Chapter 30 — So Many Visitors Tonight...

Gao Yang stood by the window and waited a while, until he was certain that the ylittlepony's aura had faded completely; then he let out a breath and swiftly began closing the windows.

But just as the sashes were about to meet, a dark shape shot up from below with a swoosh, accompanied by Amber's bellowing: "Hey, Uncle, I just saw a little thief—splat."

Gao Yang: "..."

A moment later, Miss Amber—her body and soul both grievously wounded—finally stood steadily on the floor. The unlucky half-elf clutched her forehead, an ice pack still pressed to her face, and glared at Gao Yang: "That's a dirty trick!"

"How was I supposed to know you'd come bursting in through the window," Gao Yang said, glancing at her. "What is it with everyone today? Doesn't anyone use the front door properly?"

"I'm a thief! You telling me to use the front door is an insult to my professional pride, isn't it?" Amber spluttered. "And I just got knocked flying by someone! You still haven't mentioned how you're going to compensate me for on-the-job injury—don't you have any shame? Are all you nobles this stingy?"

Gao Yang looked at Amber, still lively as ever, and confirmed that apart from that nasty bump against the window frame, she was really not hurt at all, so he shook his head: "I don't have money now, but once I do, I'll make it all up to you."

Before she could open her mouth, Gao Yang continued: "I'm your elder. I won't cheat you—satisfied?"

Amber's eyes went wide: "You said it. My memory's excellent!"

Gao Yang waved his hand, telling this noisy half-elf to stay put and behave, then went over to the desk and looked at the crystals spread out upon it.

There were five crystals. One was the item Miss Meitzen had handed him just now, an object kept in trust from seven hundred years ago—in theory, something important that Gao Yang Cecil had once entrusted to the Mithril Treasury's keeping. Yet for some reason, his mind held no corresponding memory of it at all. The other four crystals had been found in the study's mithril safe.

But Gao Yang did not know the origins of those latter crystals either.

His mind held memories of the mithril safe, but as for what lay inside it, all he knew was that the platinum disc was in fact a key—one that could open a warehouse that by now should be known to no one. As for the remaining crystals... he remembered only the scene of Gao Yang Cecil placing them into the safe back then; he could not recall where they had come from.

It was as though all memories connected to these crystals had been erased.

Gao Yang turned the crystals over in his hands. They were made of the same material, but in shape, the one from the Mithril Treasury was clearly intact—perfectly symmetrical, roughly the size of a palm and shaped like a spindle, though without pointed tips; at its center a faint blue radiance could still be glimpsed. The other four crystals from the safe were plainly fragments—the remains of another spindle. Gao Yang tried piecing them together and found that at best they could reconstruct two-thirds of a spindle.

"What are these?" Amber had stood by for barely a few minutes before boredom made her want to take flight; unable to restrain herself, she sidled up to Gao Yang. "Crystals, huh? But they're so dull... they look completely worthless."

Gao Yang did not even lift his head: "Thank goodness they look worthless; otherwise I'd have to silence you right now, to save you from getting ideas about them."

Amber clutched her chest in exaggerated alarm: "Wow! You nobles are so cruel!"

Gao Yang glanced at her with some curiosity: "Nobles this, nobles that, all day long—do you have some grudge against nobles?"

"No grudge. But isn't it only natural for the poor to curse the nobles?" Amber rolled her eyes. "Anyway, there's nothing else to curse, so whether it's birth, aging, sickness or death, natural disaster or man-made calamity, it's definitely all the nobles' fault. That's the rule."

Gao Yang looked at Amber with a half-smile: "That's not the manner of a poor person at all. Real paupers wouldn't dare say such things."

Amber was smug: "Of course not. Ordinary paupers can't Shadow Walk either~~~"

Gao Yang paid no attention to this fellow who ran off at the mouth and never told a single honest word; instead he waved her off to go call Rebecca upstairs.

"Call that little lord?" Amber blinked, then glanced at the crystals before Gao Yang. "Wait... don't tell me these really are worth something?"

Gao Yang knew how her mind had jumped: "Why would you think that?"

Amber's analysis was delivered with perfect confidence: "This kind of moment, this kind of atmosphere, and then you bring up that agent of the Mithril Treasury from just now—you're obviously about to set out your legacy. Don't tell me the Cecil family's foundation for a thousand generations actually rests on these crystals?"

Cold sweat broke out on Gao Yang's forehead: "If you don't go right now, I'll flatten you against the wall with my sword!"

Amber whisked into shadow and gradually dissolved into the air.

Gao Yang let out a slow breath. The noisy half-elf was finally gone, and he could be truly quiet at last, and think about the question that left him vaguely uneasy: what exactly lay behind his own "resurrection"—or rather, his "possession"?

At first he had assumed it was all coincidence: he had simply drifted through the sky until some device reached the end of its service life, whereupon the escape system had dumped him down, and he had happened to fall right into somebody's ancestral tomb. But now it seemed... perhaps his arrival had indeed been an accident, but the resurrection of Gao Yang Cecil was not.

A man fated to a limited lifespan—and who in fact had died very young—would not purchase a permanent custody arrangement at the Mithril Treasury.

Unless he had known long ago that one day he would come back for his own belongings.

Of course, it was also possible he simply had money to burn... but that possibility was too remote to be worth considering.

Gao Yang's finger moved unconsciously across the desk, tracing out three Chinese characters: Who am I?

Gao Yang, from Earth, died in a plane crash in his previous life, crossed over to this place—though the principles of it were still unclear—and first hung in the sky for many tens of thousands of years, watching the seas turn to mulberry fields in this world. Then he possessed a human body and became Gao Yang Cecil; so far it had been barely two months.

His memories fit together seamlessly, his personality was unimpaired, his logic clear and without flaw.

So it was not the situation he feared most.

Then the problem must lie with Gao Yang Cecil—his resurrection... could it be that I, this Visitor from the Sky, have botched it?

Thinking carefully, a man whose flesh did not decay for seven hundred years after death was itself a considerable puzzle. Perhaps that legendary figure had arranged, seven hundred years ago, to resurrect himself on some future day—say, when his unworthy descendants were about to squander the family's foundation, or when those nation-destroying monsters came surging back and tore through the defensive line, or when both disasters struck at once—and in the spirit of dying in harness, to go on protecting his homeland. But for all his calculations, he had missed one thing: a soul that was a satellite turned spirit had happened to fall right on top of him...

Put that way, it was quite likely!

Gao Yang knitted his brows, running through all sorts of possibilities in his mind, but the vast majority of them could not be verified.

The only thing that could be verified was that he was still himself.