Magic Farm 187

Chapter 187

[Divine Formless: There are five pills in a bottle, should I give you two?]

[I Love Survival Games: Did the survival game tell you how many you should take?]

[Divine Formless: No.]

[I Love Survival Games: Then I guess there’s no limit to how many you can take. Just eat them yourself.]

[I Love Survival Games: I’m about to head out to look for the Ice and Snow boss.]

[Divine Formless: Let’s talk again when you get back.]

When Qi Yu walked through his territory again, he could clearly feel the difference.

His body’s resistance to the cold had increased.

To be precise, his overall physical abilities had improved in every aspect.

Unfortunately, ever since he returned from the resource zone, his attributes had turned into a string of asterisks—he couldn’t see the exact numbers anymore.

But judging by how he felt, if the numbers were still visible, every stat would have changed far more dramatically than if he had leveled up by an entire class.

He lowered his head, gazing at the thick snow under his feet. Then he looked up, watching the large, drifting snowflakes falling from the sky.

A strange thought rose in his heart: if he wished, even a single, weightless snowflake could bear his weight.

The wind, the snow—every element of nature now felt intimately close and filled him with joy.

An elf… was it?

He would wait until evening and ask Teacher Egnol about it.

For most of the following day, he drove his magical sleigh through the Forest of Stars, and, unsurprisingly, came across another player’s territory.

This time, the player saw him and even waved at him enthusiastically, head tilted back.

“Is that you, boss of I Love Survival Games?” From afar, Qi Yu heard her excited shout.

Qi Yu: “……”

Just as he thought, you Blue Star people are truly frightening—so warm and outgoing, even toward complete strangers.

He kept his cool, instructing the elemental spirit to pick up speed. The magical sleigh skimmed across the sky like a shadow.

That evening, the regional channel was abuzz again—another player had run into a game expert. Someone even @-ed him, asking if it was really him.

Qi Yu ignored them.

He tallied up his gains for the day.

Today, he had collected a total of 215 Ice Crystal Gems.

Up to now, he had amassed 983 Ice Crystal Gems in all. After spending 150 on the magical sleigh and the event-exclusive clothing set, he still had 833 left.

It was enough to exchange for all the remaining items.

But he didn’t exchange them right away. He didn’t even bother with dinner, instead taking out “Advanced Theory and Practice of Magic Circles” and opening it.

Teacher Egnol had mentioned before that all his works carried his spiritual imprint. If Qi Yu ever needed to find him, he could simply open this book.

But Qi Yu rarely disturbed him outside of class.

This time, he truly had something to ask.

This time, Teacher Egnol’s spiritual space was a garden.

There was a swing in the garden, beneath a massive grape arbor. The grapes had ripened, heavy clusters of purple fruit hanging down.

Beneath the arbor was a set of exquisite lounge chairs and a small table. Sitting there, you could reach out and pluck a grape to eat.

It looked so comfortable!

The elf teacher sat on the swing nearby, flipping through a book.

Sensing Qi Yu’s arrival, he didn’t even look up. “I guessed you’d come. You have quite the patience.”

He had thought Qi Yu would come as soon as he returned from the resource zone.

Hearing this, Qi Yu strode over and said earnestly, “Teacher Egnol, you know what happened to me, don’t you?”

The elf closed the book in his hands and finally lifted his gaze. “Of course.”

Qi Yu had never liked beating around the bush, especially not with a teacher he trusted so much.

So he spoke directly: “I ran into an elf in the resource zone. He seemed to mistake me for one of his own.”

He spoke honestly: “He poured a heap of memories into me and gave me a storage ring filled with all sorts of incredibly valuable things.”

He held out his right hand to show the elf. “I tried to take it off, but I can’t.”

He had no idea what method had been used on the ring—it seemed bound to his entire being. Even he himself couldn’t remove it.

After Qi Yu finished speaking, the elf on the swing fell silent for a long, long time.

At last, he only uttered four words: “He wasn’t mistaken.”

Qi Yu: ?

He was completely taken aback!

He asked cautiously, “Teacher Egnol, you’re not joking with me, are you?”

He received a cold glance in reply.

Qi Yu was completely immune to such a frosty look. He explained his reasoning: “But I’m obviously human. I’ve always been human, ever since I was a child. Before… well, before I came here, I never had anything unusual about me.”

“And besides, I’m already an adult—not a child anymore.”

There were so many things he couldn’t make sense of.

If it was because of the survival game that he awakened some kind of bloodline—like that “siren player” he’d met in the arena—then the elves’ attitude toward him didn’t make sense.

They had given him their things, not as if he were a “mixed-blood” outsider, but as if he were truly one of them.

Egnol listened to his words. This time, he didn’t fall silent.

He quickly repeated what he’d just said: “He wasn’t mistaken.”

Qi Yu was stunned. “But I…”

He hesitated, unsure whether this mysterious elven race really knew about the existence of the survival game.

Even though he’d met Teacher Egnol through the survival game.

He hesitated a moment. “But I’m not even from here.”

“I know.”

The elf seemed to understand his concerns, and also the words he hadn’t spoken aloud.

“That’s why you were brought back.”

Qi Yu jerked his head up.

He stared at the tall elf before him in disbelief. “You… do you mean what I think you mean?”

Did the elf know where he came from?

The elf didn’t answer directly. “Qi Yu, think carefully—do you have parents? Any family? When do your memories begin?”

Qi Yu couldn’t answer.

He had always found it odd: he’d had an excellent memory since childhood, almost photographic. Yet his earliest memories only dated back to when he was nearly ten.

Even his age had been estimated by the base, based on his appearance.

The people at the base had told him he’d been picked up by an exploration team from outside.

All his memories and knowledge began at the base.

Later, when the base was destroyed, everyone he knew was gone, leaving him alone to wander the apocalypse.

In the apocalypse, children with unknown origins and no parents weren’t uncommon. He’d never questioned that explanation.

He stared blankly at the elf before him.

Teacher Egnol said, “Letting you grow up alone, in a strange… place, was our failure.”

“I’m sorry.”

He hesitated, then finally raised his hand and, very gently, patted the top of Qi Yu’s head twice:

“We’ve been searching for you for a very, very long time.”

Qi Yu stared at him, unblinking.

After a while, he said seriously, “Although what you’re saying is very moving, and it doesn’t seem like you’d gain anything by lying to me…”

“But, how can you prove what you’re saying is true?”

Egnol: “……”

The child had grown up, and his wariness was a good thing.

Considering where he’d grown up, Egnol couldn’t even feel upset about it.

He patiently explained, “That’s why we prepared the things in your storage ring.”

And so the conversation circled back.

He told Qi Yu, “Under normal circumstances, you shouldn’t be like this now. The elven bloodline hid itself to protect you, which is why you grew up looking human.”

“The items in your ring aren’t treasures—they’re the food every elf must eat from birth. Just as humans need to eat and drink to grow up healthy.”

Elves are born powerful, with lifespans approaching immortality. Their childhoods are long, and to reach their most perfect form, they must absorb immense energy during their growth.

These things were never meant to be a youngling’s concern—the clan is responsible for caring for every newborn elf.

For Qi Yu, it was already many, many years too late.

“Your body is severely depleted,” Egnol explained. “Or to put it another way, the energy needed for your bloodline to awaken was never fulfilled.”

This poor, ill-fated cub had skipped the elves’ long childhood entirely, growing from a child to an adult in human form.

In other words, he now needed to make up for all the energy an elf would require from infancy to adulthood.

The infusion of energy in the resource zone had only just barely brought him to the threshold of “awakening.”

After roughly explaining the situation, Egnol could tell the wary cub before him still wasn’t fully convinced.

He continued to provide “evidence”:

“I know you came from another place.”

“I also know your little dragon rider friend came from another place.”

“Your ‘hometowns’ are not the same.”

He spoke these astonishing words with utter calm: “Due to certain rules that must be followed, there are things I can’t say too plainly. But you understand, don’t you?”

This time, Qi Yu was truly stunned.

Of course he understood—aside from not explicitly saying “the apocalypse” and “Blue Star,” what difference was there between what Teacher Egnol had said and just spelling it out?

He stood quietly where he was, his mind, for once, completely blank.

Egnol said nothing more, simply sitting quietly with him.

He didn’t know how much time had passed before he snapped out of his daze.

“So… I…”

His thoughts were a mess, a jumble of words crowding his lips, and he blurted out, “So I’m an orphan, then? Do I have any family?”

Egnol’s gaze softened even more.

He said gently, “Elves are not like humans. We are not born from the union of man and woman. Elves are the fruit borne of the Mother Tree. The Mother Tree is mother to all elves, and all elves are your brothers and sisters.”

“Qi Yu, you have many, many family members.”

“We have never abandoned you.”

“You survived alone in a perilous world for nineteen years.”

“And in your true homeland, your kin have searched for you for far longer—far more than just a few dozen nineteen-year spans.”

“……”

After returning from the spiritual space to his territory, Qi Yu sat under the Tree of Wisdom, lost in thought for a long, long time.

He couldn’t say he was overwhelmed, nor that his feelings were complicated.

To be precise, while his mind had received and firmly remembered all the information, he hadn’t fully absorbed or processed it yet.

As a result, he still felt a disconnect from those facts, to the point where he wondered if he was dreaming.

After spacing out for a long time, he came to his senses and made an important decision: I need to get some sleep.

No checking messages, no talking to anyone.

Once he’d slept, all the things he couldn’t figure out would surely become clear.