Chapter 1530 — One Story, Two Tellers

Before the shadow throne that loomed tall as a mountain, Verodai, perched atop the stone pillar, suddenly fell silent—and it was nearly a full minute before he managed to produce a sentence: "That joke of yours isn't the least bit funny, my lady—if even an ancient deity such as yourself can call herself a 'mortal,' then are there any gods left in this world at all?"

"The essence of godhood lies not in the strength of one's power, and still less in whether one is ancient—the dragons have a history stretching back over two million years, and the oldest dragon alive today is in fact my contemporary, yet they remain mortals, simply because they possess mortal minds and live along mortal 'trajectories,'" Lady Night said in a leisurely tone, as though she were merely chatting with an old friend about the passage of years. "All things in this world have their own trajectories; gods walk the road of gods, mortals walk the road of mortals—but these trajectories are not impassable."

"Mr. Great Adventurer, I crossed the boundary many, many years ago—though I had a bit of tiny assistance from the Pathfinder at the time, judging by the results, I long ago ceased to fit this world's definition of 'the gods.'"

"Crossed the boundary… you bring up that phrase from time to time," Verodai said, half comprehending. Then something seemed to strike him. "Wait—does that mean you could actually help the mortals of this era…"

"No," Lady Night cut the Great Adventurer off. "As for why—you said it yourself just now: 'this era.' I do not belong to this era, Mr. Great Adventurer. I am a ghost who has scraped along from antiquity to the present. Even if this ghost is no longer a god, I cannot complete on behalf of this era's mortals what they ought to do themselves. The fact that I can act to this extent already amounts to exploiting a loophole—only because I found a glimmer of 'connection' in the mortal world of this era can I intervene in its present affairs."

"Found a 'connection' in the mortal world of this era…" Verodai mused. "I don't quite understand. This connection you speak of—could it be…"

"If you don't understand, then don't—it's no great matter," Lady Night said with a slight shake of her head. She seemed to have lost interest in the topic, or perhaps was hinting that the Great Adventurer should not press further. She casually picked up the scepter she had set beside the throne, summoned a shadow rift, and gently wiped the scepter's head, her voice low. "I have already done all I can to pave the road ahead for them, but the greatest challenge of all… they must still overcome on their own. There is only so much a ghost can do."

Verodai quietly regarded this ancient deity who bore the weight of heavy years and had honored an ancient oath through nearly eternal time, and only after a long while could he not help but speak: "Are you wiping the blood off that stick?"

"I told you—it is first and foremost a scepter," Lady Night corrected at once, with the utmost seriousness.

Verodai thought it over and reflected that the other party had not actually denied there was blood on the stick—and by stressing "first and foremost a scepter," the implication was most likely that this scepter could secondarily serve as a bludgeon, correct…

But he had no interest in bickering back and forth with an ancient god. Watching this lady before him wipe her weapon while softly humming some ancient ballad, as though in excellent spirits, he naturally chose to seize the opportunity to ask about matters that interested him: "That exploration team… will they be able to find Cinderfall City without trouble?"

"Since I have already sent out the invitation, of course I will let them find that city," Lady Night replied offhandedly. "Why? Are you looking forward to it?"

"The last time I looked forward to something this much seems to have been several hundred years ago," Verodai said in a wistful tone. "Sometimes even I find it incredible when I recall it—I style myself a Great Adventurer, I fancy that my whole life has been spent adventuring far and wide, but the reality is that I have lain quietly before your throne for several hundred years. In all those centuries I have not taken half a step out of this desert, have not visited a single unknown realm. The only thing I have done is tell you stories—story after story, long since yellowed, long since blurred."

"My lady, you knew from the very beginning—this is not the state befitting 'Verodai the Great Adventurer.' I have been stalled here far too long. From my own perspective, more than half of my life has been spent in this state of stagnation."

"That is because you yourself cannot move or leave," Lady Night said, pausing her wiping of the scepter and lowering her gaze slightly. "Even until not long ago—until this cage in the crevice drew a little nearer the border of reality—did you only just have the chance to briefly leave the throne and journey to the edge of dreams, no?"

"That my body cannot leave is one matter; that my heart has accepted and approved of the status quo is another," Verodai said, refusing to let Lady Night's deflection deter him. "I lie quietly here until the pages yellow, and it is said I am trapped in this place—but in truth I have been calmly accepting the status quo all along, because the part of me that craves adventure is not here… That impulse is on 'the other side.' His name is Mojin. He has wandered the world for several hundred years, witnessed countless wonders never recorded on my pages, and even now he is still on his journey, never halting.

"But at the same time, he cannot fully record any single one of his adventures. His centuries of adventuring are less adventures than a dazed, aimless wandering. He has seen many things, yet often after some dream or another they dissolve in the sunlight. He says he still keeps the habit of journaling, but those precious notes are always lost or damaged for one reason or another.

"My lady, ever since my memories began to recover and my thoughts grew clear during this recent period, I have been thinking—how exactly was 'Mojin Verodai' split into two halves? Now I seem to have vaguely worked it out, and I suspect… it was your doing."

Lady Night had already set the scepter back beside the throne. From behind the dark clouds she quietly overlooked the tiny book before the throne, as though gazing at a splash of water so brief as to be insignificant from the end of the river of time. Had she been a deity operating strictly by the rules, she surely would not have lavished any superfluous attention on so tiny a being—yet her humanity softened her gaze in the end, and she broke the silence: "A person is composed of two parts, Mr. Great Adventurer.

"One part is called 'curiosity.' Curiosity points toward the unknown future; it forever yearns to set out on the road, and it will pursue without ever stopping. The other part is called 'memory.' Memory guards the past; it records every stretch of scenery a person has witnessed in this life, and it is the proof that a person once existed in this world. It is precisely because of these two parts that mortals can possess the drive to move forward—and also the capacity to record and distill history."

"So you divided my 'curiosity' from my 'memory,' leaving me neither to walk toward the future nor to be trapped in the past, but forever stalled in the 'present,'" Verodai said, a vague understanding dawning. "Because only in the 'present' do I exist?"