindIsHere’s livestream could clearly see the changes in the cave. As soon as the mist appeared, Su Mo and Yu Zhen swiftly retreated to the edge of the platform. The view before them was rapidly changing, and the countdown display, along with the challenge instructions, appeared at the top of their vision.

[Players momo, ScarletFruit14, UnchainedWanderer, ClearWindIsHere loaded (4/20) Location: Misty Sea Realm, remaining time: 3 hours. Successful challenge will fully unlock the Gate of Apocalypse, correct the server-wide max level to 80, and grant the gift of the Gate of Apocalypse. Failure will result in losing everything, and all players will drop 10 levels. Challenge target: Misty Sea Demon, kill it to complete the challenge. If all participating players die, the entire team will be expelled.] ApexMind’s voice continued— [Well then, I wish you victory.]