Chapter 441: The Gods |
May 10, 2014. Atop the Snow Mountain.
The ice-blue sky was pristine and cloudless. Standing on the precipitous ridge and gazing upward, one could almost imagine peering through the dome of the heavens into the cosmos beyond.
Winter had not yet arrived, and the weather was fair. Thousands of climbers from all corners of the globe had congregated here, led by local guides, to ascend the world's highest peak—a testament to their courage and their will to conquer nature.
Year after year, some would exhaust their strength and leave their bodies behind on the mountain. Year after year, headstrong fools, driven by some irrational obsession, came in endless waves. Old corpses, frozen into sculptures, became waypoints for those who followed. New bodies, shallowly buried in the snow and ice, added splashes of color to the mountain's white canvas.
Qi Si sat by the mountain path, chin in hand, watching with a listless air as the climbers, their faces and hair crusted with ice, trudged up the mountain one laborious step at a time.
These people could neither see nor hear him. Though they passed within arm's reach, they clearly belonged to two different worlds. Fortunately, he had three companions on this journey. Their idle conversations, analyzing their current situation and speculating about the future, were just enough to keep them from forgetting how to speak.
Qi Si was involuntarily reminded of a science fiction novel he had once read: after the apocalypse, with humanity on the brink of extinction, the last survivor in the universe went mad from extreme loneliness and terror.
Now, the four of them were spectators to a bustling scene, yet utterly unable to join in. They wandered like powerless ghosts from a distant time and place, not even sure if they truly existed. Was this not a similar form of torment?
Worse yet, they belonged to different factions, now thrown together by a common purpose and forced to maintain a veneer of peace in their daily interactions. Qi Si felt as if all the misdeeds of his past life were catching up to him right here and now.
The four of them had felt no cold or fatigue on their journey, no pain or sensory input of any kind—they were more ethereal than ghosts. During their travels, Chu Yining had returned home to find her own memorial portrait and an obituary for dying in the line of duty. She was, for all intents and purposes, dead, no longer possessing the right to exist. To remain so optimistic in the face of all this... well, her mindset was truly extraordinary.
Qi Si sighed. "If you make a wish to the mountain god now... first of all, who knows if we're even in the same dimension as this mountain god, or if it could hear our prayers. And even if we got a response... would we just be sending a long-distance greeting to the Ancestral God to let her know we're still alive?"
Xiao Fengchao added, "If my memory of the Final Instance's settings serves me right, the entire Snow Mountain is an incarnation of the Ancestral God, and everyone here worships the so-called 'Mother God.' In that case, Sister Chu, if your prayer actually got a response, it'd be straight out of a horror movie..."
"True, the connection between the Final Instance and reality is too strong," Chu Yining agreed with a nod, quickly scribbling something in her notebook. "We never made it to the summit in the Final Instance. That's why we concluded it couldn't be cleared through in-game means, and why Lin Jue activated the Dark Judge's power... But what if the key to clearing it was at the summit all along?"
"Sister Chu, what's past is past. No use thinking about it now, haha," Xiao Fengchao said, abruptly changing the subject. "Besides, given the state we were all in back then, we never would have made it to the summit anyway..."
Regardless, the four of them eventually fell in behind a guide and began their ascent toward the summit.
The guide and the climbers were ordinary humans, and by this point, they were showing clear signs of exhaustion. The final two kilometers of the journey were a slow, staggering crawl. The four companions ambled along behind them, making idle conversation.
Whatever soul now inhabited him, Fu Jue was not one for idle chatter. He had been silent ever since they entered Shangri-La Town. But now, he pinched a shard of ice between two fingers, his brow furrowed in thought. As if having finally reached a decision, he flicked it toward the guide's feet.
The guide clearly saw the ice shard. He paused, spat into the empty air, and muttered something to the climber. The climber, already pale from exhaustion, turned even whiter. "No way," he mumbled. "I always thought the snow monsters were just a legend..."
After a moment of tense scanning, the guide spoke in broken Mandarin, "I must have been mistaken." The journey resumed. The players all understood what this meant. Fu Jue stated coolly, "Since arriving in Shangri-La Town, our connection to reality has deepened. We can now exert some influence on people and objects."
Xiao Fengchao's eyes lit up. "Then couldn't we try to contact the Weird Investigation Bureau? What if we spelled out a message on the snow with ice blocks for someone to see and pass along?"
"Great idea. I'll start drafting a message," Chu Yining, always the most proactive, immediately began to write furiously in her notebook. "This feels so surreal. Do you think all the paranormal events and urban legends we used to encounter were just cries for help from people trapped in parallel dimensions?"
Qi Si wasn't given to such fanciful thoughts. For him, contacting the Weird Investigation Bureau now, whether successful or not, was no bad thing.
In 2014, he had only just been born; he hadn't yet had the chance to commit his heinous deeds. Even if there had been some... friction in the Final Instance, that was all Zhou Ke's doing. What did that have to do with him, Qi Si?
Likewise, he had no power base in this timeline. Forget the strange entities under his control—he didn't even know if Bob, the pig farm owner, was running a pig farm at this point. To change his circumstances, he would have to rely on the power of the Weird Investigation Bureau.
In any case, being able to re-establish contact with the real world was good news. After days of weary travel, the four felt a renewed sense of purpose. They no longer bothered with the slow-moving guide and pushed on toward the summit at full speed.
An intangible substance seemed to float in the air, growing thicker and wrapping around them the closer they got to the peak. It formed a tremendous pressure, a heavy weight barring their path.
A feeling of resistance welled up from their hearts without reason, like a psychic's premonition of ghosts and death. Before they even arrived, their minds began to conjure a series of terrifying images of the summit, warning the audacious intruders to stop, or even retreat.
But they had come this far. How could they give up now?
Fu Jue strode silently at the front. He grabbed a protruding icicle for leverage, hauled himself onto the highest point of the Snow Mountain, and turned to help Chu Yining. Qi Si and Xiao Fengchao followed close behind, stepping in his tracks to reach the top.
The moment they all stood firm on the summit, the vast expanse of white snow around them refracted a crimson light. The sky above looked as if it had been cleaved in two by a great blade. One half remained a placid ice-blue, while the other burned with the fiery gold and red of a conflagration. Molten rock and blazing fire rained from above, a torrential downpour that stretched a curtain of golden beads between heaven and earth.
"Collapse." The word surfaced in all their minds. The sky was shattering and falling. No description could be more fitting. It brought to mind the end of the world, the end of time, and then the ancient myths of the heavens collapsing and the legend of the goddess Nuwa mending the sky.
Qi Si thought of the "Twilight of the Gods," the calamity rumored on the Weird Game forums to have wiped out the core members of the Ark Guild, triggering a massive shift in the player landscape. Was it a spectacle like this? Or perhaps it was precisely because it was such a magnificent sight that it earned the name "Twilight of the Gods"?
Or maybe, just maybe, the scene unfolding before him *was* the Twilight of the Gods that had occurred in the Sunset Ruins of the Weird Game?
"Who are you people? How did you suddenly appear on the summit?" A question, sharp with urgency and fear, came from behind them.
Qi Si turned to look. The guide and the climber had also reached the top. They held their trekking poles defensively, staring with suspicion at Chu Yining and Xiao Fengchao.
At the same time, Chu Yining looked in his direction, her expression a mask of confusion and panic. "Qi Si? Fu Jue? Where are you? Why... why can't I see you anymore?"