Volume 4: The End of the World Chapter 70: Silence
Building three star lighthouses was the only condition that the Empire proposed to Ravenwood after the conquest of Terra. It was not negotiable.
"Of course, you can refuse, but we will build a lighthouse on the remains of your corpses. So, please do not regard our reminder as a threat... This is not a threat, but a declaration."
This was what the great sage Ye Zhi, the first chairman of the Star Council, declared to the rulers of the forest elves.
They cut down trees, set up barriers to block out vigorous vitality, used traditional wooden materials to build skeletons, burned trees to enclose land... When building these three star lighthouses, the empire trampled on almost every sacred tradition of the forest elves. Even the laborers who built the lighthouses were prisoners of war from the forest elves.
Therefore, for many years afterwards, the forest elves regarded the three star lighthouses as a symbol of shame for being conquered by the empire. Even now, more than 800 years later, even though the magic enlightenment ceremony of the star lighthouses is also open to forest elves, few forest elves choose to become magic chanters.
"However, in my side of the world, you are such an outlier. You are a lucky person who can communicate with the power of the World Tree, but you still choose to study the universal magic of humans."
After jumping off the Fright Bird, Ebony said this to Flora beside him.
Floro Kane on this side is also such a person, which really makes people want to sigh.
However, Flora did not reply. She raised her head and looked at the huge lighthouse with a dark top.
The shape of the Healer Star Beacon is like a winged scepter with a coiled snake, and its shape is slender and elegant.
On weekdays, its top would shine with green and silver light. For magic casters, this lighthouse would allow them to sense such a node that communicated with the Astral Healer Constellation through the etheric domain from a very far distance.
People whose numerology constellation is Healer can rely on their communication and resonance with the astral world to continuously guide creative qualities from the astral world to the human world.
However, at this moment , whether from the top of the lighthouse or from the perception of her own etheric domain, Flora could not observe any light.
"There's something seriously wrong there."
After many unsuccessful attempts to sense it, Flora made a preliminary judgment.
"But this has nothing to do with us, right?"
Ebony's voice behind her made Flora turn around. Her calm eyes made the other party panic for a moment, and then the tall beast spirit hunter immediately continued:
"Even if there is any problem with the lighthouse, we only need to go east along the Green and Gold Avenue. It is only a few kilometers away from the Jade Province boundary marker. Like you said before... the end of the world."
Hearing this, Flora sighed slightly, then shook her head and said:
" Although what you said is not wrong...but don't you think this is a bit too coincidental?"
She said as she continued looking towards the lighthouse.
In the hundreds of years since the establishment of the Star Law, the sudden extinguishing of lighthouses can be said to be a rare occurrence. Except for those lighthouses that were extinguished by the Star Council due to local rebellions to cut off the magic enlightenment and promotion of the local government, only large-scale disasters that are rarely seen in a century will occasionally cause similar things to happen.
At this moment, they had just headed towards the border of Ravenwood along the Green Gold Avenue, intending to conduct an investigation there, when the Star Lighthouse at the last node went out without any warning. Moreover, at this moment, everything was silent near the Star Lighthouse of the Physician Seat, and it didn't look like any tragic disaster would happen.
Wait... everything is quiet?
Thinking of this, Flora suddenly turned her head to look at Ebony beside her. At this moment, the other party was looking at her with the same expression.
“It’s too quiet around here.”
As Ebony spoke, he arched his back slightly, and the beast tattoos on his body moved. A translucent long-horned beast skull appeared on his head, looking like a deer or a lion. The beast's ears trembled slightly, as if it wanted to receive all the sounds around it into its eardrums.
"There was no sound at all. No insects chirping, birds singing, or wild animals trampling on branches... There was really no sound at all in the direction of the lighthouse. It was completely silent . No, it was even quieter than silence."
Ebony said in a low voice.
"I remember that the tower guard of the Healer's Seat is about to be promoted to a legend, and he has an elite response team under him. No matter what happened, it is impossible that no sound could be heard."
Hearing this, Flora also lowered her voice and spoke.
Not only was there no sound from any living creature, there wasn't even the rustling of leaves swaying in the wind.
"So what's next? You're not going to investigate in that lighthouse?"
Ebony asked, somewhat worriedly.
Based on his experience as a hunter, it didn't seem like a wise move to just step into a star lighthouse with such a strange atmosphere to investigate.
As for Ebony's question, for the first time, a larger expression appeared on Flora's face - if I had to describe it, it would be a look of surprise similar to "Are you crazy?"
"Why do you have such an idea? An unknown existence that can quietly extinguish the Star Lighthouse and completely silence the elite mage troops guarding the Star Lighthouse... no matter how you look at it, we should avoid it, right?"
Ebony, who was inexplicably regarded as a reckless man by the other party, stood there in a daze for a few seconds, then opened his mouth, intending to ask back, who was it that suddenly said "Look at what happened near the lighthouse, I'm still a little worried"?
However, as his lips closed and his vocal cords trembled, he was unable to utter even the slightest sound.
Not only did I fail to make any sound when I opened my mouth, but almost in an instant, my breathing, heartbeat, even my footsteps and the friction of my clothes all lost all sound.
He felt that the surroundings were completely silent; even the slightest sound disappeared without a trace.
It is a silence that is even quieter than silence.
Dead silence...
Wu Mu still remembers that when he was a child, he would close his eyes and cover his ears while playing hide-and-seek with his playmates, waiting for them to hide. But even if he blocked his ears completely, he could still hear a buzzing sound.
But at this moment, even the tinnitus caused by auditory hallucination disappeared completely.
""
Ebony's mouth kept opening and closing, trying desperately to say something to Flora who was walking in front of him, but after a long period of futile efforts, in the end, all he could produce was a dead silence.
He couldn't make a sound.
The staggered footsteps seemed to be stepping into the void, without any sound. Ebony rushed forward a few steps awkwardly and patted Floral's shoulder.
Then, he looked at his hand that was patting the other person's shoulder and felt a strange touch.
In fact, the touch was not strange, but because he could not hear any sound, he subconsciously felt that when he patted the other person's shoulder, he should have patted something thin and soft, and not the dry and hard touch like a mummy.
But even though he patted the other person's shoulder, Flora still didn't look back. She craned her neck to look at the turned-off star lighthouse, without even a moment's gaze away - which made Ebony look over there as well.
Then, in the eyes of the two people, the magnificent and elegant lighthouse quietly collapsed in the next moment, just like a building block tower with its key foundation removed.
Against the backdrop of a sickly moon that looked like a dead fetus, a woman wrapped in a black veil made of thick smoke was floating alone in the air, staring at them quietly.
You will die...
The beast spirits imprinted on their bodies immediately came to this simple conclusion the moment they sensed that ominous existence.
There was no mouth on the woman's face, but the moment he saw her, Ebony felt that his soul wanted to let out a terrifying scream.
