He put away the firearm whose barrel still retained a trace of warmth.
He walked over to Ma Teng's corpse, his eyes still wide open in death, as though he lay on the ground gazing up at something.
Looking at that inexplicably tranquil face.
All of a sudden.
Roland's heart was filled with a tumult of emotions.
It was a complex feeling, one difficult to describe in concrete terms.
In the end.
When all his thoughts turned into helplessness...
He looked toward the end of the passage again.
An ancient door, tightly shut.
Roland could clearly sense it.
Behind that door.
Inside that sealed-off room.
Something was constantly calling to him.
Especially now that he had successfully defeated Ma Teng, the nemesis who had plagued him for a thousand years.
Without any hesitation.
He walked toward it, one step at a time.
At this moment.
He no longer had any misgivings.
All he could do was trust that the Magic Talisman would grant him the power to turn everything around.
To reach this place.
He had given almost everything.
Even his ka-tet—his entire team—had been utterly destroyed because of it.
Eddie Dean, Odetta Susanna Holmes, Jack Chambers, and even Ao Yi—his companions had paved the road leading here, the road he had walked to this day, with their lives.
Therefore.
No matter what, he had to keep going.
There was no other choice.
Even if a cliff, an impassable chasm, or destruction lay before him, he could only keep walking...
There was absolutely no road back, no room to turn around!
Now.
As he walked through this corridor, where there was no living thing besides himself.
With every step forward.
He felt the call he faced grow ever stronger and more fervent.
In a daze.
His vision even began to