387: Chapter 375 Road Construction, God Worship

The members of the Special Investigation Bureau drove out of the base gates and along the asphalt road, passing over a mountain. Their field of vision suddenly opened up as the sea and the Pillar Mountain suspended above it burst into view.

As China's frontline department for dealing with the supernatural, the Special Investigation Bureau was fully responsible for all domestic supernatural affairs. As high-ranking officials of the bureau, the Director and his colleagues were undoubtedly among the people in China who understood the supernatural best.

Having been in contact with the Mountain Gate for nearly two years, they considered themselves worthy of that honor.

They had witnessed quite a few supernatural methods and entities, such as the Kunpeng, Immortal Xu, the Mountain Gate, Flying Boats, and so on.

Yet even so, as they leaned their heads out of the car windows and saw a Pillar Mountain floating above the sea, the shock in their hearts remained beyond words.

It wasn't because of the scene itself.

Human imagination is bold and rich. Not to mention a mountain flying, there were plenty of fantasy films and television works depicting spaceships dragging entire planets.

But there was a fundamental difference between those and the scene before them.

To be honest, the group firmly believed that even if they saw aliens moving a planet with a spaceship, they wouldn't be more shocked than they were now.

Because one relied on machinery, while the other relied on the power of a human being.

High above the sea in the distance, Pillar Mountain was slowly descending. The one controlling all of this was the person below, holding the mountain up with a raised hand.

Although they were still far from the coast, everyone recognized him at a glance.

The man had white hair and wore white clothes, his silhouette slender. His left hand was behind his back, while his right hand was raised high, supporting Pillar Mountain.

This was no different from picking something up from a high shelf in daily life; if one had to name a difference, it was perhaps that the "object" was a bit excessively large.

Compared to the size of Pillar Mountain, Immortal Xu's silhouette was as tiny as an ant. Yet it was this "ant" who was holding up a mountain peak that weighed thousands of times more than himself.

"Is that Master?" Luo Xiling stared for a long time, only snapping out of it when her gaze moved down to that back silhouette.

The Director, Zhao Qi, and the others didn't have her level of vision and could only vaguely see a white figure. They couldn't be certain if it was Immortal Xu, but on second thought, there could be no other choice but Immortal Xu who would have the audacity to perform such a technique in front of the Mountain Gate's entrance.

"It's Martial Uncle," said a girl from the group of five.

The Director slammed on the gas: "Immortal Xu did tell me that his seniors used some methods to move the statue of god's landing point near the base, but..."

"But I didn't expect him to actually move an entire mountain!"

Ye Ming, in the passenger seat, remained relatively calm and even had the presence of mind to analyze: "I remember the statue of god in Russia also appeared on the peak of a Pillar Mountain. Is there some connection between the mountain and the statue of god?"

"Maybe the statue of god prefers to be in high places."

"Then it should have landed on Mount Everest."

The Director was getting a bit annoyed by their bickering: "Don't worry about that for now. Has the Publicity Team arrived yet?"

Having learned from Immortal Xu that they needed to promote the statue of god's existence to utilize it for self-strengthening, the Director had prepared a professional filming team early on, striving to record sufficiently shocking scenes.

He felt there was nothing more suitable than Immortal Xu carrying a mountain into the sea.

Ye Ming nodded: "They are on standby 24 hours a day. They set out as soon as they received the order and were faster than us; they should be at the coast by now."

"Good!" The Director slapped the steering wheel hard.

The convoy sped forward and soon reached the coast. Everyone pushed open their doors and ran onto the beach.

Pillar Mountain was about several hundred meters from the beach. This distance wasn't too far; their vision was clear, and they could even see the flowers, grass, and trees on the mountain.

"I'll go up and take a look!" Luo Xiling looked at her Master's silhouette and couldn't help but call out her Flying Sword.

"Not allowed!" The Director grabbed her arm. "Don't mess around. What if you interfere with Immortal Xu's technique?"

"Master is so powerful, surely he wouldn't..." Luo Xiling grumbled in protest, but ultimately didn't dare disobey and obediently retracted her Flying Sword.

Immortal Xu hadn't given any instructions, and they didn't know what they were supposed to do, so they simply stood in a row, looking up at the Pillar Mountain that seemed like a miracle.

The accompanying Soldiers got out of their cars and ran over, standing behind the group with their rifles, gazing into the distance together.

Perhaps due to its massive size and the lack of reference points, Pillar Mountain's descent didn't seem fast, making it feel as if it were standing still.

Only as time passed and the distance between the mountain's base and the sea surface shortened did people realize with a start that it had been descending all along.

After an unknown amount of time, the base of Pillar Mountain finally touched the seawater slowly, stopping its descent only when about one-third of the mountain was submerged.

Thus, this "Welcome the statue of god" ceremony reached its conclusion.

"So... incredible." Lin Miao searched every corner of her mind and found she couldn't come up with a suitable word to express the shock in her heart, finally squeezing out two words that hit the essence.

"The mountain is in place, but where is Immortal Xu?" The Director was more concerned about the subsequent plans and looked around.

However, after waiting a long time, Immortal Xu never appeared. Fortunately, a voice carried through the air.

"The statue of god rests upon the mountain peak; it may be worshipped."

With a clear direction, the Director's confusion vanished, and he immediately began assigning tasks.

Luo Xiling and the others could fly, so they went to the mountain peak first to check the situation. Lin Miao and Yue Ruo were responsible for organizing and releasing the videos filmed by the Publicity Team, spreading them among the public as quickly as possible to encourage people to come and worship.

The last and most important task—eliminating hidden dangers.

The Director chose to entrust this to the reliable Ye Ming, with Zhao Qi serving as his assistant.

Just as Luo Xiling was about to take off on her sword, she turned back in surprise: "This is the Mountain Gate, what hidden dangers could there be? Who would dare cause trouble here?"

"You wouldn't understand even if I told you. Just hurry up and check the mountain peak."

"By the way, I don't think this mountain has a road. While you're at it, fly around a few times and research which side is best for building one."

"Oh." Luo Xiling led the four new disciples away.

The Director turned to Ye Ming and emphasized: "Immortal Xu said to promote the statue of god, but he didn't say we couldn't change the name when promoting it. To be honest, I'm not very willing to use the term 'statue of god'."

"You know, criminals who use the names of gods and buddhas to commit fraud have never been fully eradicated. Now that the government is officially promoting a 'statue of god', they will surely become rampant."

"We must suppress this trend!"

"Understood." Ye Ming responded seriously and led Zhao Qi quickly to the car to head back to the base, intending to fly back to the Special Investigation Bureau headquarters.

Everyone left to carry out their respective orders. The Director stood with hands on hips, facing the Pillar Mountain in the sea: "statue of god... I really want to see what it looks like soon."

...

What does it look like?

The same as the one in Russia.

Zhang Mu, who was standing beside the Director using the Shadow Technique, smiled and made a few jokes in his heart.

It wasn't that he couldn't change the statue of god's appearance; even without using the Transformation Technique, manually crafting a stone shell to put over it would achieve the same effect.

The problem with doing that was that the statue represented Zhang Mu. If he put a shell on it, would they still be worshipping Zhang Mu?

To be safe, Zhang Mu gave up on changing the appearance and presented his original face.

As for why various countries would wonder in the future why all the statues looked identical, he could just use a perfunctory excuse like "they are brothers."

Anyway, at this moment on Earth, no one dared to doubt what the "Supernatural" said.

If someone really did raise questions, Zhang Mu didn't want to bother making up lies. The World arsenal was short-handed anyway; they could just go in and work until the end of their days.

"It'll probably take at least ten days for the news to spread and for people to come worship. Let's leave it for now."

He glanced at the sky; the sun was setting.

"Farid and the others have class tomorrow morning. Better do some preparations in advance."

Zhang Mu called out a light gate and stepped through, teleporting to the Seventeen area.

...

Seventeen Freshman Dormitory.

"Morning."

"Morning."

The Young Woman pushed open her door, rubbing her sleepy eyes. Farid, who lived across from her, also happened to wake up and head out. The two bumped into each other, exchanged morning greetings, and then walked together toward the cafeteria on the first floor.

After a few steps, the Young Woman seemed to perk up and excitedly said to Farid, "Do you know how scared I was when I came in yesterday?"

"Huh?" Farid was deep in thought and was startled by her suddenly raised tone. After reacting, he replied, "The dormitory was indeed... unexpected."

Yesterday, Tevan told them that the dormitory used Space Techniques; it looked like just one room from the outside, but it actually contained a whole different world inside.

The Young Woman had thought at the time that behind the door would be an apartment-like suite, but to her surprise, the layout was just like her university dormitory—it was a whole building!

And it had a full six floors!

The first floor was the cafeteria and the Dorm Manager's room, while everything from the second floor to the top floor was freshman dorms. There were twelve rooms per floor, totaling sixty clean rooms for the five of them to choose from.

After exploring the six floors, the Young Woman realized. No wonder Senior Tevan said we were lucky to have a dormitory to ourselves. I thought it was a single room and wondered what was so lucky about it; turns out he meant a whole building!

The two lived on the third floor. Chatting as they descended to the second floor, the remaining three who had chosen rooms on the second floor happened to walk slowly out of the hallway.

The five met at the stairs and went down to the cafeteria together, each getting their meal and sitting at a long table.

The Young Woman poked at the corn kernels in her rice with a silver fork: "Senior Tevan told us we have class today, but he didn't say exactly what time."

"We'll wait at most twenty-four hours, why the rush?" the Young Woman said, noticing her actions. "You don't like corn?"

"Yeah."

"I was going to ask the cafeteria lady for rice without corn, but then I saw all the rice had corn in it, so I just gave up."

"Give them to me." The Young Woman moved closer to the Young Woman, and the two worked together, quickly picking all the corn kernels into her bowl.

The Russian Man had a very good appetite.

By the time the two finished picking the corn, he had already cleared his tray, tilted his head back to finish his soup, put down the bowl, and joined the conversation with a burp: "Since we're already at Seventeen, I don't think it matters if school starts a bit earlier or later."

"I'm just particularly curious about what freshmen learn. Will we learn magic?"

Farid smiled: "What Seventeen uses isn't magic."

The Middle-aged Man joined in with great interest: "Then what is it?"

"Techniques." The Young Woman had heard this word from Tevan's mouth and it was firmly etched in her mind.

"Techniques?" The Middle-aged Man thought for a moment. "I've learned a bit about Chinese Taoist knowledge, and they seem to use 'Techniques' as well."

"Is that so?" The Young Woman looked surprised.

Farid was also a bit confused: "Maybe... it's just a similar name?"

"I've seen the videos of Immortal Xu appearing several times, and they are very different from the moves Tevan used."

"Then I wouldn't know." The Middle-aged Man shook his head.

"We'll just ask Senior Tevan when he gets here."

"Speaking of Senior Tevan, when is he coming to get us?"

Without realizing it, the topic had come full circle after a long detour.

The Young Woman, being adventurous, said excitedly: "Why don't we go out and look?"

"Don't be ridiculous. What if Senior Tevan comes right after we leave?"

"But it's so boring—" the Young Woman dragged out the last word.

"Is the dormitory boring?"

A young voice came from the cafeteria entrance. The five were so startled they quickly turned around, and sure enough, Tevan was standing before the door, looking at them with a smile.

"Senior Tevan! Hehehe—" The Young Woman stood up and ran over, trying to use a silly laugh to gloss over Tevan's question.

Tevan didn't mind and said to himself: "It's normal for the dormitory to be a bit boring since it doesn't have entertainment facilities."

"However, once you start classes, you'll have plenty of things to keep you busy every day."

The Young Woman nodded obediently again and again, and Farid and the other four also walked over.

Tevan scanned the five of them: "Sorry, according to the regulations, I should have accompanied you through all the enrollment procedures, but I had some personal business to handle yesterday, so I had to let you handle the check-in yourselves."

"It was very simple, we've already done it."

"Did you register with the Dorm Manager?"

"Yes."

"That's good." Tevan glanced at the necklaces hanging around their necks. "Although I already said it yesterday, I still want to emphasize it again."

"The necklace is very important. It doesn't just represent your student identity and function as your dorm key; most importantly, you'll have to use it to clock in when starting and ending classes in the future."

"Clock in?" The somewhat modern term made Farid feel confused. "Is it to prevent students from skipping class?"

"No, it's to prove that you are yourselves."

"Uh, sorry Senior Tevan, I don't quite understand."

The Young Woman guessed: "Do students use techniques to skip class?"

Tevan tapped her head with the wooden staff in his hand: "I told you, it has nothing to do with skipping class."

Then what did it mean?

Tevan looked at their expectant eyes and explained: "The Seventeen teaching area is built above an Ancient Battlefield. You should know very well what happens on a battlefield."

"So... that's how it is. Too many Soldiers died, and inevitably some strange fellows appear."

Ghosts?

The Young Woman grabbed Farid's arm in fear, and the other three also grew nervous, constantly looking around as if something were lurking in the shadows watching them.

Tevan shrugged: "Don't be afraid. They won't attack proactively, nor do they have the ability to harm people. It's just that occasionally, uh, some are a bit mischievous."

"For example, pretending to be a certain student to attend class and then causing trouble in the classroom."

As he spoke, he burst into laughter: "Hahaha... I heard from the Head of Department that at first they didn't know it was them causing trouble, and the teacher got so angry he gave the real student who arrived late in a hurry a severe beating."

"That's truly a great injustice."

"Haha, tell me about it."

Tevan stopped laughing: "Anyway, the importance of the necklace is no less than that of your ID card, so you must keep it safe."

"Understood."

"Good." Tevan turned and started walking toward the door. "I'll take you to the classroom."

"Well, according to tradition, before class starts... everyone, are you ready to welcome the new day's lessons with enthusiasm?"

The five who followed were stunned for a moment, then shouted in unison after snapping out of it: "Of course!"