Chapter 777 — Shattered Memories

Those scattered, broken memories were like a flash of lightning that suddenly split the darkness—a flash that lit up countless shadowy, long-hidden things. Torn, fragmentary, incomplete as they were, some intuition welling up from the depths of his heart let Gao Yang realize in an instant what they were—

They were the record of that mysterious voyage. Or rather, a part of the record.

Victoria's voice drifted faintly away, but Gao Yang's mind had already sunk deep into those images, which had already begun to dissolve.

He "saw" an unfamiliar stretch of beach, jagged with grotesque rocks, utterly desolate. A winding cliff and a steep slope strewn with rubble ran down from the distance; on the other side, the sea heaved gently, wave after fine wave lapping at the reefs near the shore. The glow of approaching dawn was rising from the horizon, and sunlight tinged with a hint of magnificence fell upon the cliff and the slope, gilding the whole world in gold.

A vast three-masted ship lay at anchor on the distant water. Broad-hulled, its shell covered in runes and arcane lines, it bore the marks of storm and sea that declared it belonged to the Church of Storms. It rested steady on the gently heaving surface; the fine swells could not stir it in the least.

Gao Yang "walked" into that memory and found himself standing on the beach, surrounded by many shadowy figures—all shrouded in a hazy black mist, their faces indistinct. They were talking of long voyages, of weather, and each voice brought him a faint sense of familiarity, yet he could not recall a single name to match any of them.

It was as though those names had been wiped clean from his subconscious; even recalling fragments of memory could not recover them.

Memory could not be disturbed, could not be altered, and Gao Yang did not know how to make those shadowy black shapes take clear form. He could only follow where memory led, continuing to "walk" deeper.

The moment of departure seemed to have come.

A boarding boat had appeared on the beach at some point. Gao Yang climbed in with those mist-veiled figures, and they set off toward the great ship in the distance.

The sun was gradually leaping up from the sea; night had almost entirely retreated, and the scene on the water grew ever clearer. Yet even so, a lantern with a blurred, hazy outline still hung from the bow of the little boat, swaying there as if it were dispelling some darkness that did not exist—Gao Yang's gaze was drawn involuntarily to that dim blob of light, while the conversation of those around him reached his ears:

"...This is probably the *Stormchild*'s last voyage... I hope all goes well..."

"It will. She has the finest pilot-priests—many pilot-priests—and the final blessing besides..."

"But the pilots may also lose themselves in the deep... Everyone has lost their protection now. Even the children of the sea are no exception."

"It doesn't matter. ... is protecting the priests' minds, and even if one goes mad... there's another to take his place."

"And if they all go mad?"

"...Then all we have left is courage..."

"Ha—then I'd say things aren't so bad."

Someone laughed heartily, a laugh broad and deep as the ocean waves. Gao Yang "saw" his remembered self laugh along with them—these laughing men in the boarding boat, facing the first light of dawn, as if bound for a feast worth looking forward to. Yet a word surfaced in Gao Yang's mind: the doomed.

He was stunned for a moment before he realized the word was not his own. It came from the deepest memory of Gao Yang Cecil—the most profound impression of that pioneer from seven hundred years ago, in the moment before he boarded the great ship—

Then the image shattered. What followed was a comparatively long darkness and a tangled chaos of shifting light and shadow.

Gao Yang thought that was all he would be permitted to see, but after a span of darkness, the memory had a continuation after all—

A three-masted sailing ship lay near the coastline. Gao Yang recognized it as the very ship that had been preparing to put out to sea in the previous memory.

Yet compared with the beautiful, magnificent vessel of departure, the ship was now a wreck—most of the runes protecting her hull had gone dark; one mast was snapped clean through; the tattered sails trailed over the gunwale like a burial shroud; and the magically blessed wooden deck and hull were riddled with alarming cracks and holes, as though the whole ship were on the verge of breaking apart.

She seemed to have weathered more than one terrible storm, and the storms had left her tottering. Had a very faint, thin curtain of light not still covered her hull, holding back the surging seawater and barely preserving her structure, she would surely have broken up and gone down before ever nearing the coast.

In a flicker of vision, Gao Yang found himself seated in the little boat again—only this time it was pulling away from the great ship, drawing in toward the shore.

The giant sun had already sunk; the glaring crimson light of sunset spilled from one side of the cliff and poured across the glittering sea, till the leagues of ocean seemed soaked in blood—soaked through to the bottom of a man's heart.

That hazy, blurred lantern still hung at the bow, swaying against the sunset as if dispelling some unseen darkness.

Apart from Gao Yang himself, only three figures remained in the boat now. Every other place... was empty.

No one spoke. The atmosphere was dreadful in its heaviness, and as a passerby within the memory, Gao Yang could not bring himself to break that silence.

Only when the boat was nearly ashore did one of the figures speak and shatter the quiet: "Almost there."

Someone beside him echoed: "Yes. Almost there."

"There is always a time for parting," said the third figure. Though his shape was indistinct, his gaze seemed to rest on Gao Yang. "Things are not so bad. At least you came back alive."

Gao Yang felt his own throat move. Overlapping with the memory, he heard a familiar yet strange voice come from "his own" mouth: "You paid a tremendous sacrifice."

"...That was more or less expected. I just never thought the sea would be such a dangerous place once we were utterly without protection..." one figure said. "As for our sacrifice... don't weigh it on your heart. Compared with ours, the sacrifice you made was just as great."

Gao Yang Cecil's voice was low and solemn: "I hope it was all worth it."

The figure who had first spoken shook his head: "There's no 'worth it' or 'not worth it'—only whether you do it or not. We are small creatures, so perhaps all we can do are small things. But compared with sitting and waiting for death, taking some action is always a little more meaningful."

Another figure teased him: "Ha—'Philosopher,' forcing out another deep thought on us!"

But the shadow they called "Philosopher" said nothing more, as though he had fallen into thought.

Silence followed for a time, and in that silence the boat came to shore at last. The four of them leaped onto land, and for a moment they simply looked at one another, wordless.

This time it was Gao Yang Cecil who broke the quiet first: "Have you thought about what will become of all this afterward?"

"I can't imagine it yet," one figure said, shaking his head. "...We've scattered. At the very least, we must... find our way back... our kin are in..."

The voices and images in the memory suddenly grew fitful and broken, and the light around him began to flicker bright and dim. Gao Yang knew that this shattered memory had finally reached its true end. He strained to concentrate, picking out every syllable he could hear, and amid the faint lapping of the waves a blurred voice came through:

"That wall can still hold for a few hundred years, perhaps even a thousand... Maybe before then our descendants will have grown strong, and the troubles that beset us today need not beset them."

It was the voice of Gao Yang Cecil.