Chapter 754: Being in the Night
Chapter 752: Being in the Night
In the future of fire, the world is burned out.
The fire is not eternal, the firewood in the shelter also has its limit, beyond the remodeled earth and ocean, the eternal curtain still binds the whole world – and when everything within the curtain is reduced to ashes in the flame, the world will end in one long cooling.
It is said that this “cooling” lasted four hundred years, and finally, the age of the ashes came – the cold ashes covered the world, no new flames rose, no living beings cried or breathed, the world came to a standstill in the pile of cold ashes, and nothing new was born or breathed. Nothing new is born, and nothing old dies.
In a sense, the shelter that had experienced the great annihilation finally ushered in eternal peace, and the ashes returned to the ashes – the end was permanently frozen in this moment, and no new suffering befell this land.
Duncan came to a large rock and sat down without a care in the world, not caring in the slightest about the ubiquitous ashes here, he looked at the ruins of the city on the plains that were still weathering and crumbling and transforming into ashes, and after a moment of contemplation, he suddenly spoke, “That means there’s no turning back on this option.”
“You can remake everything,” Critter came to Duncan’s side, his thin, withered body standing like a bent, withered branch in the cold wind, “with one exception.”
“Myself,” Duncan said softly as he roused himself, “I cannot redefine myself ……”
Crit remained silent for a long time before speaking, “If there is truly no path, the future of the Flame is at least a continuation – but I wish you to be careful and prudent. Time is like a river, and many of its tributaries can be rewritten, but the only way to cross the main stem at the end is to cross it, and there is no turning back when you run through it.”
“There’s no need to worry about that, I actually figured these things out the moment I rejected Pilot One’s proposal – what you’ve shown me is merely a further refinement of my initial speculation,” Duncan shook his head gently, “More than all that, my real gain was finally determining something ……”
As he spoke, he reached out his hand and slowly held it in the air in a false grip – the ethereal green fire of the aura immediately burned from between his fingers, expanding and leaping through the air like a phantom.
“Is that so,” Duncan nodded slowly, suddenly feeling a bit emotional, “At this point I’m a bit envious of Duncan Abnormale from a century ago, you have revealed the future to him, and although it was an accident, at least he knows where he should be heading.”
The light and shadows reorganized wrongly, things returned to their original position, and the dim, closed cabin reappeared in Duncan’s field of vision, the door to subspace still standing still at the bottom of the cabin – it was as if nothing had ever happened here.
Duncan watched the scene with a grave expression, pondering, “These ‘fires’ are really just appearances.”
There was nothing more in this ended branch of history that could propel it forward in its evolution.
He then turned his head to look at Critter, who was still standing quietly beside him, “You can see this branch of history, so can you see my other choices?”
“I’m sorry, no,” Critter met Duncan’s gaze matter-of-factly, “We are ghosts trapped in a time loop within the Asylum, and can only see what is within this time loop, and your other choices lie outside the loop- -to us, that is like a great void in the night, and my gaze cannot cross that vast darkness.”
His eyes looked one last time to the sky and the earth here, his gaze sweeping over the faint sunlight behind the clouds and the cathedral with its spires soaring high in the ruins of the city, and instead of asking Krit about the future of the others or their whereabouts at this moment, he turned away without a second thought.
“It is suffering to grope in the darkness, and it is suffering to know your destiny, and there was never meant to be any comfort at the end of time – I’m sorry to say we have no good news, not from the day we set out.”
“Not a big problem, I didn’t expect good news either, some enlightenment would be enough this time,” Duncan rose from the boulder, not stained with the slightest bit of ash, “It’s time to get out of here.”
Duncan gazed silently at the flames in his hand, then casually turned his hand over.
The auror’s fire went out instantly, the silent shattered embers transforming into many tiny sparks that flickered briefly at his fingertips, and for a moment they looked like phantoms of distant starlight.
This branch of history collapsed behind him, just like the fire in Prand.
The world of ashes seemed to be touched by this wisp of flame, and the wind on top of the mountain suddenly became a bit agitated, and even the nearby ashes appeared to rise and fall abnormally-but this was only a momentary illusion, and in the next second, both the wind and the ashes returned to their original state.
“…… Sorry about that.”
“Located outside the cycle …… That is, outside the ‘known world’ of Asylum?” Duncan responded immediately, “Surely we still have to find a way to break through that eternal curtain?”
Critter was still standing next to the door, still in the position of reaching out and tapping on the doorframe.
He then withdrew his hand and bent slightly to face Duncan, “I hope this didn’t cause you any trouble.”
“It’s not a big problem, I’m troubled enough as it is, no less,” Duncan said casually, “At least now we have confirmation that there is a way out of this that sucks.” “The Asylum is in such disrepair that tinkering with it is no longer necessary, though I shouldn’t say so,” sighed Collette, “but its destruction is doomed – Doomsday has been chasing this in time since the moment of the great annihilation of the world, and now it’s really catching up.”
“…… Doomsday Theory, a theory the Final Preachers have been preaching for a long time now, and it has always been felt that it was just the ramblings of your madness in the wake of madness.”
“There is only a thin line between insanity and sanity in the first place, and the ‘truth’ never cares about the difference between the two,” Critter’s expression was bland, “Perhaps from another point of view, my companions have never really been insane, they just …… got a little tired, and chose to embrace all the truth, and became crazy in everyone’s eyes.”
“Do you become like that too?” Duncan was suddenly a little curious, “In some branch of time, or in the near future ……”
“…… I don’t know,” Krit hesitated and shook his head slowly, “Dusk is upon us, but the world doesn’t go out abruptly, there is still a small part of my journey left, and in order to communicate with you within that window, I could only intercept the most stable ‘part’ of myself to come here, so now I do not know what I have seen at the end of my journey, perhaps ……”
He paused briefly and continued, “Perhaps we will meet again sometime in the future, and what appears before you then may be a deranged and deranged madman, or a twisted and formless monster, which would mean that I have come to the end of my journey, and have wandered in the darkness for far too long, or perhaps …… “
Clete said here suddenly stopped, followed by a slight change in his eyes, as if he suddenly saw a direction in the long darkness, suddenly thought of something, the deep wrinkled grooves on his face stretched out, his eyes looked at Duncan: “By the way …… I will try to do everything I can to meet with you again s, whether sober or crazy, I will definitely appear in front of you – I’m afraid there is no suitable window at that time, so the probability is that I will not be able to talk to you directly as I do now, and you may not even be able to see me …… but I will definitely find a way to leave something something that you can ……”
The old man’s voice ended abruptly.
In the dim and empty cabin, only Duncan’s lone figure stood silently in front of the subspace door.
After standing like a statue for a long time, he finally turned around, picked up the brass lamp hanging not far away, and slowly walked towards the exit of the bilge.
……
It was now twelve hours after nightfall.
As the scholars had warned – the sun had not risen and the sunset had not appeared on the sea level.
If there were some people who still had the illusion that the seventy-two hours of twilight was just an “isolated mutation” and that the sun would still rise the next day, this fluke has now been completely extinguished.
The long night had become a fact.
Near Light Wind Harbor, the four Ark ships were still docked near the shoreline, and the “Luminous Geometry” located offshore on the eastern side was releasing soft, light gold “sunlight” as usual, so that the entire city-state would not fall into complete darkness.
The Academy Ark was brightly lit.
The short and fat Lune stood in the “Temple of Knowledge” on the top floor of the ark and prayed reverently in front of the icon of the God of Wisdom, Rahm.
Prayer composed of “0” and “1”, the rhythm and pronunciation are particularly strange is gradually approaching the end.
The smoke of incense rose in the sanctuary, and Rahm’s icon stood silently in the smoke, which did not have a human form, but was a dark rectangular stone monument – above the monument was inscribed with the rune of the “Eye of Wisdom”, and there were dense symbols and fine lines all over the monument. There were also dense symbols and fine lines all over the monument.
In the sound of Lun’s blessing, those symbols and lines vaguely changed slowly, as if they had been injected with life for a while.
But with the end of the prayer, the monument’s short-lived “vitality” also dissipated.
Lune turned his head to look at a Truth Magus who had been waiting by the side since a while ago: “What is the situation now?”
“The bad news is that the sun still hasn’t risen, and it seems that the night curtain is going to last for a really long time, the good news is that according to the monitoring data coming from the various city-states, the drop in temperature is gradually slowing down-according to the current cooling curve, it seems that the extreme low temperatures of the various city-states during this night curtain won’t be lower than the lowest value in the historical records. minimum, and the world is not going to freeze completely in the long night as you feared …… ‘Cold Plague’ will not happen.”
Listening to the Magus’ report, Lune finally relaxed slightly between his features, but soon frowned again, “…… Is this really good news?”
(End of chapter)