Chapter 99

He stopped in front of Hels’s pendant about “parents,” but Horne did not take it. Instead, he looked up and said, “If you need it, I can close my eyes.”

“No need.” Hels answered very straightforwardly. Since it was a longing, it would not show scenes one did not want to see.

But that vision was a scene Horne had never anticipated.

He did not experience it from Hels’s perspective, but from Mikaila’s. Mikaila was in a dim, enclosed space, sleeping, but she was woken by the rain sounds outside. The cold wind from the Snowfield seeped through the window, like the first rain of winter. She lifted the black curtain and stood up in a daze, walking out. The sight before her instantly sobered her, leaving her frozen in place.

The hallway of the house was flowing with blood. The rain sound she heard was not actual rain, but blood dripping from corpses, “plip-plop” onto the floor.

Looking up, there was a man and a very young Hels—two corpses with their chests pierced, feet off the ground, nailed high on the hallway wall. What protruded from their chests was the severed sharp mouth of an alien, like some decoration.

A horrific scream exploded. Horne instantly opened his eyes, but the pendant had already been put away by Hels.

Horne stood in place, his legs too heavy to move. He knew that when he had rescued Hels from the Snowfield years ago, the child’s condition had something to do with aliens, but he had never imagined it would be this kind of scene. What was most inconceivable to him was that this was Hels’s longing.

What was he longing for—his father’s death, his own death? It was the second time this had appeared.

“Just an illusion.” Hels said, his tone as relaxed as ever. “I don’t want to die, after all…”

He imitated Horne’s tone: “You’re still here.” Then he laughed.

Horne did not want to joke with him. He only gave him a cold glance and even wanted to pull his hand away, but Hels immediately gripped it tighter, so Horne made no further move. His heart felt like a hurricane had swept through it.

Only one pendant remained. Their five pendants’ progress was not much different. Horne found Hels’s last pendant, but when he saw the words on it, his hand, which had reached halfway, stopped.

“Lover.”

Every pendant read his longings, all true reflections of his inner heart. What would this one be?

“I’m at the last one! Sir, did you see mine? Hurry up!” Ains’s voice came from behind, high-pitched, anxious and impatient.

“Don’t rush.” Hels replied casually.

Horne took a deep breath and picked up this pendant.

The scene repeated. A few seconds later, Horne looked around with a slight frown.

The scene had not changed at all. It was still Cloud Palace Star, still this magnificent sea of clouds interwoven with gold. The massive wind pillar before them rose slowly, without any alteration.

Immediately after, he heard Hels’s voice: “Found it?”

Hels walked over from not far away, step by step into Horne’s view.

“You…” Horne started to speak but stopped.

“Hm?”

Horne said nothing for a long moment, somewhat dazed as he stared at Hels, watching him draw closer and closer.

“Why are you looking at me like that again?” Hels laughed lightly.

He had never shown any care or lack thereof. He had collected each pendant so impassively. Even when Horne secretly watched him, he made no extra movements. Only when their eyes met did that face show some emotion.

“Shut up and take it.” Horne urged, turning his head to the side.

From Horne’s current position, Hels took the pendant calmly, without showing a trace of awkwardness.

“Horne! Where are you?” Wen Yu asked loudly.

Horne immediately turned his head and walked toward Wen Yu’s direction without even glancing at Hels. He walked faster and faster, as if any slower and his heart would leap out.

He wanted confirmation, but when he picked up his own “lover” pendant, the exact same scene appeared as with Hels’s—nothing changed.

“Are we all almost done?” You Wenjie asked from behind. “Ains, did you find yours? I’m still missing two.”

“Almost!”

Hels just watched Horne’s back like that, unwilling to let go of the pendant in his hand.

Under the massive wind pillar, Horne stopped. He let the wind gust after gust, growing more and more fierce, until he gradually calmed down.

“What are you thinking?” Hels walked to his side, gazing at the wind pillar with him.

“Thinking…” Horne opened his mouth, then paused. He looked back at the five hundred meters he had just walked.

His heart raced, even his eardrums vibrated, and the blood vessels throughout his body pulsed. Hels did not know his “lover” vision, but he knew Hels’s.

“Hm?”

“Nothing.” Horne lifted his head to look at the highest point of the wind pillar, changing the subject urgently: “Look up there.”

Hels raised his head. In the instant he did, he heard Horne’s soft, mumbled question.

“Do you want to kiss me?”

Hels jerked his head down, but by the time he looked, he saw Horne only adjusting his own pendant, his expression calm without a ripple.

“What did you say?” Hels asked softly, in disbelief.

Horne did not even look at him, replying breezily: “What did I say? Must’ve misheard.”

Breezy as floating clouds, lighter than the wind brushing his hair. If not for the fist hidden behind his back, clenched until it nearly drew blood, even Horne would have believed his own calm facade.

But Hels noticed a detail. Horne had said “Must’ve misheard,” not “I didn’t say anything.”

He pursed his lips and smiled.

Horne frowned: “Funny?”

Hels shrugged, feigning indifference: “Huh? Did I laugh? Must’ve misheard.” With that, he added a smile devoid of emotion.

Horne did not want to talk to him. Every muscle in his body tensed unnaturally. He turned away, not sparing him a glance.

But Hels was in a good mood. He watched that back—forever unyielding—that would pause for him in some touching detail.

All five stood at the end of the five hundred meters, their pendants clinking lightly against each other.

They still did not understand the pendants’ meaning, but for now, it did not seem like anything bad, since every word corresponded to something of their own.

Freedom, peace, kindness, lover, parents, friends, reputation, wealth, status, self-esteem.

Ten.

“This seems like some psychological test chart.” Wen Yu said helplessly. She had wanted to say it after seeing the first few words, but the task was urgent. Whatever it meant, there was no time to dwell.

Alien tech, yet it understood human thinking pretty well.

“Did everyone get scenes with their pendants?” Horne looked to the side, as if he could really see the others.

“Yes.” You Wenjie answered. “I feel like it’s not the Tower knowing us, but scenes generated automatically from our own desires.”

And they needed to be seen by others.

“Never mind that. I’m doubting now—can we really walk up on water?” Wen Yu asked, craning her neck up. She only cared about the tangible things before her. The inverted waterfall splashed at the top, water droplets falling like rain, forming stairs in the air.

What You Wenjie saw was different from his initial imagination. From afar, this place looked like an hourglass, and it was indeed one, but without a shell or glass—like blocked by an invisible barrier somewhere. They formed the shape of sand spontaneously. Reaching in, one could even grab a handful. The sand at the edges formed stairs, like protruding bricks.

Horne asked Ains, who said the massive glowing plant had no stairs, but she could probably keep riding this tree to fly up.

Horne and Hels exchanged a glance, and the latter nodded lightly.

“Go up and see.”

The wind pillar supported heaven and earth. They climbed the stairs step by step.

The terminal still had no signal; they could not contact the outside.

Their figures were like ants, suspended between heaven and earth, turning into precarious grains of sand. The planet they were on rotated slowly, never stopping. In the eternal universe, it was as if they had never climbed at all.

The third hour since the five disappeared.

The Obelisk’s middle section snapped apart in midair, the upper and lower ends floating slowly, emitting a glow.

The fire in the Tower District was completely under control, everything restored to normal. At the West District Cathedral, Ais stood by the window as usual, looking at the city, the planet.

The guard nearby walked over: “Leader, the Particle Rain is in its final stage. Before our kin arrive, it will cleanse the humans.”

“Good.”

The guard hesitated, then asked: “The Obelisk is still running?”

Ais’s gaze slid from the distant city to the Obelisk, its dark green, icy light faintly spreading outward.

“If the Obelisk stops, it means they’re all dead inside.” Ais turned and walked back to sit in the church’s position of God. “It won’t be long. Humans who enter the Obelisk can’t come out alive. It’s just a matter of how much moral dilemma each endures, unless…”

He chuckled: “There’s a traitor.”

“Bang!” A muffled thud.

Horne looked down. He could not see the other three’s scenes, but this was the fourth time he heard a body hitting the ground.

“Still no good?” Horne asked.

You Wenjie was having issues; he always fell after climbing two steps.

You Wenjie’s voice came from below, tinged with helplessness: “No, this hourglass keeps flipping.”

The massive hourglass before him flipped at irregular intervals, always after You Wenjie climbed a few steps along the brick-like sand edges. The entire thing inverted, the edge sands vanished, his limbs lost support, and he fell from midair. Fortunately, he never climbed too high—the highest was only seven or eight meters—and he had time to adjust his landing pose during the fall.

But the sky was at least a hundred meters up, maybe more, just like in the real world.

Horne and Hels’s side was better. Though it grew harder the higher they went, it was not as straightforward as You Wenjie’s falls.

Horne grabbed a handful of cloud.

The wind pillar blew so hard his face hurt, his hair constantly blocking his eyes. Most importantly, the clouds around the pillar were growing softer again.

From initially too soft to advance, to hardening enough to walk on, now soft once more. One step, a wobble, precarious. Grabbing the cloud above—unexpectedly, he grasped nothing. The cloud tore like cotton candy.

The two stopped a few meters from the ground, unable to go higher.

“Do you still have pendants over there?” You Wenjie shouted upward, head tilted back. He looked at the flowing sand, no longer trying to climb, instead searching the grains for more pendants.

No one saw any more glowing points in their scenes.

In a few short seconds, another “plop” of falling into water. Wen Yu dropped from the waterfall’s edge, splashing into the pool at the bottom.

The water was not deep; she could stand, but she was soaked through.

“No good. The stairs up there are water.” She stood at the bottom looking up too.

Those stairs seemed to lead straight to the sky, yet everyone could only climb a few before the rest turned decorative—one touch and they shattered, one pull and they disintegrated.

They simply could not go up, and now no new pendants either.

Horne clung tightly to the cloud mist in his hand. Turning his head, he saw Hels beside him squinting slightly, red flushing his skin, his attention not even on himself.

His temperature was rising; they could not keep fumbling aimlessly.

Horne leaped down from midair, landing on the ground, and extended a hand to Hels: “Come down. I’ll carry you.”

Hels’s lips curved lightly. He was about to speak when he was cut off.

“Shut up. That’s an order.”

Fine, the colonel’s order.