Snap.
The "Land of Obsession" with the scent of ink gently closed.
"Mom, did Mr. Wilkin really go to the Barren Lands?"
In a cramped bedroom that only fits a bed and a cabinet, Little Amy, having heard the bedti story, curiously asked.
"I don’t know, but I think so, because the Exorcist has already returned." The mother placed the book on the cabinet and said gently.
"Then he died, right? That’s so sad..."
"No, Amy, you should feel happy for him." The mother tucked in the corner of the quilt that might catch a draft for her child: "He felt the sa because he found the aning of life in his final monts."
"What is aning?"
"aning is the path revealed at your feet when you are lost and helpless; aning is the light that keeps your faith firm as you wait during tis of despair; aning is looking back on your past when you grow old, without having wasted your ti in idleness."
"My aning is to protect Mom and Dad!"
Little Amy said what every child would say.
"Of course, we’re waiting for Amy to grow up and protect us." The mother said likewise.
After the child drifted into dreams, the mother gently placed the Fluorite Lamp beside the book, allowing the soft light from the living room and outside the window to make the bedroom cozy and stepped out of the room.
"You spoke to Little Amy about this too early." Her husband whispered to her in the living room.
"It’s not like it was when we were young, Andor. Do you rember our neighbor Mann and his daughter before we left the Vena Refuge? That twelve-year-old girl was married off to a boy a year younger than her... Amy should understand the aning of life earlier."
"Everything is terrible, right..." Andor sighed.
"You’ve been sighing a lot." The wife ca behind her husband’s chair and gently massaged his forehead: "Even more than when we were in the Vena Refuge. Did sothing happen?"
The wife had asked many tis, but Andor never said anything, though now with the Exorcist’s return to the Land of Light, the pressure made it hard to bear alone, and he needed to share with his family: "I’m worried that all we’re experiencing now, all these dreamlike beauties, will dissipate like smoke from extinguished fires blown away by the wind..."
The uniqueness of the Land of Light is like a bonfire in a dark forest, visible from afar even through the gloom. No one knows how many coveting presences lurk in the dimness outside its reach, or if they’ll cross the boundary between light and dark.
And yet, the bonfire itself might be nothing more than a generous mirage before its end.
"All we can do is do what needs to be done..." Mina didn’t want her husband to think too much. Although for a forr Bard, emotional thoughts were almost instinctive.
"Beneath the world’s spine walks the dark-haired, dark-eyed Exorcist, the thorns of obstruction lting away in his light..." Andor’s murmured whispers echoed in the living room.
"What are you doing?"
"Praying."
"Mr. Exorcist doesn’t like us doing that."
"But it’s the only thing we can do for Mr. Exorcist..."
"No... Andor, what we can truly do for Mr. Exorcist is beneath our feet..."
Mina leaned against her husband’s shoulder, dawn near outside the window.
...
In the depths of a break in the clouds, the starry sky lay exposed, bringing magnificent splendor and... indescribable, inexplicable fear.
The cottages and mansions surrounded Agate Lake, with the lake encircling the island’s heart, under the young boughs of the Annie Tree stretching over the soil.
Lu Li and the twisted figure of Elena conversed.
"It’s pitiable... He thinks... he’s promoting your deeds..." the twisted figure said.
They talked about "Land of Obsession," which was sweeping from the Barren Lands to the Vena Refuge and on to the Land of Light, and its author Clarence Wilkin.
This book would soon beco as ubiquitous as other Exorcist stories, a spiritual pillar for people struggling in despair.
Though they would not know, the twisted figure sensed a plot entwined within "Land of Obsession."
As untold stories beca widely spread, the original plans of the departed souls would no longer remain secret —
Was that the final rebuttal of the Parchnt or sothing else, Lu Li could not know.
rchant Anthony appeared then, bringing back Matthias’s reply: the mayor ordered all publishers to stop printing "Land of Obsession," but did not prohibit people from discussing it, nor did he wish to — that would be too obvious. He said Lu Li could not imagine how popular this story was in "Vena Ice-Free Port," where Clarence Wilkin’s roommate, Old Eugene, beca a celebrity, constantly invited by nobles and wealthy to recount Wilkin’s stories. Even the guards who "sympathized" with Wilkin that night were hired by nobles to be private escorts — all of this was because of Lu Li.
Besides, Matthias’s reply included the rchant’s trade records and his additional advice.
The trade records were requested by Lu Li, who needed to know what was real and what was fantasy in the three-plus months he spent in the dream realm — it turned out the ancient stone seal and the Weird Collector were the only two real things besides knowledge.
The rchant Anthony in the dream realm wasn’t real either — the New Year’s gift to hell did exist, but it beca Lu Li handing it to the fake rchant, who then passed it to the real rchant, who took it to hell.
Matthias’s additional advice concerned the 341 residents of the Land of Light.
The existing 341 residents, a quarter of whom ca from the Twisted Vine Church and their ever-increasing Believers, while the remaining 258 were refugees Andrea brought back four tis from the ruins of the Unfrozen Harbor.
Three months and only these people, slower than expected — but Andrea couldn’t be any faster. Although the direct line from the Land of Light to the ruins of the Unfrozen Harbor only took three days, dangers abounded along the way. Weird Lairs, wandering predators, migrating tribes, and more crucially: Andrea had no effective ans of combating the weirdnesses, only able to sail around any sensed weirdnesses in the vast deep sea, lest they catch the scent of the humans on board.
Matthias advised Lu Li to maintain vigilance towards them, not to treat them as "subjects," at least not yet. He used the offensive phrase "they and we are almost two different species" to describe those who fled the Vena Refuge.
What drove Matthias to such an extre view wasn’t just that those leaving the refuge included murderers, cultists, and law disregarded, but also that the weirdness had severed the backbone of humanity—civilization. Humans who lost civilization regressed to a ti of raw survival, perhaps even worse: they experienced life, reproduction, and death, but many didn’t understand the aning of these words.
Unattended children lived like beasts on the dim surface; church children would devote their bodies and souls to their lord; only children in communities would continue the civilization inherited from their ancestors.
Lu Li gazed toward the hole-riddled sky above Old Belfast, where the starry sky was gradually paling and dimming.
Due to the dawn breaking.
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