Chapter 154#

The Hunt 05#

In the deathly silence of the room, Bai Song picked up the stylus and, following his Brother Yu’s instructions, sent a message on the black slate.

[MistyMetropolis-IveArrived]: @Vincent, come find me.

A reply came shortly after.

[Vincent]: ?

[MistyMetropolis-IveArrived]: Alice Magic Academy.

[Vincent]: ……How are you still alive.

Even through the network cable, the disappointment was palpable.

A moment later, Vincent’s tone hardened.

[Vincent]: If you have something to say, come find me yourself.

[MistyMetropolis-IveArrived]: Within one hour.

Then, without paying attention to whatever Vincent was saying, Bai Song followed his instructions and sent one more message.

[MistyMetropolis-IveArrived]: The street number is Daoist Master Ling Wei’s dormitory number.

After sending it, Bai Song clicked his tongue. Inside that gear-and-clockwork castle known as “Alice Magic Academy,” he and that Daoist Master Ling Wei — who could draw talismans and had once been able to fly on a sword — had shared a dormitory room, but by now he had long since forgotten what that room number was.

So would this “Vincent” gentleman, who was suspected to be a Murphy cleric, still remember it?

Most likely yes. Ever since getting to know Brother Yu and thus coming into contact with the Paradise, he had learned to accept one thing: the differences between people could be vast.

Thinking of the clockwork castle made him think of the younger Anfield brother.

Glancing over at An Fei, who was sitting quietly in Yu Fei Chen’s arms, Bai Song thought silently — with such an unmistakable aura, why had he never recognized him before?

The mistake was rooted in having just bid farewell to Commander Anfield of Oak Valley, and then failing to recognize him when they first met Pope Ludwig at the temple, which had led to a mistaken impression of Brother Yu.

Once a bad impression is formed, it is very hard to change.

So his expectations of Brother Yu had sunk lower and lower — until today, when he finally realized that all of it had been wrong.

Bai Song sighed.

After sighing, he and Windsor stood together on the balcony, letting the breeze wash over them. Now that he knew all the identities of that beautiful elder brother, he felt far more concerned about An Fei’s condition, and could better appreciate the way Brother Yu must be feeling right now.

“If it’s really like Brother Yu described — resonating every single moment — what would that feel like?”

Windsor shook her head, and after a long while said: “I think it would depend on whether the memories from before were good or bad.”

“If they were good, it would be like a person dreaming beautiful dreams without end, yet waking each time only to realize again and again that it was all in the past, all an illusion — and that reality has already fallen to ruin.”

“If they were bad, it would be like suffering nightmare after nightmare, but each time the nightmare ends and you return to reality, you find that only a single second has passed — and the very next second, you are dragged into yet another nightmare.”

“Round and round, without end, never stopping.”

Bai Song thought about it for a long while, then bowed his head, overcome with gloom.

Inside the room, Yu Fei Chen still held An Fei just as before.

The vine kept trying to stretch out a leaf to touch An Fei’s face, or to play with his hair; Yu Fei Chen tied it into a firm knot around the drawer handle. The vine could only sulk, slapping impotently at the tabletop.

An Fei rested against him in a posture of complete, trusting relaxation.

But this was only reality. What he was encountering inside the resonance — no one could know. All Yu Fei Chen could do was ensure that nothing happened in the real world, so as not to cause further distress.

Hold him long enough, and one begins to notice: the warm body in one’s arms sometimes trembles faintly, as if in fear.

It was as though a thread reached out from within An Fei’s body and connected to his own soul — whenever this happened, Yu Fei Chen felt a strange, dull ache in his chest, like a blade dragging slowly across it. He had to draw An Fei closer, until he could feel the entirety of this person’s real, tangible existence — until An Fei’s heartbeat pressed directly against his own body — and only then would that sensation begin to ease.

Forty minutes later, Murphy found the only inn on that street. Windsor waved to him from the balcony, and an attendant told him the guests’ room number.

At the doorway, the hallway light cast Murphy’s current appearance in sharp relief.

Someone with only a passing knowledge of the Eternal Day might know of the existence of the God of Time — but they would never in a thousand years guess that this was him.

On the contrary, Yu Fei Chen or any other cleric would recognize Murphy at a glance.

——Because he had dressed himself as a painter.

A long-haired painter with one blind eye.

One eye was chestnut brown; the other a murky grey-white. He carried a canvas bag, worn but not quite falling apart, its corners smudged with paint, its zipper half-broken — revealing an oil painting on the board inside that hadn’t had time to dry properly, thoroughly smeared into chaos.

Murphy’s first words upon entering were: “Compensate me for my painting.”

On the balcony, Bai Song murmured: “Wow, he actually had the peace of mind to paint in a place like this.”

Windsor: “But I can’t see anything about this painting that warrants compensation.”

Bai Song: “Perhaps that’s what art is.”

Windsor: “Perhaps I understand art better than you do.”

Bai Song: “You’re probably right.”

Yu Fei Chen: “You could have left it behind.”

Murphy: “The light is already wrong.”

Yu Fei Chen said: “Come in.”

The moment Murphy impatiently crossed the hallway and saw the scene inside the room, he froze.

He stood rooted to the spot, so furious his eyes had gone red.

He had barely drawn a single breath before rage set his whole body trembling; he wanted nothing more than to turn and leave.

“You… you…”

The God of Time’s vocabulary for cursing people was extraordinarily impoverished. Five full seconds passed without a single coherent “you” amounting to anything.

An Fei, sensing the commotion, first raised his eyes toward the hallway, then after a moment offered Murphy a faint smile and said in a gentle voice: “You came too.”

With that, he quietly closed his eyes again, still leaning against Yu Fei Chen’s shoulder, with no intention of moving whatsoever.

Murphy startled, and his expression immediately grew grave. He crossed to the sofa in a few steps: “What’s wrong with him?”

Yu Fei Chen: “Resonance.”

“How did this happen?” Murphy’s voice dropped to the barest murmur. “Don’t disturb him. Let’s talk on the balcony.”

Yu Fei Chen told An Fei he would be stepping away for a moment.

An Fei nodded.

He was so reluctant to part from Yu Fei Chen when they were together — yet when Yu Fei Chen did leave him, he only let go gently, without trying to hold him back, as though he were accustomed to separations.

It was Yu Fei Chen, instead, who kept watching the silhouette behind the curtain through the balcony glass.

He gave Murphy a rough account of the situation: “That’s the way of it.”

“You suspect he keeps falling in, pulling himself out, then falling in again?”

Yu Fei Chen: “What would that be like?”

The subject being the chief god, they kept their words carefully vague.

“Memories of the past have been thrown into chaos by the shattering of the world. He is pulled into them, struggles free, returns to reality — and yet the very next instant is swept back into the resonance again. The time he spends in reality is a line made up of countless such instants — each one waking, only to be swallowed anew. For someone in that state, the suffering of the past is the only thing that feels real; the world of the present is nothing but a fleeting shadow.” Murphy’s hand on the railing trembled without stopping: “I have seen someone caught in deep resonance. That person’s mind shattered completely within a single second. Do you understand? In just one second, the person caught in the resonance may have traveled… ten thousand li through the past. But he can still tell what is real right now — so perhaps it’s not that dire… What I just described is the most extreme case. Something like that can’t possibly happen. Not unless his power structure is an exact match for this place.”

Yu Fei Chen: “And if it did happen?”

Murphy pressed his lips tightly together. After a long silence, he said: “You know that his will is iron — stronger than any living creature in this world.”

“But if even he himself has no way to pull himself free…” Murphy’s voice fell away, and his vacant gaze drifted toward the coal-gas lanterns swaying in the lane below.

In their flickering light, his voice returned to calm: “You and I must try every possible method together to help him come back.”

Murphy drew his gaze back and looked at Yu Fei Chen — only to find that Yu Fei Chen was already on his way back into the room.

Murphy’s words had barely landed when Yu Fei Chen paused beneath the balcony’s glass door, turned his head, and gave him a cool, indifferent sidelong glance.

Murphy: “……”

In that moment he felt Yu Fei Chen was even more disagreeable than before — and yet, somehow, at last agreeable. He was very conflicted.

Murphy: “I’ve been going through a great many texts in my memory, and the only approach that might work is to stimulate his awareness of reality to the greatest possible degree — though it may cause him further confusion and pain. The more vivid the present becomes, the more the past feels like an illusion. Once that illusion reaches a sufficient depth, his will alone should be enough to pull himself free entirely.”

With that, Murphy dragged a single armchair over and sat facing An Fei.

An Fei remained exactly as before — cool and still. The black hooded robe looked simple but was exquisitely made; his silver hair was tied back with casual ease; his gaze rested somewhere beyond the mortal world. All of it made him look like a young, prodigiously gifted mage, deep in contemplation of some profound, complex, and iconoclastic incantation.

“Do you remember the first thing you ever said to me?” Murphy’s voice was gentle.

An Fei only looked at him and said nothing.

“You asked me what I was painting. I was painting a tree. You said that in the picture you could see the complete life of a tree — from its first growth all the way to its death.”

“I said I didn’t know — I was only drawing what I could see. The doctors told me my eyes had an unknown affliction.”

An Fei continued to look at him, the faintest smile on his face.

“You said it wasn’t a disease. Only that not everyone could see it. You pointed to a corner of the painting and said that was what other people could see. As it turned out, they could only perceive one ten-millionth of what my eyes contained.” Murphy spoke softly.

An Fei remained exactly the same.

Murphy grew gentler still.

Yu Fei Chen had gone downstairs to buy An Fei a late-night dessert.

By the time he returned, the one telling stories had somehow become Windsor and Bai Song.

Murphy was drinking water. When he finished, his voice was faintly weary, his tone slightly hoarse: “I didn’t see any effect from what I said, so I let those two take over — their shared memories with him are closer to the present.”

At that moment, Bai Song had just finished telling a story about the Oak Valley Containment Facility. Windsor swiftly picked up the thread, bringing up the rule of the True Doctrine Tribunal and the Bishop of Dornpe’s former views on the protection of Omega rights.

An Fei remained just as quiet and courteous as ever, listening to their stories.

——But when Yu Fei Chen walked over, he lifted his face, his frost-blue eyes gazing at him with a still, unhurried depth.

Then he glanced at Windsor and Bai Song across from him — even casting a slow, subtle look in Murphy’s direction.

Finally, his gaze returned to Yu Fei Chen.

Yu Fei Chen read An Fei’s meaning with perfect clarity, not missing a single word of it.

Those people. So tiresome.

Yu Fei Chen set the dessert plate down on the tea table. He spoke his first words since the storytelling had begun.

“It’s time for you all to leave.”