"Doesn't your horn matter?" Qiaoqiao Tianyi asked.
Yaleriga put down her hand stroking her horn.
"It's nothing," she said, "I just got into habit. There's no touch there."
"Do you feel uneasy here? Because it's too dark? I'm not used to this kind of place without starlight."
That's certainly not Yaleriga's real problem. In fact, she didn't feel the darkness of the environment, not because the horns and hair of her companions always shimmered. She has been using infrared vision after going deep into the chasm, and then converts color vision through spectral analysis, and then presents the daytime environment and hundreds of millions of hues that tetrachromats can see under a continuous light source. She did not implant this fault-prone image synthesis device into her body. Instead, she covered the surface of her eyeballs like a thin film, and then put on protective clothing to avoid sound wave damage. She also used sound insulation protection during her long journey. After in-depth research on the service, it has now been transformed into a lightweight and convenient one. She has additional sound wave filtering and communication components for her ears, plus her past subcutaneous reinforcements, enough to support her activities in this sound of destruction for hundreds of hours.
Of course she also made the same transformation for Qiaoqiao Tianyi. However, the latter are not used to wearing devices on their eyes. Spacecraft experts also said that as a native creature with two-color vision, she often felt dizzy when simulating four-color vision. Trichromatic vision is the limit of what she can accept.
"Wouldn't seeing so many colors at once make you unable to walk?" she asked Yaleriga, "So much visual information to process, they are so fancy that they give me a headache!"
"But I heard you are also called the Rainbow Nation."
"Yes. Of course we are different from our primitive ancestors. Most wingers have trichromatic vision. Maybe it's just that I don't like colors that much. I did meet one of my students. Her natural five-color vision made her temper He’s very weird, gets excited easily, and often laughs at other people’s drawings.”
"She saw information that you didn't pick up on when you were coloring."
"I know, I know. But we don't need to rely on color vision that much."
Yaleriga knew what she said was true. Even without any equipment on, Qiaoqiao Tianyi's night vision is still sharp, and it seems that her own light is enough to allow her to walk freely. She can also see to both sides and behind her at the same time, and capture tiny, fast-moving creatures.
They did not return to the boat, but sat among the dark trees, watching the trams appear and pass by one after another. Through the bright windows, they could see biological activity in every car. But they were no longer anxious now. The detectors spread out did most of the work for them, helping them understand what was going on in the land. Now they know that there are settlements, villages, and even cities here.
On the electric railway track they were looking at, the bright lights of the town dispersed the darkness, the boilers spewed fire at people's orders, and the machines in the factory were all connected to a main line board, and the line board itself went straight to the ground. There is also agriculture here, but the species that can survive in the saline-alkali soil are quite limited, and it seems difficult to import, so the residents use them more as feed, cultivating a kind of artiodactyl with droopy belly and short feet. They did not learn the animal's name because the detector failed to pick up any language. If the inhabitants of this region did have a vocal language, it was doubtless rarely used.
At the place closest to the edge of the world, the signal from the detector is more mixed, but it brings many meaningful pictures: there are many statues standing on the edge of the vertical cliff. They all have eye-catching ears in appearance. After comparing with the residents, they found that the carvings were generally realistic, but the expressions of the statues made them curious - they were all withered and wooden, as if they were desperate for survival. Lost all interest. This kind of solemnity can also be seen in the local residents, but it is far less painful than what is depicted in the statue.
They discussed this matter and thought that it might be a religious expression, just like the worry-free people near Neverland depicting all the gods in a carnival state. Or maybe it has some political meaning, but it's hard for them to explain why the ruler of this place wanted to make his monument look like this.
By the time the fifth train passed by, they had collected a lot of information about this land, enough to give them an idea of what was there and what they needed to study further. But what they are really looking for, whether it is the white paper boat or Jing Huang, has not left any obvious traces in this world.
They waited in the darkness for a while longer, until the last detector completed its exploration. During this time, they all became silent for some reason.
"This is really a long journey." Qiaoqiao Tianyi said.
"Maybe it's not over yet."
"Yes. But we've explored further than anyone - I mean, anyone from outside - has explored. I think we've found enough to write a piece for the White Tower. You want to do this Something?"
Yaleriga shook her head and didn't answer. What she was thinking about at this moment was not the book or the royalties, but the former owner of the Silence. They have been apart for thousands of hours, which is enough time for two strangers to completely forget each other. Moreover, she is not living a leisurely life on a sunny, small planet full of grass and dew. Instead, she is wary of unknown dangers at every moment of exploration: some kind of ferocious beast unique to this place, deadly natural geological traps, and, of course, And the missing killer. She reminded herself of this deadly enemy all the time to avoid repeating previous mistakes.
But is this really worth it? she began to ask herself. Sinking down in this invincible chasm filled with deadly reverberations, pursuing an elusive target, it is impossible to determine when success will be achieved, or at least the hope of success. A possibility that is more worrying is that they found the wrong one from the beginning - Jing Huang never actually went down, but went to other areas at the top of the chasm. During these thousands of hours, he had completed his revenge on his enemies, and then floated to an unknown place in the void. At the same time, she and Qiaoqiao Tianyi were wasting their time in the sewers of this world.
This was not a smart choice. If she was really sober and rational, she should immediately turn around and take a free ship to Purple Arrow District 3 to find Lombart. She knew that Rembart would bring her much comfort, using his tender care and medical skills to make her forget the pain of the journey. There was no price to pay for this choice, because she had never signed a written contract with anyone, but she was still sitting in the darkness. Waiting for the train on the track to pass at the bottom of the deepest sewer in the universe. No, she knew she hadn't made the wrong choice all the way down. The babies sent to Gate City undoubtedly came from the depths of the Chasm.
"What are you thinking about, Ya Lai?" Qiaoqiao Tianyi said, "I think you seem to be in a daze."
"I'm thinking about their fertility," Yaleriga replied.
"Procreation?"
"Yes. Their population is small and they don't dump that many babies every month. And those babies are very similar, but their adults look very different."
"They all look the same to me."
Yaleriga smiled slightly. She can discern facial differences within different races almost as well as people of her own race. Even among the Durand people's always neat and elegant black cat guards, she can still find the most handsome one among them within ten seconds.
When the last detector sent the message, Yaleriga stood up from the ground. Her fingers brushed over the area where the horns had made up, then she put her fingers into her purse and pinched it. She felt a long, thin chain.
"I hope they don't have horned devils in their religion," she said.
"What? So what happened?"
"I don't want to scare anyone to death," Yaleriga said, "while kissing me."
The blessing had no effect. After the Silence fell from the sky and forced the sixth passing train to stop, all the passengers who were forced out of the carriage looked shocked and frightened. They looked at the two strange creatures they had never seen before, with expressions on their faces as if they had fallen into a nightmare. But they didn't run away, and they didn't scream either. In such a world full of endless noise, they remained quiet even in the face of death threats.
Yaleriga scanned and picked among the crowd. She saw one of them was particularly tall, with long cheeks, a thin torso and strong limbs, looking at her with a deep and burning gaze. She twitched her fingers at the other party.
All passengers who were near the man dispersed uncomfortably. The chosen person stood there for a while until Yaleriga pointed at him with a scimitar from a distance. He slowly crossed the crowd and came to Yaleriga. Yaleriga planned to comfort him with a few words, but he seemed to be able to hold on, and she realized that her voice might not be heard by this person at all. He didn't have a receiving module in his ear.
"Just do it," she said to herself, and kissed the man on the lips. Qiaoqiao Tianyi was so frightened by her that she screamed.
"What-what-hey! Now is not the time!"
Yaleriga finally remembered this mistake. She still hasn't told Qiaoqiao Tianyi about her ancestry. But that must be postponed. She closed her eyes and felt herself falling into a warm, moist sea. The waves were over her head, bringing many strange memories. As she went deeper into the darker depths, many scenes unfolded before her eyes. She knew the name, origin and hobbies of the man in front of her, and how he had climbed on the cliffs at the edge of the world to install and fix the statues. This is just superficial communication. She only had very fragmentary knowledge about this civilization.
But, that was her biggest victory in these thousands of hours. In these scattered memories, she saw the eternal dark sky of this world. There were no twinkling stars or billowing ether, and the astronomy here had changed very little from ancient times to the present. It was no wonder that the man she was kissing was so impressed by a bolide that streaked across the sky many years ago.
