Chapter 819 — The End of the Story

Narratir's voice was low, slow, and gentle. Faced with this simple question, Selina fell into a long silence.

She did not know how long she pondered before she finally raised her head and gazed at the Upper Narrator's purposeless face.

"This is only an experiment. Merely... an experiment..."

Every word seemed to drain the last of her strength.

Two seconds later, the pure white, holy spider finally let out a soft sigh. "Ah, thank you... At last I have heard the answer from the Creator's own mouth."

"Narratir," Gao Yang could not help stepping forward, "actually, I can still..."

"Could you give me some time?" the Upper Narrator's voice came softly. "I want... to look at the stars."

"The stars?" Gao Yang raised his head in astonishment, but he could see only a dark, chaotic sky, without a single star.

And when he looked back again, that snow-white spider deity—and the cocoon she had sheltered to the very last—had already begun to scatter into motes of radiant dust.

……

The howling in the valley fell silent, and the trembling of the earth grew still.

The people of Orindale stepped out of their homes in unease and dread, took to the streets, asked one another what had happened, and as if by common impulse all turned their eyes toward the direction of the Throat of Orindale.

In the dim, hazy light of the sky, children cried out in astonishment.

Against the outline of the rising sun, a vast, nearly transparent spider seemed to climb little by little up the nearby crags, up onto the high ground at the valley's rim. There It came quietly to a halt and carefully pushed forward the cocoon-like thing before It.

The last glimmer of starlight at the edge of the sky shone down upon the spider's ever more insubstantial body. Facing the final starlight of the day, It seemed to breathe out a faint murmur of wonder. Many heard an illusory voice rise in their minds, yet were utterly at a loss before that voice—

"Here is where the story ends..."

Then the sun rose, and the radiance of the great sun shone over the earth. Everything seemed to dissolve like a dream, and between heaven and earth there remained only ten thousand fathoms of glowing clouds.