Chapter 882: Chapter 882

A large map was sprawled on the ground, and three people were squatting by the roadside, surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the crowd. Goya cradled her magic wand, her fingers pointing to a red-star-marked location on the map.

The red star was located at the center of many divided, gray-colored blocks, beside which were green blocks.

"Does these gray blocks signify cities?"

As he spoke, Li Cheng gazed at the green blocks near the volcano and softly asked, "And what about these green blocks around this area? Wilderness?"

"They could also be called natural parks."

He Ao, lowering his head to read the text on the map, said in a measured tone, "These places appear to have human-made roads, rest areas, and designated scenic viewpoints."

While speaking, He Ao’s gaze had swept across the entire map.

The map Goya brought only included the scope of the First District. Judging by its area, the First District covered about three-fifths of the entire Relic Planet and nearly half of that vast territory was marked green.

These areas, segmented by cities into smaller sections, were labeled ’Natural Parks’.

Then, He Ao paused for a while before continuing, "These natural parks probably transformed into the wild ruins we see now after the destruction of the civilization."

"It feels like a passage of time,"

Li Cheng sighed softly.

During times of prosperity, these were parks, and after civilization perished, they reverted to nature.

Then, he turned his gaze back to the map, "Where could that research facility Jie An visited be? It has a starry sky and lava."

At that moment, He Ao’s attention was drawn to the delicate finger still pressed on the map.

The position of the finger had shifted from the initial red star and was now at the center of a green block, marked with an icon of a mountain spewing fire.

In fact, as soon as Li Cheng raised his question, Goya had already moved her finger to this icon.

She was the first to see this map, so her understanding of its information was the most comprehensive.

"Does this icon possibly indicate a volcano?"

At that time, Li Cheng’s gaze also settled on where Goya’s finger pointed, and he pondered, "Lava, starry sky, that research facility, could it be inside the volcano’s crater? When Jie An went there, it was at night, perhaps just in time to see the starry skies above the volcano?"

He paused and swept his gaze over the map, continuing his analysis, "This volcano appears to be the only one on the entire map and the natural park surrounding it is rather extensive. The map shows very few infrastructures, and there aren’t many people around like in the cities. If some secret research facilities were set up here, they wouldn’t be easily discovered."

Many Transcendent facilities of the Research Institute were located in similar areas.

"It’s possible, but not certain,"

He Ao pondered, finding Li Cheng’s analysis sensible, yet he always felt matters might not be that simple. He looked up at Li Cheng, "However, we could go check it out."

He compared distances on the map, "Our current position is about twenty centimeters away from this volcano. The map’s scale is roughly one to a million. Twenty centimeters on the map translates to two hundred thousand meters in reality, which is two hundred kilometers."

He paused again, his gaze sweeping over Li Cheng and Goya, "We should be able to make a quick trip."

Goya slowly withdrew her small hand from the map, watching He Ao and gently nodding.

Li Cheng also nodded thoughtfully.

For three B-level individuals, if they traveled at full speed, they could quickly cover two hundred kilometers, although it would be somewhat exhausting.

Li Cheng didn’t know how ’Hao Yi’ had managed to estimate the map’s scale at a glance, but given ’Hao Yi’s’ previously demonstrated intelligence and capabilities, this task likely wasn’t very difficult.

In fact, the method to estimate a map’s scale isn’t difficult. The map showed not only their location and the volcano but also other landmarks. By simply estimating the direct distance to these landmarks and comparing it with the distances on the map, one could easily derive the scale of the map.

However, He Ao chose an even simpler method—he glanced at the scale marked in the First District’s script at the bottom right corner of the map.

While he was reviewing the scale, he also caught a glimpse of an area in the bottom right corner of the map. There was an icon labeled ’Central Library,’ but that icon was nearly two thousand kilometers away from their current location.

Li Cheng picked up the map and stood up, looking at the markings on it, "We’re here, and if we want to go to that volcano, we need to head east, which is behind us. There are no straight roads that can take us there directly. We’ll probably have to make a detour, and it’s not just two hundred kilometers away. This route isn’t easy to travel."

Then he looked up and saw ’Hao Yi’ walking ahead, stopping in front of a sign with various scripts on it, with Goya silently following close behind him.

At this time, He Ao noticed that someone hadn’t followed and turned around, waving at Li Cheng who was still standing there.

Li Cheng gathered the map and walked over with a puzzled look, saying, "That volcano seemed to be to the east."

He Ao just smiled and pointed to the sign behind him.

Li Cheng followed the direction in which he was pointing.

The largest area of the sign had a big screen, which theoretically might have been playing some videos, but now, those ’videos’ had turned into a mass of wriggling, eerie lines.

Below this large screen was a fixed plastic board with several horizontal lines depicting arrows. Each line was evenly dotted with many small points, each marked with what seemed to be text.

He Ao’s pointing ultimately focused on the middle line, particularly on a point toward the center.

The ’text’ on that point resembled much of what Li Cheng had just seen next to the ’volcano’ icon on the map.

At this moment, Li Cheng finally realized something and, looking up at the ’sign’ in front of him, said with an air of surprise that also questioned if this could really work, "Is this a bus stop?"

The line He Ao was pointing to was indeed a bus route leading to the ’Volcano Park’.

He Ao nodded lightly, and casually pressed a touchscreen button at the front of this route.

It was written in the First District script, [To take the 37 bus directly to Volcano Park, please press this button.]

Li Cheng still looked shocked and amazed by the bus stop sign in front of him. He had already planned how to conserve energy while walking, and now they could take a bus?

Although it seemed like there was nothing wrong, something felt off.

And in the moment that Li Cheng’s mind was filled with countless thoughts, a huge floating vehicle had already descended in front of them, and then the door opened.

He Ao glanced at ’37’ marked on the vehicle’s body, looked toward the still somewhat confused Li Cheng, and quickly reminded him as he moved forward.

Goya followed him immediately.

Li Cheng, now fully alert, hurried to follow He Ao’s pace and boarded the bus.

The bus wasn’t crowded with many people, and the seats were soft, double sofas, arranged in rows on either side of the aisle.

There appeared to be no driver—it seemed to be an autonomous vehicle.

In the vehicle, a broadcast was playing in the language of the First District.

He Ao looked at the dictionary that included phonetic comparisons between the First District and Second District languages, and he was able to mentally conjure up the specific pronunciation of certain words.

However, he hadn’t actually practiced with it and could only guess the possible vocabulary based on the broadcast’s pronunciation. It wasn’t until the third repeat that he figured out that the broadcast was probably saying things like "the vehicle is about to take off" and "please hold on tight."

As the third broadcast ended, the bus doors simultaneously closed, and the entire vehicle gradually began to levitate.

Despite constant reminders from the broadcast to hold on tight, the bus took off very smoothly, making it hard for anyone to fall.

Some advanced fighter jets in Copy World could achieve this effect too, but they were not cheap.

He Ao raised his head and started looking at the details around the entire door area.

By this time, Li Cheng had completely come to his senses and looked at He Ao curiously, asking.

"I just pressed that button, and then this bus showed up," He Ao said, scanning the surroundings, "which means that this bus operates on demand. It likely doesn’t stop at every station but only where passengers need to get on or off.

"Since there is a button to get on the bus indicating ’I want to board here,’ there should similarly be a button for getting off, informing the bus ’where I want to disembark.’"

Quickly, his gaze landed on a position above the door.

There, there was a display screen, the screen was full of distorted lines, and below the screen were touch-sensitive buttons linked by straight lines with arrows.

Several of these touch buttons were lit, while most were dim.

Twenty-five stations in total.

He Ao recalled the number of bus stops he had seen on the bus stop sign, then counted the number of touch buttons, which also totaled twenty-five.

Volcano Park was the seventeenth stop.

He Ao reached out and pressed the seventeenth button.

Seeing the button light up after his touch and flicker briefly, he sighed in relief.

Li Cheng looked toward ’Hao Yi’, asking tentatively with a hint of nervousness.

"It should be," He Ao turned back and whispered. "But if it doesn’t stop when we get there, or if we encounter any issues, we still need to be prepared to jump off the bus."

"By the way," Li Cheng looked at ’Hao Yi’ perplexed, "how did you guess we could take a bus from here?"

He Ao shrugged. "This bookstore is decorated so beautifully, like a tourist spot, so I figured there should be a public transit stop nearby. I just glanced around to see if there’s something like a bus stop sign, to check if we could get to the volcano, and then I found it."

Of course, he also roughly checked the estimated travel time on the bus stop sign before deciding to take the bus after he realized it would take significantly less time than walking.

Although reasonable, it still seemed a bit off.

’Hao Yi’s entire line of reasoning was fine; the problem was that Li Cheng had never considered using ’public transportation’ as an option.

This Relic of the Bygone Days was far too illusory, and having just been attacked, Li Cheng unconsciously treated everything in the relic as ’potential enemies,’ never considering using these ’potential enemies.’

As the bus took off, he could already feel the high speed of the vehicle cutting through the air, a major improvement over walking.

Of course, devising the idea, analyzing the public transportation system’s operations, and then utilizing it were another matter entirely.

After a brief pondering, he raised his hand and gave ’Hao Yi’ a thumbs-up.

Simultaneously, a pale hand also stretched out from behind the two, and gave ’Hao Yi’ a thumbs up.

The owner of that thumb, Goya, innocently scratched her head with a magic wand.

She did not know what Li Cheng had realized; she just knew that ’Hao Yi’ was awesome.

He Ao chuckled looking at the two and remarked casually.

Eventually, the three chose three vertical window-side seats next to the door.

Goya sat in the middle, Li Cheng in the front, and He Ao in the back.

They chose not to sit side by side because the sofa seats weren’t very large; it would be crowded to sit close to each other, and in an emergency, movements might be hindered. Sitting by the window allowed them a quick escape option if needed.

The aerial bus ran swiftly and smoothly.

He Ao’s gaze moved through the window to the sky.

In gaps within the clouds, out of sight, a slender figure carrying a coffin already rushed through the clouds like a streak of light, heading southeast.

That was the direction of the Central Library.

Maiden Puppet had set out the moment He Ao spotted Central Library.

Covering nearly two thousand kilometers with the Maiden Puppet’s speed, it would take less than half an hour to reach.

He Ao withdrew his gaze, looking down at the city below.

The flying bus was fast, the scenery around faded like a fleeting light, and the sky’s color gradually dimmed as it seemed to approach sunset.

Soon, He Ao spotted the edge of the city and the lush green forest in the distance.

Just then, the bus slowly decelerated and stopped in front of a city-edge bus stop.

A phantom figure seated at the back got off, while another man clutching a thick book that seemed to be a travel guide boarded.

This man was slender, seemingly refined like a university professor might be.

After boarding, he looked up to survey the situation inside.

The bus door slowly closed, and the vehicle gently started moving, ascending into the sky.

Then, the middle-aged man holding the travel guide walked straight to He Ao and sat beside him.

He glanced at the dim sunlight outside the window and opened his travel guide.

The thick guide opened at a bookmarked spot in the middle, revealing a beautifully detailed picture of a volcano.