Next up is Joey, the anchor of the dream. Uriel hesitated for a moment, then turned and headed downstream. His heart beat like a drum, his fingers tangled in his hair, and he followed Manet forward. The two corpses cuddled together like a pair of lovers, gradually becoming a shadow in the water. Uriel fell far behind, not daring to approach them.
The further downstream you go, the colder the blood becomes. Maybe there will be no end at all. This is an illusory river, just like the Black Moon River in Broken Moon... and it was for this reason that he decided to move forward. Uriel chased the shadows, gradually losing sight of his goal. He saw more shadows, more bones and mutilated limbs, and more corpses that came from nowhere. He didn't recognize any of them. I swam in a river of the dead. Uriel avoided the shadows, and they ignored him. After all, they are just corpses. They don't move like corpse eaters, and they don't open their eyes.
But Uriel could not pretend to be completely fearless. In fact, the river terrified him. Uriel had killed many people on the battlefield, but this was not the reason why he was afraid of corpses. Damn it. There was something unusual in the water, something unknown, full of malevolence. But he couldn't find the target. These were all ingredients of dreams, and anything could appear in dreams.
The vision gradually dimmed and the light became fainter. Uriel floated upward, trying to escape the darkness. The Golden Bird River eventually merges into the Sea of Singing, and the sea that this river of blood leads to seems endless. Uriel felt his heart twitch when he thought that he was going deep into the endless deep sea.
He floated in the water, looking back.
Only strange corpses...
Uriel continued to rise, breaking the surface of the water. There was a pebbly riverbank only ten yards away from him, and reeds occasionally caught the bones. He was still in a familiar dream. But when he looked towards the river, his spirit suddenly became tense again. The center of the river has completely lost its color and is pitch black, but the darkness is not the same as other sections of the river.
The night sky sparkled with stars, their interlaced brilliance like a crown. The Broken Moon is the pearl of the sky, quietly placed in the center of the dream world. The dark vortex stirred silently, and it was bottomless inside, with twisted and scattered figures constantly involved in it.
He seemed to cast an empty glance at him.
For a moment, Uriel's inner fear reached its peak. He felt suffocated and stiff, the heat was irretrievably lost from his body, and the flame of his soul was suddenly extinguished. It's just a dream...but too scary and psychedelic. This is not a mysterious place that mortals can reach. He must leave here, otherwise he will die.
Only desperate people can treat death with contempt, and Uriel is not one of them. But he was frightened, trembling, and shaken, but instead gritted his teeth and dived into the water.
The water was not turbulent enough to allow one to swim within two yards. As you approach the vortex, the corpses become denser. The darkness swallowed bones and shriveled flesh, spitting out dirty black foam. They spread like ink in the bright red river, and Uriel tensed his muscles, almost cramping. He suppressed his nausea and pushed away someone's shoulders, fearing that they would suddenly turn around and pounce on him.
These were the Broken Moon's offerings, Uriel realized. Meimi was sent out of Kamaria by them, but Broken Moon still silently gathered strength and prepared for the next resurrection. But except York, none of them could possibly live a thousand years. Who will stop Him then? Winnie Watts may be plunged into eternal night.
Manet's body appeared in front of him. The densely packed skeletons were crowded together, like workers queuing at the platform early in the morning trying to catch an overloaded bus. Her head was turned to the side, and her elbows were raised like a puppet, pressing against the ribs of the sailor's body. A mess of hair hangs from the latter's trident, dancing like a dark flag in the ripples, summoning more bones. Even the scene when Yotsuba City was massacred by corpse eaters was not as weird and inexplicable as it is now. No matter what was under the whirlpool, he didn't want to go in and see the truth.
Uriel forced himself out of the panic and tried to pull Mana out. It was no use at all, idiot. Her body was buried in the monastery outside Iron Claw, with the skull of her enemy as an offering. This is just a dream, a false world. He thought as he tugged on her shoulders.
Suddenly, as if a plug had been pulled from the bottom of the sink, the vortex exploded with gravitational force. The barrier of corpses quickly collapsed, stirring into the chaotic current. Uriel let go of his hand at a moment when the pulling force increased sharply, but he had no time to swim far away. Waves as black as ink pulled at his whole body. The apprentice struggled to resist, but he still gradually approached the violent vortex. Maybe I should go down and take a closer look. This is just a dream anyway. The thought was fleeting, but in the end fear prevailed, overwhelming foolish curiosity.
Or there is no difference. The water in the river was getting colder and colder, and Uriel's resistance became more and more difficult. He turned his head, and Manai's body was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps she had already disappeared into the whirlpool. Did I see it wrong? Is that just a girl with a similar outline to Dorothy, not her? After being thrown into the vortex, he will know the answer.
A corpse was swept up by the water waves and hit Uriel, pushing him into the whirlpool. The apprentice suddenly lost his direction and could only follow the vortex. The dark waters became an upside-down and chaotic world. His vision was empty, and his eardrums could only absorb his own heartbeat. Things kept colliding with him, and Uriel suddenly realized that he was descending while spinning, and was about to enter the bottomless depths...
...until a pair of hands dragged him out of the whirlpool. They were a pair of arms as cold as death, the shoulders and elbows were covered by steel armor, and the seven-pointed star shone brightly. Uriel raised his head with support and looked at Joey's body in the dream with wide eyes. The anchor point immediately shattered the "spiritual vision".
it's over. The apprentice felt dizzy and slowly opened his eyes. "Sauron? What time is it-" His words were stuck. Something is wrong.
The sun rises and the night has passed. Puddles of lime mixed with water accumulated in the middle of the road, and the air was filled with the terrible smell of burnt corn, boiled mung beans, and fresh horse manure. This is the smell of the city. Men and women going to the market, children wandering around, and vendors pushing carts spread slowly like a muddy river between the stone brick walls. They are as gray as the sky, very different from the colors of dreams. It just rained last night.
He was standing in front of an unfamiliar street, and a carriage was speeding towards him. A red-haired girl ran past, blindly dashing across the street. Neither slowed down, seeming to diverge on this narrow street. Uriel subconsciously stopped the other party. For an instant, time seemed to stand still.
"Ruth!" A terrified scream came from behind. A girl's voice, completely unfamiliar. Am I in a dream?
Uriel's feeling at this moment was no less than waiting for a phantom train of floating clouds on the platform in the outer world.
"Thank you." Another girl rushed through the crowd and rushed to the apprentice. The child from before was still struggling behind Uriel's arm. Their facial features looked quite similar, but their impressions were completely different. Uriel looked at them in confusion for a long time before he realized that the problem was with their hairstyles.
"Ruth...Gods, thank you...this child is simply...ah——!" She seemed to have seen a dragon in the city, and screamed again in panic. "Can you see us?"
Damn it, I'm not blind. But Uriel was not in a hurry to refute. He looked around and observed the expressions of the people around him. "It looks like it is." People were doing their own thing and didn't pay any attention to the tragedy that almost happened here. Where the carriage passed, they spread out and stepped on each other's shoes, while the horses' hooves and ruts had long since disappeared at the end of the street. The girl known as Ruth stopped lunging forward, and Uriel let go. "No one else can see you."
"It's, uh, a mystery," the second girl explained uneasily, grabbing Ruth. "Thank you, sir, but we should go." She didn't want to stay in front of the apprentice at all, and the girl who stupidly rushed under the wheel, Ruth, held her hand obediently, and then followed her step by step and left. Not a word was said.
It was indeed mysterious. Under normal circumstances, he should have woken up in the guest room of the church, not this strange street. Uriel still remembered the whirlpool at the end of the blood river, the corpses floating down the river, the cold hands, and the twinkling seven-pointed star. I should be awake, but where am I?
He tried to walk across the street, hoping to find someone to ask about the situation. It was a busy place with pedestrians, and it was unlikely he could answer his question. A woman carrying water was resting under the wall. As soon as Uriel spoke, she picked up the bucket and left. This is not an isolated case. He then asked the baker, the laborer, the blacksmith's apprentice, the crab seller, and the waiter at the bar where the drinks were served. They all ignored him and didn't even look at him. No reason could convince Uriel, and he realized that he did not exist in the eyes of these people.
Only two people could see him.
It is not difficult to find the two red-haired girls. Their traces are invisible to others, but they are very obvious to the apprentice. Uriel climbs the fence in the street and no one stops him. Soon he was standing on the roof, and people in the house complained about the old tiles based on the sound. As he pushed his way through the crowd, brushing aside jostling brawlers, they fought with each other's sudden bursts of strength. I am a ghost in this city, out of place.
Fortunately, it's not like he was in the blood-red dream. The mystery and magic power are not affected, only the scroll of oath is not on him. The problem lies in "spiritual vision". As long as Uriel plans to peek into the future, he will feel a headache. Without the Scroll of Oath, his magic power would not be enough to activate this demon's magic again.
They were stopping under an ash tree. In the alley, Ruth chased a stray dog in a circle in the open space, and her sisters - they should be sisters, but the apprentice could not tell their ages - were resting by the well.
Uriel jumped from one roof to a tree, "Two ladies."
When she heard someone calling her above her, the girl almost hit the tree trunk. But instead of running away, she screamed in horror: "Get down!"
