The new passenger of the Silence adapted to the ship for about dozens of hours, until his thoughts and expressions gradually became harmonious, and he was finally able to talk and dialogue with Yaleriga fluently. He roughly understood what an alliance was, what a star was, and why the ship beneath him came to his world from the first two places. This young man (forty-two years old, barely an adult for the residents of this area) has good learning ability and also displays a strong curiosity about the unknown.
At first, he asked questions tirelessly, eager to know whether the countless spheres in the void represented the residence of some kind of soul. Is that where people go after they die? Or the place where a person was before he was born? Why aren't they in a state of normal, eternal decline? What is it that holds them up and distorts the concept of right direction?
Those questions were quite naive and unorganized, but Yaleriga felt that there was something endearing about his simple thinking that was a mixture of religion and philosophy. Therefore, she always answered patiently. When Yi fully understood that Yaleriga and Qiaoqiao Tianyi were not the screaming monsters that swallowed up living people in local legends, but two pure strangers, his awe was much less than before, and he gradually showed friendship and kindness. close. Finally, he finally took the initiative to ask what Yaleriga was looking for and why the bolide fell from their world.
Yaleriga showed him the image of Jing Huang. They are all records left by Jing Huang when he entered and exited the surveillance area. With only one glance, Yi was able to affirm that he had never seen such a person, and had never heard any similar person discussed in any community. It is not difficult to understand his determination, because the difference in appearance between Jing Huang and their clan is obvious. If such a man ever appeared in the world, gossip would spread quickly.
When they talked to this point, Yi showed a strange look. He said to Yaleriga: "The Ageless One will know you."
This is a concept that Yareliga has never heard of. Of all the knowledge she gained from Yi, she only knew that there were city-states and villages in this world, and of course there were actual territories and nobles (the names were different in each place). However, no one has a particularly big advantage. No one is recognized as the greatest king on earth, and people who live in different areas have no strong desire to occupy other areas. That's partly because fertility contributes little to food production, and partly because of disease.
The disease is inseparable from place of birth. People have discovered a long time ago that once they are away from the area where they were born for a long time, certain strange diseases will easily occur. Some people will become dizzy, and some will even bleed from the holes in their bodies. The countryside believed it was a curse on the land itself, but Yi had heard otherwise while working in the city. Doctors claim it's because of "wrong rhythms." Medical science believes that everything has a rhythm that needs to be echoed. If you are in that rhythm, the body will naturally sing a chorus, and people will be healthy both physically and mentally. And if the rhythm is not coordinated with the body, it will cause various disorders.
Although this disorder is common, it manifests itself differently in each person and in each region. Some people can travel to more places, and certain areas can move to each other without getting sick. Such areas are called "synchronic places". If people in every place want to have more options for their children to settle down, they will find ways to give birth to children in many areas. This behavior was legal or illegal in different eras, depending on how administrators viewed the population under their jurisdiction.
Yi was born in an era when synchronized reproduction was legal. His parents had lived all their lives in a farming village in the east—that is, in the farthest direction from the red and shiny magma fragment. They feel the signs of aging as they approach ninety and decide to have one or two children. They have no special plans for their children's future, but they hope to go further than themselves. So they sold a group of livestock and lived on the easternmost cliff for six years. In four of those years, they gave birth to two children, Yi and his sister. They each have their own advantages, Yi is more flexible and his sister is stronger, but they also have the same ability, which is to stay at the edge of the world for a long time. Regardless of the southeast, northwest, the cliffs that lead directly to the back of the world seem to be in sync, so they can freely move around the entire world.
Yi's sister put her talents to good use and became a fuel seller who traveled to the edges of the world. And Yi is a line layman currently serving in the northern camp, a profession that often faces harsh environments and life-threatening dangers. He is considered very young in this industry and is in good health. He is able to live independently and regularly returns to take care of and accompany his parents. But he is an introvert and doesn't like to interact with others. Characters like his are common among metal carvers, as they are the ones who hear the rhythms of the world most easily. When they climbed along the cliff and hammered the sound-producing nails deeply into the cliff, they could often hear the violent song of the underground, which was the underground rhythm in medical theory. However, since no one can be born in the earth, naturally no one can bear the sound. They just endured it forcefully, swinging their hammers in silence amidst the rumbling singing.
For all of this, Yaleriga only saw a small part from Yi's memory. After all, a kiss was not truly shared, but she had no intention of taking it any further immediately. After chatting with Yi about the overall appearance of the world, she asked about the "ageless man" he mentioned earlier.
"Are they the masters of the city?" she asked, "Why are they called the Immortals?"
Yi showed that strange look again. Now Yareliga could roughly distinguish his emotions. She knew it wasn't fear, it wasn't like she was talking about a terrible authoritarian, but more like it was funny, like Yaleriga saying something interesting.
"They are not city lords," he said. He seemed to think deeply for a moment, searching for the right words in his head, while his hands began to fidget again. Yaleriga read his hand movements and saw the descriptions "legend", "believable" and "power" rolling through his hands.
"Your god?" she guessed again.
Yi shook her head. "They are men," he said with certainty, "intelligent men."
"What is their status compared to the city lord?"
"They're not interested. They only deal with big disasters."
Yaleriga asked him to talk about the great disaster, but Yi shook his head at her helplessly. There had been no major disasters in a long time, he said, nor had there been wars. There had been harsh wars before he was born, and another world, called the House of Frost, came to attack the central world in which they lived. The invaders were eventually routed, and the spoils of war are still placed in the center of the world's great cities, visible to everyone who passes through the city center. Although that happened many years ago, as long as people look at the trophies with their own eyes, they will know that the ancient wars really happened, because there are no such creatures in their world. People also agreed that without those immortals who lived in seclusion at the back of the world, it would be difficult to win this war.
The hermits' stories attracted Yaleriga's attention, but if the legend Yi told her was to be believed, the Immortals had been around for at least hundreds of years. There are five hundred of them in total, some say five hundred and fifty-five, and they have been stationed at the upside-down bottom of the central world for a long time. Only the masters of sixteen cities know how to contact them. Yaleriga had no clue about the identity of these hermits, but given their large number and long history, she guessed that they were not Jing Huang, or the 0305 that Jing Huang was looking for.
"What do they think of outsiders?" she asked Yi. "What would they do to us if they knew we were here?"
Yi couldn't answer her question. He had never seen a real immortal person in the past, nor had he encountered the situation proposed by Yaleriga. But he said hesitantly that the Immortal was only responsible for dealing with catastrophes in the past. If Yaleriga just came to find one person, maybe they would not be interested. When the bolide crashed thirty years ago, they had no reaction.
Yaleriga listened to all his opinions. At that time, Yi had stayed on the Silence for more than fifty hours. In order to prevent him from becoming unwell, Yaleriga put him back on the ground and asked him to wait in the temporary camp outside. She herself told Qiaoqiao Tianyi everything she knew from the exchange and discussed how they should proceed.
"Are you sure that meteor is that child?" Qiaoqiao Tianyi said, "Thirty years ago? I know that the flow rate of time here is very different from that outside. It may be bigger the deeper you go, but if the child has been down for three It’s been ten years, why hasn’t he found the abandoned baby criminal? God, do we have to chase for another thirty years? Oh, wait, how long is their thirty years?”
"With our time, it's about 150,000 hours."
Qiaoqiao Tianyi weakly shook its wings twice.
"I can hold on," she said firmly, "but I really miss the sun. Any color, the kind that can fill the sky with light."
"I'm wondering if we should just pursue it."
"You mean we go home now? After we get to this point?"
"No. I think, since we may still be chasing for 150,000 hours, maybe we should stay here a little longer to avoid missing some important information. Do you think we should go see the undead? They have no idea what's going on down there. The situation should be better understood.”
"Agreed. But do you think it would be dangerous?"
No one can draw a final conclusion. But Yaleriga already had an idea in mind. She told Qiaoqiao Tianyi about the ancient war that Yi had mentioned, as well as the trophies placed in the center of the city. Through the evidence that amazed the locals, they might be able to deduce what kind of power the Immortal has.
Qiaoqiao Tianyi fully supports this idea. She immediately planned to arrange for a detector to go over for inspection, but before that, Yaleriga stopped her.
"I want to change the approach," she said. "Detectors are easy to spot in crowded places, and details are easily lost."
"Jalai, we have gone too far by stopping the car on the track. I will not agree with you using a spaceship to conquer a city. People with real character will never support bullying anywhere, let alone they are not simple microbial structures . They have feelings and intelligence, but they were not born in a good place. Even if we may not have the ability to rescue them, we should not use them like yahoos."
After listening to her traveling companion's sincere criticism, Yaleriga revealed a malicious smile. Qiaoqiao Tianyi stared at her alertly, his mane flying towards the ceiling.
"I don't plan to use the spaceship." She said with a wink, "I'll go by myself."
"What?"
"I plan to go to the city to take a look in person." Yaleriga explained, "walk over and get close to the trophy like a pilgrim. Then..."
"Photography and analysis?"
"Maybe just get it on board. The White Tower will be willing to buy it."
Qiaoqiao Tianyi's mane was completely unkempt. She squatted solemnly on the ground and said in a long voice: "Ya-lai-"
Yaleriga must admit that it was not a very successful joke. After a full two hours, Qiaoqiao Tianyi let her out of the Silence. Refusing to wear a camouflage suit and walk upright like Homo sapiens, spacecraft experts hung cameras on her chest and back to participate in her city tour.
She found Yi wandering in the camp and asked him to take her to the nearest city. But Yi looked at her blankly, as if he had never seen anyone dressed like this in his life.
Yareliga touched her ears happily, which were now covered with a bulging layer of fake skin. Her hooves were covered with stuffed iron boots, and she looked no different from the locals. Of course, she didn't forget to cover her face with some active fake skin to make her features closer to those of the locals.
"How do I look?" she asked her new friend.
The latter did not answer, but slowly moved his stiff gaze upwards, staring at the top of her head. Yareliga can cover her horns in many ways, such as an optical hat. But she didn't do that. Instead, she wrapped a light red scarf on her head, exposing only the tips of her two horns, and tied it tightly with the silver chain in her waist bag. In Yi's memory, she had seen women dressed like this.
After a while, Yi came back to her senses. He told Yalayli that Gana was the dress of the aristocrats in the city - the women dressed in this way made headdresses and hats from the skulls of rare animals, sometimes complete specimens of small animals, or the wings of hundreds of insects. Yaleriga's horns certainly look unique, and one would guess that they are the skull of a very rare animal. That would undoubtedly attract a lot of attention, people asking her name and whereabouts, and even asking to spend the night with her.
"Then tell them this." Yaleriga said, "Tell them that I come from a city on the highlands and came to them for learning - I am an expert in the study of earthly rhythms. If they know my research It helps a lot, maybe I'll treat them to the night."
