Volume 7 - CH 117.5

When Shen Yünjü and Ye Lan look around, they discover that there are actually bystanders looking at the spectacle.

Maybe they’re curious, simply joining the crowd, maybe they’re potential participants, but they’re still conflicted inside for various reasons.

The two of them look at each other, and quickly head for a spectator each to ask about this place.

A few minutes later, they group back up and exchange information.

“The ‘Impurities Cult,'” Shen Yünjü says with a heavy tone, “they seem to be… waiting, for some kind of miracle?”

“Raining Hellfire.”

Ye Lan replies by reflex. She finds herself stunned by the answer, because she does not know why she knows the phrase, or why she would utter it at this moment.

She tries to work out the reasons she may utter the word… maybe the disaster they went through was the Raining Hellfire?

Why would she be aware, though? Why is it that she knows?

It’s ridiculous, but as the shock passes, she merely appears frozen for a second before returning normal, and murmurs, “could it… relate to our missing memories?”

Shen Yünjü adds, “was it like a déjà vu for a specific moment in time?” Then he goes silent, before explaining, “I don’t know why I said that, but it feels like the correct way to describe this phenomenon. It’s almost like… I’ve been through something that exploited déjà vus.”

He is clearly bewildered by this, though, bewildered because he both finds this disquieting and also, completely normal. The grey fog has only clouded his memories, but not his instincts and senses. His mind feels that it is normal, and he should know this.

He only forgot; or more specifically, something is blocking access to his eyes, to his brain, so he cannot see, so he cannot remember.

Shen Yünjü finds his thoughts digressing a little, but then he shakes his head, saying, “all that aside,” he stresses, “we still have half an hour.”

“Raining Hellfire…” Ye Lan repeats the phrase rather slowly, “if the disaster lives up to its rather ominous name, then there is likely no escape.”

Shen Yünjü tries to recap everything, “so these believers of the Impurities Cult, are waiting here for the Raining Hellfire to come.

They will die in the disaster, and then immediately be reborn, repeating the experience for eternity… that is absolutely nightmarish.”

“We should try to leave as soon as possible.”

Shen Yünjü nods in agreement.

Some kind of danger sense is also urging him.

He thinks about it, and says, “so about the door… the person I asked said that there are streets further out from here, and I’m sure there are doors there.”

“But that does not relate to what is happening here,” Ye Lan replies quickly and calmly, “the door that let me leave the previous scene was directly related to the incident inside that scene.”

Shen Yünjü, looking over at the centre of the plaza, murmurs, “but, there are no doors to be found here.”

Ye Lan furrows her brows, looking hesitant. She thinks for a moment, and says, “could it be… that the door does not physically exist?”

“So something only superficially or metaphorically serving as a door? Like a passageway? Or a simple road?” Shen Yünjü asks, “can you think of something like that?”

Ye Lan looks straight at the centre of the plaza.

Countless people dressed in black robes sit there, looking like ants under the blue skies, and they certainly are about equally vulnerable when considering how easily the thing falling from the sky would reap their lives.

Then Ye Lan narrows her eyes, and mumbles, “a passageway?”

She extends her fingers, and puts it in front of her. She closely watches as her fingertips depict what looks like a gargantuan object falling down from the great beyond of the sky down through to the middle of the plaza.

With a slow, confused tone, she says, “a road?”

Shen Yünjü sees what she is doing and falls into thought, wondering hesitantly, “you’re talking about… the trail, of the thing that fell? Its pathway?”

“A pathway that connects the earth to the heavens,” Ye Lan replies, “like a door that is not a door.”

Shen Yünjü gulps at the rather outlandish nature of this suggestion. Nervous, and perhaps sounding a little defeated, he meekly says, “it’s right in the middle of the Raining Hellfire,” but then a moment he later, he firmly says, “let’s go, then…”

Ye Lan is surprised by this in turn.

“We have no other choice,” Shen Yünjü says dryly, “we’ll have to go and try. It’ll take about all the time we have left just to reach it now.”

Ye Lan wants to say it is merely a sparkle, a figment born of hot fever dreams. Look around at this empty place without any signs of doors. It can’t be helped her thoughts are digressing from reality greatly.

But then again, they call them ‘doors,’ but it is actually the way out it opens up to, that they truly need.

The way——Would the trail of the thing that falls down, count as a way?

She is merely postulating intuitively from the lexical definition of the words they are using.

She wasn’t even expecting Shen Yünjü to run with the idea.

Not that they have any other options.

Shen Yünjü can’t come up with other possibilities, so he’s willing to try Ye Lan’s suggestion out. Even if they die, there is insight to be gained.

They turn around, and return to where the robed men and women assemble.

Perhaps they are happy that they have ‘come around,’ the cultists do not object to their ‘jumping the queue’ towards the centre.

Over twenty minutes later, they finally reach the small, empty zone in the middle of the plaza, about three metres squared in area at best; circular, and filled with the cultists from its circumference and out.

Shen Yünjü sighs in relief. He would throw the heavy robe away if he could, as the heat is really getting to him now.

After gasping, he looks up at the sky quietly. And so does Ye Lan. They are waiting for the object to come.

Seven or eight minutes later, some kind of strange buzzing sound can be heard. It’s still quiet but the tone is sharp. It’s like if someone has turned air into guitar strings, and wind into fingers, performing some rather atrocious piece of music.

The music gradually worsens in severity.

Shen Yünjü can hear Ye Lan saying quickly, “the thing… is falling!”

He narrows his eyes to search immediately, and then realises, he doesn’t even need to do that. The object is already here, right in front of his eyes. It’s just shy of a hundred metres away now, perhaps, and still continuing to widen in his eyes quickly.

It’s an oval object perhaps ten metres in diameter at its widest. Some kind of sleek, metallic finish smoothly covers its surface.

The smoothness runs out at its edges, which are quite rough, and looks to have some strange symbols carved in.

What really is this thing?

Shen Yünjü would like to look more closely, but they’re out of time. The object is already making contact. The sky has darkened out. Air is pushed away at great volumes.

Yet the very moment the object is about to strike them on the head, a surge of grey fog peters out the impact;

The fog covers up the sun, covers up the object, covers up all the insane people dressed in black robes.

There looks to be the silhouette of a door inside the fog.

Ye Lan exclaims, “we were right!”

Shen Yünjü sighs, greatly relieved, and says, “thanks to your imagination.”

Ye Lan smiles a little, as they walk towards the door together.

When they open their eyes up, they discover, to their shock, that this place——looks weird?