Embers of Embers

Chapter 73 Gap
This is a lonely and cold world, with endless ice fields at your feet. Dark blue seawater surges under the thick ice. There seem to be other things in the depth, but due to the obstruction of the ice, they cannot He could only weakly tap on the cold surface, mixing the strange friction sound with the cold wind.
The stars gathered into a river of stars that penetrated the night sky, spreading from one end of the horizon to the other, occupying the entire field of vision.
Lorenzo looked at the figure with his back to the full moon, countless emotions welling up in his heart, but in the end he couldn't say anything, and just stared at each other from afar until the man came to his side, Sitting on the lonely bench.
"Don't you think this place is like an artist's absurd dream?"
He sat down casually, his worn windbreaker didn't look warm at all, but he seemed to feel no cold, and he judged the world casually.
This is a world in the gap, existing in the gap between life and death. Except for the two people at this moment, everything is so desolate.
"Probably... at least I think it's pretty good."
Lorenzo thought for a while and sat back on the bench. The two of them faced the full moon rising below the horizon, as relaxed as sitting in the park watching wild dogs chasing squirrels.
"By the way, what should I call you now, Lorenzo or something? How is life in Old Dunling?"
The man smiles.
"Lorenzo... To be honest, I don't like this feeling."
Lorenzo was too lazy to show any shyness or other emotions, his whole person was cold.
"I know. After all, who knew that you would actually choose this name in memory of me. You clearly planned to remember it, but found that the person who should be remembered is not completely dead."
"Ah, I understand this feeling so well, I'm so ashamed!"
The man was extremely happy, talking about it from various angles.
But then everything calmed down. Lorenzo was not happy about this damn joke. He took a deep breath, as if he was suffering heart-rending pain, and his resolute eyes were filled with sadness at some point.
"I remember you were dead and I killed you with my own hands."
During the long silence, Lorenzo was the first to break the calm. He did not look at the man, but stared straight ahead. The full moon was so huge and bright, as if it was rising from under the sea. The glow on the surface Huge craters are faintly visible.
Lorenzo remembered what those astronomers had said. They said that those craters were left behind after the impact of asteroids, but in his opinion, they were just shriveled eye sockets. Maybe there were once huge pupils there. , but were poached one after another by unknown forces.
"Oh oh oh, I almost forgot if you didn't mention it? You are really cruel."
The man didn't care about Lorenzo's emotions at all, and said with a bit of joy, he lifted off the dark windbreaker, and the chest underneath was bloody bones without flesh and blood, as if he had been attacked by a ghoul, All organs and even the heart were eaten away.
"How do I taste? I've always thought of myself as vanilla cake."
Like a salesman asking a customer if his meat tastes good, a big part of Lorenzo's neurosis comes from this jerk.
"You know, you looked very ugly when you were eating. You were crying and chewing at the same time, and you were complaining."
Ah... I really want to tear this lunatic alive.
Lorenzo rolled his eyes at him. When a neurotic meets another more neurotic person, he always feels an unspeakable feeling of powerlessness. Normally Lorenzo tortures others, but here he is torturing himself.
"So you said this is [the gap]? What is that?"
"Literally, the [gap] of everything."
The man covered the abominable wound and then spoke slowly.
"The Order has been studying things on the spiritual level, that is... the soul. Those alchemists divided things into four major elements, but above this there is also the soul related to life."
He turned his head, and it was a face that was somewhat similar to Lorenzo's, but different.
The man is a very optimistic person, so optimistic that even if he dies, he still can't calm down. Even if he is thrown together with the monsters, he might pull those terrible creatures to tell cold jokes together.
"As we are familiar with the connection with darkness, Lorenzo, have you ever thought about what the deepest connection is?"
"The deepest part?"
Lorenzo shook his head. He didn't know too much about these things. What was in the deepest part seemed to him to be endless monsters and erosion that killed people instantly.
"That's right. This is what the religious group specialized in in the later stage. What is the deepest connection? All experiments have a hypothesis, a hypothesis."
Lorenzo seemed to have thought of something and asked.
"That's right here? The deepest part of the connection, you named it [Gap]."
"As expected of my successor, you guessed it right."
The man was delighted with Lorenzo's quick thinking, and he clapped his hands happily.
"So... am I dead? After all, you died six years ago. As a dead person, you are happily telling me that the two of us are in the deepest [gap] of connection, although I don't know what is going on here. What’s going on, but it’s not a place where you can just come when you want, right?”
Lorenzo felt that he might be dead, but he felt a sense of relief. He collapsed on the bench and looked at the Milky Way running through the night sky above his head. He suddenly felt that the scenery of the world after death was not bad.
"You are not dead, my friend. Logically speaking, no living person can reach [the gap], but there are always special things, like us."
The man said as he hugged Lorenzo. He could smell the faint smell of blood in the cold air, coming from the man's hideous wounds.
"I died then, and I was here when I woke up, and sometimes I can sense your presence, but I can't see you, it's like the connection to the dark as we know it, Our worlds overlap, but I cannot observe your world.
Until today, your connection with the darkness has reached the deepest point, and I finally saw you, so I dragged you over as soon as I tried hard. "
As the man spoke, he moved his hands and made a dragging gesture.
"Then do you know that before I came here, I was fighting a Michael demon hunter? He has exceeded the threshold, and the rising pure flames are enough to melt steel. Maybe I will be burned to death in the time I am talking to you. ”
Lorenzo said coldly as the touch of reunion had been almost worn away by the man's nonsense.
"Huh? Then I'm really sorry."
The man apologized after hearing this, but Lorenzo couldn't see any sign of remorse on his face.
"[The Gap] still has too many secrets that I don't know yet, but at least we proved that it does exist."
Another useless message, Lorenzo looked at him with cold eyes and asked coldly.
"What about you? What's going on with you? You've been dead a long time ago, so are you my illusion at this moment, or some so-called soul?"
This is a weird place, weird things, weird everything.
The man thought it was nothing. He thought for a while, then pointed to the ice field at his feet.
"I'm probably the same as it. Just like six years ago, we still failed to kill it, but we successfully trapped it. You are the last person in the world who remembers its existence, so it lives in your memory. Here, as long as you don't spread its information, it will be trapped and dead in your memory forever.
Logically speaking, I am dead, but part of me is entangled with it. When you trap it, part of my consciousness is also trapped here, so I have survived to this day. "
The man said seriously.
"In other words, if I really die, what is in front of you is just a reverberation with memories, a lonely ghost that doesn't belong anywhere."
This is a sad story. As the man's words began to tremble, the friction sound mixed in the wind became louder and louder. Lorenzo didn't even have time to grieve for him, so he subconsciously moved to prepare for an attack, but was stopped by The man held on tightly.
"Don't worry, it can't escape. It has been struggling like this every day for so many years."
As if appreciating some beautiful scenery, the man sat steadily on the bench, watching the ice beneath his feet crack and huge seawater surge up from underneath.
"This may be God's last comfort for us. Although everyone is almost dead, it is really good to still see its painful struggle every day."
Lorenzo listened to those words quietly, and the blue beneath his feet completely exploded. Countless dry arms stabbed out of the sea water. They were imprisoned by heavy chains, longing for fresh air, and then let out whimpering wails.
It scratched the smooth ice with its palms and tried to climb up, but it was all in vain, leaving deep scratches on the ice before falling into the deep sea again.
how many people?
They are hundreds and thousands, trying to escape from this cold sea of ​​ice, but no one can do it.
The heavy iron chain spread from the end of the deep sea to the top. Its figures gathered like a school of fish, and finally turned into a dark orca that crashed through the glacier and leaped high. Countless faces overlapped and turned into a hundred-faced monster. , the strange darkness under the full moon is clearly visible.
The sound of the tide swept over, and Lorenzo saw the terrifying multi-faced whale bringing up a waterfall of white tide. But then the low temperature froze everything, and it still could not escape the ice sea, standing in the desolation like a sculpture. Above, everything collapsed in the next moment, shattering into fine snowflakes. Dragged by the strong wind, the chaotic whiteness swallowed everything up.
The man didn't panic at all, as if he was watching a performance that he had seen countless times. Now that the song was over, the audience should be sitting firmly on their chairs waiting for the show to end, so he clapped his hands, feeling grateful for this performance that he had repeated so many times. Applause for every death.
(End of this chapter)