686: 205.
“Anna 686: 205.
“Anna Himfast had a natural disadvantage.
Colonization of the Ailen Peninsula stemd from the aftermath of a war.
As the Mist of Strangeness erged, the Exorcist Association diated the conflict, and McDonald I abandoned the city walls, claiming it was for openness and comrce.
Although most people knew the real reason was that constructing the walls would be prohibitively expensive.
Subsequent successors adhered to this concept, thus contributing to the prosperity of Belfast.
[Himfast is now ready to face the invasion of the Mist of Strangeness!]
On the sixth day back in the Elm Forest, the news featured an image of the “preparations” encircling Himfast, made of countless stakes driven into the ground.
Entire trees were felled from the forest miles away, branches stripped away and trunks hamred into the ground–this was the fastest way to erect a makeshift wall.
It didn’t need to be very sturdy, after all, the wall wasn’t ant to withstand catapults and soldiers.
When night fell, the fires lit atop the wooden wall would hold back the advancing Mist of Strangeness.
Jimmy took the newspaper Lu Li had finished reading and went to find Raimy, who was guarding the cultivated land.
The freshly tilled soil was darker than its surroundings, having just been watered by Raimy not too long ago.
Rustle rustle—
The branches above gently swayed, and new leaves silently sprouted from the dark brown twigs as if welcoming the approaching figure.
An ethereal, pale hand holding a book reached out to Lu Li, who took it before Anna sat beside him, pressing her skirt and placing her hands demurely on her knees.
“You have looked into too many mories lately,” Lu Li’s gaze lingered on Anna for a mont before returning to the open book.
“She is already affecting you.”
mories, more than books, plays, or stories, have the power to influence a person.
Just as a young boy hearing tales of heroes for the first ti will harbor long fantasies and yearnings, sotis even becoming so engrossed in the stories he imagines himself as the very hero.
“They always surface uncontrollably when I do certain things,” Anna said in silence.
Sara’s mories erged like flashbacks, and even more frequently.
Preparing food for Lu Li, mories of Sara doing the sa for Adam would surface.
When Lu Li slept soundly, she would involuntarily recall Sara gazing affectionately at her lover through a mirror after he had fallen asleep each night.
Even during hunting, the power brought by the people who died in Sara’s deadly gas would co to mind.
Even when doing nothing at all, Sara’s mories would arise in her mind.
It was unavoidable, just as humans cannot stop breathing or thinking.
“Don’t lose yourself,” was all Lu Li could say.
Lu Li was unsure of the turmoil Anna was going through, but it was certainly beyond his imagination.
“Don’t worry, no matter what… I won’t harm you,” Anna said, her gentle and beautiful smile blooming.
That night, Lu Li, unusually, dread a dream that mirrored reality.
After the event at the Arlen Kingdom, Lu Li agreed with Anna’s suggestion to abandon resolving the issues with Sara and Adam, and instead returned to Tafeng City with York and the others for one day.
During their visit to the church, the radio on the pulpit turned into a broadcast of evil spirits, and in the Confessional, a vague human silhouette could be made out.
As Lu Li walked by, a piece of Parchnt floated out from a gap.
[Do not agree to Adam’s request] it read.
Thump—
Lu Li woke up with his heart pounding, the faint crackling sounds coming from the fireplace.
Anna, seated at the desk, turned her head, her gentle visage illuminated by the oil lamp: “Did you have a nightmare?”
Lu Li might have been regretting sothing, but who knows.
He drifted back into sleep, perhaps because the interval was short, the dreams continued as one.
This ti it was the opposite path.
Leaving the church, Anna whispered of the pain of being stripped of all senses after losing her body, the silence of her once-beating heart causing her to grow cold once again.
Anna longed for blood to flow through her body again.
The bustle downstairs at the inn almost roused the exhausted Lu Li from his sleep, as a group of ruffians burst into the inn looking for trouble, and Anna coldly drove them out.
One of the ruffians got so scared that he tripped and fell to the ground, and Anna’s twisted shadow caught up to him, stepping into his shadow.
A jumble of mories rushed into Anna’s brain, accompanied by a beating heart and the blood flowing through her body.
In a restaurant in Tafeng City, patrons and waiters watched in astonishnt as a young man frantically stuffed food into his mouth, his belly swollen like a pregnant woman’s.
The worried owner approached just as the young man collapsed face down on the table, and the shadow quietly departed.
Anna didn’t like this body…
The chaotic mories made her sowhat different from usual, and Anna’s projection wandered the streets looking for a proper body.
By the ti Lu Li awoke from his dream within a dream, Anna was no longer the sa.
Her consciousness was scattered by the patchwork of mories, although Anna remained Anna, not having beco a collective consciousness.
But the way she thought and acted was altered by those entangled mories.
A stranger nad Anna.
Gaze into the abyss for too long, and the abyss gazes back.
…
The next morning, the new “Investigator Weekly” and so good news appeared at the sa ti.
“We made it.” Amber clenched her fist beside the cultivated land.
Between the soft, dark-brown earth, startlingly green sprouts broke through the soil.
Whether it was awakening weeds or tender shoots of beans and potatoes, this was the first plant to grow in the field.
Although two days before, Annie had already sprouted leaves the size of a fingernail and the unnad plant in the flowerpot was as tall as a finger.
Amber barely restrained the urge to dig it out and check, waiting until the rchant left, she then shifted attention to asking Lu Li what was written in the “Investigator Weekly.”
“The progress of the new calamity in the Barren Lands.”
Exorcists had already rushed to the source of the disaster, which was nothing but a dead thicket and a decaying oasis of a village.
The weekly reported that progress was going well, and in order to prevent the birth of a devastating calamity like the Plant Disaster or the Night Disaster, every mber of the team was extrely careful and serious, and perhaps there would soon be good news.
In the afternoon, upon returning from the hunt, Anna found sothing interesting: a fishing cage.
So the next morning, after the Mist of Strangeness retreated, all the residents of Elm Forest, except Amber and the children, temporarily left the top of the cliff and accompanied Anna to the reef area below.
The sound of the sea waves was clearer and louder than on top of the cliff, with the black waves violently hitting the rocks, creating white foam.
The waves at the bottom of the cliff were too big, and rather than worrying about whether they could catch fish, they should be more concerned about whether the fishing cages made of wire sh would be broken apart by the waves.
Near the edge of the shallow water area by the reef, Anna baited the hook, tied the rope to a rock, and then lowered the fishing cage.
They wouldn’t be able to check the catch until the afternoon or the next day, and it was possible they would catch nothing—
But more than the catch itself, they enjoyed the sense of ritual that the act itself brought.
Raimy and Jimmy stood on the rocks with their calves subrged, feeling the sea breeze, while Lu Li lifted his dark eyes to look back at the sprawling ruins of Belfast, then towards the unmanned lighthouse standing on the edge of the rocks.
The light atop it had grown dim a long ti ago.
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