Minecraft: Is this still the Minecraft I used to play?

The Dark Sea Crystal was peeled apart from top to bottom like an eggshell.

It slowly falls into the water and accumulates at the bottom.

"MC has this effect?"

Shi Qian was somewhat surprised; he had only ever seen such scenes in Minecraft animations made by certain big names before.

The contents inside were gradually revealed. Shi Qian, having prepared in advance, gripped the trident in his hand.

Before them was a one-eyed creature, pale yellowish-brown in color, which at first glance resembled the Guardian.

But upon closer inspection, the other party did not have the unique spikes of a guardian.

There was something about him that Shi Qian was extremely familiar with.

Those are its eyes, just like the eyes of the Heart of the Ocean when it opens.

"Is this the creature that dwells in the heart of the ocean?"

Shi Qian walked a little further on the ice and looked at the creature in front of the water.

The creature was probably just hatched and was still a little confused.

When it saw Shi Qian approach, it moved forward a little as well. When it realized what it had done, its pupils constricted.

Just as Shi Qian was about to throw his trident at it.

The creature vanished, leaving only the Eye of the Ocean in its place.

And his eyes were slowly closing.

?

Shi Qian rushed into the water, grabbed the Eye of the Ocean, and struck it with his trident.

"Wake up—"

However, it was impossible to stop the Eye of the Ocean from closing until it transformed into the Heart of the Ocean and automatically entered Shi Qian's system inventory.

"...Wow—"

Shi Qian was speechless at this turn of events. He rolled his eyes, ignored the mess in the treasure room, and crawled out of the ice cave.

After all, the only valuable things about the entire underwater temple for players are the building blocks, the gold in the treasure room, and the sponges in the sponge room.

As for Shi Qian, he came here simply out of curiosity.

He doesn't need building blocks. The open-air throne is fine; he can just demolish it and rebuild it wherever he wants.

He can buy gold and sponges directly, and after the "Eye of the Ocean" emerged, there was nothing left in the treasure room.

There is absolutely no gold.

However, Shi Qian couldn't quite figure out what kind of creature it was.

Could the "god" worshipped by the guardians really be this thing...?

Going to such great lengths to build an underwater temple to hide this thing might also deceive other creatures about "gods".

He's starting to doubt whether the core even exists anymore.

Once this item is put into the backpack, when Shi Qian takes it out again, it becomes a perfectly normal Heart of the Ocean.

He just checked the radar; the Heart of the Ocean is not a physical entity.

There are no other physical entities in this underwater temple.

Unable to find anything else, Shi Qian kept the Heart of the Ocean in his hands, turning it over and over.

What's the connection between this thing and the Guardians? It feels like they're some kind of ancestor and descendant.

After all, they are all one-eyed creatures, and among the guardians are ancient guardians.

This thing isn't going to be called something like "Ancient Guardian," is it?

Besides changing his eyes and hiding, does this creature have any other abilities...?

Guardians can fire lasers, so this thing should be able to too.

And the dolphins said they finally saw the eyes fly away?

If I kill this creature, is it possible that I'll gain the ability to fly...?

Thinking of this, Shi Qian turned his gaze to the Heart of the Ocean that he was playing with in his hand.

As if sensing something, the Heart of the Ocean trembled slightly.

"Oh my, that's interesting."

It seems that even in its form as the Heart of the Ocean, this thing is still alive.

Shi Qian put the Heart of the Ocean back into his backpack and didn't pay any more attention to it. He then continued walking towards the Boiling Spring.

Anyway, it's in my backpack and it can't run away.

During this period, Ranxiao frequently logged in and out of the game, and every day after collecting the dropped items, she would run to the frozen entity and squat down.

Every now and then, it tells the entity inside the ice block what's happening outside.

Shi Qian didn't understand Ran Xiao's thought process either, but he let him be.

Until Ranxiao brought him some good news.

"Boss! I think I know who's inside!"

"found it?"

Shi Qian became interested and went over to investigate.

Because Ranxiao shouted quite loudly, the players fighting the drowned zombies nearby all heard it.

"What?! What is that?! Who?! Can you let me pass by and listen—"

The player skillfully dodged a trident thrown by a drowned corpse, but couldn't dodge the one thrown by Shi Qian himself.

It has to be said that gamers' love of gossip exists everywhere.

After hearing what they said, the remaining players stopped fighting and headlong swam downstream.

However, they were all killed by the trident, and a bunch of loot dropped.

Ran Xiao sat next to Shi Qian and applauded his clean and efficient technique.

"Boss is really amazing!"

Shi Qian tapped the ice block, signaling Ran Xiao to mute.

"Alright, stop joking around, tell me who's in here first."

Ran Xiao responded with an "oh," her enthusiasm undiminished, as she gripped the ice and pointed further in.

"Boss, I guess it should be Qiming."

"But you might not know this player. Let me tell you, I've played against him before."

"It was a long time ago when I asked you for help..."

When Shi Qian mentioned the name "Qi Ming," he had already found the player's appearance in his memory.

While listening to Ran Xiao's ramblings, Shi Qian reminisced.

This Qi Ming was the one who spied on the guild war that night, and was also the one who was caught by Shi Qian and killed the next day.

Shi Qian still had a deep impression of him, after all, he was the only one who did this.

However, how did a perfectly good player turn into this?

Shi Qian had previously speculated that some players might have encountered a bug when they first entered the game and ended up looking like this.

In retrospect, it was indeed an in-game conversion.

One entity has been identified, so who is the other?

After Shi Qian finished thinking about all this, Ran Xiao had just finished explaining the grudges and entanglements between him and Qi Ming.

"Have you found anyone similar to him, or anyone he's close to?"

Ran Xiao thought about it carefully.

"I haven't found anyone like him on the forum."

"After all, he was the only one asking about switching accounts under various strategy guides and official videos. In fact, the frequency was quite low at the beginning."

"After that, every time I searched, I would see a lot of anonymous posts, and the more recent the posting time, the higher the frequency."

"Then one time he forgot to post anonymously, and I saw it as soon as it was posted. Although he seemed to realize it five minutes later and deleted the post, it was no use, haha, he had already been discovered."

Shi Qian looked at Ran Xiao's silly grin and realized she could write an 800-word essay about just one point.

I'll remind him of another topic: who he's close to.

Ran Xiao scratched her head.

"I haven't found anyone in particular."

"But... he seemed to have revealed some information in a post on his account before, but I'm not sure if that's true."

Seeing his conflicted expression, Shi Qian gave him a definite answer.

"Just say it."

...