Chapter 899 — Travelogue

Amber blinked, half understanding, and asked no more questions. She turned her eyes back to the latter half of Mojin's notes, and beside her, Gao Song's gaze suddenly slowed as it swept over certain words and sentences on those ancient pages.

Amber noticed at once: "Did you see something?"

"...I suspect I've found the content that caught your adoptive father's interest..." Gao Cen said as he rapidly flipped through the following pages, skimming the contents. After several shifts in his expression, he slowly knitted his brows.

"Then read it to me," Amber said, growing a little anxious when Gao Yang did not go on. "Hey, I'm sure I know most of this has something to do with my origins and all that. I've prepared myself mentally, so just tell me..."

"In his later years, Mojin Wilde explored the Shadow Realm, and succeeded in establishing communication with its inhabitants..." After a moment's thought, Gao Yan nodded and pointed to the words in the travelogue—

What follows is the firsthand record left by Mojin Wilde:

"Xth day, Xth month... After several less-than-successful attempts, I finally found a weak point in the real world, a natural shadow rift. This rift can be widened and stabilized through ritual, allowing a human to step through it whole and remain there for an extended time, rather than merely flitting across the shadow boundary as other shadow professions do. I am not certain whether the Gondor mages of old opened their shadow gates in this same manner, but this is the best method I could find...

"Xth day, Xth month. With all preparations complete, the rift opened, as stable as I had imagined, though somewhat smaller in scale than expected—yet still sufficient. I have decided to pass through this door tonight, at the hour when the shadow power is strongest. Wish me luck...

"…On the other side of the door is a world even more desolate and bizarre than I imagined... utterly colorless, lifeless, everything in it built of black, white, and gray... The things of the real world are projected into this space in grotesque forms. The small town where I lodge appears here as great heaped and twisted fragments of buildings, and the distant mountains seem to have become writhing black mist...

"This world is plainly unfit for ordinary people to live in, and I can see no value in it for resource extraction, but I have still decided to go a little deeper. The good news is that apart from elemental imbalance, the magic here is the same as in the outside world. I can exert more than eighty percent of my strength here...

"Xth day, Xth month... I have encountered those creatures! They look very much like humans, wearing strange garments like runecloth, like smoke constrained into human form... They drifted past from far away, and I do not think I alarmed them. I am certain these are the legendary shadow dwellers—the intelligent inhabitants of the Shadow World. It is said that only a few masters devoted to the way of shadow have ever, under the rarest circumstances, glimpsed these mysterious beings, but even those masters left no record of successfully establishing communication with the shadow dwellers...

"I, Mojin Wilde, the most powerful human spellcaster in this realm—though not a shadow mage—intend to take up the challenge. I will attempt to establish communication with these mysterious beings. Perhaps they can tell me what secrets this strange and uncanny world holds...

"Xth day, Xth month. Lost the fight.

"Xth day, Xth month. Lost the fight.

"Xth day, Xth month. Fully prepared—I even returned to the real world to perform certain special rituals. I believe I have accumulated enough experience, including how to deal with their elusive, formless bodies and their ever-growing numbers. I have no weaknesses left.

"Xth day, Xth month. Lost the fight.

"Mojin, oh Mojin! Look upon your record of shame! You are the most powerful human spellcaster in this realm! How can you be chased into headlong flight again and again by a pack of strange enemies who can do nothing but mutter?

"Xth day, Xth month. Lost the fight.

"I think this calls for cunning.

"I am no longer young. I ought to rely on strategy, as befits an old mage who behaves his age... With the right approach, those shadow dwellers may yet prove reasonable.

"I intend to preserve my earlier failures in full as well. Perhaps they will serve as a warning to adventurers of later generations. True, this may damage my image, but an adventurer's calling is to try every path; even the most humiliating experience is precious. I cannot conceal my failures.

"Look on the bright side: I am already old, so there is no hurry to publish these records. I will leave instructions for my descendants to publish them after my death—then I will not have to hear the laughter... and who knows, someone may even be won over by my sense of humor..."

Gaoyang had already skimmed through it once, so he managed to keep his expression under control; beside him, however, Hupo could not stop the corners of her mouth from twitching, and after a long moment she blurted out, "This man's mind is a strange one..."

Gaoyang: "He was one of Victoria's ancestors..."

Hupo: "So this is what they mean by 'great wisdom appears foolish'..."

"It is only that his temperament is rather peculiar," Gaoyang said, his expression solemn and calm, pointing at the lines that followed. "Let us continue. He began trying to approach those shadow dwellers in a special way."

Hupo shut her mouth at once and leaned her head in—though she could not make much of it, she followed Gaoyang's finger down the page:

"...The shadow dwellers seem to abhor uninvited outsiders. They take me for an intruder from the real world, which is why they refuse all communication, time and again. So what if I made myself look like a creature that lives in the shadow world as well?

"The idea is bold and workable. I know certain rituals and magical brews—a large dose of shadow potion may not sit well with the stomach, but it may also make those shadow dwellers better disposed toward me, and a little stomach upset hardly matters then...

"Xth day, Xth month... Following the above reasoning, I completed the ritual, transformed myself into a form close to that of a shadow creature, and consumed a sufficient quantity of shadow potion. I found an old friend versed in shadow magic; he said I now 'looked exactly like a shadow.' That being so, surely nothing could go wrong.

"I decided to attempt contact with the shadow dwellers that very night—by then the shadow power within me would reach its peak, and my disguise would be flawless.

"Xth day, Xth month. Lost the fight.

"Suffered severe diarrhea on the way back.

"...(Old Gondorian obscenity) (Ansu obscenity) (Northland obscenity) (unspeakably vulgar language)"