Promotion: The One Who Knows

Fan Ning sat on the bed, staring blankly at the brightly lit bedroom.

Only when he realized that the room was gradually growing dimmer did he start turning his head to look around.

He easily spotted the area beside his pillow. A large pool of luminous liquid lay there, its color somewhere between pale gold and incandescent white.

The liquid meandered across the uneven bedsheet, with more of it dripping over the edge onto the floor. A nearly blinding patch of white had gathered there, with faint shadows resembling flames burning within it.

That was where he had placed the Key after casually taking it off before going to sleep!

"Is this... Luminous Essence Elixir? Luminous Essence Elixir of the 'Candle' Phase? How much is this? More than a hundred milliliters, right?" Fan Ning was stunned.

The viscous liquid flowed like light. Large amounts of Luminous Substance evaporated into the air, forming glittering clusters of light before finally turning into ordinary Inspiration and dispersing throughout the surface of the world.

In a room like this, Fan Ning felt his spirit incomparably comfortable.

He plunged his hand into the incandescent white beside the pillow and fished out the necklace. The elixir was close to human body temperature. Aside from a slight ripple-like sensation, there was nothing unusual about it.

The Key had not been contaminated in the slightest and remained exactly as it had been.

"Did it extract the Inspiration that gathered in that dream?" Fan Ning was not entirely sure, since most of his attention had just been focused on conversing with the two people.

"No, forget that! There's no time!" Seeing the light in the room gradually dim, Fan Ning suddenly snapped back to reality.

He flew out of bed and hurriedly rummaged through the outer pocket of his trousers on the bedside table, pulling out the "Four-Fold Line" Drift Waymarker. He held the waymarker in one hand beneath the edge of the bed while using the other to scrape down the remaining Luminous Essence Elixir from beside the pillow.

Once the grooves in the symbol were filled, Fan Ning lay back down and placed the waymarker over his lower abdomen.

A resplendent white screen of incandescent light sprang to life. The phantom symbol of the "Four-Fold Line" appeared above it, while the coordinate arcs in the outer ring began spinning rapidly.

Fan Ning closed his eyes and imagined his spirit passing through them.

He already had very strong control over his sleep, and his consciousness soon settled into tranquility.

"Hm? I woke up in my apartment?"

Fan Ning sat up in bed. Beneath the not particularly bright gaslight, he saw dark greenish-black wooden flooring, a cross-legged wooden table and piles of books in the corner, as well as an old upright piano.

But when he looked at the paintings hanging before the piano, he found that the two portraits of the musicians Gilels and Kashunichi were nowhere to be seen.

Instead, there were paintings filled with chaotic colors and lines, resembling the abstract artworks from his previous life.

Thus, he successfully realized that he was dreaming.

Fan Ning sprang lightly from the bed, flew out the window, then came back in. After looking around for several breaths, he fixed his gaze on the largest abstract painting before the piano.

He imagined that he held a nonexistent flexible pole, then performed a pole vault followed by a backflip--

With a posture he could never have achieved in the real world, he plunged straight into the painting!

At that moment, he felt his spirit completely break free, plummeting rapidly through a kaleidoscope-like passage that folded countless landscapes together.

"A stage?"

Fan Ning examined his surroundings. "A church's altar?"

Beneath his feet was a light brown wooden platform. Stained-glass windows opened in the surrounding walls, half-hidden behind heavy curtains patterned with plants. Deep inside, phantom stairs extended upward.

Fan Ning followed the stairs with his gaze and saw, amid the golden haze above, an organ console made up of three rows of manuals and one row of pedals, along with countless pipes and reed pipes arranged behind the wind chests.

The organ gleamed with a golden luster. Overall, it looked like a gigantic mechanical apparatus that had grown together with the walls of the church.

He turned and looked below the altar. Several rows of long redwood pews filled the space, with candle stands lining the galleries and pillars decorated with curved plaster moldings. Faint light seeped through the skylight in the dome.

"Have I already reached the Migrant Surge Layer?" Fan Ning wondered. "Why is it a church?"

According to the memories he had glimpsed yesterday, the Migrant Surge consisted of countless wastelands suspended in the void. Farther away stood a ring of mountains, with the Radiance Tower rising into the heavens at its core.

Although Vyadlin had said that the circumstances within the Migrant Surge were bizarre and varied, with logic leaping and breaking apart while everything constantly changed,

this was an indoor scene, which inevitably made him suspicious.

Fan Ning tried to manifest the image of the Key in his consciousness. He successfully caused it to hang against his chest, but no Luminous Substance gathered upon it.

Luminous Substance had gathered in Clear Dream before.

"Could this not be the Migrant Surge? Am I still wandering around the edge of the Astral Realm Layer?"

"But my Inspiration is being consumed much faster than it was in Clear Dream."

Fan Ning did not dare waste time. He floated lightly down from the altar, passed through row after row of long redwood pews, and walked toward the distant church doors.

The door was made of a single block of marble, with a huge spiral groove carved into it, winding outward in numerous circles.

"Hm? There's a relief in the middle."

He looked toward the starting point at the center of the spiral. It was precisely the symbol of the four undulating lines converging together.

As usual, Fan Ning performed a dream-checking action: he reached out to see whether he could pass through the object.

His palm pressed against the marble relief. Just like a real object, it felt cold and solid.

He felt some Inspiration being drawn inside.

Carefully distinguishing the source of the Inspiration, he realized that, strictly speaking... there were one, two, three, four... four parts.

Beethoven's "Für Elise," Chopin's "Fantasy Impromptu" and the third movement, "Funeral March," of his "Piano Sonata No. 2," and Tchaikovsky's "Barcarolle."

A sudden change erupted. The pale golden screen of light before him burst into intense radiance, turning almost incandescent white!

[395/100] began dropping as though a sluice gate had been opened.

[300/100], [200/100], [100/100]...

At the instant the number returned to [0/100], the entire screen flashed one last time before vanishing completely.

At the starting point of the relief beneath Fan Ning's hand, golden flowing light began to spill out. Like a "charge," it filled the spiral groove from the inside outward, stopping when it had nearly reached halfway around the first small circle.

So this church was where that mysterious text message and the screen had ultimately guided him?

Would the progress of reproducing the music in his memories be transferred here from now on?

What would happen if he eventually filled the entire spiral pattern?

Before Fan Ning could think it through, the cold sensation beneath his hand suddenly disappeared. The entire marble door began to ripple like water, gradually blurring.

Fan Ning's heart stirred, and he stepped forward.

This time, he felt no resistance at all. He passed straight through and arrived outside the church!

There seemed to be no gravity here, and he began to float.

In this deeper sleep, his consciousness was much hazier than in Clear Dream. He could barely maintain a half-awake state.

This was... this was!!

In the night, the steep ring of mountains before him was covered in strange plants. A massive waterfall cleaved down from the mountaintop like lightning, splitting the mountain in two before dividing into countless tributaries that meandered like streams around the gentler foothills.

Farther away stood the crystal-clear Radiance Tower. Its lower end was blocked by the ring of mountains, while its upper end towered into the heavens.

Fan Ning was in the river at the foot of the mountains. Although he was floating, his lower body was still submerged in the icy water.

But he had no time to care.

Because at that moment, he was staring at the existence above the dome of the Radiance Tower.

Behind countless layers of curtains woven from light and darkness, a partial silhouette refracted by Radiance illuminated his spirit.

Fan Ning felt that he could hardly breathe.

This feeling of suffocation and sublimity was like a sheer cliff so steep it could crush a person, black clouds filling the sky and firing bolts of lightning, a volcano carrying the power of destruction, a raging wind poised to sweep away everything, a vast ocean amid raging waves, and a waterfall plunging from a colossal river... (*Note 1)

This "Light of First Acquaintance" seemed to be a voice yet not a voice, a scene yet not a scene. It did not even resemble information conveyed through language.

It transcended the range of what the five senses could perceive.

If he had to describe it--

This "Light of First Acquaintance" was the resounding chorus of a church organ. It was a tiny person colliding with and being crushed beneath the movement of colossal celestial bodies. It was dazzling light, extreme rapture, delirium, and vertigo. It was tears and transcendence born from sudden enlightenment!

In this state, some Hidden Knowledge or secret tradition seemed to have been implanted in Fan Ning's mind:

"'Candle' is hope,

the light of dawn,

the truest silhouette of Radiance,

the world's most sacred flame.

'Endless Fugue' guides one to the summit of art.

It dwells in the holy advent of Dwelling Garden.

Above that is precisely where your spirit was born.

It cleaves itself apart, and the wound it opens shines like the stars.

It scatters fuel, and the blood it sprays gleams like blazing fire.

Thus the throne of Inspiration and insight is raised high, raised high, raised high!

It separates your title from that of its servants.

The spirit that chants one of your names is a bursting candle flame, a gathering candle flame,

coal that gathers wind, coal that burns fiercely, coal that surges forth Radiance,

all of them the feared, the beloved, the favored, the contemplative, the chosen of the Highest, the recipients of secret tradition,

who speak, chant, raise their eyes, and noisily sing in rapture,

paying homage to the firmament beneath the Highest Dwelling, and being heard by it,

while each day, Inspiration surges forth,

with hearts full of joy, day and night without end,

just as these words say:

Holy, holy, holy, Lord of Witnesses."

Only when listening in person to certain symphonic passages in his two lives had Fan Ning experienced something like this--

"An orgasm inside the skull."

Countless pieces of Hidden Knowledge or secret tradition concerning "Candle" flooded into Fan Ning's mind.

"The Lord of Witnesses to whom this Four-Fold Line symbol points—is His name 'Endless Fugue'?"

Fan Ning's Inspiration surged dramatically, growing at an exaggerated speed.

At the same time, his spirit received a certain gift from the silhouette of Radiance.

For a long time, he gazed at that existence behind the countless layers of curtains.

Then, after dozens of breaths, all the colors of everything in the Migrant Surge turned incandescent white in his eyes.

He fell backward, his spirit passing through the church doors behind him and plunging into the ground.

The bedroom was still dark, silent both inside and out. Fan Ning opened his eyes.

He felt around for the gas lamp beside the bed, then rolled out of bed.

The waymarker vanished into thin air after use.

The clock on the wall pointed to 1:40 a.m.

He walked to the window and gently pushed it open.

The winter night was silent and desolate.

He looked at the snow piled on the branches of the tall chestnut tree outside the glass, as well as the courtyard scenery visible through the gaps.

"Everything is the same as usual, and yet everything is different from usual."

A pale golden gleam flashed through Fan Ning's eyes before they returned to normal.

*Note 1: Adapted from Kant's discussion of "the feeling of the sublime" in Critique of Judgment.