Yu Liang's gaze rested on a corner of his vision, where a list of paranormal tales only he could see was located.
[Mainline - Changhong Zoo]
[Subline - The Non-Lonely Monkey]
According to the notes added to the mainline paranormal tale, the root of the strange occurrences in this zoo was "it". The best they, as summoned visitors, could do was either flee or find "it" and then escape.
Such a note had an air of whimsy to it. Still, from what he's been told by Old Du, there was no normal way to escape the place unless they craft a key from the moon. The answer did seem obvious enough - they would have to seek and understand the existence and origin of "it" to find other means of escape.
Either way, he had to get to know this place better.
Yu Liang made up his mind and edged closer to Old Du, quietly memorising the large zoo map that hung in front of the latter.
There was a Swan Lake in the centre of Changhong Zoo. As its name suggested, there was an island known as Lake Heart Island in the lake itself and the exhibition pavilions were arranged around it in a circle. Besides that, there were also smaller scattered lakes, but these were labelled as "XX pool" on the map.
Visitor Services Centre, Hong Supermarket, Children's Playground…
Yu Liang noted down the locations of these key places before focusing his attention on the bottom right corner of the map.
That was the exact location of the Prairie Animal Pavilion that they were currently at. Two inches to the right of this pavilion was Gate No. 2. Similar gates numbered 1 to 4 were located on each side of the map, along the north, south, west, and east directions.
Did that mean there could be more newcomers apart from the three of them?
Recalling the actual distance they travelled from Gate No.2 to the Prairie Animal Pavilion, Yu Liang estimated the size of the zoo. He licked his lips and kept his astonishment to himself.
This zoo was huge, almost the same size as a small town.
Seeing that Old Du was still engrossed in planning their route on the map, Yu Liang let his gaze drift towards the flowers and plants by the side of the road. He also started fonddling the chess pieces in his pocket.
Luckily, the reward for his newcomer quest was a full set of Xiangqi chess pieces. More importantly, they weren't just simple "chess pieces". Each piece represented a different Chinese character.
Red: General 1, Guards 2, Elephants 2, Horses 2, Cannons 2, Chariots 2, Soldiers 5.
Black: King 1, Ministers 2, Bishops 2, Knights 2, Cannons 2, Rooks 2, Pawns 5.
There were a total of thirty-two chess pieces. This may seem like a lot, but Yu Liang shook his head slowly after he mentally went through all the pieces.
Clearly, most of these pieces were useless based on Old Du's word charm combination rules.
For instance, the General and King, which were quite complex Chinese characters. He couldn't find any worth-trying means of combinations for these pieces.
After much thought, only the Horse, Bishop, Rook, and Pawn seemed to be of some use.
Among these, the five Pawns had far greater value.
Water, when combined with Pawn to get "Quench". Quenching is a heat treatment process used to harden the surface of a workpiece. He wondered if it could be used to harden objects forcibly, or even able to harden the body. Fridge his fist.
Grass, combine to get "Extraction". It is a word used to describe the lush growth of plants and trees. However, Old Du had mentioned that some word charms could be manipulated at will when they were being created. As a verb, "Extraction" meant to gather. If it could be used on people…
Forceful gathering, could that be considered as control?
And lastly, the most crucial one - Add Stone.
"Break", to cause to break.
Naturally, the targets that could be broken were inclusive of humans.
The first two combinations were somewhat forced as they were not that common, but he was definite there won't be any issues for the "Break" charm.
However, Yu Liang was inclined to believe that both "Quench" and "Extraction" are also usable. This was evident from the performance of previous combinations like "Incinerate", "Illumination", and "Fire" that this word charm game was rather hard-core.
Old Du had stated previously, if they were creating a noun charm, it'd suffice just to vaguely match the definition. But if it's a verb that needs to be used actively, random combinations wouldn't work. The user must fully understand the character to successfully create and activate it.
In a way, this word charm rule was the only comfort Yu Liang found after being transported here. At least, he was very familiar with Chinese characters.
Old Du didn't look robust. Still, the fact that he could carry a huge backpack for so long and manage to survive till now, not to mention experience a world of paranormal tales, indicated that his combat capacity was far superior to both Xiao Zhize and himself.
Water, grass, stones; these were common natural materials that could be found in the zoo easily.
Regardless of which word charm he derived from the Pawn character, they all proved to be very useful. Yu Liang only found it to be a bit of a pity as he only had five black coloured Pawns in a Xiangqi set, which limited his extravagance.
Yu Liang looked at the roadside, deciding to sneakily collect some stones and grass to fill up his inventory when Old Du and Xiao Zhize weren't paying attention.
Old Du's speed of creating word charms had been considerably fast in the past so he didn't need to pre-make these verb charms. He simply had to prepare the materials and only combined them into whichever charm needed per situation.
On the other hand, the other five red Soldiers pieces weren't very useful - at least he could not think of any usable combinations for the moment.
However…
Could Old Du withstand a "Break" charm?
Suddenly, a thought flashed across Yu Liang's mind. He couldn't help but glance at Old Du's back. But without giving much thought, he entirely dismissed this idea.
Ignoring whether such an action was necessary, he suspected that Old Du might not be afraid of a charm attack.
The "Break" charm was similar to the "Burst" charm. And "Burst" was not hard to get. If Old Du could have it, so could others. But just now at the bus, everyone obviously respected Old Du.
It was just like a firearm. If everyone had a gun, there would naturally be no fear of each other's guns. Hence, Yu Liang thought that Old Du might have a countermeasure.
For now, it is better to follow Old Du obediently to get a clearer picture of the zoo while secretly collecting some word charms as a contingency plan.
Yu Liang's fingertips rubbed against the stroke marks of the "Pawn" character.
He wondered if the "Break" charm could directly pulverize a crocodile. Looking from the perspective of the paranormal tale, it did not mention that the "Monkey" could possess the ability to counter-attack the crocodile. The logic underlying this tale seemed simple; he guessed that any attack from the "Monkey" must be ineffective against the crocodile.
If he could use something like a long spear to try attacking the crocodile, at least he could get an idea. Otherwise, if he was left alone and come face to face with the crocodile, only to find out that the "Break" charm was of no use, he might just despair, wouldn't he?
"Let's go, let's head to the turtle zone first." Finally, Old Du made up his mind and turned to look at the two of them, "Today is the day new visitors arrive. We would not be staying in the visitor centre. What would happen during the day remains to be seen, but the visitor centre is definitely a high-risk area full of paranormal events at night."