I'm Not a Flame-Chaser

Like the changing of the sea into mulberry fields, a dream spanning thousands of years.

Did he return to the shrine?

Lin tentatively raised his hand and discovered that his clothes had changed.

He was originally wearing a black trench coat that he used to conceal his identity after arriving in the modern civilization, but now he had changed into a set of coarse cloth clothes, the style of which was similar to the clothes of the villagers he saw in Yae Village.

What's going on? After entering the Tenshu-kaku, is it another Yae Village?

Are you ready?

At that moment, a deep male voice came from behind Lin. He turned around and found a middle-aged man standing behind him.

"... What?" Lin asked, puzzled.

"Didn't I tell you to prepare the things needed for the sacrifice? Didn't you hear what I said?" The middle-aged man, dressed in white cloth, looked like a clergyman, and his words carried an air of authority. He was clearly questioning Lin at this moment.

At this moment, a middle-aged man walked over and apologized to him, saying, "Yae Guji, I'm so sorry. It's his first time helping with the preparations, so he doesn't know anything about these things. Everything is ready, and we can hold the ceremony at any time."

After saying that, he turned around and scolded, "Lin, hurry up and apologize to Yae no Yae Guji."

"..."

Yae... Gongji?

Lin pondered the surname and his position in his mind.

In other words, this man must be the head of the shrine, and also the highest authority in Yae Village? But Lin had never seen him before, could it be...?

Lin caught a glimpse of the fox statue in the shrine. It was noticeably cleaner and tidier than the ones he had seen before, and it even had a shimenawa (sacred rope) around its neck. Clearly, it wasn't being treated the same way he had seen it before.

Lin was still thinking, but he remained outwardly calm. He bowed slightly to apologize to Yae Guji, while also observing the shrine's surroundings.

Apart from the statues, the shrine looked completely different. When he first saw the shrine, apart from the clean main part, everything else looked somewhat dilapidated, which was due to a lack of renovation.

By the way, where's Bella?

Lin looked around but didn't see the gray-haired girl. They came in together, so could it be that their destinations were different?

"Alright, inform the whole village that the sacrificial ceremony will be held in three days, at the same location as the Divine Tree in the village. We are honoring the Fox God." Despite his Yae Guji's face still exuded a meticulous and dignified air. He glanced at the thoughtful Lin and then said, "You should all go back and rest."

"Yes, Lord Chief."

Lin followed the middle-aged man down the mountain. The man kept talking to Lin, who listened while thinking about other things.

"In short, things will be easy from now on. You basically don't need to do anything, just don't make any mistakes during the ritual..."

"What is the offering?" Lin asked abruptly, looking indifferently at the middle-aged man. His icy black eyes made the man shiver and feel a little scared.

"A sacrifice, isn't it just a sacrifice? Last time the sacrifice failed because the offering wasn't a virgin. This time, the chief priest will personally select the offering..."

Sometimes, what you worry about turns out to be reality.

When Lin entered Yae Village, he had already considered that the religious beliefs and the "traditions" that existed in such a remote village with limited access to information were likely to deviate greatly from the mainstream.

The more ignorant, foolish, and superstitious one is.

After hearing the first half of the middle-aged man's sentence, Lin already knew what the so-called sacrifice was.

He turned and left without saying a word, completely ignoring the middle-aged man's shouts behind him.

When Lin entered the consciousness space, the Yae Village he saw was very different from this Yae Village. The Yae Village he saw should have abolished the belief in gods. And judging from the fact that the villagers said the bloodline of the Miko was cut off after Yae Sakura disappeared, at that time, only Yae Village Yae Sakura was left as the head of the shrine. Yae Guji was already dead.

In other words, this is probably the Yae Village of more than ten years ago.

"How much longer... do we have to wait..."

Here it comes again, that soft call seems to urge Lin to quicken his pace. He doesn't return along the original path, but instead chooses a small path up the mountain, all the way to the outside of the shrine.

Looking at the wall in front of him, Lin Qingqing leaped onto it, and then his eyes met a pair of sky-blue eyes.

"..."

"..."

After a moment of silence, Lin said, "So you were here."

The person before me was Bella.

Her five clothes had also been changed, and her body was now completely exposed! Her extremely elegant clothes had been replaced with coarse cloth clothes. At this moment, she was lying on the corridor in the backyard of the shrine, looking at Lin with her beautiful eyes with great curiosity and confusion.

"Um... big brother, you'll get scolded if Lord Kuji finds out."

"..."

Big brother?

What was with that soft, lifeless tone? Every word seemed to exude a sickness. Lin frowned, looking at Bella, and continued, "What are you talking about? There's no one else here."

"Ah, has Lord Miyaji gone out? I didn't even know." Bella smiled on her pale face and said to Lin, "Then, big brother, can you talk to me for a bit? I won't tell Lord Miyaji."

What exactly happened?

The Bella before me exuded a delicate and fragile aura in both her demeanor and movements, completely unlike the anthropomorphic Honkai Beast that would occasionally reveal its wild beastly nature.

Is this another issue with the space of consciousness?

Such a situation is not particularly strange in the consciousness space. Lin has also experienced similar events. Is Bella becoming a child in the shrine this time?

Thinking of this, Lin turned and went into the backyard, then walked up to Bella and looked at the girl who was like a delicate flower, asking, "What do you want to tell me?"

"Hehe..." Seeing that Lin was willing to chat with her, Bella gave a delicate smile, but against her pale face, she looked like a fragile work of art. "Then... let's talk about things in the village."

The Journey Begins in the Sky: Chapter Fifty-Four, Eightfold

Bella is playing the role of a child from the Yae Shrine in the consciousness space... Could this child be the future Yae Sakura?

"Cough cough... I haven't been to the village in a long time, big brother, can you tell me if the cherry blossoms in the village are in bloom yet?" Bella covered her mouth and coughed softly, slowly calming her breathing, and smiled at Lin Qing. "Also, the last time I went out, I saw an Abyss Flower kitten. Has it grown up?"

"..."

Lin wasn't from Yae Village, so he only knew that the cherry blossoms would bloom like a pink starry sky more than ten years later, and that cat... no normal cat could live for more than ten years.

As for Bella in front of us, she should be the type who has been frail and sickly since childhood. But if she is Yae Sakura, then is the cherry-haired girl who can protect the entire Yae Village and fight against the Honkai Beast after growing up a healthy body that she only has after being Honkai Energy by Honkai energy and becoming Herrscher?

"Oh... big brother, you probably don't know that kitten. I hope it can live happily in the village. Everyone in the village is very kind. When I went out, everyone took care of me..."

"Uncle from Shangliu Huiba: Give me some rice candy~ I haven't eaten it yet, right? I'll get another one and I'll eat it this afternoon..."

"Cough cough... I heard that when it snows, the rooftops in the village are covered in white, which is really beautiful, but I can't get cold, so I can't even go out to the yard to take a look..."

A little bird flew into my bedroom, but unfortunately it didn't want to stay with me...

Although it was called a chat, it was actually Bella talking the whole time. She seemed to have been suppressed for too long and hadn't communicated with outsiders for a long time. She talked about all the trivial things in detail, some of them more than once or twice. For example, she mentioned the little bird four or five times, and her eyes were full of disappointment when she talked about it flying away.

Lin gazed at Bella's delicate face, her expression completely natural, as if she were herself, the shrine maiden in Yae Village more than a decade ago.

"Tick-tock".

A broken branch fell from a tree in the courtyard, interrupting Bella's words.

"Ah, we've been chatting for so long, I'm sorry to have taken up your time, big brother."

The girl's charming smile was warm like springtime, as if she had completely forgotten that Lin had come to the shrine in a sneaky manner at the beginning.

Now that she had finished speaking, Lin revealed his purpose. "Do you know that the sacrificial ceremony is about to begin?"

As Lin uttered those words, he clearly saw Bella's already pale face turn even paler.

"Yes, I know." Her smile faded slightly, and she nodded gently.

"... Do you know who the sacrifice is?"

"..."

"..."

Springtime is not warm.

Between winter and summer, it is always blown away by the foehn wind before it can even bring warmth.

Lin sat on a tree branch, contemplating matters of consciousness space and rituals.

Generally speaking, the existence of consciousness space has a purpose. Either it is because the person is good at the consciousness level and wants to use their ability to defeat the person who enters the consciousness space, or it is because they want to control a specific person through consciousness.

But as it stands, Lin doesn't see any particular purpose in this consciousness space, or rather, the purpose of the person who created the consciousness space is to let Lin see what happened in Yae Village.

A story set hundreds of years in the past, from a remote and superstitious village, about a poor girl who was sacrificed.

But why?

Why would I want him to see all of this?

Lin couldn't understand. He had no connection with Yae Village. Even Yae Sakura, who was extremely similar to Sakura, was just a similar but different individual.

So what does He want Lin to do next?

Can we stop this ritual that has already taken place?

Lin would indeed do that, even if it were just a fake world, a man-made demonstration of the past, he would act in accordance with his heart's answer.

But what is the significance of the person who created the consciousness space wanting him to do this?

Just as Lin was pondering how to find the anchor point in the consciousness space, he heard footsteps on the wooden floor. He peeked out from among the leaves.

Yae Sakura.

The mysterious girl who had been there since arriving in Yae Village has reappeared, but this time... she has shrunk.

A cherry-haired girl with no animal ears and no Miko attire arrived at Bella's bedroom door. She stared at the small, dejected figure with her head down, then opened the door and went inside.

In the future, when Yae Sakura grows into an excellent Miko, there is a room in the shrine that is uninhabited and filled with the clothes of children as young as a few years old.

Yae Sakura and... Yae Rin...?

Lin sighed, climbed down the tree, and learned what was going to happen next from his conversation with Bella, who was playing the role of Yae Rin.

And these are things that Yae Sakura herself experienced.

Let's think about how to stop this ritual first.

Lin arrived at the edge of Yae Village, and as expected, he was unable to leave the area bounded by the Yae Village.

He then returned to the village, listened to the villagers' complaints, and walked forward without saying a word.

"It hasn't rained in so long..."

"May this ritual bring down the sweet dew from the Fox God..."

Drought was the reason for the sacrificial ceremony.

This did not surprise Lin. Most ancient superstitions came from natural coincidences. When they did something and God happened to be in a different mood, they would think that their specific behavior had moved a non-existent deity.

The sacrifice of a living person did not make anyone in Yae Village uncomfortable. A month ago, they had already sacrificed a young girl, but the girl was not a virgin and the rainmaking attempt failed. Therefore, they believed that the Fox God was displeased because of the sacrifice and demanded another sacrifice.

This time, Yae Guji personally selected the offering, choosing a young child with Miko blood, who was also his daughter, Yae Rin.

To Yae Guji, Yae Rin might be a worthless existence. She was frail and sickly from childhood and could not serve as Miko. At the same time, she could not walk on the ground on her own, so there was no need to worry that Yae Rin would rebel.

More importantly, in the eyes of the villagers, his prestige would be even greater if he sacrificed his beloved daughter as a offering.

Exchanging something worthless for something valuable is a good deal.

Of course, he was also a genuine believer in the Fox God, so he hoped that his act of sacrificing his daughter would move the Fox God.

"Call..."

After organizing the collected information, Lin let out a breath.

Then, looking at all the villagers who were looking forward to the upcoming ritual, he said for the first time with a blank expression, in a sarcastic tone. "A stupid era, and a bunch of stupid people, gathered together to do a stupid thing."

The Journey Begins in the Heavens: Chapter Fifty-Five - The Sacrifice

The simplest way to stop this ritual is to take Yae Rin away, but we can't leave the Yae Village area right now. Even if we escape with Yae Rin, we'll be caught sooner or later.

Then let's just knock everyone down?

This is one way, but it doesn't solve the problem at its root. Even if Lin ties all these people up and tells them they're not allowed to perform sacrifices anymore, what then? They'll just transfer their hatred to the original sacrifice, Yae Rin.

Because of blindness, there is ignorance.

Lin couldn't think of any other solutions for the time being. Should he destroy the site of the sacrificial ceremony and cause a riot in the village?

But unlike organizations like the Fire Moth and the World Serpent, when Yae Village encounters other events, they probably think that Lord Fox God has become angry again.