Volume 3: The Land of Mist Chapter 37: On the Outside
Long, long ago, Remedios wanted to throw herself into the sacred fire of the Phoenix like her fellow tribesmen, so as to end the torment she had suffered for so many years as soon as possible.
Five hundred years is the "deadline" that most of the high elves have set for themselves, and this deadline is based on the loss of the concept of "emotion".
Emotion is a consumable. It is carried by beautiful memories and slowly accumulated in the first half of life. Then it is worn out, consumed and forgotten bit by bit in the days that follow.
Emotional memories are all vivid, but perhaps it takes more energy to remember those vivid memories. In order to reduce the burden of memories on the soul, those vivid memories began to fade in her mind after a few hundred years, and finally only simple logic remained.
She still remembered that the first time she met the Judge was in the forest of Ravenwood, where he saved her life from the demon pigs. But she couldn't remember what the weather was like that day, whether the air was filled with the unique fragrance of the forest's soil. She also couldn't remember whether the wind carried the melodious singing of birds on the branches, allowing her to lean against the tree safely and enjoy the rare peace after being on the verge of life and death.
She was rescued from the demon pigs by a human named William Kane - this was the only information she remembered now. It was like a document written on parchment and sealed with wax to be preserved forever.
Just dry records.
Sometimes she couldn't even figure out why she joined the End Watchers, an organization that seemed very suspicious at the time, just because of this incident?
That's it. No matter how beautiful, bright, and touching the memories are, after being baptized by the long years, they will become cold logic of behavior.
What could be more terrible than forgetting?
Generally speaking, after more than 400 years, many high elves could no longer tolerate their increasingly vague memories and increasingly thin emotions, and chose to participate in the Holy Fire Ceremony in advance.
It took Remedios about four hundred years to completely forget the voices of her former friends, and eight hundred years to completely forget their appearances. Then, she spent another hundred years to completely confirm that her emotions had completely dried up.
Nothing could stir up any emotion in her anymore.
She originally thought so...
but… …
"Don't be stupid, I'm back."
The moment this voice echoed, Remedios's past memories seemed to come alive again.
She looked at the person who suddenly appeared in front of her.
"Your Excellency, the presiding judge?"
But it’s impossible…
The closed loop on her side was not woven completely, and she had not yet written her will into the cyclical time, making it a phenomenon that existed in this world like the rising and setting of the sun. She had not yet connected William Kane 1,008 years ago with the concept of the Eighth Holy Spirit, making him the "Eighth Holy Spirit" and returning to the world.
So who is this person in front of me who looks like William Kane?
"Is this really you?"
She asked, seeming a little excited and a little scared.
"Who else could it be?"
The man answered briefly.
"But I haven't yet..."
At this point, she hesitated for a moment, then asked directly:
"So, what they say is true? You left us just to find a way to ascend to godhood?"
Otherwise there is no way to explain why the other party appears here.
The layers of time are not separated by clear boundaries like water and oil. It is more like two glasses of water poured together, containing each other. In other words, traveling through different layers of time is not about going from one place to another, but about changing your perspective on everything in the world.
This sounds easy, but if the difficulty of crossing the World Shell to other planes is like putting your finger from the oil layer into the water layer; then changing your perspective on time is probably as difficult as using the naked eye to distinguish which drop of water from two mixed cups was poured from the first cup.
At least technically, this is something that cannot be done.
Only by making yourself the spokesperson of the Holy Spirit, the king of nothingness, and transcending the constraints of cause and effect and time, can you appear here.
"They? Who?"
William grumbled for a moment, then asked directly:
"You think I'm a god?"
The other party nodded and said:
"Otherwise, how did we get here?"
William smiled faintly and said:
"You also came here of your own will. Does that mean you are actually a god too?"
Remedios shook her head and said:
"My situation is somewhat special, and there is a shortcut."
Ritual magic, anthropomorphic worship of the Holy Spirit…
And the fragments of creation that are still intact... the soul.
The Mist Spirit is a relatively intact fragment of the creation.
People who died in it will keep reappearing. Based on this property, some scholars speculate that she may have some connection with the holy spirit "the dead" that symbolizes memory, and may be a part that was not completely broken when the world was created.
As long as they are in the mist spirit, mortals can walk in a cycle with themselves as the observation axis, temporarily becoming part of the cycle time. If they end their lives in it, they can completely become part of this cycle time.
This is why those who died in the mist of Ava will reappear in the world as mist ghosts.
The essence of the fog ghost is not some strange spirit, but just a phenomenon.
Now Remedios relied on this to temporarily step into it.
William heard this and spread his hands and said:
"So I came here through the mist spirit just like you."
I have to admit that this is an extremely wonderful experience.
When William stepped into the egg-shaped thick fog earlier, although he could clearly feel that he was still in the throne room, the scenery he could see was far more than just everything around him.
Going back along his own time, William arrived at that afternoon one thousand and eight years ago after skipping a long gap.
This was when I left.
However, the strange thing is, or not strange is that this is his limit. William can only see nothingness when he traces back further. He cannot see the birth of his own character as he theoretically can.
It should be emphasized that this is not time travel, because the retracing based on cyclic time will not cause any changes to the past or the future.
But he can only see "everything" that he knows, and can only "see" everything that he knows.
If he wants to make a change, he must consume a huge amount of fuel to bend his timeline into a closed circle and become a part of the cyclic time.
But by then, he will be a phenomenon.
Phenomena are phenomena precisely because they do not need to rely on individual will to exist.
Even if millions of bright lights are lit at the same time to illuminate the night, the night is still not the day - this is not something that can be changed by human power.
But from another perspective, this also proves that personal will is a product of causal time.
William, who felt a headache, did not think about these questions anymore. He looked at the image of Remedios in front of him and frowned slightly.
At this moment, Remedios was like a Parkinson's patient riding on a roller coaster, using a cheap SLR camera to take a picture of a human figure through a layer of frosted glass - only a rough outline could be barely seen.
This is probably the phenomenon that appears when countless selves overlap on the timeline.
Thinking of this, William looked down at his hands.
A normal hand, without even the slightest ghosting.
If there is a third person like the reader, looking at the two of them from a God's perspective, he or she will see a dazzling shadow looking at a complete person.
William does not exist at all times at the same time like the other person does. He is himself, independent and unique.
It's like an outsider hanging outside of any system.
