"Brighter than the Earth Cave City I come from. This is the first time I've ever set foot in such a bright, beautiful place," a middle-aged apprentice remarked nearby with a sigh.
A few nearby wild wizard apprentices exchanged whispers, then set off together into the distance.
Everyone was thrilled by this mysterious city—at least for the time being.
Luge glanced at Baonte. Baonte shot him a look in return, then turned and strode off. Chuckling, Luge shamelessly hurried after him.
"Ah! Manson? Manson! I only took two steps and already puzzled out a question—this place is too terrifying. Shouldn't we get out of here?" Some distance away, an apprentice was calling to his companion in inexplicable panic.
Everyone who heard slowed their steps, and even Baonte stopped to look.
"You fool, that's something you reason out every day. You just happened to figure it out here."
"The things from that terrifying World of Knowledge might really burst a person's skull..."
"Relax—knowledge doesn't come looking for fools..."
The two apprentice wizards spoke in low voices and gradually drifted away.
Luge turned back and found that Baonte had, at some point, already gone far ahead. He hurried after him with quick, small steps. Before he had a rough sense of the situation, he meant to stay by this burly man's side for a while.
The city's buildings were all of white stone—walls, pillars, and roofs alike—giving them a very clean, tidy look.
Many of the pillars were carved with winding patterns, some exquisite, some rough and bold.
The only unsettling thing was that those places he had seen earlier, the spots that had been so full of people coming and going, were utterly empty once he drew near.
Trailing behind Baonte, Luge bent down as he passed a house with a pointed roof and touched the steps before its door. There wasn't a speck of dust on them.
He curiously touched and inspected things here and there, but didn't dare do anything out of line.
Baonte, for his part, seemed to have a goal of his own—which pleased Luge. It meant Big Brother Baonte knew something about this city, at least a part of it.
A quarrel drifted over from the distance. Once they rounded the corner, though, there was only a single apprentice wizard—his face rough-hewn, his voice rising and falling—as if arguing with the empty air before him.
Baonte seemed to read Luge's confusion and said slowly, "First, don't let your thoughts wander. In this place, don't carelessly dwell on hard problems. Everyone's capacity has its limits. Save your chances for what's truly worthwhile—though of course, that's just one possibility..."
Suddenly the apprentice waved his arms in agitation, then furiously clutched at his own throat.
Then, amid a burst of furious roaring, a dazzling light poured out. When everything went quiet and the light scattered, all that remained on the ground was a square black object.
"He's dead."
Baonte walked over and, under Luge's astonished gaze, picked up a book from the ground.
The burly man studied the book in his hands and let out an inexplicable sigh.
"This book is his legacy. He was only a trigger. Its contents aren't necessarily tied to him—it's a product of what his level of strength could reach, plus some power of this city, the gifts of the World of Knowledge, even whatever was on his mind before he died, and so on. All those coincidences came together to make a book."
As he spoke, Baonte put the book away. It seemed to be a spell book.
"Take this advice as payment for helping me pick up my staff. From here on, don't follow me—I still have things to do." With that, Baonte turned to leave.
Where there's a first, there's a second, Luge thought.
"You're looking for that friend of yours named Kaliu, aren't you? You suspect he might not be dead?" Luge quickly raised the subject to stop him. "Tell me what he looks like. I'll be wandering all over the city—let me have a look for you."
Baonte's steps paused.
"While you're wandering, be careful. Don't go barging into the houses of this city."
As he spoke, Baonte tossed over a scroll painting. On its back were handwriting notes from experiment records—clearly just a random sheet he'd grabbed up. Luge caught it and unrolled it, and saw that a few sparse strokes had sketched out a face full of spirit and character.
Luge's breath caught, then settled back to even.
"Well, the artistry is truly astonishing," he said.
Baonte looked at him and said, "This fellow cares a great deal about his looks. At his age, he's still kept his own face young. But he's cunning. If he isn't dead, he'll surely have changed his appearance and slipped in here."
So he doesn't expect much from me, Luge thought.
"Take this. If you really do see him, just throw it out, and I'll come." Baonte handed over a little round bead the size of a fingernail.
Luge nodded hard and tucked it away, then watched the burly man's receding figure.
Once the figure had vanished completely, he hurriedly unrolled the scroll again. One glance was enough—he recognized it at once. This was Half-Man.
But so much of it didn't add up.
He didn't dwell on it further. Instead, he first found a quiet, secluded spot and tested whether he could open the Abyssal bedroom space. Last time's affair had left him with a mental scar, and this city was a special place besides.
The moment the thought of opening the door stirred in his mind, and the spatial door had barely begun to form, he felt a resistance. Fortunately, it was only resistance. After some effort, the door failed to open in the end—and yet it didn't fail entirely, either. Once it steadied, a crack was left that was just wide enough for someone of his height to slip through sideways. Everything was perfect.
With that settled, he could ease his mind. Luge began his wandering.
His wandering wasn't entirely aimless, of course. He thought back to the street corner where he had seen the little crybaby worm-person vanish and tried hard to make out the surrounding buildings. Since there was an acquaintance about, naturally he still wanted to go pay a visit. That little one seemed to be like a key to this city; coming here surely wasn't a simple matter. And besides, the little one's younger brother was still in his hands, so naturally he had to show a little more concern. In a way, they counted as half family.
As he walked, he kept turning over the matter of Half-Man.
Surely thinking about such things wouldn't draw any danger? he wondered.
Half-Man's every move was utterly unlike that of an apprentice wizard, and none of it was something an apprentice could pull off. Baonte, moreover, had plainly said that apprentice wizards couldn't erase the mark on another's storage pouch.
If Half-Man were Kaliu, then how could he have been so easily defeated by Baonte? What was that illusory state of Half-Man's all about? And the way his eyes and nose could scarcely move at all? And the bodies split in two—that half a head even seemed capable of thinking for itself.
If Half-Man could appear before him right now, he would surely be unable to hold back from questioning the other—at the very least, he'd ask whether the other was Kaliu.
No—Luge suddenly thought—it would be best if Half-Man never appeared before him again. At least not while he was in this city.
Turning these wild thoughts over, he rounded a few more streets.
A large tiered pool of overlapping trapezoids appeared before him. Clear water flowed down from the topmost level, filling the fan-shaped basins of the descending steps one after another. The water trickled on, as if it would never run dry. A dozen or so apprentice wizards had already gathered at the pool's edge.
Luge walked over and first looked up at the highest point. At the far end of the pool stood a tall structure, like a palace.
He looked left and right and noticed an interesting sight. Quite a few apprentice wizards had already stepped into the pool and were sitting in the water with delighted faces, as if in meditation. The pool was stacked in more than twenty tiers. Most of those who went above the third tier were wild wizards, while those self-important fellows mostly sat cross-legged on the first and second.
Luge guessed boldly that many of these fellows were probably still low-ranking apprentices like himself.
Chapter 72