Chapter 1251 — The Memory of Sand

Gao Yang was taken aback by this flowing, effortless maneuver. He raised his head to glance at the shame of the Alliance, now looking exceedingly pleased with herself, and his tone carried surprise: "You've already got such fine control? This looks like something you've practiced for ten years."

"I found that I can handle these sands very easily, and the knack for controlling them seems to have been printed in my mind long ago," Amber said offhandedly, not a trace of modesty in her tone. "I don't know how these sands actually work. Controlling them feels like an instinct—whenever the right moment comes, the method of using them simply surfaces in my mind..."

Hearing this, Gao Yang frowned and muttered under his breath with a grave expression: "A knockoff set of sands, yet it comes with an authentic manual..."

Amber did not catch it: "Huh? What did you say?"

"No, nothing," Gao Yang said, waving his hand, his gaze falling on the "dust-mist" rising and tumbling across the tabletop. "When you stripped these sands from Mo Jin... was it also this 'instinct' telling you what to do?"

"Yes," Amber nodded, then pinched her chin in thought. "I sensed certain 'essences' of those sands in Mo Jin. They seem to have taken the place of Mo Jin's original 'other half,' sustaining that great adventurer's life. So I didn't dare strip too much of the shadow sand from him, and I certainly didn't dare casually point out the existence of those sands in front of him—what if the old gentleman suddenly realized half his body was gone and got so worked up he just keeled over on the spot? I can't beat Victoria..."

"Then there's no problem with the sand you stripped from him?" Gao Yang asked, a little uneasy. "If it really is these sands that have kept Mo Jin alive all this time..."

"No problem. This is only a small portion; losing it won't affect the operation of the remaining sand in the slightest," Amber said, shaking her head before Gao Yang had finished. "I can sense that 'critical threshold' that sustains Mo Jin's life, though I don't know how to explain to you where that 'feeling' comes from..."

"Then don't explain it," Gao Yang said, waving his hand and pointing at the sand swirling and surging on the tea table. "First, tell me about these sands. You got them out of Mo Jin, but how are we supposed to know what secrets are hidden in them? They won't talk."

Amber was silent for a moment, only gazing somewhat absently at the ceaselessly dancing sand. She seemed to be pondering and sensing something, and only after a long while did she suddenly murmur softly: "Sand won't talk... but sand has witnessed what once happened..."

As she spoke, she slowly raised her hand and placed it above the sand.

The "mist of sand" swirling and surging across the tabletop suddenly stopped flowing. Under Gao Yang's astonished gaze, it came to complete stillness, and only after several seconds did it resume its flow—but this time it no longer presented that utterly random state. Instead, churning and accumulating, it slowly took shape upon the tabletop into a three-dimensional scene...

Gao Yang was dumbstruck: "This is..."

"It may be Mo Jin's memory, or the sand's memory—or, more likely, what a pair of eyes standing in a third-party perspective once saw," Amber said in a low voice, her voice seeming to carry a low, trembling hum. Hearing it, Gao Yang instinctively turned to look, and only then discovered that she had at some point assumed another posture—her long black hair drifting in the air as if bereft of gravity, pale golden light seeping from her amber pupils, shadowy power like cloud and mist wreathing around her, so that her whole bearing had changed enormously. Yet she herself seemed not to have noticed, only continuing, "What you see next is not a scene I am manipulating—I am only guiding these sands to release their 'records.' As for what exactly they have recorded... I don't know either."

As she spoke, Gao Yang saw the sand on the table condense into a clearer form. He saw, in a sea of sand, structures like pillars suddenly rising one after another, and between the pillars many crisscrossing lines and vaulted arches extending outward. Beyond those pillars he saw what seemed to be even more enormous, blurred structures, which, limited by the scale of the sand, could not be fully rendered. After the pillars and vaults had each taken shape, he saw a human figure abruptly rise at the center of the whole scene—a figure condensed from gray-white sand, its features blurred and indistinct, showing only that it wore something like a robe or cloak, looking as though it had just come through a long and arduous journey... or was perhaps still on one.

Neither Gao Yang nor Amber could make out the figure's face, but almost instantly, by intuition, they guessed the figure's identity.

"That's Mo Jin!" Amber said, eyes wide. "This is Mo Jin Wilder's memory!"

Gao Yang felt a stir of excitement as well, but soon he noticed a new change in that scene: "Wait—there's something else!"

Before his voice had died away, a small whirlwind blew up within the "sand stage," and before the "Mo Jin" at the center of the scene, two new figures abruptly emerged!

"This is..." Amber stared wide-eyed, even as she maintained her guidance of the shadow sand, watching the changes in the scene in astonishment. "In theory this should be the last fragment of impression from before Mo Jin Wilder underwent 'division'—how did two people suddenly appear..."

A bizarre thought flashed through Gao Yang's mind: could it be that Mo Jin Wilder, back then, had been split apart by these two?

The scene condensed from sand continued to change. Gao Yang hastily shook these uncontrollable thoughts from his mind and looked toward the center of that "stage," where the Mo Jin formed of sand seemed to be conversing with the two figures before him. He could hear no sound, only see the body language of both parties in the exchange, and judging from their movements alone, the two sides did not appear to be in conflict.

"I thought they were going to come to blows," Amber said suddenly. "When I first saw it, I thought Mojin was about to be torn apart by those two—I was all set for a horror show."

Gao Yang: "..."

He was too embarrassed to admit that his own thoughts had overlapped with those of the shame of the Alliance, and his expression turned a little stiff, so he forcibly changed the subject: "By the way, you can't even make out those two figures clearly..."

"Yeah, all blurry," Amber said, eyes wide as she stared intently at the image condensed from grayish-white sand and dust. "The one in front is Mojin—that I can confirm. Even if I can't see clearly, I can feel it. But these two who appeared behind are really hard to distinguish... I can't sense any aura..."

"Can it be made any clearer?" Gao Yang couldn't help looking at Amber. "Like adjusting the projection focus or something..."

"I'm not a Weave terminal! What focus is there to adjust!" Amber bared her teeth at once, shooting down Gao Song's request on the spot. "And this is formed from sand—this is as fine as it gets... After all, the whole scene is only so big, and it can't be zoomed."

"Mojin's resolution is pretty poor..." Gao Yang couldn't help but sigh, yet his gaze grew even more intent on the two figures that had appeared before Mojin, straining to make out some clue from the blurry sand and dust—and under such careful observation, he finally spotted something. "These two look like they should be women—look at their clothing... Hm? Wait! Amber, take a look—don't they seem a bit like elves?"

(End of Chapter)