musicians of old

Chapter 955 Nobody in the House
"Is this okay?"

"That'll do."

In the study of the Villa San Pelto, Fanning, who had just returned from a "long trip," was already standing behind Roy's chair, watching her quickly trace intricate mirror symbols on a piece of parchment.

The paper was placed on the candle and ignited, causing the stone bricks on one wall of the study to ripple like water, revealing a downward, illusory staircase.

The air, warmed by the fireplace, suddenly turned cold, carrying the mixed scents of old paper, dust, and some distant antiques. The two walked down, the entrance behind them silently closing, shutting out the winter sunlight.

A faint whisper began to echo in my ears.

"Hey, Fan Ning, I don't seem to be very familiar with the landing point this time, be careful."

"It's okay, it's just some of the derivative effects of the reconstruction of 'noon'."

It remains a place of twists and turns, but just a few steps away you're walking on a palatial corridor covered with worn red carpets and lined with classical portraits. Around the next corner, your feet might be on damp earth, and overhead you'd be on a cave ceiling with vines hanging down and strange, glowing fungi. The murals have become primitive, rough rock paintings.

The sources of light were also chaotic, sometimes from wall lamps, sometimes from floating orbs of light, and sometimes from external daylight shining through cracks in the wall, the source of which was impossible to determine.

“The reconstruction of ‘noon’?” Roy felt the term was both strange and familiar. “Is it related to the remnants of the ‘calamity’ that were once connected to this place? It seems that after those seven artifact remnants were taken up to the tower, no one was able to bring them down. Were they destroyed in that conflict? Sigh, I wonder if Dad will ever come back, but I have a feeling that those who could come back have already come back.”

“Everything ‘exists within.’” Fanning shook his head. “Just like the shelled species in the Second History.”

“It exists within.” Roy murmured to himself, his steps carefully avoiding several obviously unstable air vortices with cracks and gaps floating in them.

Fanning pushed open a crooked wooden window embedded in the rock wall.

Looking inside, it resembles a huge space of library ruins, with collapsed bookshelves forming hills, countless books scattered about, some intact, some weathered like sand, and some moving slowly in mid-air without wind, turning their pages.

In the distance, the broken staircase leads to more doorways and branching paths in all directions, completely defying the geometric structures commonly understood by humankind.

Along the way, through observation and speculation, Fanning has actually confirmed a basic fact: the new world is indeed different from the old world because the continuously spreading abnormal zone has completely disappeared, but the new world is still different from the single-threaded 0th history because it is also a "noon" structure.

Now that "noon" has passed, the other curled-up branches are no longer observable.

Is this an unknown threat, or a neutral fact? Is there a connection between it and other ominous metaphors?
Fan Ning leaned out of the wooden window, holding onto it, and looked up.

Above was a deep gray void, and countless paths of light and concepts entered the human mind.

The main branches of the seven climbing paths, the forty-three doors, the mysterious glimmer of unknown depth, and the boundary at the very top that is enough to obliterate the cognition of ordinary creatures—everything is completely different from before. The previous situation of multiple festering and proliferations has now disappeared. Only some high nodes are still temporarily in an unstable state of shimmering.

But Fanning quickly shifted his focus to "structures outside the main structure".

Along the edges and crevices of those radiant branches, there are countless more paths and doorways, their colors dark and somber, like the internal structure of a forgotten, moldy old musical instrument. Looking around, there may be a hundred or two visible paths silently clinging to the main structure, forming a chilling jungle of shadows.

Why are there these abandoned doors in the Tower of Light? Why do some people who return from the Anomalous Zone believe that there are more than forty phases in the world? These questions once troubled Fanning, but he later learned them, and he expected that Roy, or Joan and Sheeran, would soon gradually understand as well.

It is simply that in the "noon" era, chaos and differences are superimposed too much, and the representations of various mystical knowledge systems are different, just as the conditions of these years are also different. Reflected beneath the surface of the world, there is "movement beyond movement" and "shining tower beyond shining tower".

The layers of time and space of "noon" are countless, of which abundance is few and withering is many, and the generations that have already perished are also countless. Perishing means natural abandonment.

Doors are the old wounds of the world, and the house bears witness to them. Perhaps in the future, Fanning herself will see them more clearly.

However, there were still some other uncertain signs that made Fan Ning's gaze linger on them for a long time. Some of the damaged details of the abandoned doors seemed too "new" to Fan Ning for some reason.

It has a brand-new, sharp tear, as if it was just a few days ago pried open from the outside by some huge external force.

Others showed signs of collapse, shrinkage, and drying up, as if they had been drained by something through a door or several barriers, leaving only a fragile empty shell.

"Has this happened before?" Fan Ning asked.

“There are some,” Roy’s voice rang in his ears. “The school has been observing them for several years now, and we think they might be some kind of ‘worms.’” She paused for a moment herself.

worm?

“It’s not impossible,” Fan Ning sighed. “These things love nothingness and collapse. It’s possible that there’s a densely packed ‘worm nest’ at the very top that hasn’t been connected yet.”

Roy paused, realizing how horrifying, chaotic, and mind-blowing the scene he had described was.

But she could detect a hint of "hope that things are just that simple" in Fanning's tone.

A candle appeared in Fanning's hand.

He walked along the path, glancing back at the library-like ruins several times, passing by "wooden windows" every few dozen steps or so. During this time, the two also passed through several strange halls made up of shattered stained glass and frozen fountains.

As Fanning passed each window, she lit a candle and placed it on the table.

Are you praying?

"Ah."

"Who is the witness?"

"Various".

Roy was stunned.

Fan Ning is now truly "skilled and daring". Regardless of whether it is known to be safe or obscure and evil, except for those that he knows no longer exist, as long as Fan Ning knows a little about the prayer, he will try to pray to the roof.

"The Tower Builder", "Winter Wind", "The Primal Feeder", "The Abyss of Slaughter", "Wolf's Words", "Observing Death", "The Flow of the Heart", "The Split Pupa".
Some received no response, while others invoked unseen forces.

Fan Ning summoned a bunch of random, invisible forces; if it were any other sentient being, they would have long since melted into a bloody monster.

But it was just an invisible force, like the natural law of splashing water when a stone is thrown. Apart from that, Fan Ning did not achieve the "communication" effect he wanted.

Fanning knew that there were cases where the latter kind of effect could be achieved, such as the "Hall Chief" Pogrerich after he ascended the throne. Even though he was contaminated by the strange "Secret of the End," he still spoke normally and was very imposing. There was also the "Fugue of No End," who was in a bad state before, and even the "Poet of Fragrance," who had been dead for more than forty years. They were still able to achieve some sporadic and biased exchanges.

Fan Ning wanted to test what other similar "communications" existed, and how many more there were. After his return, he possessed the strength and reliance to launch such a "carpet-bombing" appeal.

But standing here today, the answer I received is: nothing more.

The entire dwelling above the dome, apart from the partial responses to prayers that were in effect, felt to Fanning as if "no one was there."