“Anna Himfast had a natural disadvantage.
Colonization of the Ailen Peninsula stemmed from the aftermath of a war.
As the Mist of Strangeness emerged, the Exorcist Association mediated the conflict, and McDonald I abandoned the city walls, claiming it was for openness and commerce.
Although most people knew the real reason was that constructing the walls would be prohibitively expensive.
Subsequent successors adhered to this concept, thus contributing to the prosperity of Belfast.
[Himfast is now ready to face the invasion of the Mist of Strangeness!]
On the sixth day back in the Elm Forest, the news featured an image of the “preparations” encircling Himfast, made of countless stakes driven into the ground.
Entire trees were felled from the forest miles away, branches stripped away and trunks hammered into the ground–this was the fastest way to erect a makeshift wall.
It didn’t need to be very sturdy, after all, the wall wasn’t meant to withstand catapults and soldiers.
When night fell, the fires lit atop the wooden wall would hold back the advancing Mist of Strangeness.
Jimmy took the newspaper Lu Li had finished reading and went to find Raimy, who was guarding the cultivated land.
The freshly tilled soil was darker than its surroundings, having just been watered by Raimy not too long ago.
The branches above gently swayed, and new leaves silently sprouted from the dark brown twigs as if welcoming the approaching figure.
An ethereal, pale hand holding a book reached out to Lu Li, who took it before Anna sat beside him, pressing her skirt and placing her hands demurely on her knees.
“You have looked into too many memories lately,” Lu Li’s gaze lingered on Anna for a moment before returning to the open book.
“She is already affecting you.”
Memories, more than books, plays, or stories, have the power to influence a person.
Just as a young boy hearing tales of heroes for the first time will harbor long fantasies and yearnings, sometimes even becoming so engrossed in the stories he imagines himself as the very hero.
“They always surface uncontrollably when I do certain things,” Anna said in silence.
Sara’s memories emerged like flashbacks, and even more frequently.
Preparing food for Lu Li, memories of Sara doing the same for Adam would surface.
When Lu Li slept soundly, she would involuntarily recall Sara gazing affectionately at her lover through a mirror after he had fallen asleep each night.
Even during hunting, the power brought by the people who died in Sara’s deadly games would come to mind.
Even when doing nothing at all, Sara’s memories would arise in her mind.
It was unavoidable, just as humans cannot stop breathing or thinking.
“Don’t lose yourself,” was all Lu Li could say.
Lu Li was unsure of the turmoil Anna was going through, but it was certainly beyond his imagination.
“Don’t worry, no matter what… I won’t harm you,” Anna said, her gentle and beautiful smile blooming.
That night, Lu Li, unusually, dreamed a dream that mirrored reality.
After the event at the Arlen Kingdom, Lu Li agreed with Anna’s suggestion to abandon resolving the issues with Sara and Adam, and instead returned to Tafeng City with York and the others for one day.
During their visit to the church, the radio on the pulpit turned into a broadcast of evil spirits, and in the Confessional, a vague human silhouette could be made out.
As Lu Li walked by, a piece of Parchment floated out from a gap.
[Do not agree to Adam’s request] it read.
Lu Li woke up with his heart pounding, the faint crackling sounds coming from the fireplace.
Anna, seated at the desk, turned her head, her gentle visage illuminated by the oil lamp: “Did you have a nightmare?”
Lu Li might have been regretting something, but who knows.
He drifted back into sleep, perhaps because the interval was short, the dreams continued as one.
This time it was the opposite path.
Leaving the church, Anna whispered of the pain of being stripped of all senses after losing her body, the silence of her once-beating heart causing her to grow cold once again.
Anna longed for blood to flow through her body again.
The bustle downstairs at the inn almost roused the exhausted Lu Li from his sleep, as a group of ruffians burst into the inn looking for trouble, and Anna coldly drove them out.
One of the ruffians got so scared that he tripped and fell to the ground, and Anna’s twisted shadow caught up to him, stepping into his shadow.
A jumble of memories rushed into Anna’s brain, accompanied by a beating heart and the blood flowing through her body.
In a restaurant in Tafeng City, patrons and waiters watched in astonishment as a young man frantically stuffed food into his mouth, his belly swollen like a pregnant woman’s.
The worried owner approached just as the young man collapsed face down on the table, and the shadow quietly departed.
The chaotic memories made her somewhat different from usual, and Anna’s projection wandered the streets looking for a proper body.
By the time Lu Li awoke from his dream within a dream, Anna was no longer the same.
Her consciousness was scattered by the patchwork of memories, although Anna remained Anna, not having become a collective consciousness.
But the way she thought and acted was altered by those entangled memories.
A stranger named Anna.
Gaze into the abyss for too long, and the abyss gazes back.
The next morning, the new “Investigator Weekly” and some good news appeared at the same time.
“We made it.” Amber clenched her fist beside the cultivated land.
Between the soft, dark-brown earth, startlingly green sprouts broke through the soil.
Whether it was awakening weeds or tender shoots of beans and potatoes, this was the first plant to grow in the field.
Although two days before, Annie had already sprouted leaves the size of a fingernail and the unnamed plant in the flowerpot was as tall as a finger.
Amber barely restrained the urge to dig it out and check, waiting until the merchant left, she then shifted attention to asking Lu Li what was written in the “Investigator Weekly.”
“The progress of the new calamity in the Barren Lands.”
Exorcists had already rushed to the source of the disaster, which was nothing but a dead thicket and a decaying oasis of a village.
The weekly reported that progress was going well, and in order to prevent the birth of a devastating calamity like the Plant Disaster or the Night Disaster, every member of the team was extremely careful and serious, and perhaps there would soon be good news.
In the afternoon, upon returning from the hunt, Anna found something interesting: a fishing cage.
So the next morning, after the Mist of Strangeness retreated, all the residents of Elm Forest, except Amber and the children, temporarily left the top of the cliff and accompanied Anna to the reef area below.
The sound of the sea waves was clearer and louder than on top of the cliff, with the black waves violently hitting the rocks, creating white foam.
The waves at the bottom of the cliff were too big, and rather than worrying about whether they could catch fish, they should be more concerned about whether the fishing cages made of wire mesh would be broken apart by the waves.
Near the edge of the shallow water area by the reef, Anna baited the hook, tied the rope to a rock, and then lowered the fishing cage.
They wouldn’t be able to check the catch until the afternoon or the next day, and it was possible they would catch nothing—
But more than the catch itself, they enjoyed the sense of ritual that the act itself brought.
Raimy and Jimmy stood on the rocks with their calves submerged, feeling the sea breeze, while Lu Li lifted his dark eyes to look back at the sprawling ruins of Belfast, then towards the unmanned lighthouse standing on the edge of the rocks.
The light atop it had grown dim a long time ago.