As a young woman who loved reading novels, Cheng Jianxue had naturally fantasized about transmigrating. She had even enthusiastically joined discussions about things like what one should do if one transmigrated into the world of Lord of the Mysteries...
In a better scenario, she would start as a noble, with easy access to the supernatural. Even without that, at least her survival would be assured. In a worse scenario, she would start as a commoner, or even a pauper, and staying alive would be a problem...
She could also start as the descendant of a Beyonder, or as a contingency for some unknown being's resurrection... Anything was possible, but among those countless starting scenarios, surely none involved transmigrating into the Forsaken Land of the Gods!
Who in their right mind would dump their resurrection contingency in this godforsaken place? And starting from Sequence 9, no less? There was no way to survive!
Cheng Jianxue took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. Urgency and panic would accomplish nothing. She thought that perhaps she should first confirm whether this really was the Forsaken Land of the Gods.
...Maybe her story was actually about braving Teyvat with a Beyonder Pathway?
Remembering that cry of "World, forget me," Cheng Jianxue felt an inexplicable flicker of hope again. She opened her mouth and, after briefly choosing among the masters of the various powers in the Forsaken Land of the Gods, settled on a test with the least severe consequences:
"Amanises!"
The moment the clearly enunciated Chinese left her lips, Cheng Jianxue could not help slapping her own arm. If this was the world of Lord of the Mysteries, she probably needed a language capable of stirring natural forces, such as Jotun or Hermes.
...But Klein could perform that ritual to pray to the Celestial Worthy in Chinese. Why couldn't she say someone's name in Chinese?
No, wait...
Cheng Jianxue suddenly raised a hand to her head. She seemed to have uncovered a corner of a deeply buried memory. Closing her eyes, she opened her mouth and instinctively tried to utter that sound:
Amanises.
The sound was swallowed by concealment. Cheng Jianxue thought that even without the Potion, her face would probably have turned deathly pale by now.
"So much for braving the continent of Teyvat..." Cheng Jianxue muttered to herself, lifting the blank canvas. "I'd better think about how to brave the Forsaken Land of the Gods... Damn it."
That concealed call was enough for Cheng Jianxue to confirm that this was the Forsaken Land of the Gods. If she had been in the outside world, she believed the Goddess would surely have noticed something unusual about her and come to investigate.
Only in the Forsaken Land of the Gods would something like this happen.
The blank canvas felt cold. Other than its appearance, which allowed Cheng Jianxue to recognize it as a canvas, it offered no information at all.
Cheng Jianxue suspected that it came from that strange, pure-white space. As for what that space actually was... Oh, come on. She had transmigrated into the world of Lord of the Mysteries, and no Outer Deity had come to investigate after all this time. It was either a Uniqueness or a Sefirah. Considering that this Pathway did not exist in the original story at all, Cheng Jianxue decided to treat it as a Sefirah for now.
Of course, neither made any difference to her at present. What she needed to determine was how this thing could help her.
As for how she had gotten here, and whether she could go back, Cheng Jianxue felt she could set those questions aside for now, given her current Sequence.
Her spirituality probed into the blank canvas. In an instant, Cheng Jianxue felt as though she had been swallowed, sucked into that pure-white space once again.
...How do I get out?
Cheng Jianxue slowly raised her hands. This time, she was still holding the blank canvas.
Understanding dawned on her. She extended her spirituality toward the blank canvas again and fell back into the real world, still holding it in her hands.
It was like a door between two worlds.
Now that she understood, Cheng Jianxue checked her remaining spirituality. She felt she should be able to enter and exit once more without overexerting it.
After a brief moment of thought, Cheng Jianxue grabbed some pebbles and placed them on herself, then lay down on the ground and entered that pure-white world.
She needed to determine whether she was entering with her body or only her spirit.
Cheng Jianxue did not rush to leave immediately. She checked her spirituality, then rubbed the blank canvas thoughtfully, her brows furrowing.
Staying here doesn't seem to consume spirituality... But entering and leaving does?
The pure-white world was utterly silent. Cheng Jianxue looked around. The cold resistance provided by the Potion kept her from losing body heat too quickly in this snowy realm, but as she was now, she still could not ignore the surrounding cold. Staying here for too long would still be dangerous.
After considering it for two seconds, Cheng Jianxue recalled what Klein had done in the story. She pictured the appearance of her bedroom and extended her spirituality toward the blank canvas.
Her surroundings abruptly changed. A house rose in the silent snowy realm. Cheng Jianxue stood inside her bedroom, but her brows furrowed.
Everything here was as cozy as she remembered, but even putting on thick clothes and covering herself with a heavy quilt could not keep out the surrounding cold. For this space, cold seemed to be an inherent property.
Authority...
Cheng Jianxue formed a conjecture. She believed this was some manifestation of the Pathway's authority, and she could find support for that in her own Beyonder Abilities-the Sequence 9 Potion had increased her resistance to cold.
As for whether the Potion belonged to the Pathway represented by this place... Cheng Jianxue had no doubts.
But cold shouldn't be the only thing... Decay touches on too many domains, and it makes sense that freezing could resist decay. There's no way to tell... But I remember that the Potion improved my memory, and also let me obtain a corpse's memories from when it was alive...
...Though eating corpses to obtain them, and the name "Ghoul," both sound pretty ominous.
Still, memory...
Cheng Jianxue thought of the snow that surged whenever her surroundings changed, then of that cry of "World, forget me." Suddenly, she realized something.
Was that... a manifestation of forgetting? Then what about memory? Did leaving footprints count as memory? That Potion I touched back then... Was what I saw a memory from the Potion? Does this place preserve that Sequence 9 Potion, along with its memories?
Hmm, the languages I know probably came from the memories here too... Could there be more memories here?
With a thought, Cheng Jianxue wrapped her spirituality around numerous memories of food and directed it toward the blank canvas. Food then gushed from the canvas like a fountain. Her spirituality drained rapidly in the process, and she quickly withdrew it, narrowly avoiding being drained dry.
But her remaining spirituality told Cheng Jianxue that, until she had rested properly, she had better avoid doing anything else that consumed spirituality, apart from leaving this place.
Cheng Jianxue was not discouraged. Experiments were always like this. She grabbed a nearby bag of bread, tore open the packaging, and took a bite-
The food brought a familiar
taste and texture, but that was all.
It, too, was only a memory.
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