musicians of old

Chapter 847 Splitting and Reassembling!
It was indeed only three to five seconds late.

Things kept falling into a series of low-probability coincidences.

We can't get to the other side.

This crack that suddenly runs through the entire mountain range is actually only a little over two meters wide in its narrowest part. Under normal circumstances, Fanning might be able to try to cross it with a running start, but with glaciers and snow on both sides, without special tools, the result of such an attempt would certainly be falling into the abyss.

The abyss below the crack is bottomless, and the color of the ice crystals gradually transitions from blackish-blue to nothingness. All that can be seen is a profound silence that oppresses the spirit.

"Yeah, it's so annoying." Ruoyi, on the other end, mimicked his tone, "We met after the avalanche, why is it like this again?"

If we look at the starry sky this way, can we still call it a shared view? She couldn't say.

Maybe so, since we can also hear Andante together.

"Wow, that's amazing, your phone can even play music."

"The phone got stuck. There seem to be other victims on your side too?" Fan Ning got up, brushed the snow off his clothes, and quickly noticed that the icy area behind Ruoyi was also vaguely covered with some limbs and objects. "This avalanche took me to a slightly off-center location. After I woke up, it took me several hours to find this place. Along the way, I found many more bodies of victims. Some things are strange, but the clothing, the year of the incident, and the objects all match. Did you see Qiong along the way?"

Ruoyi shook her head: "I only woke up recently, and I only searched the vicinity. I didn't look anywhere else."

"Has the 'Apocalypse Secret Realm' been discovered?"

"No, I didn't find any sheet music, but luckily I found my backpack, and there was still some food left in it."

She threw several Snickers bars over.

"Thanks, I was definitely seeing stars after climbing." Fan Ning tore open the packaging and took a bite with some snow. "Aren't you going to eat some? Do you have any more?"

“I’m not hungry,” Ruoyi said.

She leaned against the snowdrift, watching intently as Fanning ate a Snickers bar.

"Fan Ning, I'm thinking of coming to your place, or I'd like you to come over."

Fan Ning paused for a moment, but the bitterness in his expression quickly vanished, and a smile soon appeared as they looked at each other: "It shouldn't be too far. Let's walk up the crack a little further, and if I can jump over later, I will. Can you still walk?"

“I have to be able to walk,” Ruoyi said, smiling at him.

Hovering beneath the strange blue-black twilight sky, the two continued their journey along the massive crevice of the glacier, one on the left and one on the right.

The ten-day deadline is fast approaching. Perhaps what they want to know is at the mountaintop, or perhaps, on this final stretch of the journey, the two are still searching for the victims' belongings on both sides, trying to piece together a corner of the mysterious truth of the incident.

Although Joan's fate remains unknown, and it's unclear whether the "curse-free sanctuary" she spoke of truly exists, or whether it will actually appear when the "road signs are removed or the sheet music is burned," the two still try their best to keep their promise to her.

She brought the two of them here.

Fan Ning even felt that she had dreamed of such a scene not long ago: on a rugged and cold snow mountain road, she was climbing to a higher place, and Joan was standing in the "shelter" behind her, watching her back disappear into the wind and snow.

He even felt that this must have happened before.

“The sheet music that Qiong mentioned has never been found. It’s so strange.” Ruoyi stood up again in front of a corpse.

“Yes, there are more and more of these cryptic pamphlets and letters.” Fan Ning looked up. Ruoyi’s language skills were much better than Fan Ning’s, and she had more information to share.

Fanning shared his personal speculations about the secret affair, about the Mithra society, and their grand plan to "enter, possess, or submit to the Radiance."

"But look here. Not only were Joan's family ancestors pessimistic about the plan, but he was also pessimistic about whether he could survive in the cracks of this conflict."

Ruoyi flipped through the newly found letters. The leather scrolls used to write them were very special, unlike any material she had ever seen in reality. Ruoyi even felt that they had fallen from her "dream".

"This worm scientist realized the danger of 'The Secret Realm of Revelation' and wrote to Brezhnev suggesting that research cease on a method he had envisioned—a 'splitting key'—that could render Scriabin's 'The Secret Realm of Revelation' ineffective! After the Soviet leadership at that time rejected his suggestion, he had no choice but to pass the method on to his descendants. Well, he and his descendants were probably members of certain factions within the Mithraic religion, planning to use this method to deal with 'heretics'! The so-called 'heretics' were another group of people who followed the composer Scriabin's ideas and were known as the 'Snakes'!"

Heresy? The Serpent Faction? Fanning pondered the key details.

The three factions have different understandings of "building the path," each calling itself a fundamentalist and referring to the other factions as heretics.

The commission that Fan Chenxun participated in was themed "An event to pay tribute to Scriabin," which indicates that the group of climbers who perished in the mountaineering disaster belonged to the "Serpent Sect" of Mithraism! Or at least, on the surface, most of them were from the "Serpent Sect"!
In reality, there are definitely others who are not. There are two other factions hiding their identities and mixed in, trying to reverse the chaos and obstruct the "Snake Faction's" plan.

In addition, there should be a few other people who didn't even know what "Mitra" was before; they were auxiliary characters recruited to fill the gaps and were simply caught up in the situation.

The above is roughly the true composition of the victims of mountaineering accidents.

"As for the specific implementation method proposed by worm scientists, this 'splitting key causes Apocalypse Realm to malfunction'"

Ruoyi turned another page.

"The method is to disassemble this dangerous work containing the 'secret of the end,' separating its most core elements—'music' and 'text'—from each other, creating paradoxical 'antiques'? In the long river of history, their guardians will carry them away to distant places?"

She also read some unfamiliar words.

“However, this worm scientist believes that Scriabin has other means of return.” She continued flipping through the pages, “Even if the key is ‘disassembled’ according to his method, it cannot guarantee that it will ‘resist grafting and contamination in every dimension of time and space,’ because ‘snakes and snake apostles will appear in the future!’”

"The future?" Fan Ning frowned. What constitutes the future? Does the present count? It seems to be after these people have already perished.

Thinking this, Fan Ning even felt insecure. The avalanche had brought the whole world into a strange state, and he felt that he couldn't even tell what time it was.

“And the snake and the apostle of the snake,” Fanning murmured to himself.

“Yes, this is a prophecy that the worm scientists interpreted from the oracle.” Ruoyi nodded. “This person’s attitude is indeed pessimistic in many ways. For example, he even believes that ‘as we see it today, the grand plan of the sun may be flawed.’”

"The worm scientists warn that after the 'Serpent and its Apostles' lose control of the key, they will inevitably try to reunite these two separated 'paradoxical antiques' in order to regain it in the future. They will exert various influences to allow their guardians to intersect, becoming companions, close friends, or lovers, with different possibilities existing in each dimension."

"To minimize the risks of such aggregation, the worm scientist suggested that the disassembly of *The Secret Realm of Apocalypse* must be 'profound,' 'solid,' and 'complex,' ideally separating the 'musical elements' using Western-leaning vocabulary, while the 'textual elements' should be carried by Eastern thought. Based on his understanding of linguistics, he speculated that in the East, the Chinese language possesses a greater potential to 'resist distortion and collapse.' Here's a digression: finding a successor who 'is proficient in Western artistic vocabulary and deeply understands Eastern civilization' to collaborate with is a difficult but crucial issue, and the pool of candidates is limited by the 'Serpent Faction's' recruitment criteria."

"In short, those anti-'snake faction' members of the secret society must have reached a series of temporary division of labor agreements during the mountaineering art event in the first half of this year. They referred to the method left to posterity by worm scientists and named the 'Western music elements' extracted from 'The Secret Realm of Revelation' as... named it?"

As Ruoyi was reading, she suddenly slowed down her speech for some reason, and her face turned deathly pale!
"what happened?"

Fan Ning, who was listening attentively on the other end, suddenly felt a bad premonition.

“They named the ‘Western musical elements’ they separated out,” Ruoyi’s chest heaved noticeably, “…The Boy’s Magic Horn.”

"And the 'Eastern textual elements' were named 'The Flute of the East'!"