Yaleriga sat in the car and meditated.
On the surface, she appeared to be such a quiet and beautiful woman, slowly driving towards the square accompanied by her faithful but cramped coachman to perform a daily ritual of worship. Her driver had just learned how to drive an electric car twenty hours ago, but he had mastered it very well. His hands controlled the steering wheel steadily, but his eyes were distracted, looking back at her from time to time.
Yaleriga noticed his expression, but didn't intend to point it out. The lips covered by her fingers were moving silently, talking to the Qiaoqiao Tianyi on the Silence. They discussed the details of the city in front of them and what they saw and heard on the road.
Before entering the city, she had a pleasant association with a merchant. Although their time together was short, she gained a deeper understanding of the city's conditions, obtained enough documents to pass the city's defenses, and put on a backless dress decorated with shining insect wings.
The merchant also presented her with a pair of silver chain braided sandals coated with fragrant insect wax, but she refused the gift because she did not want to reveal the secret of her feet. For the same reason, she never agreed to his request to sleep with him. But the suitor had nothing to lose. She gave him designs for several simple industrial products.
"There's something strange here." Qiaoqiao Tianyi said in her ear, "Just now..."
"I know." Yaleriga replied.
"Don't you think our whereabouts are a little too conspicuous? Everyone on the road seems to be looking at you."
"That's not a bad thing for our purposes."
Qiaoqiao Tianyi did not object to her proposition. They then talked about other gains. Just as Yaleriga entered the most famous city of glory in the north, the detectors dispatched by Silence were flying in all directions. They were sent to investigate details that I didn't understand. At the foot of the cliffs at the edge of the world, or around the tallest house in the city that belonged to the lord. Out of caution, they were set up to avoid all humanoid creatures so as not to frighten the local residents, who had never even seen an airplane. However, despite their attention, the probes that flew below the edge of the world were all lost. Those who went to other cities were still able to make contact and photograph all the "memorials of ancient wars" from a distance.
They looked at the images sent back and had a lot of discussions, but in the end they decided to let Yaleriga check one of them with her own eyes. Up close, and if necessary, in touch, to determine if the thing was really what they thought it was.
"As for the illnesses of those babies," Qiaoqiao Tianyi said, "Now I have some ideas."
"Me too."
"Have we thought of a place?"
"Their prosody."
"Yes! From what I have collected, it is very similar to the abandoned babies in Men City. I am not professional in this area and cannot make a more detailed analysis, but my guess is this: in their There is a structure in the body tissue, perhaps a material that vibrates opposite to their regular tissue, that can help them adapt to this sound wave environment. I found such a mucosal cavity in their ears that can avoid these environmental sounds. Inflict damage on them and discern frequencies close to their vocal organs. I think that's why they still retain some simple language. But this tissue is certainly not that versatile - it sounds like it is gestating Those that are formed in stages will only resist very specific sonic environments, otherwise they will not encounter the phenomenon of coherence.”
Yaleriga glanced at Yi. The latter avoided her sight like an electric shock.
"That seemed like the most reasonable explanation we had," she said. "But we haven't heard of a large-scale case of missing babies here."
"Yes, but I'm thinking that maybe our thinking is wrong. Ya Lai, when Mencheng received those abandoned babies, we assumed that they were a species with vigorous reproduction. At that time, we ignored the issue of time flow rate! We Of course I think so, because the City of Thousands of Houses is already one of the slowest places known to the Alliance, and it is only about one to three to five times slower than the Central City. We only know that the time in the Eternal Light Realm is special Yes, but such a strange intellectual civilization would never develop there. Even the King of Dust was driven away by the Yongguang tribe! But here, there may never have been any large-scale cases of missing babies. They only do so every few years. Lose one, and there is a lot of technical space... God, if we go all the way down, I can't imagine how slow time will flow. We may have to chase more than 150,000 hours! Do you think it's possible? Did that kid make a mistake? The person he was looking for was on this piece of debris, and he accidentally rushed over?"
Yaleriga did not reach a conclusion, repeating her point: "We need to see the loot first."
"Yeah, those images..."
Qiaoqiao Tianyi didn't finish her words, but Yaleriga knew that they were thinking of something else. On her way to the central square, she kept thinking about the images from the detectors.
Their car started to turn right. A wider road. When the space in front of her eyes widened, countless colors suddenly appeared in Yaleriga's eyes. As the road spirals up, many vehicles continue to merge into it from the forks, leading to the high square along the spiraling main road. At the edge of the square, soundproof houses covered with steel plates and titanium alloys stand neatly and tightly like cliffs. The hundreds of bronze sculptures on top of the eaves are monsters with protruding heads and eyes, each looking down at the road below. The light in their eyes is different from the lights on the road. It has beam-like penetrating power and rotates to hit the passengers of each car. Beneath the base of the monster statue, bacteria like scales have eaten away at all the window sills and hangings. They were glowing, spraying out spores as thick as smoke.
The screams in the square were as violent as the eruption of bacterial spores. That was not the wild song of the world, but the high-pitched sound of a human mouthpiece, as well as drums and bells made of metal diaphragms, that the sound wave filter in Yalailiga's ears allowed to receive. Streams of sound fell, dancing in the statue beast's rotating eye lamp, and the smoke pushing the spores spread into the distance.
Yaleriga stretched out her fingers to catch some of the falling powder. She rested her arm on the door rail and stared quietly at the light blue particles on her fingertips. Qiaoqiao Tianyi sighed in her ear.
"Oh," she said, "Jalai, these strains..."
The electric car continued to drive upwards, joining the flow of worshipers and visitors. Only a few cars were completely enclosed, so owners were free to look around and gesture at each other. Yaleriga received many warm and surprised looks, as well as many inviting gestures. She found that the music and lights coming from overhead seemed to contribute to people's arousal.
They parked the car on the platform outside the soundproof house and walked into the square on the other side. On the continuous metal plates surrounding the sound tube lights, they saw how the carnival music like crying and screaming was emitted.
A mechanical orchestra composed of bronze statues surrounds the central area of the square. Their mouths were connected with electric tubes and diaphragms, and bells were hung on their arms and fingertips. They undulated and rotated in an orderly manner amidst sound and light, spreading perfume and artificial sequins to the crowd kneeling on the ground. The people kneeling on the ground were silent. Their foreheads rested on the ground, their hands were raised high, and they made uniform gestures. That is a tradition. In ancient times, when the flora glowed with people's shouts, people regarded the sounds from their mouths as incantations to communicate with gods. God has no form, so he uses the language of sound, and humans should not violate this boundary unless necessary.
In the center of these worshiping crowds and playing bronze statues, a platform made of complete rock grinding was placed there. On the platform was an iron cage with a spiked top, containing the trophies of ancient wars, the evil weapons of House Frost. Although it is now completely disabled, people still imprison it in a cage, as if they are afraid that it will activate again and fly into the night sky with the shadow of death.
Yes, all accounts point to it being able to fly. That metal car exuded a dark iridescent luster, and every panel was extremely thin, without any fancy patterns. There are two holes left on the unfolded wings of the chariot. It is said that in the past wars, evil crossbows were installed in those two holes, which endlessly emitted arrows of light of death, and the matter hit was removed from the world forever. disappear. This ancient chariot from the House of Frost has a color and texture that are unprecedented in the world. No one can find a sound tube, a battery, or a sound on its diaphragm-thin chassis. fuel tank. They finally had to admit that the chariot must have been shaped by the invisible hand of the devil.
