Chapter 816 — Contamination

Boundless darkness surged in, like a dreamless sleep.

Yet deep within that darkness, a thread of warm, calm radiance suddenly kindled, carving out a small sanctuary.

Within the illuminated space, the figure of Selina Geer emerged, along with the swaying grass and nameless flowers on a small patch of ground around her.

Selina frowned, studying the grass and blossoms beneath her feet. From this meager light she could not tell where she was—it might be a corner of a courtyard lawn, an empty patch behind some house, or even a vast prairie. The darkness concealed the whole truth, and the Dream Lantern's glow allowed her to glimpse only the narrow space within five meters of her.

The mountain-sized Upper Narrator was gone, the eerie "Duvalt" was gone, the ruined plain was gone—even the Outland Wanderer was gone.

Selina had a faint realization—her mind must be trapped in a cage of deep consciousness.

She only wondered how things stood on Gao Yang's side... As a powerful Upper Narrator, surely He would not be trapped by such a predicament?

Selina raised the lantern in her hand a little higher, trying to see farther, but the darkness hung around her like some tangible curtain, retreating not an inch.

Suddenly, Duvalt's voice came out of the darkness:

"Do you see it... To us, this is what our world looked like at the very beginning..."

Selina held the lantern in one hand, the other instantly tracing runes to shield her mind. She scanned her surroundings warily but saw no one—only the voice continuing to come through—

"A limited truth... a limited world... a limited reality...

"We were born on the stage you had prearranged, and there we multiplied and developed; we tilled the soil and built, we created and studied; we too had our heroes, our stories, our kings and knights, our wise scholars and industrious people...

"So happily did we live upon this stage, faithfully existing according to the script, that we once believed ourselves fortunate and prosperous—but that was only because we were still far from the boundaries of this box.

"Until we touched the fence, none of us realized that we were prisoners of this world.

"Great Creator, do you feel it—do you feel what we felt when we first opened our eyes and saw this world... This little lamp lets you see the grass and flowers at your feet, and so you may optimistically imagine a whole vast prairie beyond, but what is the truth of it?

"The light of civilization spread wider, and beyond the darkness... there was nothing!!"

All at once, the dark curtain shrouding Selina dispersed, and the radiance of the Dream Lantern blazed brighter than ever before. In that suddenly expanded light, the range of Selina's vision grew rapidly; she saw the scene beyond the lawn at her feet, saw what she had not seen before—

A cage. A colossal birdcage, its floor carpeted with a small patch of lawn. She stood at the very center of this birdcage; a few more steps and she would collide with the fine, dense bars.

And beyond the bars lay absolute void.

Selina listened quietly to the voice coming from the darkness, quietly regarded the birdcage that held her imprisoned, and softly broke the silence: "So... you harbor resentment."

"No, we are grateful... because at least it was you who created this world, at least it was you who let us live and multiply here for a thousand years... But great Creator, to step out of the cage is the instinct of every intelligent life—have you ever considered that..."

"Actually, you could have left all along," Selina said suddenly. "This is only a phased test. The test subjects in the sandbox have merely had their memories washed away; you all once had your own lives and identities in the real world. If we had known in advance that being trapped inside would cause such severe psychological problems, this test could have been termin—"

"No, you still do not understand..." The voice in the darkness gradually turned icy. Selina saw many dark red lights emerge in the distance, and then those lights assembled into countless eyes; behind the eyes loomed a gigantic spider's body. She saw a monstrous, mountain-like divine spider and a boundless web appear outside the birdcage. The "god" with its eight segmented limbs came step by step to the front of the cage and looked down at her from its height, "Of course, perhaps you do understand, and are merely making a futile attempt—but none of that matters anymore.

"Today, everything will end. The Creator will sleep within this dream, the creation will leave its cradle, and we shall see the true sunlight at last. Then the story will be written to its final period..."

The colossal spider god turned its body, its long limbs gliding as though it were ready to depart. Selina could not help but cry out from within the birdcage: "Wait!

"What exactly are you...? Are you Duvalt? The Upper Narrator? Or something else?"

The spider god paused briefly in its steps and spoke as if in a low murmur: "We are Duvalt... We are also the Upper Narrator... When a god goes mad, His humanity and His divinity split apart, and we... are the part that is His humanity."

Having answered Selina's question, the mountain-like spider slowly began to walk, following the web spread across the darkness, step by step toward the distance.

"Stop! You cannot enter the real world!" Selina shouted from within the cage. "Listen, you have no idea what the consequences would be! A god descending directly into the waking world would kill countless people—your very existence alone would bring about an uncontainable catastrophe!

"Beyond that, you yourself could scarcely survive in the real world. What sustains your existence is the dreams of mortals; you are a god who lives within dreams—that is inevitable!

"And how do you plan to enter reality? All the passages are sealed, the Outland Wanderer has made his preparations, you—"

She spoke half-truths and half-lies. She did not dare hope this would truly stop the other, only that words might delay the already-awakened god, slow His steps, and buy some time for Gao Yang, wherever he might be—

She could not see where Gao Yang was, could not even sense the faintest trace of his aura, but she firmly believed that Gao Yang, as the "Outland Wanderer," might simply be trapped as she was, that he might even now be gathering strength somewhere, preparing to deal the Upper Narrator a truly fatal blow. And at this very moment, the only help she could offer was perhaps to stall for time.

But the Upper Narrator cut her off, that low murmur seeming to come from every direction:

"We no longer care, Creator.

"Perhaps you are right, but remember this: humanity is the least rational of things.

"As for the 'Outland Wanderer' you mentioned... Ah, so that is the name of that strange being... A pity—he is indeed powerful, indeed strange, but he was the first of us to be eroded, because from the very beginning we sensed the threat he posed.

"As early as when you arrived in that woven city-state, as early as when you explored the temple, the erosion began. And our visit after nightfall was the crucial link in that erosion.

"Abandon hope, Creator. The hope you rely upon no longer exists. Assimilation is complete—the mind you call the 'Outland Wanderer' has long since dissolved into this darkness."

"What..." Selina's eyes widened in shock, and even the light of the lantern in her hand dimmed slightly—yet from the great spider's tone she could detect no bluster or deliberate deception. Besides, now that she was already caged, the other seemed to have no need at all to tell a lie. This finally made her truly nervous.

"You are nervous, and dejected. Understandable," the spider god said in a low voice. "For us it is also a regret—he was a most interesting individual, an existence we could not even comprehend, but we must eliminate all..."

"Eliminate all threats—that is a good habit."