Inside the truck’s cab, Chen Na asked worriedly, "Mom, Brother Guan Tong won’t be hit by the wild boar, will he?"
"I don’t know... That kid is just being reckless!"
Wang Yan looked tense. From her angle, the high snowdrifts completely blocked her view of the small path near the camp, so she couldn’t see what was happening.
She didn’t understand why Guan Tong had given up on hiding in the truck and decided to take on the wild boar instead. That wasn’t so plump, white dostic pig—it was a wild boar that foraged on the mountains, with thick, tough hide, capable of goring a person to death!
Just as the two of them were getting anxious, a short while later, they saw Guan Tong climb up from the small path. He waved at them, signaling that everything was fine.
Wang Yan saw him and imdiately got out of the truck, but she told her daughter Chen Na to stay inside while she went over herself.
"Guan, what did you... huh?"
As Wang Yan got closer, she glanced down the path and instantly saw the dead wild boar, its head smashed in.
She stared at Guan Tong in shock. "Guan, you killed the wild boar?!"
"Yeah." Guan Tong had rested for a bit and regained so of his strength. "I had to. Otherwise, it would have eaten all the food in my pack."
"..."
Wang Yan found it hard to believe. Guan Tong’s build could only be described as well-proportioned; the word ’burly’ didn’t apply to him at all. Yet he had actually managed to kill a wild boar...
Sothing occurred to Wang Yan, and she blurted out, "Guan, you must have used one of those Psychic Power items, right?"
Guan Tong nodded slightly.
The fight had taken place on the path beside the camp, and Wang Yan and her daughter, inside the truck on the far side, couldn’t see any of it. Even though they knew he had used a Psychic Power item, they had no idea what it was.
Seeing this, Wang Yan didn’t press the issue. She knew their relationship wasn’t close enough for that.
However, learning that Guan Tong was capable of killing a wild boar put her mind at ease. If they couldn’t deal with the boar, she and her daughter would have been forced to hide in the truck, afraid to even step outside.
"It’s all thanks to Na," Guan Tong said. "If she hadn’t warned us ahead of ti, we might not have seen the boar coming down the mountain. If it had suddenly charged and gored one of us, it could have been a disaster."
Out here in the wilderness, there was no rescue to hope for. A minor injury would be manageable—Guan Tong had a temporary dical kit—but a serious one would be a hopeless situation.
"That Nana..." ntioning Chen Na’s warning, Wang Yan sighed. "Her ability seems to work on and off. I don’t know what’s going on with it."
"An ability? Not a Psychic Power item?"
"To be honest, I don’t really understand it either," Wang Yan said. "Back in the village, they did a collective check of Psychic Power values. They said the governnt would give a subsidy to anyone over 80. I asked my daughter, and she said sotis she was over, sotis she wasn’t. I was afraid of making a mistake, so I never registered her."
Guan Tong found that a bit strange. He thought for a mont and said, "Na must be over 80. If there are tis she’s over 80, that ans her Psychic Power cap is above 80. When it’s below 80, it must be because she’s used so of it up."
Hearing this, Wang Yan asked curiously, "Guan, are you very knowledgeable about this stuff?"
Guan Tong shook his head. "Everything I know about it can be found in the white papers."
Wang Yan nodded, seeming to half-understand. Just then, Chen Na got out of the truck by herself and trotted over. When she saw the boar’s corpse, she let out a little "Ah!" and grabbed her mother’s hand.
"It’s okay, Nana. The boar is already dead."
"Huh? Did Brother Guan Tong kill it?" Chen Na looked at Guan Tong with admiration. "Brother Guan Tong, you’re amazing!"
Guan Tong said, "It’s also thanks to you, Na, for spotting it early."
"Nana, Brother Guan Tong knows a lot about this. You should ask him about your Psychic Power," Wang Yan said. "Didn’t you say before that your number is always going up and down?"
"Mhm." Chen Na nodded, tilting her head as if organizing her thoughts.
"Brother Guan Tong, sotis I can sense a huge area around . I can feel people or little animals moving around, and I know where they are. But after a little while, I can’t feel it anymore. Then, after so more ti passes, I can feel it again. It’s really weird."
If Wang Yan and Chen Na hadn’t brought it up, Guan Tong wouldn’t have asked. After all, things like Psychic Power values and items were now considered private.
But now that Wang Yan had Chen Na tell him, he was willing to help figure out what was going on.
Listening to Chen Na’s description, Guan Tong got the feeling that her Perception Ability seed to be ’activating automatically.’
Once it activated, she could perceive the movent and location of living things within a certain range. When her Psychic Power was depleted, the ability would shut off. After her Psychic Power recovered, the process would repeat.
’Can’t Chen Na control the activation and deactivation of this Perception Ability herself?’
Guan Tong thought for a mont and asked, "Na, after the first rule, what did you search for and buy in the Sublimation Store?"
"Um... it’s because my mom used to be away hauling goods, and I never knew when she’d be back. I wanted to know the mont she returned. After I thought that, sothing called [Perception Realm] appeared in the store, and after I bought it, I could feel it."
"Nana, my sweet girl." It was the first ti Wang Yan had heard her daughter say these things. Her eyes couldn’t help but redden as she pulled the girl into a hug. "It’s all my fault for not being ho enough. From now on, Mommy will always be with you."
Chen Na lowered her head, a little shy, while Guan Tong, standing to the side, was also sowhat moved. However, he was more concerned about Chen Na’s ability.
’That’s right. After passing the first rule, what she bought wasn’t an ’item,’ but an ’ability.’ That’s a relatively rare situation.’
For example, Guan Tong’s own [Wordless Book], Xu Xiaotian’s [Instant Noodles], and even Shen Zuohu’s [Finger Tiger] were all Psychic Power items.
But Chen Na’s was a special ability called [Perception Realm].
Guan Tong asked, "Na, can’t you control this ability? For example, can you try to control the activation and deactivation of this [Perception Realm] with your thoughts?"
Chen Na blinked. "How do I control it with my thoughts?"
"Well... for example, you could set a keyword for yourself. Sothing like ’Activate Perception Realm’ and ’Deactivate Perception Realm.’"
"’When you ntally recite ’Activate Perception Realm,’ focus your mind and channel your Psychic Power. When you ntally recite ’Deactivate Perception Realm,’ imdiately cut off the flow of Psychic Power.’"
Wang Yan said, "Nana, just listen to Brother Guan Tong and give it a try."
"Mhm." Chen Na tried doing as Guan Tong said. She ntally recited ’Activate Perception Realm’ and simultaneously tried to feel her Psychic Power. She imdiately sensed the living creatures around her, but in the next second, it shut off again automatically.
Chen Na shook her head and said, "I think it worked after I recited ’Activate,’ but it disappeared right away."
"’Your Psychic Power might be depleted. Open your terminal and check,’ Guan Tong suggested."
Hearing this, Chen Na ntally called up her personal terminal. She looked at her Psychic Power value and saw that it was, indeed, at 0.
"Yep! It’s 0!"
"It’s probably because your [Perception Realm] was active the whole ti the boar was here... This kind of wide-area ’Domain-type’ ability must consu a huge amount of Psychic Power. Na, you should wait until your Psychic Power has recovered before trying again."
"Okay, thanks, Guan!" Chen Na said, mischievously changing how she addressed him.
"What do you an, Guan?" Wang Yan gently chided. "A little kid like you shouldn’t be calling him Guan."
"It’s fine." Guan Tong didn’t mind. "Let Na call whatever she likes."
"Hee hee, then I’ll call you Guan from now on." Chen Na made a face at her mother, Wang Yan, then looked toward the wild boar’s corpse on the path.
"What should we do with this big black pig? I’ve seen people roast wild boar in movies before. Are we going to have a barbecue?"
"No," Wang Yan and Guan Tong said in near-perfect unison.
Wang Yan explained, "We can’t eat this boar at, it’s full of bacteria and parasites! Nana, if you want to eat at, there’s still so jerky in the truck. You can have that."
"Wang is right. Unless we have absolutely nothing else to eat, we should avoid eating wild animals as much as possible. Not just boars, but wild rabbits and things like that, too."
"Ah, bunnies are so cute, why would anyone eat bunnies!" Chen Na shook her head repeatedly.
Guan Tong was taken aback for a second, then said, "We can’t just leave the boar on the path. We should move it, put it aside, and let the snow bury it."
"Okay, I’ll lend a hand. Let’s move it together."
"Then I’ll have to trouble you, Wang."
Together, Guan Tong and Wang Yan struggled to lift the boar’s corpse from the small path onto a nearby snowbank. Then, each grabbing a hind leg, they dragged the body to a spot far from the camp and the truck, shoveling snow over it to bury it.
After all that effort, the three of them were quite tired.
Wang Yan and Chen Na went back to the truck to rest. Guan Tong also returned to his camp and tidied up his backpack, which the boar had rooted through.
Fortunately, he had dealt with the boar quickly enough. Only a bag of crackers had been crushed and a bottle of water punctured; the rest was saved.
If Guan Tong had hidden in the truck and ignored it, his entire pack of food would have been destroyed in no ti.
After tidying up, Guan Tong unzipped his sleeping bag, lay down to rest, and kept thinking about Chen Na’s [Perception Realm] ability.
’He felt the ability had high potential; it was just limited by her low Psychic Power cap right now. Once her Psychic Power increased in the future, if the range and the ability itself were further enhanced, it would have many uses.’
Guan Tong thought to himself, ’If I write a similar ability na in the [Wordless Book], can I obtain a similar ability? I can try it later, but it feels like a long shot...’
Having held the [Wordless Book] for so long, Guan Tong had figured out so things about its power. Its core was likely ’the ability to manifest written concepts into reality by consuming Psychic Power’—in other words, it possessed a kind of extrely powerful reality-warping force.
The more complex, powerful, or abstract the concept, the more Psychic Power was required to manifest it.
If he forced a manifestation, one possibility was a scaled-down version. For example, even though the first page clearly said "Guan Tong," the initial manifestation was just an intangible Shadow with his outline.
The ’Sublimation Coins’ he wrote on the second page were also a scaled-down version—this was reflected in the quantity, as he only got 10 Binding Coins.
’The problem is, I only wrote the two words "Sublimation Coin"; I didn’t write a quantifier like "X number" in front of it. Getting only 10 coins after writing that ans this is the current limit of what I can manifest in a single go.’
’A second possibility is complete failure. For example, I once tried to have the incorporeal Shadow rge with a car’s shadow and then materialize it. The result was that my Psychic Power was instantly drained, and the materialization failed.’
’My current plan is to write ’Shotgun.’ Manifesting the concept of a gun shouldn’t be beyond my capabilities. The problem is that writing it out is complex and would take too long.’
’Could I simplify it to ’multi-shot gun,’ or ’scatter gun,’ or even just the single word ’gun’? Would the [Wordless Book] manifest it according to my intent? Or would it randomly create sothing that doesn’t fit my requirents... I’ll have to try it out later.’
As Guan Tong thought about this, his mind drifted back to Chen Na’s [Perception Realm] ability.
’Knowing that this kind of Domain-type ability existed had really opened up his thinking.’
’Could I create a similar ability too? Starting a new page in the [Wordless Book] to write it would consu too much... so could I keep milking the Shadow, developing it further based on what I already have?’
’The previous success of adding the word ’corporeal’ gave the idea to add sothing else, but I never had any good ideas.’
Now, Chen Na’s Domain ability had him tempted as well.
’In its incorporeal state, the Shadow can rge with other shadows to expand its area. If I let the Shadow continuously rge and expand over a short period until it’s big enough... and if I have enough Psychic Power to manifest it as a physical entity, could I form my own kind of Domain... for example, a ’Shadow Realm’?’
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