Crow and Stigmata

"Ah... I can't go on like this..."

Huai Shi sat in the garden, clothes disheveled and face pale. Thinking of everything that had happened over the past two days, he could not help throwing back his head and howling at the sky, tears streaming down his face.

This was no longer merely the peril of being so poor he was about to go bankrupt. First, he had been discovered interviewing to be a male escort, destroying his good reputation overnight. Then he had inexplicably encountered a corpse, been surrounded by cameras and dragged into some bizarre government department, and finally suffered another devastating blow to his spirit...

From the inside out, from his mind to his wallet, he could no longer sustain such a bitter, painful life.

Especially the record that had just appeared in that book. Every time Huai Shi looked at it, he wanted to die. Unfortunately, his family was so poor he could not even afford a rope, and the gas had been cut off for half a year.

No way to die, no way to live.

"Fuck it, I might as well die!"

He flung the notebook aside, raging helplessly, weeping panda tears. Once he had finished raging and crying, he obediently picked the notebook back up, wiped the dirt off it, then sighed and continued staring blankly at the barren garden.

It would pass, Huai Shi. It would all pass... Maybe after some time, he would simply forget all about it?

He prayed silently, then began agonizing over where he could earn enough money for his next living expenses.

"It would be nice if you could really think that way. But judging by the timing, those people should have their eyes on you by now..."

He heard an unfamiliar voice beside him. It sounded like a woman's, husky and seductive, carrying an indescribable trace of mockery. She said, "Kid, you're going to die."

"You're the one who's going to die!"

Huai Shi turned to glare irritably, then froze in place.

There was no one beside him.

This was the backyard of his home. No one ever came here in the first place, let alone someone inexplicably striking up a conversation with him.

But who had spoken?

He saw a Crow lazily preening its wings atop the fence.

"Stop staring stupidly. Yes, it's me."

Amid his baffled expression, the Crow spoke calmly. "That's right, a Crow is talking to you. And no, you're not having a nightmare."

As she spoke, she seemed to let out a satisfied burp.

"You can talk?"

Huai Shi stared in astonishment, then immediately became wary. "No, wait. What the hell are you?"

The Crow chuckled softly, her tone turning aggrieved and teasing. "Wow. Back when you stared at me every day without blinking, I was your little darling. Now you're calling me some hellish thing?"

"Y-you-you... You're that shitty book?"

Huai Shi came to his senses and flipped open the notebook's cover. On the title page... the silhouette of that Crow had vanished, as though it had truly become a living thing and flown out of the pages.

"More or less."

The Crow sighed and glanced at the notebook in his arms. "Though we are both remnants, I am now merely a record contained within it.

But if you confuse me with Heaven, that would be far too ridiculous."

After saying something Huai Shi could not understand, she abruptly changed the subject. Her scarlet eyes fixed on him. "But who I am is not important. The question is—

—do you really think I was trying to fool you just now?"

She asked softly, "Didn't you personally experience the records of those people before they died?"

Huai Shi recalled the unending nightmares from the previous night and shuddered instinctively. His voice became dry. "They really... are all dead?"

"Ah, that's right."

The Crow nodded. "Other than you, everyone who has seen that box is dead now.

There were quite a few good things inside. After sleeping for so many years, it was rare to replenish so much Source Matter. It was a little mixed up, but by my estimate, there was enough for around eight or nine hundred people?"

She smacked her beak with lingering satisfaction and looked delightedly at Huai Shi. "In light of those gifts, do you need my help, young man?"

"Forty grams of copper, fifty-seven grams of silver, twelve grams of powdered tin... a crucible and a gas burner set. They threw in the remaining lead blocks for free..."

At dusk, Huai Shi finally returned home after running around the city all day. He tossed the plastic bags in his hands onto the table, picked up the leftover bottled water from two days ago, and gulped it down. He could not even worry about whether it was healthy.

"My credit loans are maxed out. I'm drowning in debt. What the hell is the point of buying all this stuff?"

"Alchemy."

The Crow picked at her feathers and replied calmly, "It isn't easy to create a Stigmata that an ordinary person like you can use."

"A Stigmata?" Huai Shi laughed. "What, are you going to make me a janitor who does midair splits?"

"What is that? A modern person's joke?"

"No, just a money-grabbing scheme from some trash game company."

Whenever Huai Shi thought of those classmates who had spent themselves red-eyed, casually dropping thousands or even tens of thousands into games, he could not help feeling... so envious.

"It's different, Huai Shi. Though the names are the same, the Stigmata I speak of is not such a ridiculous thing."

The Crow explained evenly, "If the essence of an Ascender's soul is the embryonic form of divine authority, then Stigmata are the results born from analyzing the legacies of gods.

By tracing the remnants of miracles to seek the path toward the sacred, imitating gods, examining divine authority and lingering traces—what this research produces is the existence known as Stigmata. Secret rites formed from metal and incense, tiny miracles created in imitation of immense ones.

That is a Stigmata."

"...Gods?"

Huai Shi was stunned. "Do gods really exist in this world?"

"They once did."

The Crow fell silent for a moment. "But they are all dead. Things abandoned by the age are no threat to the present world. Before long, they may not even be worth remembering."

The Crow did not wish to say more about it. She merely urged Huai Shi to set up the crucible and begin this refinement as soon as possible.

"Will just these things be enough?"

Once the flames were hot enough, Huai Shi followed the Crow's instructions. He put on a mask, ground the lead blocks into powder, then carefully used his own blood to write inscriptions he did not recognize upon metal sheets pressed extremely thin. The structures of those inscriptions were exceptionally simple, yet tolerated no deviation whatsoever.

The Crow's eye was terrifyingly sharp. Even if he was off by the slightest fraction, she made him erase it and start over. After wasting an unknown number of CCs of blood, he finally completed this simple task.

"These are only auxiliary materials. Even the simplest Stigmata cannot be refined with mortal fire and mortal metal. This is merely the crudest emergency substitute. When you create more advanced Stigmata in the future, you may even require the blood of mythical beasts and vast sacrifices, perhaps even..."

She paused and said nothing further, merely stating lightly, "Rest for ten minutes. Begin at eleven fifteen. Remember, you only have one chance. If you miss it... well, I don't think you have enough money to start all over again, do you?"

At the mention of money, Huai Shi became even more nervous. He held the notebook and repeatedly confirmed the sequence the Crow had dictated to him, rehearsing it in his mind.

Meanwhile, the Crow stood beside the crucible and watched the flames.

In an instant, the scarlet blaze abruptly turned pure white. At last, countless streams of light emerged from within it, magnificent and dazzling.

Yet the Crow's figure grew thinner and thinner.

"What is that?"

"Source Matter. Ignited Source Matter." The Crow glanced at him, then explained before he could ask another question. "Source Matter is the substance that makes up souls, spirit preserved within matter... You can think of it as fragments of a soul.

Your materials are insufficient, so we can only work with the flames. Every second, it burns away one person's worth of soul. Ah, don't worry about the source. These are all supplies from that box."

Huai Shi swallowed, not knowing what to say.

More terrifying than burning away one person every second was the fact that, according to the Crow, that box contained nearly a thousand people's worth of Source Matter...

What kind of monstrous thing was it?

"Stop thinking about pointless things. It's starting, Huai Shi."

The Crow gave Huai Shi one final look. The lead in the crucible had already come to a full boil, yet there was no stench or any other smell. Instead, under the torment of those pure white flames, it faintly revealed a hint of golden yellow.

Like gold dust rippling through pale gray.

Huai Shi had no time to think further. He grabbed the items arranged beside him in order and dropped them into the crucible one after another. First tin, then copper, and finally silver...

Each time he added something, the molten metal in the crucible showed no ripples at all. In an instant, it completely melted the foreign material.

The pure white flames suddenly surged upward. Countless streams of light were greedily drawn into the crucible, and the violent radiance stabbed pain into Huai Shi's eyes.

At that final instant, Huai Shi heard the Crow sigh.

"I hope we've truly made the right bet this time, Huai Shi."

Murmuring softly, she, already as faint as a phantom, suddenly spread her wings, beat them, and flew into the crucible.

Boom!

With a low, muffled crash, the flames went out. The liquid within the crucible rose up, sketching an intricate outline in the air before collapsing inward layer after layer.

As Huai Shi watched in astonishment, it gradually solidified and drifted slowly down from the air.

It was a feather.

A metal feather.

Every barb of the feather, seemingly cast from pure silver, was slender and perfect, without the slightest flaw. Light flowed across its mirror-like surface as though it reflected the entire world, with all manner of strange scenes flickering past.

The feather landed in Huai Shi's hand.

"This is my current body, a special unaligned Stigmata—Event Branch."

The Crow's voice sounded beside his ear, filled with exhaustion. "With that notebook and Event Branch in hand, even before the upheaval, you would have been qualified to serve as a probationary secretary."

Huai Shi stared blankly at the heavy notebook in his hands, its pages fluttering endlessly despite the lack of wind. He felt dizzy. Though countless lines of text flowed across it, it was as though he were looking into a mirror and seeing another version of himself.

Another self that existed only in written records.

"What exactly... is this thing?"

"Well, if I had to put it..." The Crow sighed softly. "It is probably Heaven's final shadow upon the earth. You may call it the Book of Destiny."

At that instant, the countless flowing words abruptly gathered together. As the Crow on the title page vanished without a trace, line after line of new text appeared.

Huai Shi (Stress Phase)

Title: None

Stigmata: None

Divine Miracle Inscription: None

Skills Held: General Knowledge LV3, Art · Performance · Cello Performance LV6, Death Sense LV0.

"See? You are now the master it has acknowledged." The Crow said wearily. "You can figure out the specifics of how to use it later. I need to sleep for a while first..."

"Wait, what the hell is 'Death Sense'? Why is it so blurry?"

Huai Shi pressed his face against the title page before he could make out that faint line of text.

"It is a sense for death, obviously. No matter what something is, after experiencing dozens of deaths in a row, it would gain some understanding, wouldn't it? Being blurry and dim means you have entered the threshold, but it has not yet reached the level of being called a skill. Still, I didn't expect you to have LV6 Cello Performance. You might actually be a genius..."

Her voice gradually drifted away, until at last he could no longer hear it.

She had probably really fallen asleep.

Only Huai Shi remained, dumbfounded, clutching his pen and notebook, with no idea what exactly to do with them.

Holding the feather pen called Event Branch, the corresponding operations and uses naturally surfaced in his mind. Apart from manipulating certain text-based objects, its greatest function was allowing him to write in the air and freely change the color...

"Well, at least I can save on printing costs for handing out flyers from now on..."

Huai Shi smiled bitterly as he looked at the pen, then turned his gaze to the book in his hands. After carefully flipping through it, however, he found that nothing seemed to have changed. Only among the newly added files at the very end did several pages faintly glow.

Huai Shi hesitated for a long time before raising the pen and touching them.

In an instant, brilliant light erupted from the pages.

The light swallowed him.

Tearjerker! What She Said to the Young Man

Please continue to vote and save this story. Also, I think I should start a Qidian Shock Department to help me come up with subtitles...