Chapter 216: Is It Deteriorating?
The adventurers and mercenaries in The Plane of Dreams had always been direct and brutal in dealing with problems. This was because they spent most of their time in all kinds of ruins and battlefields where there were countless things they could slam and smash as much as they liked. However, if Becky wanted to stay at Hao Ren’s house, she could not continue being so reckless. Hao Ren had to consider setting up a training program for her. At least to stop this lady from taking out her sword easily and smashing someone else’ stuff into pieces…
“So, it means… I’m in trouble?” Becky realized that the thing she broke was just a common item for daily use. That thing looked neat and it was beautifully decorated (in her eyes). It was probably quite expensive. “How much do I have to pay?” she asked.
Hao Ren looked angrily at Becky. He could only wave weakly and said, “You don’t have money to pay for it. Forget it. I’ll mention it in the report, consider it as work loss and apply for reimbursement.”
Becky was then relieved and continued to pick up the bag of snacks and ate contentedly. When she left The Plane of Dreams, she had not gotten back home for dinner yet so, she was hungry at this point. Lily usually cared about her snacks more than her life but, this time, she was unexpectedly generous. Probably, she noticed that the bread and cakes in the fridge were going to expire and she intended to take advantage of this opportunity to clear the stock and buy new ones. Hao Ren looked awkwardly at Becky’s mercenary outfit and said, “You better keep your outfit somewhere else.”
Becky’s mouth was stuffed with spicy strips. She rolled her eyes, gulped quickly and put her hand on her sword and asked, “Is it the rule here? The armed forces of foreign personnel must be confiscated?”
“Sort of.” Hao Ren pointed to Becky’s sword and explained, “It’s easy to attract police if you walk down the street with this stuff. And your mercenary outfit, the armor and riding boots, you better take them off. It’s too conspicuous here.”
Becky licked her finger, stood up and turned around. Becky was always careless but now, she also realized that her outfit could be too conspicuous in this world after she was reminded by Hao Ren. And she thought of how strange their clothes were in The Plane of Dreams. It was easy for her to understand that she was now in the same state. She pulled the scarf around her chest and the girdle with a dagger on her waist and said, “But, I have no other clothes.”
Hao Ren turned to the other ladies around him, asking for help. Finally, Nangong Wuyue came forward and said, “We are the same size. Let her wear mine first. Let me wash your clothes, I’ll give it back when you go back.”
Becky was a little reluctant. She scratched her face and said, “How can I let you do it for me. I’ll do it myself…”
Hao Ren quickly stopped Becky and said, “Not at all. Don’t break my washing machine.”
Nangong Wuyue took Becky to her room to pick out her clothes and the rest of them looked at each other. Hao Ren took out the MDT from his pocket and put it on the coffee table. He then poked it and asked, “Hey, explain this phenomenon.”
The MDT continued to play dead. It even turned off all its lights. Hao Ren saw it and took the sticker of Pleasant Goat from the bunch of snacks and said, “After I count to three, I’ll stick it on your forehead if you continue to play dead. Lil Pea will certainly like it.”
“I don’t know where my forehead is. I don’t think you can find it,” the MDT shouted and suddenly floated up. It then kept muttering, “It doesn’t make sense, the teleportation target is just Hilda alone. Why was there another one… who’s even a native of The Plane of Dreams. Her connection with her original world is supposed to be very stable and she shouldn’t have been pulled out so easily.”
Vivian looked at the MDT curiously and asked, “There’s something you don’t know?”
“Of course, I just have a bigger database, I’m not omniscient.” The Mobile Data Terminal slowly fell onto the coffee table and sat at a 45° angle as if it was pondering. It began to blink slowly. “I’ve set up the teleportation rules according to the latest mapping logic of The Plane of Dreams-Surface World from the local universe database. This is to regulate each individual involved in the teleportation. In theory, this shouldn’t have happened.”
Hao Ren suddenly had an idea and asked, “Wait, what about the last update? When was The Plane of Dreams’ mapping in the local universe database last updated?
“Ah, it’s been months. You weren’t an agent yet and I just got off the production line.”
“For months?” Hao Ren found it incredible. He did not expect the local universe database, such a sophisticated thing to not be updated for months and asked, “There’s no one maintaining the database on The Plane of Dreams?”
“You’re right. That’s the case. You know that there hasn’t been a special agent for The Plane of Dreams before you. Either does the Empire put too much energy on this trivial issue—the data updates related to The Plane of Dreams are handled by a private company called, ‘Starlight Tower’. They are a business team attached to the subsidiary civilization of the subsidiary unit of the Space Administration,” the MDT explained. When it saw Hao Ren’s surprised and serious, questioning look, he added, “Don’t think this is wrong. In fact, The Plane of Dreams has always been very stable. Starlight Tower first took over the data updating business more than 5000 years ago. Since then, they have been updating the database tens of thousands of times but, the total revision is less than 1%. The free relationship between The Plane of Dreams and the Surface World seems unstable but in actuality, the overall balance has always been maintained… Of course, it looks like it’s going to go wrong.”
Hao Ren was getting more and more acquainted to the style of the Xi Ling Empire (or the Xi Ling Celestials) now. As godlike rulers, they did have a serious and responsible side but, at the same time, they were good at solving problems in a simple and straightforward way. The basic unit of their management of the infinite world is the ‘universe’. In other words, anything below the universe, whether it was the star system or the Milky Way or even The Plane of Dreams, which occupied half of the world, were considered detailed questions. They could be entrusted to all levels of mortal assistants, as well as a variety of private companies to deal with.
Mortals made mistakes so, there would be flaws in these ‘minutiae’ and one of the agent’s duties was to resolve and reconcile these flaws. These were mentioned in the agent’s staff handbook.
But at that time, Hao Ren did not get it…
This kind of management was different from the grim situation found in many religious stories, in which the gods continuously stared at Earth and created natural disasters to ‘cleanse’ the world of mortals once they made a little mistake. It meant that the Xi Ling Empire had given maximum autonomy to mortals. Only when the civilized people had created big trouble would the Space Administration come to clean up the mess. Also, even a civilization could support itself as the gods, the Xi Ling disciples who were very open-minded would just laugh and call the people, ‘naughty kids’. This was a good thing for all mortal civilizations. They could do whatever they liked and even when they were about to destroy themselves, a bunch of immortals would come and save them. However, it was not easy for the agent who was sandwiched between the mortals and gods–Hao Ren’s head was now full of troubles.
The MDT also knew what Hao Ren was thinking and asked, “Would the mapping relationship be messy?”
Lily looked at the two of them and found these questions profound as well as difficult to understand. “Is the balance weakening? Just like that ship, there was a hole in The Plane of Dreams’ barrier…” she asked.
“Worse than that.” Hao Ren explained to Lily, “The Orb disappeared, the spaceship crashed, Hilda time-travelled… These can be considered as natural disasters. They are spontaneous phenomena. But, this time Becky was accidentally brought out, which occurred after the MDT’s accurate calculation and a highly controlled process. This means that not only will accidents happen in natural circumstances, but even if the security preparation process is accurate, there will be an accident. We’re in big trouble.”
In fact, there was a metaphor in Hao Ren’s heart: Even if a man has a condom on and the woman has taken pills, the woman still gets pregnant. The hole in The Plane of Dreams was really hard to defend but he was too embarrassed to say such words of unchastity in front of the innocent husky.
“May I ask…” Hilda’s voice brought Hao Ren back to reality. The Elf Queen seemed unable to sit still any longer. “Does it have anything to do with my hometown?”
“No.” Hao Ren waved his hand and then, suddenly stood up and made a decision. “So, now I’m going to take you to my boss. I’ve got lots of things to ask her. I can’t wait.”
“Right, I can’t wait too,” Hilda said, smiling happily.
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