The woman raised her normal hand and took off the silver mask on her face. That face belonged to Sera. Lu Ning saw a third expression on her face - an empty yet pure smile.
"Long time no see, Lu Ning."
"It shouldn't have been long." Lu Ning looked at her and realized the fact, "Have you become a demon?"
"Yes, but it doesn't affect us at all, does it? Let's go back to town and we can talk slowly."
Sera let some crows fly to Lu Ning's side. The power of these crows was so great that just a dozen of them lifted Lu Ning into the air. The two sat on the flock of birds and flew to Baihu Town while looking down from the sky. , except that all the vegetation has withered, nothing else has changed.
It only took more than ten minutes for the two of them to land at the entrance of the town. The old buildings had already become more dilapidated, but before Lu Ning could take a closer look, a scene appeared that surprised her.
A piece of wall suddenly fell off a house not far to the left, but it was not accurate to say that, because what Lu Ning saw was that a piece of wall suddenly disappeared, and a pile of black dirty patches appeared on the ground. It was strange. What's more, the entire process of the wall peeling off was completed in her mind.
"Don't look at that thing for too long, otherwise you will doubt the authenticity of this world." Sierra pulled Lu Ning forward quickly.
No one could be seen on the street, and the houses were all abandoned and ashes. It wasn't until she returned to the tin-plated jug that Lu Ning felt that this place hadn't changed much. This was one of the few buildings in the town that hadn't been abandoned.
"Everyone doesn't come out much anymore, but they still retain some of the old things... I remember that you seem to like drinking mead?"
This feels weird. Lu Ning looked at Sera, whose tone sounded like she was chatting with an old friend she hadn't seen for many years. Although this was true in terms of time, didn't she also attack him in the forest not long ago?
Lu Ning asked this question.
"that is you?"
Sera's answer made her startled, and then she remembered that she had been sitting in the driver's seat. Sera appeared from behind the car, but of course she didn't see who was driving. And the RV was probably already blurred in her memory.
"Yes."
"I just accidentally got the call of the coordinates, and then I went over to take a look and chased for a while." Sierra took out the well-maintained bartending tools behind the bar. "If I knew it was you, I probably wouldn't chase him."
She did not start mixing wine, but poured a glass of mead from another bucket. The wine became more fragrant and rich after years of polishing, but Lu Ning had no intention of tasting it and just frowned.
"What is going on here? The house just now..."
"Before that, why don't you tell me what you know? I'm curious about what you knew at that time... We are all demons, and there is no need to hide any secrets." Sera started to mix drinks, and This process was more complicated than anything Lu Ning had ever seen before.
Lu Ning took a deep breath, and the sweet fragrance calmed her mind a little. She removed the previous abnormality from her mind and expressed her guess. Of course, she retained the part about the identity of the distribution center.
After she explored the lakeside cabin and learned some information about the witch from Lima, she had a guess, which now seems to have been basically confirmed.
First of all, the biggest information trap set by the distribution center for tourists is witches and devils.
There is not even a single word mentioned in the information from the human side that it is related to the witch. Except for the title of the scene where the witch returns, all the clues pointing to the mission are the demon. And solving the root cause of the problem in the optional mission is naturally and logically attributed to "solving the witch". It is not uncommon for this kind of distribution center to provide some prophetic information in the scene.
This is wrong. The first mistake is what Inahara Ayano pointed out before. The root of the solution for humans is not to solve the witch, but to eradicate the town where the witch has been entangled for a long time. However, she did not realize that the second This question is the source of the first error.
The "witches" that tourists think of are all demons.
Through the metaphorical information in the distribution center, humans have experienced the most serious cognitive separation from the townspeople, that is, they treat the witches in the townspeople's legends as the so-called returning witches in the mission. However, the witch that the distribution center thinks and the townspeople think are not the same thing at all. Those who have mastered the power in the previous legends are all demons born under the resonance. If any human visitor realizes this, then all the previous related people will be destroyed. Information about the witch would probably be immediately calculated as information about the devil - but no one thought of this, and instead thought it was normal for the information to be difficult to find.
The above part of the idea has omitted most of it. Lu Ning and Sera talked about the latter key point.
If those are demons, where did the witch go?
"Yes, I understand it only today, but I didn't expect that you had already thought of this matter at that time... Was it because of the devil?" Sera asked.
"No, because I have seen many crazy scenes and encountered time dilemmas, so my thinking has broadened a bit." Lu Ning picked up the wine glass and took a sip to moisten his throat.
"A witch is a phenomenon, not an individual."
She concluded first.
"To be specific, it is a time phenomenon. Issues such as concurrent space and resonance are also by-products of the witch phenomenon. We may be able to define it as a kind of life, but it is obviously different from the life in conventional cognition. . And from the perspective of the current White Lake Town, 'it' should exist in the entire timeline from the past to the future of White Lake Town, so it cannot leave, well... it cannot leave in the way we know."
"continue."
"Because it coexists 'at the same time' at all times, it can easily know the difficulties encountered by everyone, and can easily transfer knowledge from the future to the past, or 'it' has its own thoughts and is caught by this The thought will resonate with the people it hits or passes by. As for the barrier of space, it is meaningless at all, so I don’t know why the lake house and this mine exist. And the return ceremony..."
"That was not a return ceremony." Sera finally began to tell what she knew.
"Um?"
"It's not accurate. In your words, for us, it is a return." Sera shook her head, "It is the material carrier that the witch has been looking for for countless hours, and it is the material that makes up a human being in its concept. Five elements, namely shell, memory, mind, spirit, life and death. Plus a coordinate to determine the material world it 'returns' to."
"What do those things mean?"
"The witch's clothing is a human shell." Sera said in a melodious tone. "The witch's oath represents memory; the witch's heart represents the preserved soul; the witch's pupils represent the window to a person's spirit; the witch's oath represents the window to a person's spirit; The skeleton represents the transition between life and death; the last is the witch's key, a coordinate."
"I understand the first five easily. What do the coordinates mean?"
Sierra laughed.
"This is the reality of the world that you don't understand yet."
She raised her free feathered hand, and Lu Ning noticed that a lot of the feathers on her hand had fallen off, revealing the fair skin inside again, but it was so pale that one could even see the blood vessels inside.
"Most of your guesses are correct. The only problem is that the witch does not exist in the timeline of White Lake Town."
"oh?"
Sera took a bamboo brush from the corner and placed it in front of Lu Ning. The toughness of the brush is very good, but after so long, except for the end that is tightly bound by a circle of iron hoops, the other parts have become radially raised, and it looks like a badminton.
Lu Ning was stunned for two seconds, and then realized what Sera meant, and her eyes suddenly widened.
"It exists in countless 'pasts' related to this present, and those pasts can never reach the present you see before your eyes, but they can rely on accumulation to have an impact on the present. Can you understand this?"
It took Lu Ning a while to understand the meaning of this sentence.
"You mean, that house is..."
"There is also my hand. It is estimated that my hand was cut off in some past events, so now as a demon, I need to spend some extra energy to restore the limbs... This sudden change caused the situation just now."
As she spoke, the feathers completely fell off, and brand new hands were formed.
"Because the number in the past was too huge, even if the impact on the present is less than one thousandth, the superposition to a certain extent will always cause a certain amount of damage. The houses you see probably suffered from fires or explosions. "
"So there's no one in town because..."
"Because there are not many demons." Serra clenched his fists. "If it is an ordinary human being, if he suddenly loses a certain part, he will die soon. We don't even need to dig a tomb or erect a monument for him, because this person The moment of death will be corrected by time to the state of being buried.”
Lu Ning felt a little cold behind her back, so she picked up the wine glass and took a sip.
"With such a huge base, even if the witch wants to 'return' in the past, she has to determine which past, right? So she needs a coordinate. That's what this word means."
"Wait, if I go back the way I came..."
"If you don't have coordinates, you will be randomly sent to an unknown past, but I don't think you will make such a mistake?"
Lu Ning nodded.
"Okay, let's get down to business." Sera clapped her hands and let the wine on the side slowly age. "The witch stretched time, making the past and present become two parts that are close at hand and never reachable. You Do you understand what this means?"
“That period of time extends indefinitely, and what happens during that period of time continues to happen and cycle unchanged.”
"That's right, no matter how hard the people in the town try, they will go to the Witch Trial for various strange reasons, kill a large number of doubters, wake up, try to bury the past, revitalize the town, and then start the Witch Trial again. a process."
"But people's hours are still normal."
"Yes, people's time still flows normally. They will never know the existence of this place. And everyone's position will not change, understand? What I said before about the witch's recognition of humans also applies to the town. In At that time when you existed, there must have been three sisters who opened the tavern, there must have been an innkeeper with his wife and children, there must have been two noble families in the town, and there must have been a large influx of tourists."
It doesn't matter what these people are called or how they look, as long as they have those five elements and roughly meet them.
The Sera in front of me may have had countless names.
"I hope this won't make you feel that I have become a stranger. The memory between you and me is still a relatively vivid one among the many memories." The wine was finally prepared, and Sera poured a small amount into it. into a tall glass and bottle the rest.
Lu Ning took the wine and tried to take a sip without smelling anything.
Indeed... no taste.
She just felt like she saw countless hours stacked up in this White Lake town, as if rushing from thousands of sources and converging at a distant point, with a shadow crouching on this long river. , it lifts a section of the river upward, and the light is naturally stretched and extended, but it does not break.
"how?"
Sera's words brought Lu Ning back to reality. She had not yet recovered from the unimaginable magnificence and was still in a daze. Sera couldn't help but laugh after seeing it.
"Witch's Oath?"
Fortunately, Lu Ning came back to her senses quickly. She glanced at the wine that was not much left at the bottom of the cup, and suddenly felt a wave of regret welling up in her heart. She even began to have the idea of taking another look at that grand scene at all costs.
The basic qualities of tourists allowed her to quickly find herself again. She finally understood why the legendary bartender who brewed that glass of wine had wanted to recreate that glass of wine all her life, and Sera also recreated it through bartending. Found it.
"Yes, for a witch, there are too many ways to make this kind of wine. It's a pity that the senior can't explore it all in his lifetime." Sera put the bottle next to Lu Ning's hand, "Don't drink it, I believe you Resist the temptation.”
"I know. Tell me, what do you want me to do?" Lu Ning put the small bottle into her pocket.
"Go back in time and let the witch return in your time period."
"But I don't know how to find other materials."
"You will know. When you go back, you will get information and rewards from the witch of that time. Then just follow the instructions."
"I have another question... What is the significance of the witch's return?"
"I can't answer you on its behalf, but according to my guess, if a creature like it can exist in one time, then it can exist in all times, and in this way, maybe it can get rid of the problem with Baihu The town is entangled in this state."
Sera wiped the wine glass that Lu Ning had finished drinking, and knocked it lightly. The crisp sound of the glass echoed around.
"But understanding that doesn't mean much to me. As long as I live now, I will continue to have new memories to form my past. This speed of life experience no longer requires unnecessary thinking. The current Baihu Town is very suitable for me .”
===============
After bidding farewell to Serra and White Lake Town, Lu Ning walked towards the lakeside hut. Among the two pathways connecting time and space in this asymmetrical time, only the lakeside hut had the safest coordinates.
She put the key in the keyhole, opened the door, entered, then turned and walked out.
Outside is the beautiful golden autumn season and the blue sky.
