Chapter 143#
The Mist — Part Four#
The edge of the Eternal Day.
A silver key floated in front of Sathe, God of Life.
“Have you heard?” he said to Jielü. “The City of Mist has suddenly opened its doors to all of Eternal Night. Before, you could only stumble across its entrance by luck — now anyone with a key can get in. Of course, everyone who enters loses all contact with the outside world.”
He narrowed his eyes and smiled. “People out there have been longing for the City of Mist for ages. The moment word got out, it was chaos — people fighting over keys, people selling keys. The blood has been flowing pretty freely in Eternal Night lately. Oh, by the way — have you ever been to the City of Mist?”
Jielü: “No.”
“Understandable. You’ve always had terrible luck.” Sathe closed his eyes with a dreamy expression, resting his chin in his hand. “It’s a wonderful place. You can get anything there. Even bringing back a little something at random might turn out to be a rare and powerful treasure. Some people have gone just once and come back as top-tier outer gods. The senior figures inside were always willing to keep me company, and they were so pleasant to talk to. Tsk — I really want to go again.”
“You’re quite good at calculations, aren’t you?” He reached out and slung an arm around Jielü’s shoulders, his pointed ears twitching slightly as his gaze drifted with feigned nonchalance across Jielü’s hair. In a tone of easy familiarity, he said: “Help me work out what the City of Mist is really up to by opening its doors this time.”
The RGB single earring of the God of Discipline shifted colour for just an instant. His movements were cold as he lifted Sathe’s arm off him.
Sathe gnashed his teeth and flicked his ears in irritation.
Jielü, you have no heart!
Jielü’s eyes were very pale, and if you looked closely, they churned with dense cascading streams of data.
“No data on the City of Mist. Calculation not possible.”
“Hmph.”
A moment later, Jielü spoke again, his voice measured and flat.
“However, 73.2% of outer gods and 21% of ordinary players in Eternal Night have committed their strength to the key competition. The collection rate of Eternal Day fragments has increased by 33.67%.”
Sathe: “Current total ownership of Eternal Night?”
“57.3%.”
“Not bad at all. I may prefer your body, but that brain of yours is genuinely useful.” Sathe patted Jielü on the shoulder. “They scramble for keys; we harvest the world. I’m almost starting to wonder if the City of Mist is a smokescreen He put out.”
“It isn’t.” This time Jielü’s answer came without a moment’s hesitation.
“You have a basis for that?”
“He went there too,” Jielü said. “You didn’t know?”
Sathe: “……”
Sathe’s pupils contracted violently.
“Does He not love me anymore, does He not love me anymore?!” Even Sathe’s ears drooped. “What else did He say?”
“He also said…” Jielü looked at Sathe.
Jielü rarely kept his gaze on anyone for this long. Sathe blinked with hopeful anticipation.
“Keep watch over Eternal Day with the Painter.”
Sathe: “?”
He watched helplessly as Jielü reached out and took the key that had been floating in mid-air beside him, drew it across his skin, and let a single drop of silver-blue blood fall into it.
Thirty seconds later, Jielü vanished from where he stood.
Sathe buried his face in his hands in anguish. “No senior to keep me company, no Jielü either, and He doesn’t even love me… I don’t want to live anymore.”
Yu Feichen passed through the city gate. The instant he was fully inside, the grey mist rose.
When the fog lifted, he found himself standing in a wide-open harbour.
“Welcome, traveller from outside.” A golden-haired little girl with a wicker basket on her arm passed by him, lifted the cloth cover, and showed him a glimpse of fresh flowers inside. “Would you like to buy some? No currency required.”
“No thank you.”
The little girl hopped away toward somewhere else.
“Welcome, traveller from outside — need a place to stay? Hertosse Tavern welcomes you, free of charge.”
“Welcome, traveller from outside — would you like to browse some souvenirs? Take whatever you like.”
Several NPCs on the fog-shrouded harbour were calling out to visitors with enthusiastic hospitality.
A steamboat whistle sounded from behind him. Yu Feichen turned — on the canal in the evening light, a brilliantly lit ocean liner was pulling into the dock.
Once it had moored, passengers began to disembark, and the harbour grew busier. Among those coming and going were noblewomen, gentlemen, attendants, newsboys, and bespectacled scholars, with carriages weaving continuously through the crowd. This appeared to be an era where technology had not yet fully advanced, but the city had already taken on a certain degree of elegance.
Yu Feichen, in a black trench coat, stood amid the flow of people and felt that he didn’t look out of place.
A noblewoman in a long, full-skirted gown, holding a feathered fan, drifted past him. The scent of her perfume made Yu Feichen mildly uncomfortable.
It was like a real and expansive world. It appeared to have a fully developed civilisation — to achieve this, the City of Mist would need to qualify as a large fragment-world with very stable power.
No… that wasn’t it.
Yu Feichen looked up.
At ground level, every scene and every person felt genuine. But the sky was an altogether different thing — an eerie, distorted picture.
An enormous clock hung suspended in the clouds above, its face inverted, stretching from one edge of the sky to the other. Anyone who looked up could see it.
On the pale white clock face, there was only a single jet-black hand, pointing straight down, positioned at roughly the six o’clock mark. But this clock face had no hour markings — instead it was divided into many small cells. Yu Feichen counted for a few seconds.
Three thousand six hundred cells.
Even as he watched, the black hand moved — advancing one cell forward.
Then it was still for a long while, before suddenly lurching ahead two cells at once. Yu Feichen watched for a bit and found no discernible pattern.
There was one other unusual detail: floating quietly just above his right shoulder was a wisp of grey mist. At a glance, its interior seemed unusually deep, as though it held considerable power within.
A newcomer in an unfamiliar place — crowds made Yu Feichen feel unsafe. He walked forward from the harbour and stopped at the end of a dim alley. On the other side of the wall immediately next to him appeared to be a small tavern, not especially busy, with some activity faintly visible through the window.
Inside, NPCs were chatting — all inconsequential everyday talk.
Yu Feichen reached out experimentally toward the wisp of grey mist. The instant his fingers touched it, his consciousness was drawn into a formless grey space.
Floating quietly before him was a translucent silhouette — and on closer inspection, it was the outline of his mechanical fortress.
Since being brought here by the key, Yu Feichen had lost contact with the fortress. It now seemed that the City of Mist had not merely severed his connection to his own power — it had also probed the structure of his world, and might well have taken control of it.
To be capable of this, the power that the City of Mist possessed was… unquestionably of an exceedingly high order.
The same cool, remote voice he had heard upon entering the city spoke beside his ear.
“You may take one item from your original world to serve as your first piece of equipment in the City of Mist.”
The Gate of Eternal Night had its prompt system; Claros had its auxiliary “Gatekeeper’s Friendly Reminder” — and now this voice was the City of Mist’s system, with what seemed to be a comparable function.
Ordinary instances had no such thing. Yu Feichen revised his understanding of the City of Mist. Not a large-scale instance — but a complex existence similar in nature to the Playground.
After the system finished speaking, the phantom of the fortress grew considerably more solid. As Yu Feichen focused his attention, the interior structures appeared in precise and vivid detail.
Yu Feichen’s first choice was a metal handgun — the one he had used in the instance with the snowman and Bishop Tangper.
After taking the gun, he kept his focus moving through the fortress. A two-person dormitory room unfolded within the phantom.
Lying on the upper bunk was a mechanical rabbit with a lame leg.
This rabbit had been made by Anfiel and given to him. For reasons he’d rather not dwell on, it had once been thrown into the metal waste bin in the dormitory — but eventually Yu Feichen had taken it back out.
He wasn’t choosing the rabbit because it was useful. He simply didn’t want his belongings left under the mist’s control.
Having selected two items, the system said coldly: “Quantity non-compliant.”
Yu Feichen and the rabbit’s red-black crystal eyes regarded each other.
“It’s decorative. It doesn’t count as equipment,” he said.
The system was not moved: “Quantity non-compliant.”
Yu Feichen let out a quiet sigh and put the handgun back.
Fine. He’d just go back to being an outlaw who stripped road signs bare and left nothing behind.
The system spoke.
“Item confirmed: metal rabbit figurine.”
“Function: appears to serve no purpose beyond decoration.”
“Notable characteristic: leg has a defect.”
“Rating: Low.”
Yu Feichen’s expression was blank.
That’s enough. Say another word and it’ll be annoying.
I’m aware it’s lame.
After the item was taken, the fortress phantom dimmed rapidly, though it didn’t disappear entirely. To Yu Feichen’s right, a floating display panel materialised with several lines of information written on it.
Name: [Input Required]
Base Attribute Enhancement: 145%
Held Equipment: Metal Rabbit Figurine
Rating: N
Faction: Black
Note: Initial rating derived from power level of original world. Initial faction assigned at random.
To the right of the lines reading Rating: N and Faction: Black, a black game piece floated faintly in the air.
The piece was shaped like a horse’s head — a familiar silhouette. Yu Feichen thought for a moment: many worlds had a game called chess, and what he was looking at was the knight piece, abbreviated N.
Below the knight were the pawns, P — the bottom tier of pieces.
Above that came the bishop, B, then the rook, R, and finally the king and queen, K and Q.
The iron fortress had formidable offensive power, but it was still only a moderately sized fragment in the grand scheme of things. Many outer gods in Eternal Night commanded far greater force. Since the initial rating was drawn from existing power, receiving an N seemed reasonable enough.
But —
Yu Feichen looked at the piece.
He wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, but lately his fate seemed inextricably tangled up with knights.
It had all started with Morphy’s prophecy card. Morphy — the root of all misfortune.
After that, the system fell silent. Based on what he understood so far, the City of Mist operated with its own complete internal framework. Claros had never mentioned any of this, and the City of Mist from before apparently hadn’t been like this either.
He could come and go from the grey space freely. Yu Feichen withdrew his consciousness and returned to reality, intending to gather more information.
The dark alley remained deserted.
But from the small tavern on the other side of the window came a stir — two people had sat down across from each other in a small corner booth by the window.
Through the glass, Yu Feichen saw it — above each of their shoulders floated a wisp of grey mist.
Not NPCs. Like him, they were outsiders.