Chapter 7
After coming out of the Military Control Office and saying goodbye to Roy, Lin Yuan took the bus home.
She leaned against the car window, tilted her head, and watched the scenery outside the window kept receding.
The glass of the car window reflected a delicate, cold, and bored young face.
The shape of the bus was very weird, like a weird doll that was made of various messy materials, stitched into one, and barely put together.
It shook all the way, chirping loudly, making all kinds of overwhelmed noises.
In this era, the level of human technological production had seriously degraded, and most of the mechanical spare parts had to be searched in the old ruins. It was impossible to have a complete tech, and patchwork was the norm.
The sun hung in the sky, like a salted egg yolk that was about to melt, dyeing the bloated and huge imperial capital with a faint orange red.
Even in such a far suburb, the White Tower could be seen from afar.
Standing in the center of the city, it was the symbol of the entire empire.
Its whole body was pure and white, towering into the clouds.
"Mom! Look, it's the White Tower!" In the car, a young boy pointed out the window excitedly.
He opened a huge picture book in his arms, and began to repeatedly compare the White Tower recorded in the picture book.
"Mom, this book says that hundreds of years ago, the White Tower and the king saved mankind in the catastrophe."
His mother who was sitting beside him perfunctorily reached out and touched his head.
The weary mother didn't care about the king or the White Tower, only worried about today's dinner and tomorrow's life.
"The book says that the clouds in the sky used to be white, as white as sugar."
"The book says that at the very beginning, there were the same number of Sentinels and Guides. They walked to the battlefield hand in hand."
"The book says..." The immature voice of a child kept ringing in the carriage.
The passengers in the carriage all showed tolerant smiles.
Children were innocent and ignorant, and what they say felt very funny.
How could the clouds in the sky be white? Everyone knows that clouds were either purple or green.
How could a weak guide go to fight? It was simply whimsical.
The bus took passengers on and off all the way, and it took a long time. From the beginning, both sides of the road were filled with crowded and messy mud houses, shacks, and wooden houses, and gradually became neat and luxurious.
The White Tower also becomes huge and holy in the field of vision, couldn't be ignored.
The White Tower was the center of the capital, and the closer it was to the White Tower, it got more wealthy and nobler.
Lin Yuan got off the car here, and slowly walked up the clean and tidy stone road.
It was already very late, and the lights of the street lamps were shining sporadically, sprinkled on the streets with few pedestrians.
In the corner by the road, there was a couple with a young daughter guarding a small fruit stand.
There were only three small green apples left on the dilapidated cart. The apples were huddled and twisted together, and their appearances were not very good.
Even so, the family selling apples was still reluctant to pack up their stall.
Fruits were very expensive these days, and they waited for customers in the dark night with few pedestrians, hoping to sell even one more.
Lin Yuan was not interested in apples, and walked forward with standard small steps, holding her skirt.
[This must be the most delicious apple in the world.] Suddenly she heard this voice in her mind.
That was not a sentence made of concrete language. Just an emotion that comes from superficial consciousness.
But because the voice was too strong and pure, even if the tentacles didn't deliberately catch it, the voice was still clearly transmitted to Lin Yuan's mind.
Lin Yuan looked at that location, and found that the voice in her head came from the skinny little girl behind the apple stand. The little girl of four or five years old was staring at the green apple in front of her seriously, her eyes were sparkling.
It seemed as if the dry little apple could be regarded as some kind of peerless delicacy.
Lin Yuan glanced at the girl, then at the apples, and continued walking.
[If you bite down, the sweet and sour juice will burst out from between the teeth and flow over the tongue.]
[It is both thirst-quenching and enjoyable.]
Lin Yuan's footsteps paused.
[It can fill the stomach.]
[It can also be sweet to the heart.]
[I really want to take a bite.]
[I really want to eat it.]
...
Sentence after sentence, clear and loud.
The tentacles raised their heads one after another, looking at the apples one after another.
Really, were they so delicious?
Lin Yuan stopped, turned around and walked back.
In front of the stall, she looked at the three green and not yellow apples for a long time, and finally took out a few imperial coins and put the three apples into a bag.
The moment you lift the bag and go.
The sound of drooling, dripping, dripping, became huge instantly in my mind.
Too clear, too strong.
So much so that Lin Yuan had no choice but to take out one by twisting out the apple base, and put it into the little girl's hand.
Lin Yuan, who was walking on the road, was tempted by the sound of swallowing saliva, took out an apple and wiped it on her clothes, and took a bite expectantly while walking.
Sour, sour to death.
...
Lin Yuan's house was very big, with green brick and white walls and a carved gate.
The vegetation in the yard was really lush, with flowering branches and vines intertwined, vigorously climbing out of the wall. From a distance, you can see a triangular retro-style roof behind the pavilion-like canopy in the depths of the courtyard.
No one opened the door. Lin Yuan took out the key and opened it by herself.
The creaking sound of the door opening suddenly resounded in the quiet and cool night.
Close the heavy gate and walk in. The grass and trees in the yard are shadowy in the dark night, growing too vigorously, and there is almost no place to stay. You can only walk in along a barely clear path in the middle.
The main building was five stories high, topped by an attic with a pointed roof. The windows of all the rooms stand darkly in the depths of the garden, like a deep house that has not been lived in for a long time.
Only the hallway on the first floor was lit with a little yellow light, breaking the dense and deadly darkness.
Lin Yuan walked into the hallway, turned on the light, and took off the cumbersome ivory coat.
From a certain corner of the roof, where the lights couldn't reach, a pale female arm stretched out and took Lin Yuan's coat.
"Is everything going well?" said a voice from nowhere.
"Well, it's very smooth, and the procedures are all done." Without raising her head, Lin Yuan bent down to untie the laces on her boots, "I can live at home forever from now on."
"I'm sorry," the voice said timidly, "I was not careful today, and it seems that I was seen by the part-time auntie who came to clean. She ran away screaming, and probably won't come again."
"It's okay, I'll ask her again. If she won't come, I'll ask to hire another one. Maybe their family could be a gardener." Lin Yuan finally untied the troublesome shoes and threw them out indiscriminately.
The shoe was picked up by a pair of white arms.
She took off her heavy outfit, wore only a thin silk petticoat, and ran up the oak stairs barefoot.
As if thinking of something on the way, she dropped an apple. "Here's an apple. I bought it on the way."
The arm protruding from the shadows nimbly caught the apple. The white apron of the maid's outfit dangled in mid-air.
"Thank you Miss," said the voice hidden in the shadows. "Ah, it's so sour."
Lin Yuan's bedroom was in the attic on the top floor. The room was not big, and there was a soft bed by the window. The bedside and all the cabinets were full of big and small, strange things, filling the small bedroom to the brim.
There were some wind chimes strung together with energy stones, fluorescent signboards that could only be seen in the remains of the old days, broken heads of simulated robots, and various dolls and plush toys of different sizes.
Like a kid's room with eccentric collectors.
The windows on the wall were very large, and through the glass of the windows, you could see the White Tower in the night, the houses with scattered heights, and the road with street lights.
On the bluestone-paved road, a family of three who had just sold apples was walking home.
The mother was holding her daughter, and the father was pushing the cart. The three of them shared the apple left by Lin Yuan.
The apple looked extremely sweet as they eat, as if the apple in their hands was not the same as the one in Lin Yuan's.
Lin Yuan's fingers pressed against the cold glass, standing behind the glass window, staring at the three small figures from the high attic.
A drop of rain hit the glass in front of her fingertips, and at some point, the sky started to rain finely.
The father took off his coat and put it over the heads of his daughter and wife.
The three small figures surrounded each other tightly in the rain, pushing the cart forward quickly.
Lin Yuan just stood behind the glass window, watching all the time.
Until their figures were covered by the rain curtain and could not be seen.
Why did those three look so happy?
Lin Yuan felt that what the people in the White Tower said was right, she suffered from a lack of emotions. Most of the time, there was no emotion, and neither felt particularly happy nor sad.
An emotionally-lacking Guide.
Lin Yuan was stunned for a while, remembered something, climbed onto the bed, reached out and rummaged through the toy cabinet beside the bed for a long time.
She dug out a palm-sized, half-new killer whale puppet.
"I knew it. I seem to have seen this thing somewhere." Lin Yuan became a little happy. She lay on her back and held up the bulging puppet to play with.
She couldn't remember when she got this toy. There were countless things in this room that she couldn't remember.
Lin Yuan had no memories of childhood.
Those people told her that when she was very young, she and her family lived through a fire. Both her parents were burned to death in that fire, only protecting her, this young child.
It was just that no matter how Lin Yuan recalls when she grows up, she couldn't remember the fire and the events of her childhood.
That time was blank.
It was like a period of time covered with a layer of white mist. When she want to see it, she was always confused. No matter how she look at it, she couldn't see it clearly.
She only knew that she was brought up in the White Tower. Since she was a child, her spiritual power appraisal value was very high, and she was matched early on with a fiancé who had a prominent background.
It was only recently that she was finally allowed to return to this home that had been abandoned for many years.
Lin Yuan was playing with the little killer whale puppet. The puppet's tail was threaded in one place, and a little white cotton ran out. She reached out and poked the cotton into it.
The killer whale puppet was chubby and very cute, with a black back, white belly, and white eye spots on both sides of the head, which looks like it was smiling. It seemed as if it could make a whale cry at her at any time. When she poke it with her finger, it felt very elastic.
It was not the same as the killer whale she saw in that spiritual sea today.
Lin Yuan opened her palm and made a grasping gesture, recalling the feeling from the tentacles at that time.
That fish was too thin, it felt he was skinny when it was wrapped around him, and his skin was covered with criss-crossing scars.
Not particularly pleasing to the touch.
Lying on the bed, while playing with the soft puppet in her hand and thinking about what happened during the day, Lin Yuan slowly fell asleep.
In her sleep, she seemed to have come to the seabed again.
She was wearing a little white dress, standing in a strange room, with deep sea water outside the window, and a huge whale swimming by.
The whale chirped, as if reminding her of something, or singing a sad song.
"Xiaoyuan, Xiaoyuan." Someone was calling her.
Lin Yuan turned her head, and a couple whose faces she couldn't see rushed into the room and hugged her up.
"At least I want to send Xiaoyuan out." She heard someone talking.
She didn't know when the surrounding area caught fire, and the fire burned very violently. Lin Yuan was protected by two pairs of arms, tightly in a warm embrace.
It turned out that they were her father and mother.
Her mother was the mighty Sentinel and her father was the gentle Guide.
The surrounding fire was very hot, and her mother held her in her arms, stepped on the flames, and ran all the way with her long legs. Little Lin Yuan curled up in her mother's arms, but she didn't feel scared at all.
She felt neither heat nor pain, only peace in her heart.
Her father, who was a guide, blocked her senses and lowered her five senses.
He let her feel neither pain nor terror.
In the scorching sea of fire, her mother guarded her body, and her father guarded her spiritual realm.
Time seemed to pass very slowly, and they seemed to be running for an infinite time in a raging fire.
Lin Yuan heard her father's gentle voice,
"Xiaoyuan, come, dad will teach you how to control a Sentinel's realm."
She couldn't see her father's face clearly, but the gentle voice rang directly in her mind.
"Xiaoyuan, you are a genius, you will definitely be able to do it."
"The rest of the way, you and your mother will walk together."
No!
Lin Yuan opened her eyes at once.
The dream disappeared, and most of the memories in the dream also disappeared.
She lay on the bed, only feeling her heart pounding. The sound of rain outside the window became louder at some point, and the night was as thick as ink.
The icy rain beat against the glass, and there were countless crawling water marks on the glass.
Lin Yuan sat up in a daze, looked out the window at the dark rainy night, and stared blankly for a long time.
Suddenly she wondered,
is that fish,
no, that Sentinel,
still sitting in that alley?
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Translator's note: just to note that the original text use the words 帝国 (empire/imperial), but the leader is 国王 (king/queen). It's intentional translation.
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