This time I chose Paladin.

Chapter 172 Discussion
In the end, Ping Xingdou got nothing out of him and went back in a daze.

Yi Jian finished her gossip session and came to Nie Weiyang's side.

He had barely opened his mouth when Nie Weiyang raised a finger: "Stop."

That kid has no good intentions, and Nie Weiyang is determined not to let him say them aloud.

Yi Jian stopped talking in frustration. After a moment, he peeked at the two astronomers on duty not far away.

“It’s alright.” Nie Weiyang lowered his voice to a certain degree. “This is the limit of their hearing.”

"Your skill is really useful," Yi Jian whispered back.

"If you want, I can ask Lao Liang to get you one too."

"No way!" Yi Jian exclaimed in surprise, but his voice remained very soft.

Then, he asked himself: [Brother Nie, what did you glean from these people's hearts?]
Nie Weiyang glanced at him and shook his head slightly.

“You’d better not know,” he said.

"Don't know...why?"

“Yi Jian, you’re sometimes a little too curious,” Nie Weiyang said gently. “You should learn from Xiao Jiang.”

Yi Jian remained silent for a moment, then sighed.

Over the past two months, from initially discerning good from evil and lies to now possessing mind-reading and super intuition, Yi Jian and Han Jiangxue have witnessed the changes in Nie Weiyang's skills step by step, and have also met several other people in Gushi who possess this series of skills.

After seeing it, they swore they would never touch that thing again in their lives.

It's good to be a little oblivious sometimes. In this world, who doesn't have a dark side? The things brewing and mixed in those dark corners are nothing more than desires, malice, jealousy, hatred, and brutal, bloodthirsty morbid curiosity... These things surge in the depths of the heart, and most people will never let others see them in their lifetime.

Because they are real.

They are so real.

A person's goodness may not be genuine, but their evil is always genuine.

This skill set called 'Mind Insight' is very easy to obtain; it's even sold directly in vending machines. Compared to other skills that are universally applicable to all classes, it's the easiest to obtain.

This series of skills will torment whoever uses them.

It not only forbids others from deceiving the holder, but also forbids the holder from deceiving themselves. When the holder perceives others, they cannot subjectively filter out all kinds of noise, and will even receive the most basic human desires.

Compared to having their own dark side known by someone like Nie Weiyang, Yi Jian and Han Jiangxue were even less willing to know about the dark side of others, especially the dark side of 'everyone'.

They'd go crazy. If it were them, they definitely would.

Besides Nie Weiyang, there are now four mind readers in the city. Three of them have developed serious psychological problems, and the remaining one acquired the mind-reading skill less than three days ago.

Yi Jian glanced at Nie Weiyang with concern.

"It's nothing," Nie Weiyang said.

His expression remained gentle, which only made things stranger.

Compared to others, is Nie Weiyang too normal, or too abnormal?

Nie Weiyang changed the subject, somewhat speechless: "If you and I are here, it might not dare to come."

He was referring to the dark creature that left behind the 'star stone'.

The divine aura emanating from Nie Weiyang and his companion was so intense that, to the dark creatures, they appeared as two light bulbs, one large and one small, perched atop a mountain...

“I have a plan.” Yi Jian held up one finger.

Nie Weiyang knew what this guy was going to say, so he raised an eyebrow and nodded slightly.

Yi Jian let out a hearty laugh and turned to chat with the scholar on duty.

Nie Weiyang glanced at the mountains and forests shrouded in night, and the city beyond. He exhaled and leaped down from another direction. ...

Inside the astronomical record room, Ping Xingdou stood beneath the hanging stars, gazing at the stone slabs covering the walls.

On the third day after arriving in the new world, he began leading the astronomers in their daily tasks. To this day, nearly two hundred large and small stone slabs have accumulated on the wall.

Fortunately, the astronomers' skill list includes 'astronomical record' and 'astronomical record imprinting', which will bring up a shortcut interface when engraving stone tablets... Otherwise, these scholars would have been carving stones until they died.

"If you planted this thing in a mountain, you could make a whole forest of steles..." he quipped. "What do you think?"

Fu Nian happened to walk in and smiled when he heard this.

"Then what should we commemorate?"

"In memory of me—" Ping Xingdou's voice trailed off, "—my lost youth!"

He laughed heartily, swung his arms forcefully, pulled out a large stack of stone slabs with rough engravings, and slammed them heavily onto the ground!

"Come on! Nian... Fu Nian! Let's carve stone together all night!"

"Today, I am determined to carve the entire starry sky of the Northern Hemisphere of the Earth!"

Fu Nian: "..."

Fu Nian looked at the stack of stone slabs taller than a person: "…………I need to go to sleep."

"Huh?" Ping Xingdou was deflated.

"I stayed up all night yesterday discussing the world barrier with you. Besides, I carved yesterday's recording tablet; your daily tasks were only completed because of that," Fu Nian reminded him, somewhat annoyed. A moment later, she casually asked, "So, what does Nie Weiyang know?"

“I don’t know, he absolutely refuses to say,” Ping Xingdou sighed loudly.

He seemed completely oblivious to Fu Nian's odd behavior, simply touching the stone slab with affection and kicking the crack that had been created on the ground.

“I need to keep recording,” he said. “Once I’ve finished etching the Northern Hemisphere skies for different seasons, I’ll leave China and go to the Southern Hemisphere to ask astronomers there if they still remember what the skies look like back home…”

"How are you going to get there?" Fu Nian shook his head. "It's very dangerous outside."

“We’ll walk there!” Ping Xingdou said confidently.

"..." Fu Nian couldn't help but sigh, "You'd better be able to walk across Southeast Asia."

"Huh? Ah, oh, right, we probably won't be able to find out in Africa." Ping Xingdou scratched his head awkwardly and chuckled, "Hehe. But that's still a long way off. By then, we might be able to cross the sea by boat or plane."

“But who knows what’s in the sea and in the sky,” Fu Nian said softly. “Perhaps we’ll never have any hope…”

"No hope?" Ping Xingdou's eyebrows danced with excitement. "Then let's carve a stone tablet!"

"...Why are you so obsessed with carving the stone tablet? No, I should say..." Fu Nian's expression was strange, "Why do you want to leave a record of Earth's starry sky? We live in a new world, so we should look at the sky of the new world, instead of clinging to the past."

"As for stone slabs, we've been using stone carvings to record astronomical events since the Yin and Shang dynasties..." Ping Xingdou said with a grin.

"Then why exactly do you want to remember all this?"

"..." Ping Xingdou's originally innocent and happy smile relaxed slightly.

“Because it should be remembered,” he said.

He picked up a stone slab, rubbed his messy, damp hair, took a carving knife off his ear, and then took out a hammer and chisel from his backpack.

“Look, this board is engraved with the constellation Cancer,” he said. “Stars, constellations, the zodiac… whether it’s for astronomy, or for the astrology we as astronomers use, or even—for culture…” He paused, “…of course, my thoughts aren’t actually that lofty, and it’s certainly not for anyone else.”

He grinned, and beneath his messy bangs, a pair of bright eyes met Fu Nian's gaze.

“I’m selfish. I only want to do what I want to do,” Ping Xingdou said, even if the person opposite him was Fu Nian: “The thirst for knowledge is a selfish thing, Fu Nian. You know I hate everything fake, just like you hate willful people. Before the barrier is opened, I don’t care about the illusion of this sky now, and I don’t want to record it.”

(End of this chapter)