255: Chapter 252 The Armory is in Full Swing, Ready to Depart

The very first moment Zhang Mu saw the photo clearly, he didn't realize the person on the left was himself.

It wasn't because there was an issue with his memory.

Humans look in the mirror every day, but as soon as they step away, it's still difficult to hold a clear image of their own appearance in their minds.

When others take photos of you without your knowledge, you mostly identify yourself through features like hairstyle and attire rather than facial details.

So Zhang Mu stared at the photo for half an hour before recalling that he seemed to have a piece of clothing in the same style in his wardrobe.

In a different time and place, he might have thought it was a coincidence—that two people just happened to buy the same style.

But with the photo in his wallet, the clothes in his own wardrobe, and what Ye Ming had said, the answer was obvious—the child in the photo was him.

The grandmother on the right, looking to be in her sixties or seventies, was undoubtedly the dean Ye Ming had mentioned.

This is...

Although the surprise came somewhat suddenly and Zhang Mu did feel a moment of panic, he had experienced a tumultuous half-year, and his mindset had long since been tempered to be steady.

He quickly calmed down, raised his hand to conjure a breeze to clean the bed, and sat down on the instantly tidy edge.

He held the edge of the photo, his gaze fixed upon it.

"There's no need to verify it; I really am an orphan, and I grew up in this orphanage."

"But I truly can't remember anything before the age of eleven, which means... there's an issue with my memory."

"What's the reason?"

Looking at the old woman and the child under the pear tree in the photo, a thought struck him almost instantly.

Saul Continent. The missing memory must be inextricably linked to the Saul Continent.

Tracing back through over twenty years of life, the only thing capable of causing such a magical event was that place.

However, using an entire continent as the subject was far too broad; he needed to narrow the scope.

Excluding encounters that didn't defy common sense, Zhang Mu quickly locked onto a precise target—Resurrection.

The game panel had many functions: the inventory, the character info screen, opening and closing Portals, rapid mastery of magic, and breaking through magic limits.

These were all things that didn't exist in reality, but if one encountered them, there could at least be an explanation.

The inventory and Portals could be called some kind of spatial technology, character info was a full-body scan, and the last two could be interpreted as information transfer.

Only Resurrection was an authority that only a true god could possess.

Although in universal perception, resurrection didn't seem hard to understand.

Various literary and cinematic works had created related settings—magical rule-based powers, necromancy, or on the scientific side, the experiments of mad scientists, particle reconstruction, and so on.

But in reality, people might believe that the other functions of the game panel had a chance of being realized in the distant future, whereas no one held any expectations for resurrection.

When a person dies, they are dead.

The body will be corroded clean by time, even the hard bones.

If descendants unfortunately fail to carry on the lineage and the name is forgotten by everyone, then that person truly ceases to exist.

Zhang Mu's pupils contracted as he stared at the photo: "I knew it... how could such a heaven-defying function not have a price?"

"But... why use my memories as payment?"

Considering himself a mediocre person, the kind who would be lost in a crowd, his experiences before starting the game were similar to most people's. He didn't think there was anything precious or special about his memories.

After thinking for a while to no avail, he stopped dwelling on it.

Zhang Mu stood up: "Saul Continent, huh... since it hasn't made a move against me, it'll show its face sooner or later, right?"

The current intelligence wasn't enough to analyze the answer, and investing more energy into it would just be a futile waste.

Since continuing to focus on it was useless, the correct approach was to set it aside for now.

Besides, Zhang Mu had already thought of a way to respond—becoming stronger.

This was the optimal, and currently only, method.

Dusting off his pants, he channeled his magic and directly vibrated the ID card and bank card he had left on the table into powder.

Then he looked down at the group photo.

There were two people in the photo. Under the shade of the pear tree, the child stood like a Soldier at attention, while the old woman sat on a low wooden stool with her hands on her thighs.

Both had smiles on their faces.

According to Ye Ming's account, this dean had adopted Zhang Mu and raised him to adulthood.

In theory, Zhang Mu should be filled with gratitude and nostalgia, treasuring the photo as a memento.

But he didn't remember the things that would fuel those emotions.

He didn't remember the dean's voice or appearance, he didn't remember the little moments they spent together—he didn't remember anything at all.

He had forgotten everything.

Naturally, looking at her, his heart was as calm as water, and he had no desire to keep it, even though his logic told him he should.

After standing by the bed for a long time, Zhang Mu's mind shifted, and the photo turned into fine dust.

"With your great abilities, restoring a photo must be easy, right?"

"I imagine you won't refuse."

Shaking off the remaining powder from the creases of his palms, he flew straight up through several layers of ceilings into the high sky, heading towards NH.

After reaching the base on the coast, he first summoned a Portal to the Lord of Gur City's manor and called for Solon to ask how much longer until the Royal Capital messenger arrived.

Solon turned and left, running toward the Griffin Legion stationed outside the city.

He returned about an hour later with an answer—five days.

Zhang Mu nodded to show he understood, waved him away, and immediately returned to Blue Star.

For the next three days, he set aside all trivial matters to focus on controlling the "Senior Brother Zhou" puppet, using the excuse of being "interested" to help China accelerate its research.

In between, he squeezed out some time to connect with the "Minister of Logistics" across the ocean, pushing the Queen to carry out the resource exchange.

The process differed slightly, but the general direction was the same as China's—after carefully studying the list provided by Hogwarts, the Queen chose to use Rhenium as the trading currency.

As for the two countries contacting each other and discovering that both Qingfeng Hall and Hogwarts had priced Rhenium as the most expensive item, thus noticing something unusual, Zhang Mu wasn't worried.

From the very beginning, he had conveyed a message to the personnel of both countries—rarity increases value; this is an eternal truth in The World.

Based on this, it wasn't surprising that the most precious item in the materials prepared by both sides was Rhenium.

This was also why Zhang Mu didn't separately remind both sides to keep it a secret to prevent them from communicating.

Because the actions of both countries acquiring Rhenium on a large scale couldn't be hidden.

There were only so many reserves; if China bought more, the market price would rise, and Ying Country would naturally notice.

The reverse was also true.

In this way, without appearing abrupt or having any lingering concerns, Zhang Mu put all his effort into promoting the experiments of both countries.

On the morning of the fourth day, China was the first to reach a result—the selected materials fully met the conditions for building a new generation of spacecraft.

Being in front of the Mountain Gate and having the protection of the Kunpeng overhead, they didn't have to worry about accidents and immediately exchanged all the Rhenium metal they had for "Stone."

Researchers simultaneously calculated the total amount of materials needed to build the spacecraft.

Zhang Mu had used the Shadow Technique to look at the blueprints; they weren't designing from scratch, but modifying an existing cutting-edge model to save a lot of time.

He estimated that the materials he had prepared were enough for them to build it; he wouldn't need to worry about the resource exchange later, as the puppet could handle it.

He collected all the crates piled in the Qingfeng Hall warehouse into his inventory and went to Domit's research lab.

His back was to the door as he stood at the table, his gaze seemingly fixed on the tabletop.

The pure white wooden table certainly wasn't anything noteworthy; he was looking at a sniper rifle on the table.

Back when he was taking precautions for entering Bala City, Zhang Mu had "acquired" a batch of arms from the black market, among which were several sniper rifles.

Therefore, he was no stranger to sniper rifles.

The one lying on the table was a shape Zhang Mu recognized, largely identical to a barrett.

However, in terms of details, some differences could be seen.

First, there was a rectangular crystal area on each side of the barrel.

They weren't very long, roughly the length of an index finger.

Then there was the trigger; this gun didn't have one, and the original position was replaced by a crystal ball one centimeter in diameter.

Zhang Mu strolled behind him with his hands behind his back: "What are you looking at?"

Startled, Domit hurriedly turned around: "Lord City Lord."

His state was somewhat listless.

As a Beginner Magician, he actually had dark circles under his eyes, his complexion was dark and haggard, and his shoulders slumped, giving him a spiritless appearance.

"Whoa, what happened to you? Did you go out thieving last night?"

"Lord City Lord..." His drooping eyelids rolled up, "Don't you know best what I've been doing?"

"Uh..."

Recalling the tasks he had assigned recently—manufacturing a prototype magic guidance sniper rifle, preliminary verification of the feasibility of a magic guidance sniper cannon, the application of floating stone and other ores, and the accompanying power system.

Every single one was a national-level project; countries with weak national strength wouldn't even have the capability to launch them.

It seemed... maybe... possibly... it was a bit much.

"Ahahaha..." Zhang Mu laughed heartily, "Don't mind the details. Come, this is the prototype of the magic guidance sniper rifle, right?

Give me an introduction."

At this, Domit's spirits lifted, and he began to explain with an impassioned tone.

As the first magic guidance sniper rifle developed by the team he led, Domit excitedly named it "Magic Guidance Sniper Rifle No. 1."

Zhang Mu was greatly shocked by his broad naming sense and deep imagination, waving his hand to signal that there was no need to explain the origin of the name; he wasn't interested, so move on to the next point.

Although he was a bit reluctant, since it was the Lord City Lord's command, he had to start listing data and functions.

When designing this gun, Domit had thought carefully and decided to completely change the interior while keeping most of the external structure.

First, for the activation method of the kinetic shooting module, the firing pin was changed from being controlled by a linked trigger to being activated by magic.

In other words, as long as a Soldier's finger touched the crystal ball at the trigger position, they could channel magic to activate the firing pin and fire the bullet.

And to prevent the firearm from being taken and used by enemies, the crystal ball was also set with a spiritual imprint system equivalent to a fingerprint lock.

Then there was the magic part.

Because they currently lacked high-level magic but couldn't delay the development of the firearm, Domit simply standardized the specifications of the inlay holes so the Core could be universal.

This would not only save costs but also be more convenient when upgrading and iterating the sniper rifle in the future.

The only flaw in such a design was that the user had to possess a certain amount of magical talent.

Of course, it wouldn't be too strict; otherwise, the universal advantage of the firearm would be eliminated.

As long as their Mental Energy was active enough to perceive magic, that would suffice.

After listening, Zhang Mu stroked his chin and pondered.

As long as they could perceive magic... that wasn't too difficult.

Teacher Potter had once said that the standard for becoming a Magic Apprentice was mastering the Meditation Method, which meant mastering the three abilities of magic absorption, magic control, and magic perception.

And magic perception was the most basic, yet also the easiest of them.

Domit had even specifically lowered the requirements; as long as one could perceive the existence of magic—for example, in a magic-rich environment, feeling that there was something invisible nearby—they would be considered qualified.

With such conditions, he could easily pull out several special operations squads from the First Army Soldiers.

"Lord City Lord," Domit added, "if in the future we have Soldiers with enough talent to become magicians, we can customize more powerful exclusive sniper rifles."

"We'll talk about that later. Here, take this." Zhang Mu waved his hand, and a large batch of neatly stacked metal boxes appeared in the empty space on the right, "It's all Rhenium; it should be enough to manufacture a batch of magic guidance sniper rifles."

"Uh... shouldn't we save some? magic guidance mortars and other magic-conducting weapons are also under development, and using it all on..."

"There will be plenty of Rhenium in the future. Just do as I ordered."

"As you command!"

With the instructions given, Zhang Mu directly left "The World" and summoned a Portal to the Saul Continent.

After finding Solon, he had returned to Blue Star from the City Lord's manor, so naturally, he was still in the manor upon arriving.

Coming out of the study, he first went to the backyard.

Pavlina seemed to have taken Leah out shopping; he didn't see them after looking around the front and back of the yard.

Seeing this, Zhang Mu didn't continue looking for them, turned around to leave the city, and sped all the way to Moza Village.

As usual, he looked out from the small earthen slope outside the village.

It was around two in the afternoon, and the First Army Soldiers were training in the open space in the middle of the village.

Domit was also there, but as a High-level Knight, the First Army's physical training had no effect on him, so he supervised from the edge of the open space with a serious expression.

The Soldiers were not slacking in their training.

Their faces, exposed outside their combat uniforms, were tanned dark, and almost every one of them had scars on the backs of their hands. Judging by their powerful running strides, their physiques were much stronger than before.

Zhang Mu was very satisfied. He didn't disturb them and headed off to find Mihe.

This old man had been quite lazy lately, dozing in a rocking chair in the middle of the living room, not even noticing the sound of the door opening.

"Sleeping this soundly?" Zhang Mu scratched his head as he walked into the house.

"Hmm?" Perhaps hearing his murmur, Mihe slowly opened his eyes, lying still without any intention of getting up to greet him, "You're here."

"What, not feeling well?" He pulled over a wooden chair and sat down beside him.

"No, I'm very comfortable." He smiled and swayed the rocking chair, "Having worked tirelessly for the Resistance Army, I've never been as leisurely as I am now."

"It's not time yet."

"I know, but at least we can enjoy ourselves before setting out, can't we?"

Zhang Mu crossed his legs: "Yes."

Sitting up, Mihe stretched his hands upward with effort: "Nn—.

Is it time to move?"

"The day after tomorrow, well... three days at the latest. The Royal Capital's messenger should be arriving by then."

Mihe had, after all, experienced many ups and downs; his state adjusted very quickly, instantly emerging from the lazy atmosphere and replacing it with a serious face: "What do we need to do?"

"I'm taking Domit with me today." Zhang Mu stood up, "When the messenger arrives, I'll have him notify you, and you'll bring the First Army to the outskirts of Gur City."

"There are only a few days left; why not just have everyone enter The World now?"

Sighing, he said as he walked toward the door, "They'll be staying inside for a long time; let's have them enter as late as possible."

"As you command, Lord City Lord."