"You mean, Maomao's target for its wishes is the Four Continents Will?"

Zhang Ze nodded. "Very likely. But as for the details, we'll need to run some experiments to find out.

"If it works, we might even be able to have Maomao directly make a wish and bring the Sect Leader back."

Zhang Ze said it casually, but Xiangxiang started flickering rapidly; she found it a bit hard to process.

Never mind the Sword Sect Sect Leader—even that grilled sausage from just now already seemed a bit absurd to her.

"B-but… why Maomao?"

Zhang Ze pondered for a moment, then spread his hands. "I don't know either, but if I had to guess, I'd say the will of the Four Continents just likes Maomao."

Xiangxiang: "Likes?"

Zhang Ze crouched down and helped Maomao put on the harness while speaking to Xiangxiang.

"The will of the Four Continents responds to the wishes of all living beings. I still don't really understand the exact process, but I think it roughly works in three ways.

"The first is when disaster strikes and a collective mindset forms among an entire race. The yearning for life and the fear of death will be answered by the Four Continents.

"The second is through rituals or mediums—like the Holy Tree, Stone Pill, Dream Origin Pill—to replicate some kind of miracle.

"The third is the Four Continents' 'favoritism'. Of course, that's just my speculation.

"In my view, the miracles triggered by those so-called lucky ones or heaven's chosen are more or less all related to the Four Continents Will.

At this point Zhang Ze's expression turned a bit strange, because Brother Feng suddenly came to mind.

Brother Feng's miraculous lock opening, plus his talent for finding paths, exploring, digging up treasures and graves, and his protagonist-grade destiny, now that he thought about it, weren't all that different from the Dog's Wishing Technique—and might even go beyond it.

Zhang Ze didn't want to dismiss personal effort, but Brother Feng as a whole was seriously metaphysical.

[Feng's Lock Opening Skill][Feng's Auto-Pathfinding][Feng's 100% Breakthrough-in-Battle][Feng's Exotic Object Identification Skill][Feng's Luck S+]

Some things really were hard to explain.

Compared to Brother Feng, he himself felt like a simple child.

Zhang Ze: "There's a will in the dark. Some people are born under heaven's special favor. Something like that."

Xiangxiang: "Emmm... In that case, wouldn't I be the same?"

Zhang Ze: "How so?"

Xiangxiang: "If I weren't lucky, how would I have run into you back then? If I weren't lucky, how could I still see you today?"

Zhang Ze froze for a moment, a bit disarmed by the sweetness.

But Xiangxiang did kind of have a point. The fact that her Divine Soul could merge with the Exile Fleet's scrapped engine was basically a miracle in itself.

"Maybe it really is like that. In that case you'd better properly thank It from now on." As Zhang Ze said this, he finally finished putting that special harness on Maomao.

The harness was yellow, with lots of chains hanging from it that clinked and rattled as Maomao moved.

Maomao didn't like this new outfit at all, but for the sake of the grilled sausages that kept getting stuffed into its mouth, it reluctantly decided to wear it for a little while.

"What's this outfit for?" Xiangxiang asked.

Zhang Ze: "Oh, this? It's something I cobbled together this morning after getting beaten up by Master.

"The harness was ready-made—probably Lily's work. The chains I just twisted together myself. Mm… let's call it a dog leash.

"I plan to take Maomao into the shallows of the Earth Sea. If the sea it patrols isn't the Earth Sea, this outfit can protect it.

"If it is, this outfit will keep it from running off.

"I don't want to get tortured by Lily over something like losing the dog."

"I see. Mm, got it." Xiangxiang chatted with Zhang Ze while continuing to search her database.

In theory, after the integration, everything from the Thousand Mechanism Pavilion should have been archived under her—big or small, automatically uploaded and stored.

But she couldn't find any record related to that harness.

After repeatedly searching a few times, she suddenly noticed something off.

During the period when she and Zhang Ze had bared their hearts to each other, enjoyed the union of fish and water, and she'd temporarily gone offline, someone had tampered with the database.

Who could it be? So hard to guess…

Xiangxiang stared at the screen in front of her, at Lily's sticker avatar flashing red, and the traces of her not-quite-erased account login record.

Just as Xiangxiang was about to tattle to Zhang Ze, she realized Zhang Ze was nowhere to be seen.

He and Maomao had already dived into the Earth Sea.

...

In the Earth Sea.

Zhang Ze felt he was wise and foresighted; good thing he'd leashed the dog in advance.

As soon as Maomao entered this place, it was like a fish returning to the ocean, a Dragon soaring to the ninth heaven.

Its soy-sauce-colored fur turned completely golden, drifting like smoke. Calling it a divine dog wouldn't be an exaggeration.

Maomao was like a ball of golden flame, dragging Zhang Ze and tearing around happily in the void.

"Wait, slow down, I can't keep up!"

"Woof! (Lazy dog!)"

.....

After the better part of half a day, Zhang Ze and Maomao finally "surfaced" from the Earth Sea.

Once out of the Earth Sea, Maomao turned back into a soy-sauce-colored big dog, while Zhang Ze had been successfully run ragged like a dog.

He really couldn't hold it back.

A simple experiment had turned into pure dog-walking-the-human.

Because of the Earth Sea's nature and the Four Continents Will's favoritism, Maomao was practically invincible there.

If anyone else had come to walk Maomao today, they'd probably have died here on the spot.

"Senior Brother, you're back!"

Once Zhang Ze got his breath back, a soft, pale little hand stretched out, offering him a lollipop.

Junior Sister had already returned from the Sword Sect Main Pavilion this morning. While Zhang Ze was down below walking the dog just now, she'd been here chatting with Xiangxiang the whole time.

Strictly speaking, it was more her talking to herself, because Xiangxiang was still searching through the database, restoring the information that Lily had tampered with or deleted.