musicians of old

Chapter 907 Beneath the Tower! (Final Chapter)

The thought just occurred to me.
It possessed a destructive magic, instantly freezing Fanning's tears and draining her emotions!
All emotions.

An absolute, almost inhuman calmness has shaped Fanning's current divine state, like solid ice.

Despite the excruciating pain of his entire body feeling as if it were dissolving, he stood up straight with a blank expression.

It traces the shadow of the dial in the polar night and then disappears again!

In the span of three breaths, from one end to the other, the deadly, morbid light descended once more.

The profound insights gained from the "Gateway to the Polar Night" have been rekindled.

Fan Ning gritted his teeth, veins bulging on his neck, his last remaining trace of divinity squeezed to its limit.

However, after closing the distance again, something unexpected happened.

On this colorful, twisted land, one "tower" after another, like poisonous mushrooms after rain, silently broke through the viscous surface and rose up from the ground!

One, ten, a hundred, a thousand...

In the blink of an eye, thousands upon thousands of towers had risen up in all directions, within his sight!

They formed an incomparably magnificent yet utterly desolate dot matrix.

Each tower looked exactly like the one beneath the "X-coordinate" of the collapsed sky he had previously observed—the same height, the same funnel shape, the same greasy vortex swirling in deep space, the same magnificent accumulation of flesh and blood, and the same hanging, disordered organs and blood vessels.

Fanning froze on the spot, feeling a violent wave of cognitive dizziness.

This is impossible!

what happened?
He narrowed his eyes, focusing his spiritual perception, trying to distinguish between truth and falsehood.

Upon closer inspection, he did indeed discover the differences between these towers.

It's not about appearance, but about the concrete whispers and thoughts that respond.

The tower closest to Fanning had blasphemous runes appearing at its base: "This gate forbids the rules of 'candle'."

The other tower next to it shimmered with a greenish, pus-like luster; "Those who enter must offer a 'star map' as a sacrifice."

In the distance stood a building exuding an aura of absolute indifference, marked "Only those who have abandoned their attachment to emotions may enter."

There is another gate, its doors twisted into a serpentine vortex; only by answering with the "Secret of the End" can one pass through.
Thousands of towering buildings, whispers rising in layers, are both unsettling and tempting, making one want to "just go in."

Weakening, or rather, a form of discipline?

To create a more controllable "collaborator"?
Force yourself to actively castrate the most core and irreplaceable part of yourself amidst endless "correct" choices?

"Hahahaha"

For the first time since escaping the outside world, Fanning smiled.

"hahahahahahahaha!"

A person who has traveled back and forth through the virtual world, collecting "starlight" from almost the entire river of art; a person who has gazed into the abyss in the polar night and personally proclaimed the "secret of endlessness".
A person who has long been deprived of everything.

"Who is it? Who did this? Haha." Fan Ning muttered to himself in a low, short voice, his voice hoarse yet carrying a strange, almost deranged laugh. "...No, are you playing this game with me?"

The fifth movement, the finale, was supposed to be coming to an end after such a long escape and such a frenzied outpouring of five juxtaposed themes.

At this moment, the "signal motif" and "roaring theme" that opened the first movement, "Orchestra at Night," resounded again! But they were no longer in their original form; instead, they became obsessive and bizarre, shifting between various surreal colors such as D major, C minor, C major, and B major, and mixing and intertwining with the transformed five themes of the original final movement!
The last wisp of divinity that could barely be used to perform the secret art of riding a chariot burned fiercely, and the true knowledge of the "Gate of Summoning the Moon" was revealed!

Fanning made no attempt to “analyze” the details of those thousands of rules.

There was no so-called "optimal solution" that was sought at all.

Instead, it manipulated the invisible force of conceptual connection and merged everything that came its way!

"A rule prohibiting candlelight divination? Sure!"

"Sacrifice my personal memories and emotions? Fine!"

"Want a 'star map'? Sure, sure!"

"Let's talk about the 'Secrets of the End'? Anything is fine with me!!"

"—All conditions are met simultaneously!" Fan Ning spread his arms wide and laughed heartily. Using himself as an unshakable gravitational axis, he hurled the remaining divinity like countless invisible giant cables, forcibly pulling, dragging, and compressing thousands upon thousands of concepts and thousands upon thousands of tower shadows. "Come, come, let me help you weld all these damn rules together! Let's see if this carefully crafted matrix of discipline can withstand the weight of the logic of these things themselves!"

In the penultimate section of the final movement, the melody, which should have been heading towards the C major tonic chord, was interrupted by an augmented triad formed above the tonic.

A terrifying, invisible gravitational force erupted from Fanning's center, and the millions of towering buildings emitted a teeth-grinding, distorting sound that seemed to be the wailing of space itself!
Boom! Boom! Boom!!!

The explosive sound bursts forth in the last measure of the final movement.

Those rules, forcibly intertwined, clashed and annihilated each other, sparking logical collisions and annihilating black holes! Countless tower shadows became blurred and distorted in the violent tremors, like reflections thrown into a vortex!

Only one remains.

The world suddenly became quiet.

Fan Ning, whose face was ashen, squinted and looked up.

Aside from the sky, which is not the shimmering canopy of the past, but a large, collapsing, swirling junkyard of colors; and the tower's texture and its grotesquely twisted, hanging veins, aside from these two points, it is actually somewhat like the Shining Tower.

Is the source of the spread in the original anomalous zone, the "X-coordinate" or the "ring ruins," inherently mapped to the Radiant Tower beneath the surface of the world?
Fan Ning suddenly had this thought.

The tower is surrounded by a bottomless ravine, into which all the moss and lichen melted by the sunlight flowed and drained.

Only a thin, fragmented rock line, barely wide enough for one person to pass, connected to him like a deformed blood vessel stent. Panting, ragged, covered in wounds, his brains nearly dissolved along with his body, Fan Ning stepped across a massive, still-writhing, pus-filled edge.

In any case, he was indeed at his limit and could no longer withstand the intense sunlight of the "noon moon" during its extremely short daylight hours.

"Keng"

Dozens to twenty sharp, cold metallic whistling sounds rang out in succession.

Sure enough, it was "Raging Silver".

Fanning recognized the largest irregular shape among them, which he had seen before over the "Central Control Area".

The reason why the space near the tower was isolated from the intensity of the "Noon Moon's" light was indeed due to the "Director's" assistance and protection.

The "large controlled zones" that once existed in the Honkai world have certainly all dissolved by now, but the "Raging Silver Flakes" that once showed traces of control are now gathering and converging below the tower, hanging on both sides of the narrow passage—and above the deep valley—arranged in this order.

Fanning, carrying his guitar, looked back and saw that the world he once knew had been completely swallowed up by a crazy, liquid scene, turning into a huge, endless mass of colorful mud, with the deep valleys being filled in ever higher.

Oh, a guitar.

Fanning's hand hovered above the deep valley, then he let go.

With its strings broken and curled, and its body stained with oil, the "Illyrian" fell silently into the deep valley.

However, the star map inside Fanning's "Night Watcher's Lamp" was brilliant, the collection work was almost complete, and most of the core "starlight" was preserved.

The "Raging Silver Plates" on both sides continued to flash with an ominous light, and the thin rock lines underfoot groaned under their weight.

Fan Ning slowed his pace, walking steadily, his gaze fixed on the increasingly close-up blood vessels and organs hanging down from the collapsing sky above.

Changes occur again.

A figure moved about in the shadow of the tower gate.

One, two, three. More "Fannings" emerged from the doorway.

They walked along that thin line, met Fanning face to face, and then passed each other by.

Their direction was "returning home".

These "Fannings" varied in their clothing and demeanor. Some were imposing, holding batons and wearing elegant tailcoats; some had flushed faces and eyes that showed the weariness of having achieved great satisfaction of desire; some were ragged and covered in wounds; and some even had missing limbs, exuding a strong sense of decadence and death.

Their faces were exactly the same as Fanning's.

It's definitely not a disguise.

Fan Ning sensed the "Secret of the Endless" from the aura of "Fan Ning"!
Furthermore, even the unique "Purema" that had just crossed the "Gate of Midnight" in the Void Realm, possessing the power to perceive silence, lingering, and rest, was exactly the same!
“No need to go up.” A “Fanning” with a calm face but lifeless eyes spoke, his voice as flat as if he were stating the weather. “I am you from the future, here to inform you that we have succeeded. The new world has been achieved, but the price is that you must return to the beginning of the cycle and start all over again.”

After he finished speaking, he continued forward, his figure stepping into the blinding, writhing curtain of pus.

“It’s a failure.” Another “Fanning,” crippled and with only numbness in his eyes, brushed past him, his voice like a broken bellows, “Going up there would only be experiencing the joys and sorrows of ‘noon’ again, plus playing the Symphony No. 6 in A minor again. It’s meaningless. Give up, don’t do their work for them.”

"It's empty inside, there's nothing there."

"They are waiting for you, to make you one of us too."

"I might as well go again. I've already been three times. Although it's not very meaningful, I might go back for that dreamlike summer beach experience."

"Put down the 'night watchman's lamp,' you've run the race you needed to run, you should relax a little."

All of these things, whether they are temptations, blows, statements of seemingly irrefutable "facts," or simply heartfelt expressions, may be attempts to entice people.

They are all "Fanning," bearing the imprint of reality, telling countless possible "futures," good or bad or meaningless.

Fanning stopped in her tracks.

He stood in the writhing shadow of the collapsing behemoth before him, watching these versions of himself return from the "future" to tell him the story.

These figures appear so real in the distorted light, and the emotions they convey are so consistent with their own nature.

Fanning's gaze slowly swept over their faces, which were calm, painful, or numb.

Then, my gaze fell on the hands of the lanterns that they were all carrying.

Those "night watchman's lamps" are either extinguished or shining with a false light that once belonged to the true knowledge of the "secret of illumination."

A strange smile appeared on Fanning's lips.

Cold, mocking, resolute, or resigned.

Maybe it's true, or maybe it's one or more possibilities.

so what?

Fan Ning didn't speak, didn't question, and didn't even glance at those "selves" again.

He carried the lantern, which contained a star map of the long river of human art, and took the last few steps, brushing past those figures.

From above, everything looks like ants on a large, haphazardly painted mosaic.

Countless filthy dust particles and fragments of flesh floated weightlessly in the blinding light.

At the base of the twisted, drooping veins, a door resembling both brick and flesh slowly opened a crack, swallowing Fan Ning's figure inside.

Destination: the tower.

(End of Volume 7)