After leaving the funeral home, Lin Chuan did not head straight for the train station or airport. Instead, he hailed a cab and went directly to an antiques market in a remote part of the city.
He took a few familiar turns and found a shop he knew. As soon as he opened the door, the mingled smell of aged paper and mothballs washed over him.
"Boss, how much for this pair of jade pendants? I heard they were from the Qin Dynasty?" Lin Chuan picked out a pendant with unusual patterns and asked, only half serious.
The shopkeeper behind the counter did not even lift his eyelids, idly flicking the beads of an abacus. "Who fed you that nonsense? There aren't that many genuine antiques on the market these days, let alone anything from the Qin Dynasty. At most, they're reproductions from the late Qing or early Republican period. They're not that old."
"That's fine. Money can't buy my fancy, can it? I just like the patterns." Lin Chuan waved a hand, paid without hesitation, and picked out another dozen or so old objects while he was at it.
The sunlight was just right when he stepped out of the antiques shop. Leaning against a wall, Lin Chuan casually stored everything except the jade pendants in the pile of miscellaneous items within his Sefirah. Then he took out his notebook and drew a black line through the entry for attending the funeral.
His pen paused, and his gaze moved down to the name of a city-the place he intended to visit next.
He had once had an online friend he got along with extremely well. They often joked around in forum threads and discussed all sorts of wild ideas. But one day, that friend suddenly went offline and never logged in again.
Lin Chuan remembered their last argument very clearly: "If you transmigrated to another world, what should you do as a modern person?"
The other man had insisted that he would certainly do well if he transmigrated. Even without any cheats, the superiority of modern knowledge and his broader perspective ought to be enough to earn him a place in history.
Lin Chuan had mercilessly mocked his wishful thinking, arguing that transmigrating would not leave him much better off. Who actually went out of their way to memorize joke material like transmigration guides? Finding yourself in another world only to realize you remembered none of the relevant knowledge was the normal outcome.
Their heated discussion about transmigration gradually went off the rails. They seriously considered whether the modern viruses and bacteria carried by someone physically transported to another world would trigger an apocalypse and destroy it, and whether possessing someone else's body and then finding a girlfriend of your own counted as the original owner cuckolding you, along with all sorts of other ridiculous questions.
It finally ended when Lin Chuan said, "Have you ever transmigrated? You're just making things up and taking them for granted." That had infuriated the other man so much that he could not think of a response for ages.
Lin Chuan considered that a win for himself. After all, he had argued the other man into silence.
As for what that had to do with his destination, that fellow reader with a mouth full of outrageous jokes and a head full of transmigration fantasies had a real name: Huang Tao.
A few days later, Lin Chuan was sitting in first class on a flight to another city.
As the plane broke through the clouds and settled into smooth flight ten thousand meters above the ground, Lin Chuan leaned against the window and closed his eyes, intending to rest for a while.
He had been so busy lately that he had not slept a wink. After all, every day he remained on Earth carried the risk of the Oldest One awakening, and he did seem to no longer need rest or sleep.
Still, Lin Chuan deliberately maintained the habit of closing his eyes to rest. Not needing it did not mean he could not or did not want to. Once he made his escape, it would be better to keep a normal human routine.
As for schedules like working nine to nine, six days a week, or around the clock, seven days a week, Lin Chuan had long since excluded them from the category of human routines. The Church of Evernight deserved a serious mention here. No wonder Amanises had been a senior executive at a multinational corporation. Just look at the name of that Sequence: Sleepless! Born to be a corporate workhorse. Miles ahead of the competition-anyone get it?
Just as Lin Chuan finally managed to rest for a moment, his heart gave a sudden jolt. To his surprise, as though a curtain had abruptly been pulled away, the targeted Fooling that had shrouded the entire Earth, as omnipresent as atmospheric pressure, had vanished.
Perhaps the Celestial Worthy had withdrawn his symbolism himself, or perhaps the preset duration of the authority had expired. Either possibility meant the same thing:
The Celestial Worthy no longer cared whether God Almighty noticed Sefirah Castle pulling people in.
In other words, at this point, whether God Almighty noticed no longer mattered. Perhaps there were already enough Light Cocoons hanging in Sefirah Castle, or perhaps... even if God Almighty wanted to interfere, he would no longer have time to act.
Because the Oldest One was probably about to awaken.
"Oh well. This little bit of time won't make a difference. I might as well see this good deed through."
Lin Chuan hesitated over whether to flee immediately, but in the end, he closed his eyes again.
This time, however, he did not fall asleep. With a mere thought, he returned to the space above the boundless void.
After the flight landed, Lin Chuan made his way to Huang Tao's hometown.
It was a somewhat aging residential neighborhood, but one full of everyday life. Following the address Huang Tao had inadvertently mentioned in their reader group years ago, Lin Chuan arrived before a slightly rusted security door.
Knock, knock, knock.
A long while after the knocking stopped, heavy footsteps sounded from inside, slippers scraping across the floor.
"Who is it?" As the lock on the security door turned, a middle-aged woman with graying hair and a haggard face opened it.
"Hello, ma'am. Sorry to drop by unannounced." Lin Chuan made his voice as gentle as he could. "I'm an old online friend of Huang Tao's. I happened to be passing through this city on a trip, so I thought I'd stop by and see you."
To put her at ease, Lin Chuan took out his phone and pulled up his old conversations with Huang Tao on the forum and in their QQ group.
At the sight of her son's familiar username on the screen, Huang Tao's mother froze, then her eyes quickly reddened. She touched the screen with a trembling hand. "Taotao... yes, he used to be on his phone every day. He said he had a group of friends online he really got along with..."
She wiped her tears and hurriedly ushered Lin Chuan inside. "Come in, come in and sit down. I'll get you some water."
Time slipped by unnoticed as he sat in the somewhat dated living room, listening to Mrs. Huang pour out her heart in fits and starts.
Lin Chuan learned that ever since Huang Tao had died of a "sudden illness" a year ago, all laughter had vanished from the household. Huang Tao had been an only child, and his death had undoubtedly dealt his parents a devastating blow.
He stayed until evening, when Huang Tao's father returned from work and pushed open the door. He was a man of few words. Seeing a guest in the house and learning that he was his son's online friend, he merely nodded firmly, a flicker of grief he could not conceal passing through his eyes, then silently went to the kitchen to prepare dinner.
Seeing this, Lin Chuan rose and politely declined the parents' earnest invitation to stay for dinner.
"I still have places to get to tonight, so I won't trouble you any longer." Lin Chuan stood up, took the last two jade tablets from his bag, and gently set them on the coffee table.
"Huang Tao helped me a lot online. These are protective charms I had someone get for me. They aren't worth much, but they're a small token of my gratitude. Now that he's gone, please take good care of yourselves. If he were still here, I'm sure he wouldn't want to see you like this."
As Huang Tao's parents said their goodbyes, Lin Chuan waved, turned, and walked out of the old apartment building.
Everything was done. It was time to prepare to leave Earth.
Before you continue