Mystical Journey

Wooo~~~

There seemed to be a strange howling in the air, like the siren of a faraway train, or like the roar of a certain creature.

Garen turned his head to the side, and suddenly looked at the night sky outside the balcony.

He did not know when it started, but there were many giant silver metal rings hanging in the sky, these rings as though suspended in mid-air, the top half piercing into space, hanging in the night sky without moving in the slightest.

The countless silver rings were all over the sky, scattered into many smatterings, extending all the way into the unseen distance. Each metal ring was more than ten meters in diameter, more than a meter in thickness, unnaturally clear.

The moonlight fell down evenly, reflecting a faint silver light off these silver rings.

"Did you say the Door to Heaven?" Garen turned around, once more looking at the red-eyed girl who had mysteriously appeared.

"That is the very first origin." The girl widened her blood-red eyes. "Only Listeners can see it."

Garen looked at the little girl in front of him, and suddenly felt some bone-piercing chill on the back of his right hand. He raised his hand, and saw an eye-catching red dot on the back of his right hand, just like a red mole.

He remembered, this was the Imprint of the Listener that Kid had given him back then, at the time Grand Duke Cody had even asked him a strange question, whether or not Garen could show him his Imprint, but Garen had rejected him.

"Then what is this?" He raised his hand, and waved his Imprint at the girl opposite him.

"That is your qualifications, the qualifications you earned." The little girl walked up to Garen, and also raised her head to look at the night sky outside.

"Only with these qualifications, can you truly see this world." The little girl said, somewhat dazedly.

For a moment, neither of them spoke, they just looked at the scene in the sky quietly, the countless silver round rings hanging in the sky, as though it was just a strange painting.

Garen seemed to be looking at the scene in the sky, but at the same time part of his attention was spent on staying aware of the girl’s movements.

He had not been able to kill her each of those times just now, this strange phenomenon made his heart waver slightly, it would be understandable if just like him, she had a natural talent such as Nine Lives, but strangely, his five senses or his spiritual sensitivity had vaguely noticed that the girl’s true body seemed to be in some unknown space, and her body out here seemed to only be the shadow she was projecting outside, no matter how many times he killed it, he would not harm the actual body at all. It was like using the light to destroy a shadow, no matter how many times you did it, there was no way you could harm somebody like that.

"Don’t you want to go and see?" The girl laughed suddenly, "Entering this world for the first time, a world that only we Listeners could ever enter before."

"What is your aim?" Garen glanced at her.

"Aim? Of course." It was as though the girl only then remembered her reason for coming, "Let me think... What was my aim for coming here?" She massaged her forehead, acting troubled.

By now Garen had sort of noticed, this fella seemed to be slightly crazy, there was something wrong with her brain, her words and actions followed the changes in her emotions completely, and even her emotions were completely impossible to grasp.

"The Listeners’ world, is it a real world?" he asked again.

"That’s right... This place is a strange existence, me, Kid, and more, there are ten other people in total, we were all born here." The little girl’s memories were awakened by Garen’s words, and her attention diverted.

"Once, several thousand years ago, you humans were still fighting to the death over the Listener’s Imprint, but hilariously, now barely a few people know about this world’s existence..."

"What are the benefits of this place?" Garen stared at the little girl as he continued asking.

"Benefits?" The girl tapped her lips, "The things you find here, you can bring them out to the other side, but only the Imprinted can take them out. Hmm... there’s also the Door to Heaven, you can find the existence of the Door to Heaven here, isn’t the ring on your hand an item from this place as well?"

Her gaze fell on the Troll Grip that Garen was wearing.

"Ring?" Garen touched the Troll Grip instinctively, this ring was the gift given to him by the city troll, why would it be a product of this place?

"The City Troll, I met it before, it’s really tall, and travels around everywhere, only creatures that give him enough water and food with get this ring as a present." The girl seems to know everything, suddenly she turned her head slightly, as though listening to something.

"How did you know..." Garen was interrupted before he could finish.

Shh~~

The girl held a finger to her lips, and continued posing as though she was listening to something.

"It’s coming..."

"What?" Garen frowned, staring at her.

"It’s that big tortoise. Come, I’ll show you something cool!" The girl suddenly pulled Garen’s hand, leaping lightly out the balcony.

Whoosh...

The two of them actually jumped straight out of the balcony, landing directly on the ground.

Bam!

They crashed hard onto the ground, and the girl dragged Garen into a run without any further words.

Garen did not know what she was planning either, but he did not resist, because he could not feel any ill intent from the girl. It was as though after they chatted for a while, the feeling of discomfort she gave him grew thinner and fainter.

The little girl pulled him and ran, leaving the mansion altogether, dashing straight down the mountain.

At such high speeds, Garen turned around to look at the mansion, the place was still brightly illuminated, and there were still many people gathered inside, it was just that they were all frozen on the spot, motionless, as though time had stopped at that moment.

Some people held their wine glasses and were about to sip from it, the wine inside tilting and almost about to drip out from the corners of their mouths. Some people were waving their hands with a smile, their arms suspended in mid-air. Others were turning and tilting their bodies to the music.

The band’s musician had plucked one of the strings, and the silk string bent at a slight angle, but it showed no signs of straightening out again. At the main entrance, a young man had been tripped by the door frame, and was about to fall, his body slanting in mid-air, but he just did not fall.

Everything and everyone, all the people and creatures seemed to have had their bodies and wills frozen, only Garen and the little girl could move.

The two of them wove through the forest, the Nightlight Moths frozen in mid-air like insects stuck in amber, embedded into the air, without moving an inch.

As he passed by, Garen simply pulled with one hand, and with a tear, the moth’s wing was torn down, the faint poison powder scattering everywhere, just like a small cloud of black dust.

"Did you see that? This world has countless times that flow at different speeds, the world you usually see is just a level that flows at a slower-than-average speed. And once the time is at extremely slow speeds or even stops completely, these creatures moving at high-speeds will all be revealed, that is when you can truly see what they look like." The girl seemed to be talking to herself, or perhaps she was explaining to Garen.

As the girl spoke, the scenes around them moved faster and faster, and grew more and more blurred.

At first he could still sort of see that they were still in the Ultimate Protection area, but by the end everything had turned into blurred shadows that could not be identified.

Garen could only be dragged by the little girl around, turning left and right as they moved at lightning speeds.

He did not know how much time had passed, when suddenly the girl stopped abruptly.

"Look..." The girl’s voice came from beside his ear.

The view around him suddenly focused into vision.

This seemed to be a grey-black wasteland, they were surrounded by grey hills and dunes, with a smattering of black plants and moss growing on them.

The ground was completely bald, there was not a bit of green to be seen, occasionally there would be a few tombstones stuck in the earth, but the words on them were already utterly worn off.

Garen looked up.

There was no moon in the sky, only countless pale blue stars scattering their faint light. The faint white cloud vapor was vaguely there, but seemed not to move at all.

"See... This is the truest view of the world..." The little girl released Garen’s hand, smiling brilliantly.

Bam!

There was a deep knocking sound from far away.

Bam!

And another.

Bam!

The third sound.

The sounds kept coming, one after the other, like footsteps, as though there was some heavy creature rushing towards here, one step at a time.

Garen looked at that direction from a distance.

Between the black hills, he saw a huge black tortoise crawling over to them.

There was a small piece of grassy land on the tortoise’s back, several tombstones stuck on it, slantingly, forming a small arch-shaped graveyard. From a distance, this small graveyard was actually its shell.

The tortoise’s limbs were four dried-out, branching tree roots, thick and grey-black, every time they were lifted and put down again, they would make a deep crashing noise on the ground.

Garen stared hard at the tortoise, his wariness raised to the highest. The whole tortoise was more than ten meters tall, and as it got closer, its huge body also became clearer.

But what surprised Garen the most was not that, it was the things behind the tortoise.

There was actually a veritable crowd of pale blue silhouettes following behind the tortoise, these humanoid shapes floated and glowed slightly, translucent like ghosts, with men and women, young and old among them, they all wore different clothing, and had no legs underneath their bodies, having instead a cloud of blue light.

"What is that?" Garen asked in a murmur, although he had already experienced many miraculous things in the Totem World, but this huge creature here and the meaning of the people behind him could not help but make Garen’s heart stiffen.

"That is the Giant Tortoise." The girl replied, "Normally it only exists for an instant... Mm, according to your units of time, about a hundred-and-ninety-thousandth of a second. But in this world, we can see its actions clearly."

"And these things behind it are...?" Garen watched the giant tortoise walk past him, carrying the large crowds of pale blue figures behind it.

"These?" The girl followed Garen’s gaze, and instantly understood that he was asking about that long line of pale blue figures. "They’re spirits~~"

"Spirits?"

"The souls of people after they die, duh." The little girl explained casually. "Aren’t you scared?" She seemed to be slightly surprised, at first she had come to see Garen out of curiosity, to find out what was so special about this young man that her host was so wary of. But the more she got to know him now, the more she felt that Garen was different from the rest.

"You just came with me like that, aren’t you scared I’ll hurt you?" The little girl finally couldn’t help but ask.

"You can’t hurt me." Garen laughed. Everything in front of him now, seemed to be slowly merging with the Ancient Endor legends from the Secret Technique World.

This world, had been mentioned before in the Ancient Endor legends.

The legendary world where everything stopped, the great hero Helra had fought here with the Serpent of Fate, and although he managed to kill the Serpent of Fate in the end, he also sacrificed an arm that stayed here forever.

Only creatures with the same Imprint can harm each other, and that was also why the Great Sages who gave the heroes their Imprints could not fight themselves, so they had to trick the hero Helra into acting.

Even the great Earth Mother admitted that she could not interfere with the matters here.

But what intrigued Garen was that the legend had evidently been passed down in the Secret Technique World, and yet there was such a scene in the Totem World. The two worlds seemed to have countless connections.

The girl was still recovering from her surprise at Garen’s words, and just then, the huge graveyard tortoise had walked past them on the right, the countless blue silhouettes gathering behind it, like a blue neon-colored river, twisting and turning into oblivion.

The humanoid spirits in the river were all dazed and lost-looking, as though they had utterly lost their self-awareness, and was just floating stupidly behind the Giant Tortoise.

Garen couldn’t help but think of the Underworld Carriage. In the library of the ruined city, that Underworld Carriage he had encountered seemed to have some strange connection to this Giant Tortoise.

"Back when Cody was still small, I brought him to see the Giant Tortoise, and he was scared half to the death. Why don’t you have any reaction at all?" The little girl’s expression was full of confusion. "Don’t you want to know where the Giant Tortoise will bring all these spirits?"