The old man came behind her at some point.
"Oh, look," said the old man, "you have found your father. It is always easy for blood relatives to identify one another in a group."
He came to the peasant girl, squatted down, and sat side by side with her, looking at the giant phantom on the top. He was still so easy-going and natural, as if he didn't notice the source of the crack in the peasant girl's heart. The peasant girl wanted to ask her knowledgeable traveling companion what it meant, but she didn't know how to describe it.
"This was discovered by a relative of mine in the past," the old man said, "a small place where memories accumulate. My child, have you ever thought about the things that people in life have lost in their hearts - those ideals, joys and dreams that have disappeared. Where are all the pains? If you value them and hold on to some of them all the time, then they will last longer, until the moment of your death. But most of them will be lost earlier, they They flow from your sleep, like shadows passing through a narrow gap. They fall from your dream into the dream of the world. Some fell into the bottomless abyss, and some were eaten by the monsters on the edge of the abyss. The remaining ones , those more intuitive parts, they will fall here. Here, in the fragments of dreams, time and space will not be an obstacle to you. Who you want to find, you just need to listen carefully."
He took out the wooden flute from his waist and played a folk song by Mulun En. The peasant girl remembered that the song went like this:
The sea of stars rises from the north,
The soldiers quietly put on their winter clothes.
He was thinking of the dead hedge outside the forest,
And a rocking chair by the fire.
Needlework and scraps of fur are placed in the chair.
Belongs to his beloved Elsie.
The sound of music is like the wind shuttling in the fog, calling many shadows. Among the shadows that gathered together, the peasant girl recognized an extremely familiar silhouette. It staggered closer, its waist covered with precious jewelry. It was the shadow of a man wearing a gold ring.
Shadows hid in the fog, surrounding her and the old man, as if they were listening longingly to the music played by the wooden flute. The thunderous laughter echoed above their heads again. That laughter was so loud and powerful, it seemed like it was going to break the whole earth. But these two sounds did not interfere with each other at all, and they could be heard clearly. One of them is in the sky and the other is on the ground. They spread independently and seem to echo each other. She rested her chin on her knees and took both sounds to heart.
A long, long time has passed, so long that the old man has played every folk song she knows, and the shadow of the king has fallen asleep on the throne. The peasant girl woke up from her distant and confused reverie and found that the old man was staring at the king above her head.
The old man's dark eyes never showed the emotions she often saw on mortal things: anger, suspicion, hatred, fear, longing... She only felt one kind in that abyss-like black. Enduring peace and patience. The old man is neither cold nor enthusiastic, neither impatient nor slow. He seemed to maintain a mild, spectator-like interest in everything, but he was indeed standing in the middle of it all. She still didn't know the old man's own motives.
But now she seems to understand a little better. In the two pools of darkness where the old man aimed at the king's shadow, she saw a deeper crack. There is also an eternal source flowing deep in the heart of the old man. It is more secretive and silent than the peasant girl's heart. Through the two dark windows, she cannot detect the shimmering water as it flows. Only when it hits the king's huge shadow can she detect the silent waves and sprays. Splashing foam. She had never seen the sadness as thick and dark as the ice ocean in any mortal.
The shadow of the man wearing the gold ring gradually faded. The king's shadow was also hidden behind the fog, becoming a hazy mountain peak. At this time, the old man turned to her, and the waves in his eyes had disappeared.
"Your father left this creative dream here." The old man said, his tone as unhurried as ever. He pondered briefly for a while, and then said to the peasant girl: "I should talk to you about the outside world, child."
This made the peasant girl feel very confused, because the old man often told her stories about the distant foreign countries outside - in the void beyond the world and hellfire. But the old man's tone now is very special, as if he wants to say something completely different from the past. She didn't know how to hide her doubts and asked the old man directly what it meant.
"People try to find meaning in everything." The old man said, "Weather, disasters, stories... and of course life. The people on each star may not look like you, but in my opinion, Many of your behaviors are the same, and the differences are minimal. Some of them are different from those here. They do not have the supervision of your father like your father, but there is no hellfire, and it is a relatively free place - let me tell you Put it this way - but, even so, they are constantly looking for meaning, as if they are looking for a king for themselves. They are also like the people you have seen, they always do things that are expected to be good, but maybe they never do it. He didn’t really want to do good things. Do you remember the master who came with a machete that day? He once firmly believed that your sister, the Valkyrie of Mulunen, would go with his family, but once he found out that this was not the case, he quickly became corrupted. Not to your vanished sister, but to something within his reach. Perhaps his conscience is not completely dead, but a conscience that fails to influence action is useless. There are countless people like him out there. Of course, some are slightly better than him, and some are more hopeless. But that's not their fault, kid. They were born without meaning. Do you know what I mean?"
The peasant girl shook her head in confusion, and the old man patiently explained to her. He said that people in distant countries were born meaningless, so they did not know what they should do and what they should not do. In this way, many of them disappear in meaningless waste. Others try to find meaning for themselves. They make up their own meaning bit by bit, relying on their own fantasies or accidental exotic legends. Sometimes it is a "fictitious king", people pretend it exists, and then use the "king's language" to express the rules they want and benefit themselves; sometimes they do not look for it from the outside world, but regard themselves as the king. , believe that they are meaning itself, and in order to prove this point, they must conquer everything that is alien so that their own meaning can be revealed; there are still some people left who admit their own meaninglessness, but then want to prove that meaninglessness is better than meaninglessness. Since it is meaningful, they no longer say "meaningless" but "freedom of will". They built all kinds of things and did all kinds of things for it. The old man only told her that some of them were generally considered good, such as raising young children and curing diseases; and some were generally considered bad, such as killing fellow humans and destroying other civilizations. But no matter what, most things are considered "good" when they are done.
"People in this world do the same thing," said the peasant girl. After she was born, she saw the beautiful spring in the world, but the beings in the spring were always painful, violent, fearful, and sad. She didn't know it was sadness before, but now she can feel it. Now the stories she heard outside were no different from those in the world.
"People believe that their actions are meaningful." The old man said, "But judging from the final appearance of the shadows, they do not exist for a meaning of their own. Children, they just sway left and right with the environment. At the same time, they make up some meanings for themselves according to the environment. If the meaning conflicts with the environment, they will fall into the kind of madness and corruption you see. What you see is not their evil, but their evil The mediocrity. The chaos you have here is not so bad, because most of the suffering of mortals can still be attributed to the hell fire, and their own sins are as simple and clear as the actions of children. But I have been to some places It’s much more painful, the people there have spun a hellfire for themselves.”
That's something a peasant girl can't understand. Hellfire exists from the beginning and will eventually devour everything. Its existence is a matter beyond discussion, beyond the power of any living being. Although the old man told her that there was another world outside the hellfire, she never had any conflict with the king's words in her heart. The king and the old man were like two voices, echoing in the sky and the earth independently of each other. She could hear them at the same time.
The old man said that the hellfire woven by humans was a complex and deformed behemoth. It begins at the beginning of history and continues until the moment of destruction. Many times they don't look like monsters, but magnificent palaces and temples built by people themselves, but generations of people have their own ideas. As long as each generation has the opportunity, they will inevitably change something they think is bad and add something they think is good. Sometimes this modification is so crude and thoughtless that it damages the underlying foundation of the building, or makes the whole structure uncoordinated. But if you want to start over again. That is absolutely impossible, because the building has been accumulated over a long period of time and is too huge. If you want to completely demolish it. Falling debris would crush everyone to death. Over time, the monster became so complex that even the most knowledgeable people of the era could not explain exactly where each of its structures came from and what role it played. They could only argue with each other, some pointing out where changes would be better, others arguing that not a single brick should be moved. But the latter is also useless advice, because the building itself is crumbling over time, and if it is not repaired and renovated, it will fall sooner or later. Everyone uses their small and pitiful vision to tinker with it, making it barely supportable, and mixing in all kinds of selfishness - hoping that this building will be more like their own style, or that it can give them more shadows - in the end It was finally irreversible.
"Where is their king?" asked the peasant girl.
"That usually happens in places where false kings rule." The old man said, "The meaningless beings themselves decide how to build their meaningless kingdom. Usually their individual existence is very short-lived, and no one can make the next generation think. Completely inherited from the previous one, the part of them that is responsible for ruling is no exception. My child, can you imagine those mortals sitting in your father's position? Can they endure the coldness and height of the throne? Can they receive everyone in the world in time? Wraiths? It's a bad thing to put them in your father's place, but that's what people often do where false kings rule. No one has the power to hold the building up when it collapses, so the end result is always unhappy. Okay. But that's somewhere else. There's no building like that here, just your father and the hellfire. He created you to solve this problem."
The peasant girl sat up a little straighter. She had not thought carefully about the meaning of her birth, but now she realized that she was carrying a very important mission. She was no longer a limb of the king extending to the earth, but she took on this heavy task herself. At the same time, she felt a little happy because her task was completed smoothly. Although every battle was difficult and she lost Tajechi, in terms of time, she made it just right. Before the actual hellfire comes, the king will return to earth.
"I have never seen you smile, child," said the old man, "but I can see that you are happy now."
He looked at the peasant girl with such loving eyes, but his eyes were no different from how a mortal grandfather looks at his granddaughter. She was both happy and overwhelmed by the gaze.
But soon she became uneasy again, because there was still a dark and lonely ice ocean hidden in those black eyes. She didn't understand why the old man had such strong feelings in his heart. The first time she felt hesitant, in the end she could only ask questions repeatedly, asking the old man what his hometown was like.
"That's not important," said the old man. "I suppose it's home to someone else now. I don't miss it, kid. But if you're wondering, yes, there was a king there too. His nature was the same as yours. The father is closer and was born with a certain meaning, just like you were born to return this land to its past. They are different from mortals. Like the mortal sufferings we mentioned earlier, they rely on their own power to It can be easily avoided if you can. The king is also very noble, and it is not nurtured, but is like this by nature, so no desire can tempt him. But the noble also has its tragic tragedy - let us talk about this later, tonight You have seen a lot, now it is time to go back to your father."
He stood up, took the peasant girl's hand, and turned back to the shadow-filled path.
