Chapter 783 — The Trap Deep in Memory

Many strangers appeared in the castle, knights with faces hidden behind iron masks. The servants lost their former radiant looks; the old steward frowned in worry. Whispers from some unknown source echoed among the bookshelves and spread around Yuri's ears, and again and again these whispers mentioned rebellion, the old emperor's descent into madness, the great fire that had broken out in the Obsidian Palace—words to make the heart tremble with dread.

The splendid furnishings in the castle corridors were carried away; the iron boots of royal infantry trampled the quiet of the manor paths. The boy became a young man—no longer riding, no longer laughing freely. He sat quietly in the ancient library, his head buried in those yellowing tomes, buried in secret knowledge.

The servants were dismissed; the master of the castle went to Oldernan and never returned; the mistress wandered the courtyard raving, muttering curses without cease. Withered yellow leaves spun on the wind into the already emptied entrance hall, and the young man's cold gaze watched through the crack of the door the sparse attendants outside, as though all the changes of the world had ceased to concern him.

The court intrigues of Oldernan, the frenzied shadow looming over the Augustus family, the nobles each fearing for their own safety... none of it concerned him.

Day after day the young man sat in the library, deep within this sole surviving family legacy. The scrolls in his hands grew ever gloomier and more bizarre, describing countless terrible dark secrets, countless mysteries of knowledge held to be taboo.

He studied the history of the Empire; he studied the records of the old imperial capital's fall. With a certain mockery and a gaze from on high, he boldly studied those forbidden secrets concerning the curse of the Augustus family, as though entirely unafraid that such studies might burden the family with further crimes.

And in the course of studying these forbidden secrets, he also found, among the books the family had collected, a great many long-dust-covered books and scrolls.

It recorded knowledge of dreams, of the secret arts of the mind, of the dark divine sorcery.

Hidden knowledge was poured into his brain; a stranger's mind was linked to the young man's through those symbols and words concealed in the corners of the scrolls. He shut himself away in the library, becoming in the eyes of the outside world a "prisoner of the library," a "fallen oathbreaking noble," yet his spirit found release, and through repeated experiments with forbidden arcane arts he transcended the bonds of castle and manor.

Thus was a Sleeper born in the depths of a down-and-out noble's castle.

You Yaohengjiao strolled through the library, gradually arriving at the deepest recesses of this palace of memory.

Before the final door, he saw his younger self standing quietly amid a vast, chaotic heap of books, that young, pale face bearing a calm smile that nonetheless brimmed with madness, intricate dream runes painted across his robes and the surrounding floor and walls, coating every surface, gleaming in the darkness.

Heavy footsteps echoed from the scene; royal knights in full armor pushed open the door and stormed into the young man's domain. The officer at their head loudly read out the decree of Emperor Luo Yan Augustus, come to arrest an oathbreaking noble suspected of secretly researching imperial secrets, of offending imperial majesty, of practicing black witchcraft.

The young man, now a Sleeper, smiled and unleashed the large-scale spell arrayed throughout the entire library; every knight who had invaded the castle became a devoted follower of the Sleeping Cult within a few breaths.

"There are no Sleepers here, because everyone is a Sleeper..."

You Yaohengjiao halted before the last row of bookshelves, quietly watching the memory scene revealed through the door between the shelves.

It depicted his final step in becoming a Sleeper.

But that had been more than ten years ago.

Traversing one's memories helped reconstruct the subconscious's self-perception. Yaojijiao felt his mind growing steady once more; he had completed the re-outlining of his self-perception, and in theory, the "interference" force that caused the dislocation between the conscious layer and the perceptual layer would be thoroughly eliminated once this process ended.

He relaxed somewhat, facing those deepest memories with a calm demeanor, his gaze drifting over the rows of bookshelves nearby, over those thick, ancient, ornately bound volumes.

On the cover of every book was depicted a vast expanse of land, and a hand covering the sky above that land.

Yuri's gaze froze instantly; his heart tightened, and from the corner of his eye he saw that the young man in the final door, symbolizing his self from over a decade ago, was wearing a strange smile.

The other smiled and slowly raised a hand, palm held horizontally, facing downward, as if covering an invisible expanse of land.

"To the upper narrator, to our omniscient and omnipotent Creator..."

Yuri's eyes went wide; pale golden runes surfaced beside him, and as he struggled to break free of these deep memories, he shouted:

"Magminghengjiao!

"Do not calibrate your mind! Do not enter the depths of your own memories!

"This is a tra—"

He vaguely seemed to hear Magminghengjiao's furious roar as well, and realized that that hot-tempered Mingxu Jiao had likely run into the same crisis as himself, but before he could mount any further response, he suddenly felt his consciousness violently convulse, felt the heavy shadow shrouding his spirit swept clean away by some crude factor.

Amid flickering, disordered light and shadow, the images of the old castle and the library rapidly dissolved into nothing, and he found himself standing on the street of the phantom town where the streetlamps had come on, while that Daniel Yaojijiao was staring at him in utter astonishment.

"What are you shouting about?"

Daniel Yaojijiao asked with a frown.