In front of the towering throne, the figure of the uninvited guest disappeared in a sudden roll of gray and white sand like a phantom. The black book lying quietly on the stone pillar seemed to be stunned for a few seconds. Until the wind blew again, Wilde's confused voice came from the book. "There seems to be a person here just now …"
As soon as his voice trailed off, a slightly languid and majestic voice came from the sky. "What did you say? Mr. Great Adventurer? "
When Wade heard that, he "looked" at the throne in front of him. On the towering throne, the Mistress of the Night, who was dressed in a pitch-black dress like the night sky, was sitting there lazily. The grayish-white patterns that looked like cracks were quietly curled up at the corners of her dress.
"Ah, Mistress of the Night, you're back?" Wilde asked subconsciously. "Where did you go just now?"
"Me? I've been here all the time. I just took a nap, "the Mistress of the Night said slowly." Great Adventurer, did you fall asleep just now? Why do I feel that you're a little strange? "
"I … Maybe I had a dream?" The voice in the black book was obviously confused. "I don't know … I seemed to have seen a visitor who came here by mistake and said something to her. She seemed to be a very interesting girl, but suddenly she disappeared. I can't remember the specific conversation with her … I also saw the empty throne, and you were nowhere to be found. I thought you went to the border to deal with that guy again."
"Then it seems that you're really confused, Mr. Great Adventurer." The Mistress of the Night's voice had a hint of a smile. "It's not so easy to have 'guests' here. If the mind of an intelligent creature accidentally came here, I would definitely find out at the first moment …"
Then the ruler of the shadows paused for a moment and said with a hint of expectation, "I remember it's your turn to tell a story this time … Can we continue the story from last time? About the ice river flowing at the bottom of the magma, and the elves in the ice river … "
Wilde's voice was a little helpless. "Mistress, although I'm very happy that you like my story so much, can you appreciate more of the more reasonable and rigorous stories? I think the story of the magma ice river and the elves is too outrageous … If it doesn't work, I'll make up another one for you. "
The Mistress of the Night laughed. Her laughter seemed to be able to dispel the haze of chaos that shrouded the desert forever. She lowered her head, and like a dark cloud suddenly descending, in the depths of the huge, lofty and hazy shadow, Wilde saw a pair of smiling but majestic Amber eyes looking down at him.
"Mr. Great Adventurer, I've seen too many rigorous and reasonable stories. In this boring place, the absurd is more interesting, isn't it?"
…
Amber woke up with a start. She opened her eyes and realized that the hard touch under her body was not an illusion. She was lying on the floor of the room on her back, and the familiar chair was not far away. She seemed to have fallen from the chair and fell into a strange dream. The short moment in the dream was magnified into an adventure and a wonderful conversation that lasted several hours. As her body touched the ground, she woke up from the dream.
"Falling is a shortcut to waking up from the dream …" Amber could not help but think of the words she heard in front of the throne, but soon she noticed the sunlight that spilled into the room through the gap between the curtains. She still remembered clearly that when she first began to study the sand grains, it was still a sunny afternoon outside, but now … the light of dusk shone into the room.
"From the looks of it, those few hours of experience were real. At the very least, the flow of time was real …" Amber rubbed his temples, hoping to clear his somewhat muddled mind as soon as possible. "Have I been squeezed out from 'over there'?"
She muttered to herself to stimulate her mind to wake up quickly. But in the next second, she seemed to have noticed something strange, and her eyes suddenly fell on her fingertips.
Some fine grains of sand were scattered around the floor that her fingertips touched. Those grains of sand were covered with a layer of grayish-white color that did not seem to belong to this world. Some sort of grayish-white texture spread from those grains of sand and "dyed" the originally dark brown floor into a large patch of grayish-white.
"… Oh my …" Amber's eyes widened in an instant, realizing that she might have gone too far this time. But as she stared at the sand, an inexplicable sense of "connection" suddenly emerged from the bottom of her heart, making her feel that the sand scattered on the floor was not a pile of inanimate objects, but … an extension of part of her power.
She stared at the sand, feeling the vague "connection" in the bottom of her heart. The connection was very subtle, somewhat like her perception of the Shadow Realm, but much more specific and clear than that. She even felt that she could control every grain of sand, and even …
She snapped her fingers, and the sand on the floor disappeared in an instant, and the grayish-white color on the floor that was "dyed" gradually returned to its original state.
Hu Po opened her mouth and looked at her fingers, as though she could not believe what had just happened. Then, she revealed a pensive look, and after a long period of thought and perception, she reached out her hand and gently rubbed it. A wisp of grayish-white quicksand appeared out of thin air like water, and with a rustling sound, it landed on the floor. More and more quicksand gathered, and the grayish-white "domain" rapidly spread throughout the entire room...
"Oh my god …" Amber suddenly reacted, hurriedly stopped summoning the sand, and then hurriedly "recalled" them again. Fortunately, there was no accident, and the room gradually returned to normal after half a minute.
When everything returned to normal, Amber was still sitting on the floor in a daze. She remained in this state for a long time before she finally slapped her thigh and said, "Oh, I'm awesome!"
Then she jumped up from the floor and was about to run out of the door excitedly. "Then I have to show off this to the old dumpling …"
She rushed to the door, but the moment she pushed the door open, she seemed to have thought of something and stopped. While trying to suppress her excitement, she muttered to herself, "No, no, no, I have to test it again to find out what this thing is. And more importantly, the information is the book that calls itself Werd …"
…
The cold wind blew through the barren wasteland under the night sky. Millions of years of starlight shone on this ancient land as old as the stars. Victoria stood on the towering wall of New Agundor. She looked inside the high wall and saw rows upon rows of rugged and grand houses. Large and small lights illuminated the lonely city that sheltered all living beings in the cold winter night. She then looked outside the high wall and saw the wilderness stretching out in the starry night. The rolling land was full of scorch marks left by war. Everything in the distance seemed to have been swallowed by darkness and cold. Only the huge destroyed factories and palace buildings were silently telling the glorious scene of Tarlonde's past.
The world outside the wall looked bleak and hopeless. But Victoria, who had lived here for a few days, had learned that there was something in the dark ruins. Some sporadic and weak lights shone in the depths of the darkness. Occasionally, she could see the shadow of the Giant Dragon flashing through the starry night. In the places where the lights shone, the Dragons dug out some of the old factories that were still functioning and used to monitor the border of the safe zone. Even under the ruins, the Dragons were doing their best to clean up the collapsed underground transportation network and storage facilities. They worked around the clock.
This reminded Victoria of the ancient times recorded in the books. She thought of the pioneers of the Ansu Kingdom who worked hard to reclaim and build the wasteland on the edge of the wasteland. It also reminded her of the wasteland in the south of the Gloom Mountains and the series of plans that His Majesty had conceived to counterattack the wasteland. In the near future, those plans would become practical.
At this moment, a gentle and cheerful voice suddenly came from the side and interrupted the duchess's thoughts. "I'm sorry, Victoria. It's so cold and I have to drag you out for a 'walk'. I don't think it's fun to accompany an old man like me in the cold wind on the city wall, right?"
Victoria was startled out of her thoughts. She saw the old man in a black bonnet and a black robe standing next to her and looking at her with a smile. She quickly shook her head and said, "Of course not. Please don't think so. I like to walk with you."
"Really?" Modir obviously did not believe it. "Not many young people have the patience. Usually when I talk to people about my adventures, they run away faster than anyone else."
"That's because they are inexperienced," Victoria immediately said. She then tried to make a smile. She felt that she had succeeded because the old man in front of her had a smile on his face. "As for me … I have not had such a free time for a long time. To be able to temporarily put down the things at hand like this and accompany you for a walk outside is actually a very rare rest and relaxation for me."
"It sounds like you usually have a lot of work." Modir nodded. Then, he was a little worried. "You have been away for so long. Won't your work be delayed?"
"I … I asked for leave from my superior when I came out," Victoria quickly explained. In a sense, she was not lying. "I have also arranged for my colleagues and subordinates to help me deal with my work. It won't delay me even if I don't go back for a while."
"That's good." Modir smiled. As usual, he did not ask Victoria about her real 'work'. Victoria took this opportunity to quickly change the subject. "Have you been haunted by that 'dream' again in the past two days?"
"It's okay these two days. I didn't have that 'strange dream.'" Modir shook his head. "Maybe it's really useful for you to be around me? But then again, that 'dream' itself doesn't happen every day. In fact, from the moment I boarded that mechanical ship until today, I've only encountered a total of three dreams, which isn't considered frequent. It's just that the dreams themselves are a little scary. "
"But you can't relax," Victoria said with a serious face. "That dream obviously points to the power of the gods. If you are careless, you will be doomed forever …"
"Okay, okay, okay. I know, I know," Modir said as he waved his hand. The old man's expression was a little strange. He could not help but look at Victoria from head to toe. "Did your father teach you this character? Why do you look more old-fashioned and serious than an old man like me at such a young age … "
There was finally a trace of awkwardness in Victoria's eyes. She obviously lacked experience in this kind of conversation. She could only bite the bullet and say, "My … character has always been like this. My father's character is similar. In fact, the rigorous way of doing things has always been our family tradition … "
"Family tradition?" Modir could not help but blink as he pointed at himself, a little stunned. "This tradition is passed down by me?"
Victoria's expression did not change, but her heart suddenly skipped a beat. She instantly remembered the embarrassing thing that Heti had mentioned when she was chatting with Heti about how her ancestors did not recognize the ancestral precepts. She thought that she had finally encountered a similar situation. And these sighs did not affect the speed of her response. Facing the old man's curious expression, she quickly said, "This … should be passed down by an earlier ancestor. And according to the family records, your character is not quite in line with this tradition …"
"That's good." Modir patted his chest when he heard this. "I thought I was a serious and old-fashioned guy. If that's the case, it's a little scary. How boring is it to live an adventurous life with a straight face all day?"
Looking at the somewhat exaggerated reaction of her ancestor, Victoria did not know how to react for a moment. But when she thought about how she usually did not show any expression, she felt relieved. She then asked curiously, "Why do you like to adventure so much?"
As her voice trailed off, there was a sudden silence on the wall. Modir did not speak for a moment as if this sentence had evoked a lot of thoughts. After a long silence, he finally broke the silence. "Don't you feel curious? Don't you feel curious about those unknown territories, unknown things, unknown knowledge? Our world is so vast, and the more you explore its end, the more you realize that the 'end' is still beyond your knowledge. In such a boundless field, you keep discovering things that no one has ever discovered before … Don't you think it's interesting? "
Victoria opened her mouth. Her ancestor's answer did not surprise her because many records of this great adventurer and many of his remarks from six hundred years ago had already been left in the family's books. She was very familiar with those, but when she saw the light in the eyes of the great adventurer, she could not help but say, "Have you ever thought that these adventures may one day cost you your life? Even now, you are being entangled by the power of the ancient gods … Maybe it is the 'aftereffect' of some adventure …"
"Haha, child, be confident. Remove the 'maybe' from it." Modir suddenly laughed. "A guy like me who fooles around will definitely not be able to die peacefully on the bed at home. Some of the weird troubles I encounter are definitely an extra 'gift' from exploring the unknown territory. Girl, you don't have to remind me. I know this better than you."
Victoria seemed to be unable to understand the old man's almost paranoid 'hobby'. She could not help but say, "Then you …"
"Then I will continue to go out. Yes, I will continue to go out." Modir smiled as his eyes turned to the darkness in the distance, looking into the depths of the wilderness that was beyond the limit of vision. "I don't have a noble reason, nor is it to open up the borders of civilization. In fact, I have never thought about these. I just feel that … Just like this polar night, if this polar night never ends, and humans are like short-lived bugs living under the night sky, we will never see the sky beyond the night sky. But if we go out for a walk, no matter which direction we go, we can see the sunrise, see the sun rise in the sky …
"Many bugs may think that this is no big deal, but the sun … it is really there."
(End of Chapter)
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