"Where did you get the Abyss Herald's corpse?" Dain pushed through the crowd and squeezed in.
He prodded the Abyss Herald's body before him; it was soft, like a puddle of mud. This Abyss Herald hadn't returned to the embrace of the Abyss like its other kin; instead, its body had been forcibly stabilized.
"So you thought I was just shooting lasers for fun before, huh?" Ember stroked his chin, his eyes fixed on the purple text appearing on the Abyss Herald, as if he were analyzing something.
But he quickly abandoned this mental effort. Pointing at the purple text floating in mid-air, Ember asked Dain:
"Come, come, take a look. What does this say? Why can't I understand it?"
The Abyss Order and Dain had many similarities, the most notable of which was their writing style.
Every word was recognizable, yet strung together, they became incomprehensible. It was exactly like Dain when he spoke in riddles.
"Let me see... Loom of Fate... weaving fate..." Dain squatted down, muttering disjointedly.
After reading, Dain felt a strange sense of familiarity. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and began to recall the past.
A curtain appeared in his mind, and the memories Dain unearthed were like slides projected onto it.
Most of the images were blurry, but a few familiar scenes remained clearly visible.
Among them was an inverted purple crystal.
"Ha..."
Dain suddenly opened his eyes, his gaze gradually shifting to the inverted statue bathed in dark purple light.
The light distorted, and in Dain's vision, the inverted statue began to overlap with the hanging dark purple crystal from his memory.
"The Sinner... was it he who guided you, or are you approaching him on your own..."
Dain pursed his lips. Unbeknownst to him, a fine sheen of sweat had appeared on his forehead.
"Uh... Dain, what do you see here? I'll give you a chance to rephrase that."
An iron hand waved before Dain's eyes. Dain turned his head and saw Ember, who was waving his fist.
Dain suddenly remembered some unbearable memories.
Due to his curse and constant dealings with the Abyss, Dain always tended to leave his sentences unfinished.
This was actually a form of protection for the person he was speaking with. The secrets he carried were too heavy; if others knew them, fate might seek them out.
And the power of fate was unstoppable.
At least, that's how it was for Dain.
However, Ember didn't care about any of that. He hated riddlers more than anything.
Why, you ask? Naturally, he had been tormented by them. Every single person in the Firelink Shrine was a riddler, including the Fire Keeper!
Every time Ember entered the Firelink Shrine, his head would ache a little more—talking to riddlers was simply too exhausting.
He thought things would be better in The Lands Between, but the moment Melina spoke, Ember knew that her riddling skills were no less than the Fire Keeper's.
Having learned from the first two lessons, Ember now utterly detested riddlers!
So whenever Dain spoke in riddles, Ember would tap his head and tell him to be clearer. It worked very well; now, when Dain was with Ember, he would only speak plainly.
"Ahem... I was just thinking about things that happened too long ago, merely feeling a bit sentimental," Dain coughed a few times, then quietly stepped back a few paces.
Ember's punches still hurt a lot.
"Then the Abyss Order... and my brother, what exactly do they want to do?" Lumine also tried to decipher the information in the text, but unfortunately, she couldn't understand the unique script of the Abyss Monster.
"What do they want..." Dain was about to say something, but he looked at Shenhe and the others nearby and stopped.
Shenhe, Xingqiu, and Chongyun, while impressive to ordinary people, were still considered "ordinary people" in Dain's eyes and should not be entangled in matters concerning the Abyss and Khaenri'ah.
Their fates could not bear such a weight.
Just as Dain was struggling with how to explain to Lumine, he suddenly heard a gasp of surprise beside him.
"Wow! A bald head!"
"I guess I don't find this guy so scary anymore."
"evil beings should not be judged by their appearance."
"I wonder why they wear masks. Is it because of this?"
A flurry of chatter reached Dain's ears, and a bad premonition arose within him.
He looked down and saw a bald head reflecting blue light. Looking up, he saw that the Abyss Herald's missing mask had somehow ended up in Ember's hand.
"..."
"What are you doing?"
Looking at the Abyss Herald's head, with its eyes tightly closed and its forehead reflecting an eerie light, Dain now felt his worries were somewhat superfluous.
"Curious about the true face of the Abyss Herald. I'm very surprised; I didn't expect it to be bald. Are all Abyss Heralds like this?"
Ember thought of Enjou; he could verify it with him next time they met.
"I don't know." Dain clutched his chest, looking very distressed.
Then, he saw Ember put the mask back on the Abyss Herald and begin digging a pit where he stood.
"What are you doing now?" Seeing the scene before him, Dain immediately understood the reason for the Abyss Monster's previous demise.
They had done so many evil deeds; dying without leaving a body successfully prevented the kind of posthumous humiliation Ember was inflicting.
"The deceased are to be respected; I'm digging a grave for it."
Ember's hands dug swiftly. As he spoke, a deep pit was ready.
More dust flew, and what finally appeared before everyone was a slightly raised mound of earth. In front of it, a wooden sign was stuck, inscribed: "Abyss Herald · Torrent's Tomb."
And it was even written in the Abyss Monster's script.
"Hmph..." Dain bent over. Before, it was just chest tightness; now, it was angina.
After a few deep breaths, Dain finally composed himself. He twitched the corner of his mouth and said to Lumine, without concealment,
"I don't know much either, but from the current information, Aether seems to want to weave fate, mimicking that guy's example."
Now Dain had completely given up, no longer caring if Shenhe and the others would encounter darkness in their destinies after hearing these things they shouldn't have.
Anyway, if anyone came looking for him in the future, he would just say: "Please find Ember on the surface; I know nothing."
"Fate? This can be woven?" Lumine had several question marks in her head. Who was the Sinner? What was fate? Was weaving fate truly possible?
"Amazing! Weaving fate, that's difficult. Your brother has grand ambitions." Ember stomped the grave mound firmer. Hearing Dain's words, he couldn't help but praise Aether's aspirations.
"But is he really that powerful? With so many stars, how can he push them?"
Teyvat's fate was a very tricky thing. From Ember's half-baked astrology, Teyvat's fate seemed strongly correlated with the celestial Fates.
So how to change fate? By changing the trajectories of the stars, of course!
Thinking this, Ember suddenly felt that Teyvat's fate was actually quite easy to change; it was just pushing stars.
If pushing stars could change fate in The Lands Between, that would be great. Then the Nox wouldn't have had to use the strength of their entire clan to develop the fingerslayer blade and anchor it to the future Ranni.
Hoping that at some opportune moment in the future, a suitable person, in a suitable place, would pick up the appropriate fingerslayer blade, thereby gaining a sliver of opportunity to ascend fate.
The price, however, was the slaughter of their entire clan by malice from the starry sky, and the destruction of the Eternal City.
The cost was so great that Ember felt it wasn't worth it.
But then again, it seemed pushing stars was also quite difficult for the Nox. The main issue was that the stars in The Lands Between were alive; if you pushed them, they would bite you, which made things very difficult.
Thinking this, Ember suddenly found fate to be a real pain in the ass, impossible to untangle or resolve.
Aether, that kid, has a long and arduous road ahead of him!
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