Second Life: Welcome to Gaia

Chapter 83: Ye Yan in the wonder room

When the Man-eating Flower died, Ye Yan received a huge amount of experience from the monster because it was not just a level 15 elite, but it was 6 levels higher than him, which gives a 35% bonus on the total amount, totaling 1,500  experience points, that he got all alone. 

It still will take a long time for him to reach the 6,800 experience points necessary for him to level up, but if he can kill more high-level monsters, he can make a shortcut to level 10.

Fighting monsters of the same level of man-eating flower will put pressure on him, but it will be worth it. He is still a low-level player after all, and even if he dies, he will just lose 1% experience, which is a low amount, considering that the level 15 monster gave him 22% of the total necessary for him to get to level 10.

That's why, after getting out of the astrology room, Ye Yan decided to look for monsters of the same level of the carnivorous plant in the region. This will be the best solution, being that he can't enter the Alchemists' Guild to get quests until the afternoon of the day after tomorrow.

When Ye Yan entered through a hole in the rubble, he felt that he entered the rabbit hole. However, he didn't take any suspicious pill to start to have hallucinations.

The hole was getting narrower the deeper it was. When he entered, he had to crouch, but now, he needs to crawl across the passage. And all the while, holding a bottle with the firefly inside.

He hopes if finds some monsters inside, it will be a cute rabbit or even a snake, and not a disgusting cockroach. 

The walls of the hole are made of colorful rubble that, with the flashing light of the firefly, gave Ye Yan a strange sensation, like if he was having hallucinations.

His only thoughts now are that he needs a lantern as soon as possible because he can't continue in this way. And as he can only use the firefly for one week before he dies if not set free, he will have to get another light provider anyway. 

After a few minutes of crawling inside the narrow passage, Ye Yan reached an exquisite room that was almost intact compared with the ruins outside. 

In the room, there are some tables with all kinds of instruments on top of them. Some were small but others were big. Some astronomical apparatus was on the floor because of their size.

In the middle of the room, there is a table with two cups of tea that should have been forgotten there a long time ago.

Ye Yan was looking around the room when suddenly, a sound as something falling came from his left, leaving him alert immediately.

He looked at the origin of the sound and saw a tabby yellow cat with long, white eyebrows and mustache, giving it a wise style. 

The cat walking relaxed to the table and jumped over it. After that, it stood there, looking at Ye Yan.

"This is the astrology room of the Ancient  Royal Palace and I am its guardian."

"You are an adventurer that came looking for this room's treasures but it is impossible for someone like you to get something from here. Only a mad person would try." The cat sad, while moving his right paw and showing his sharp nails.

"Why and what is your name?" Ye Yan frowned when he listened to the cat and asked. 

"Me? You can call me master cat if you want. I forgot my own name a long time ago." The cat said while looking everywhere but at Ye Yan. It seems he is lying about forgetting his name but there is no way of knowing what.

"Why you said that I would be mad if I try to get something from here?" Ye Yan went straight to the point.

"I am the guardian of this place and no one can pass through me. If you try, you will die. That simple." The cat licked his paw and use it to comb his mustache before answering him.

Ye Yan looked at the cat that seems harmless at the moment and decided to use his scroll to identify its level. However, when he looked at the cat's information, there was nothing there, just a lot of question marks.

After seeing that the scroll can't identify it, he knew that the cat must be very powerful, at least level 20.

Thinking a little, he decided to continue talking with the cat because must be a way for him to get the stardust or the Book of knowledge wouldn't have indicated this location.

"I need stardust and I know that I can only find it here, so I would like to know if we can make a deal? I will not leave here without it." Ye Yan decided to try making a deal with the cat but he thought that he should say he wouldn't leave without it to show that he already made up his mind.

"Hum. Interesting. You really are a mad person but who was not, among every great person that once existed? To achieve something, you need to be different, thinking in another way compared with the others. Those that have the same thoughts as everyone else will only be just one more person among the others." 

"And what is madness other than thinking and acting differently from others. The madness, the abnormal, can often achieve heights that those considered normal will never know to exist." The cat said and start to measure Ye Yan.

"Maybe, you are mad enough to reach the pinnacle one day. But first, you have to complete my challenge." The cat said after a pause. "The challenge will be simple. You only have to find one item that represents catastrophe among the many wonders in this room.

Ye Yan started to look around the room and chose to start with the left corner of the room. There are many ancient Chinese astronomical instruments and rare documents on the table.

As the Yan Empire is a virtual representation of China, everything in this room is something created by the Chinese in the long history of his country. 

The Chinese were meticulous in keeping astronomical records, chatting the heavens, and recording phenomena, with the main purpose being to record time accurately, something they started to do with great accuracy.

In ancient times, astrology and astronomy were the same and interdependent at the same time, having a connection with the spirit world. However, unlike other cultures charting the stars at this period, astrologers were separate from astronomers and their specific job was to interpret occurrences and omens portended in the sky, while the astronomers have to chart regular events, such as lunar eclipses, and calculated when some events would occur.

The Chinese astrologers were more like shamans at that time, not like other astrologers that are the union of both. The astronomer Ho could be considered an astronomer but also an astrologer, thinking from the point of view of others cultures.

Ye Yan found many sky charts in the room. There was one with the system of the zodiac designed to help guide the life of people on Earth, also called the 'yellow path', as a reference to the sun traveling along the ecliptic. Like Western astrology, this chart has twelve houses along the yellow path. They just aren't the same as the 12 greek constellations.

There were other scrolls, recording other astronomical phenomena, such as comets, sunspots, novas, and solar flares. These scrolls look very ancient but it is normal because the Chinese made such observation long before any other culture.

Looking at the scrolls, it looks like they tried to catalog every single star in the sky. They defined the constellations by one major star, called the king, the alpha in today's astronomy, and it was surrounded by princes. 

Ye Yan opened another scroll. This was a document showing the calendar with twelve lunar months, and the year was calculated to be 365.24281481 days long [1].

There were also bones and shells inscribed with the Plough and symbols for the Azure Dragon and White Tiger, two of the four regions or directions on the table.

There was an armillary sphere on a corner. It is a metal sphere consisting of intersecting scaled circles, which allowed the observer to give each star a coordinate.

There are so many things in the room that Ye Yan felt again like finding a needle in the haystack. And he still doesn't even know what he is looking for.

After hours looking for the thing that represents catastrophe, he started pondering if he should give up for today because it is getting late and he is in the game for too long today.

When he decided to ask the cat if it would be a problem in the case he stops looking for today and resumes it tomorrow, he remembered the artifact that the astronomer Ho told him about before. 

Maybe it is not a coincidence that the ghost told him about this item. And Ye Yan remembered to have read somewhere that a comet was seen as a symbol of disaster in ancient China.

Thus, he opened the scroll with many drawings of comets inside and showed it to the cat as the item he asked Ye Yan to find.

....

[1] Zu Chongzhi (429-500 CE), a notable Chinese polymath, using self-designed instruments, proposed that the year was 365.24281481 days long, a measurement that almost no different from modern measurements.