After the conversation with Yan Songlin, there wasn't much time left. Xu Zhi wasn't entirely sure what would happen to her spiritual body after her consciousness detached from it – whether it would dissipate or turn into a lifeless corpse. However, she was reluctant to "log off" in front of these two people.

So, she bid farewell to Yan Songlin and, taking advantage of the last few minutes, found an empty house to hide in and wait for the end of her spiritual body's time.

The last time her spiritual body experience ended abruptly, Xu Zhi didn't know what it felt like to normally detach from her spiritual body. But now, she finally understood what it was like to do so normally.

It was like her soul being extracted, and her consciousness momentarily blurred. Before returning to her original body, she saw her spiritual body dissipate into ashes, the fragments burned by a fierce fire and scattered in the air.

"...So that's how it is."

The next moment, her consciousness returned to her original body.

Xu Zhi opened her eyes and once again felt the "heaviness" of her physical body. But her consciousness was incredibly clear, free from the constant agitation that had plagued her before. It felt as if even her thinking speed had increased significantly.

If she had to compare the two, Xu Zhi preferred her current state.

She checked the time and saw that it was still not even six o'clock. With anticipation, she picked up her game console to see if her two spiritual pets had made any progress.

After a moment, she saw the dog character in the game suddenly stop in its tracks as if it had smelled something in the air. Then, like a mad creature, it dashed towards the southeast. In a narrow corner, surrounded by piles of discarded waste, the dog pushed aside the debris blocking its way and found the "treasure" hidden within.

It was a roughly one-meter-tall black plant that resembled a shrub, but saying it was a plant didn't quite seem right. It didn't appear to have any vitality. Its branches were completely black, resembling some kind of rock rather than foliage. There were no leaves, and the densely branching limbs bore a few scattered black fruits.

Xu Zhi roughly counted and found four fruits.

【Unbelievable...】

【Your luck is truly unlike that of an ordinary person. It's astonishing.】

【Perhaps luck is also part of your talent.】

The narrator's three consecutive exclamations about Xu Zhi's luck were testament to how rare the discovery made by the dog character was.

Xu Zhi instructed the dog character to pick the four fruits. The moment the last fruit was plucked, the "shrub" seemed to disintegrate like broken rocks, disappearing into the soil.

A thought suddenly occurred to Xu Zhi.

If even the weakest branch could produce only one fruit, and this shrub yielded four, could there be black trees that produced even more?

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And how many fruits would such trees bear?

Although she still didn't know what these fruits were, Xu Zhi had some guesses in her mind.

She had never seen these fruits during the day. The only times she had encountered them were in the early morning, just after midnight, when the scattered forces in the real world mentioned by the narrator returned to nothingness, and she was able to discover the black fruits.

Furthermore, the fruits contained immense energy. Therefore, Xu Zhi surmised that they were related to those things that could not be looked at directly at midnight, perhaps remnants left behind by them. And since the fruits would disappear once the time passed, they could only be found in the early morning.

However, these were all just Xu Zhi's guesses. Although she felt confident that she was right with a probability of up to 80%, times had changed, and the emergence of things beyond her cognition was not unusual. She couldn't guarantee that things were exactly as she thought.

In the following hour, the two spiritual pets didn't make any other discoveries, but Xu Zhi was already satisfied with the four fruits.

After recalling Xiao Yi and the dog character, Xu Zhi didn't immediately send them out to hunt. Instead, she planned to do something bold.

Feeling safer with her spiritual pets by her side, Xu Zhi instructed them, "Don't wander off. Stay by my side."

Then, without hesitation, she took one of the black fruits from her inventory and consumed it.

The taste... there was no taste at all.

It was like eating a blueberry with no flavor.

But the moment she swallowed it, a fiery sensation erupted within her body. Her vision doubled, and her ears were filled with faint, flickering noises resembling the flapping of wings.

In the distance, a candle flame seemed to appear, and moths from the illusory world came to the real world. At this moment, Xu Zhi couldn't distinguish the boundary between illusion and reality. She felt as if she had transformed into a moth, yearning to plunge into that blazing fire once again.

It wasn't an illusion; she could indeed feel her body being consumed by flames.

Yet she hadn't even approached the distant candle flame.

In her dazed state, Xu Zhi suddenly wondered, would a moth that bathed in flames be reborn?

Then she shook her head, muttering like a madwoman, "No..."

A phoenix rises from the ashes, but a moth is only consumed by flames. She was not a phoenix, but a moth.

With this thought, Xu Zhi seemed to become increasingly convinced that she was a moth, and her mission was to reach the candle flame and perish in its embrace.

Something wasn't right...

"Woof! Woof!"

The barking of the dog sounded like a bell ringing in Xu Zhi's ears, causing the surrounding moths to blur, and her sanity returned slightly in that instant. She began to doubt her identity as a moth.

"I haven't even reached the flame yet, why is it so hot?"

It felt like she was being burned alive.

"Am I really a moth? Why can't I fly? Where are my wings?"

At this moment, Xu Zhi seemed possessed, her thought processes becoming abnormally convoluted.

As her malfunctioning brain connected the two questions and felt the pain of her body being burned, Xu Zhi suddenly felt like she understood everything and found the answer. With certainty, she spoke up.

"Sure enough, I'm not a moth."

"I am the burning candle flame!"

Regardless of how convoluted her thought process was when she said it, the moment she spoke those words, the surroundings seemed to freeze for a split second, and Xu Zhi's sense of self quickly returned. She was fully awake now.

The burning sensation in her body faded, and Xu Zhi noticed that her memory was a bit hazy. She couldn't quite remember what had happened between the moment she ate the fruit and when she suddenly regained consciousness.

She vaguely remembered that she had almost lost her sanity, and it was the barking of the dog that had awakened her.

Is that... what happened?

In any case, today was a big win for the barking squad, and the dog deserved a treat.

Xu Zhi picked up her game console, intending to take out the other black fruits from her inventory to share with Xiao Yi and the dog, but she was surprised to see words appear on the screen that she had never seen before:

【Game is upgrading...】

【Estimated time: 2 hours】

"...The game can upgrade?" Xu Zhi looked at the words in great surprise. The game could upgrade???

"But why is it suddenly upgrading?"