There can't be a Harvest Moon in the RimWorld.

The driver ignored him and drove onto the suburban road. The tall buildings on both sides gradually disappeared, revealing a peaceful and idyllic rural scene. The exquisite houses and neatly trimmed fences all demonstrated the prosperity of the area.

Cousins ​​couldn't help but exclaim, "This place is so beautiful... I really wish I could move to the suburbs someday..."

Mr. Siennis glanced at him and said abruptly, "Coriano, the president of the Agricultural Association."

"What?" Cousins ​​didn't react for a moment.

Mr. Siennis said, “I mean, that house you were looking at just now belongs to Coriano, the chairman of the Agricultural Association. Oh, and in that order, it’s the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the senator from the West, the legal advisor to the Speaker of the Assembly, the director of the Youth Administration, a member of the Naval Committee…”

"This...is so prestigious? Then why do they all live here in clusters?"

"These people who live here are the culprits who wield absolute power in the city and make it a mess, then dump the mess on you young people, and transform themselves into idyllic characters in the countryside. Every time we meet, they boast that they never covet power, but are burdened with heavy responsibilities... Strange, I really didn't realize you had such ambitions before?"

Cousins, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, quickly explained, "That's not it, Mr. Siennis! I didn't know before... I really didn't know, that's why I said that!"

Siennis patted him on the shoulder and comforted him, “Don’t be nervous. I didn’t say there was anything wrong with what you were thinking. Even if you really think that way, it’s still better than those hypocrites represented by the Speaker of the Council, who wear masks every day. As long as they hide behind their masks, they can pretend to be righteous and hide their thoughts in their hearts, and say all sorts of things against their conscience.”

Seeing Mr. Siannis's angry expression, Cousins ​​asked in a low voice, "I understand. You can't stand these people, so that's why you're going against the council today?"

Siennis finally nodded: "You're right. As I said before, my personal actions don't represent the family. If I have to deliberately cater to or oppose based on my stance, why can't I express my likes and dislikes along the way? In an era where everything needs to be fake to survive, at least I can ensure that my own emotions don't have to be faked—that's better than those old foxes, and that's enough."

Cousins ​​nodded as if he understood, then asked, drawing a parallel, "So, your opposition to the Copport family is also because you're dissatisfied with their hypocrisy, right?"

Mr. Siennis was silent for a moment, then said, "No, I just simply don't like those fat guys."

Cousins: …………

…………

"Cousins, wait at the door. Stop anyone who tries to come in."

"Yes, Mr. Siennis."

The ancient exterior walls and enigmatic decorations shrouded the building in an eerie atmosphere as dusk fell. Cousins ​​turned around and was met with the bizarre grin of the gargoyle perched on the roof, and a chill ran down his spine.

Facing the setting sun, Siennis, wallet in hand, strode quickly through the black basalt pillars, pushed open the sandalwood door adorned with onyx, and entered a detached building.

From the outside, this circular building might look like a small library, because the books piled up on the floor exceed the size of a normal household book collection. No one would choose to decorate every empty space with books.

However, a closer look will overturn this conclusion. Even the most ardent bibliophile would not inexplicably want to pile up nearly ten years' worth of "junk" in their collection.

These discarded items included outdated television guides from the Horn Publishing House, rural records of miracles forbidden by the Vatican, the Dawn Publishing House's economic newspaper, leaflets printed on the street, beautifully printed art books on coated paper from auction houses, and even numerous tabloids produced by private printing houses. These inexplicably random things were all within the scope of this small library's collection, piled up layer upon layer, seemingly without a proper place to rest…

“Crawl, I’ve secured a lot of funding for you. Can’t you spare even a single pound to hire the worst nanny out in the countryside to clean up this house?”

As Mr. Siennis complained, a man with curly hair, dark eyes and an oriental appearance emerged from the corner of the room—his sudden appearance was as if he had suddenly crawled out of the shadows in the corner of the wall.

"The value of knowledge lies in the accumulation of information... Generations of humankind have observed the movements of celestial bodies, summarizing information that transcends the limitations of our short lifespans and allowing us to grasp the laws governing this planet beneath our feet. And what lies before you is an equally valuable wealth of human information, only its form is not yet accepted by others—except for me."

The dark figure slowly spoke, and finally a sliver of incandescent light shone from its body.

"My dear friend... how did today's hearing go?"

His voice was a little weak, and his expression was not very natural. He seemed to be trying his best to be friendly, but he couldn't move the stiff muscles on his face.

To outsiders, the friendship between the two is hard to understand. But if someone could notice that Siannis's originally frail body appears quite robust next to Professor Craven, and that his gloomy expression seems almost sunny in comparison, then perhaps they could understand a bit of this "mutual appreciation."

"Things are going well so far. Your research progress will definitely not be affected in the short term."

Mr. Siennis took off his hat, sat down in an armchair, and frowned. "But I saw the Miskatonic University emblem on the clothes of several young people. That's not a good sign..."

"I knew it... I knew it..."

Professor Craven, his back hunched with tension, said, “First they used ‘symbolic deciphering’ to humiliate my predictive science, and now they’re pushing their students to attack my research… My dear friend, do you remember how Professor Apahan treated us back then?”

Siennis, his face dark, stared at the light streaming through the only window of the house. "Crawl, you don't need to worry about that. External attacks and slander won't do any harm. As long as our role is irreplaceable, these cunning foxes will be waiting cautiously for your results..."

But he changed the subject, "I'm just worried that the University of Michigan's involvement might lead to the deduction of your unique predictive methods, and that you might use the University of Michigan's political resources to replace us. That's the real threat..."

A glint flashed in Professor Craven's dark eyes, and he said decisively, "Absolutely impossible! My Bayesian method is not something those short-sighted people can replicate! They don't even know whether the door to truth is round or square, how could they possibly grasp the brilliance of truth?!"

Siennis twitched the corner of his mouth but didn't say anything more.

Professor Craven gradually calmed down before getting down to business, "My dear friend...did you bring the information I requested?"

"Of course. While I was stalling for time by attending the hearing, my assistant had already scoured the archives and found the information you needed."

Mr. Siennis opened his wallet. "Here are the weather forecast for the Eastern Metropolitan Area from the third Tuesday of August last year, the winning numbers for the 212th draw of the horse racing lottery, the publication approval form for the best-selling book 'The Secret to Success,' and the yearbook of immigration data for Ruiwen Port..."

Watching Professor Craven take the data as if it were a treasure, Siennis asked, "Are you sure you can deduce the location of the fourth doomsday hydrogen bomb with this garbage data? The Federation Commander is now your most loyal supporter, just waiting for you to continue to create miracles."

Professor Craven pulled out a sheet of white paper, drew a coordinate axis at a 120-degree obtuse angle on it, and began to perform calculations with scribbled strokes, answering incoherently as he did so.

"Miracle? Omniscience brings omnipotence, they wouldn't understand... Those guys at the University of Michigan at most take turns using Gaussian Bayes, multinomial Bayes, Bernoulli Bayes, trying to find clues in my data... But the answer should never be found in the answer itself, but rather written on the back of everything... This phenomenon is neither microscopic nor macroscopic, it has already permeated every gap in the ether of the universe..."

“My dear friend, if there were truly knowledgeable people standing before us, they might be able to guess some of these cosmic matters, but most of them choose to ignore them… When wise men try to explain these laws, the gods laugh at them; when a dark-skinned man says that all time and space are relative, everyone laughs at him…”

"But when that dark-skinned man wrote the final answer on the wall, the self-proclaimed disciple of truth fled in terror, cursing wildly... I tried to do more than him, not just to state the answer... I did put in the effort and achieved some success... Science or witchcraft, if I succeed, no, if I succeed one day, I will find the fleeing truth from the cracks in a formula, the gaps in a spell, and hang it again on the terrifying spire of Aldebaran..."

Siennis had no interest in listening to his old friend's rambling nonsense; there were more family matters weighing on his mind.

The costs of maintaining his seat in Congress, the medium- to long-term planning of the family business, several hidden political donations, and dealing with the aggressive attacks from the younger generation of the Copport family have all severely drained his energy.

He sat in his chair, his eyes slightly closed, waiting for the calculation results to be captured precisely by Professor Craven, just as they had been countless times before, and delivered to him as a valuable achievement.

But Professor Craven's rambling words seemed to possess the ability to visualize and give form to some unsettling qualities in the air. It felt like accidentally flipping through a dry and bizarre chronicle while reading literature; although some parts were extremely long and verbose, filled with statistical data and tedious genealogical knowledge, an lingering sense of terror and supernatural malice still left a continuous thread in the descriptions.

Sinnis, shrouded in darkness, suddenly felt a pang of fear. He suddenly remembered the demonic powers mentioned in demonology, which allowed demons to make the intangible visible.

Half-asleep, a twitch in his left hand accidentally knocked over a stack of old newspapers. The pungent, long-accumulated smell of dust rose up, making him feel as if he were beside a rotting corpse, watching white mold gradually spread and devour its original form. It was also like observing a place teeming with morbidity through a spiderweb-covered pane of glass; every glimpse of darkness was worth pondering and savoring, before a sudden flash of insight brought a chilling shock.

In his muddled ears, he heard Professor Craven seemingly cursing in a language he had never heard before that ignorant mortals imprisoned the truth, that dull-witted fools dismembered the gods, and that they built twisted temples on the ruins of the great, eternally chanting the atrocities and folly of the past.

Then, he felt himself transform into a blue-yellow wisp of smoke, joining a grand parade. The people around him had identical ugly faces, their greasy, melting and changing features accompanied by maniacal laughter, calling for the appearance of terrifying constellations in the sky with melodies that were sometimes strange and sometimes familiar.

He seemed to step into the river of time, frantically fleeing from unknown poisons. But no one knew what those poisons, older than memory itself, were, because as those terrifying poisons danced, the social cancers also safely lurked and spread to the secret places hidden in the corrupt ruins.

Tangible and intangible, ragged and fuzzy, dazzling and obscure—all sorts of blasphemous deities danced before him, radiating dazzling high-energy particle beams that drew the solar prominences past him. As he passed through a lair darker than darkness itself, more ancient than antiquity, he finally glimpsed the hidden ultimate gate in a frenzy of screams; a bubble-like radiance was about to burst forth before his eyes…

"My dear friend, how come you're asleep?"

When Mr. Siennis opened his eyes, his head throbbing, Professor Craven was staring at him with his distinctly Eastern dark eyes, his expression a mixture of persistent caution and curiosity, representing the contradictory qualities unique to seekers of truth.

"...It's almost dark. I'm probably too tired. I'll definitely go to a hot spring resort to rest this weekend..."

Mr. Siennis glanced at the rising constellations outside the window, numbly taking the messy draft paper—on which a precise latitude and longitude coordinate had been repeatedly sketched and written down.

"Go ahead, what the military is looking for is here. By the way, there was a commotion at the entrance earlier, I wonder what happened..."

The terrifying dream he had just had left him restless, and he felt even less fond of the oppressive library. So Siennis put the draft into his wallet, exchanged a few insincere pleasantries, and hurriedly left.

But three minutes later, under the ambiguous gaze of the Dripping Beast, he pushed the door open and entered once again.

"Damn it... these guys kidnapped Cousins... that old bastard, the Speaker of the Council..."

Professor Craven remained standing in the shadows of the books, expressionless as his old friend appeared in anger. He asked in a deep voice, "My dear friend, what happened?"

Mr. Siennis stared at him for a few seconds with a sinister look, then said in a low voice, "The driver told me that my assistant was arrested by a team of undercover detectives on charges of sympathizing with rebels. This must be that old bastard, the Speaker of the Council, retaliating against my performance at the hearing..."

The situation was clear: someone was trying to embolden him, and had picked up a knife to strike at the close associates of the Seanness family. Cousins ​​wasn't particularly illustrious, but his significance far exceeded his own, as Seanness had mentioned earlier.

If his close associates are purged, then all the family's followers will be filled with fear, and those "partners" on the side of justice will be more likely to distance themselves from him...

Do you need help?

"No need. Your connections in the military are useless. I've already arranged for people to use some unconventional connections to teach the Speaker a lesson he won't forget. The Siennis family never depends on anyone, but that doesn't mean we can't use them... As long as your coordinates are accurate, we can handle any problems that arise..."

No, you didn't understand what I meant.

Craven's expression shifted slightly with the candlelight. "I mean, I can give you the location of your assistant's captivity; perhaps you can rescue him yourself..."

"……are you serious?"

This absurd act left Siennis utterly bewildered. Manually calculating the location of a hydrogen bomb might be considered a scientific analytical method, but casually calculating the location of missing persons was practically divination. For the first time, Mr. Siennis felt that perhaps there was some truth to the University of Michigan's disdainful label towards Craven's research.

"Write your birthdate, public school number, vehicle license plate number, zodiac sign that governs your destiny, and the last six digits of your office's phone number on this piece of paper, and I can tell you the answer."

Professor Craven handed him a piece of paper without any shame, not giving him a chance to question, "Your assistant is in a dangerous situation. If you were to save a corpse, it probably wouldn't help you regain your prestige, would it?"

"...I hope you can create another miracle."

Without hesitation, Mr. Siennis picked up a pen and quickly wrote on the paper before handing it back to him.

"As I said, omniscience leads to omnipotence... This calculation is merely a medium, using information to reconstruct the answers that already exist in the world... What's even more interesting is that the answers themselves are also information, and through repeated cycles, even deeper answers can be obtained..."

Professor Craven completed the calculation with ease, presented another result, and added...

"As the calculations deepened, what was obtained was no longer the answer to a specific problem, but something deeper and closer to the essence... I was obsessed with all dogmas and theories, as long as they seemed to offer a glimmer of hope to escape the narrow scientific explanations and the unchanging, tedious laws of nature. Finally, I saw the door to truth within them... Those concepts materialized, like an island, a gust of wind, a sea, and an immeasurable amount of complex information, flowing ceaselessly within them. Every second of information far exceeded the amount of information in this room by ten thousand times..."

Siennis put the scratch paper into his wallet and finally left the dark and cramped room before nightfall.

With the sound of a car starting, the circular house, resembling ruins, fell silent once more, except for a pair of eyes in the dark room, which seemed to connect him with the stars, infinite time and space, and eternity beyond everything.

“My dearest friend, go quickly… We will meet again before the truth…”

Chapter 619 Twilight Dream

A gentle evening breeze blew from the unknown space, surrounding me so fiercely that I couldn't resist it. My memories were carried into the endless void, beyond all thought and substance.

When I opened my eyes again, I was surrounded by countless chaotic galaxies. I felt like I was in a narrow, stuffy room, and even my breathing was out of rhythm.

But on the other side, farther than the eaves, deeper than the fog and rain outside the window, and even further out in the atmosphere, an invisible constellation of madness has risen from the northeast, radiating a cold, chilling light.

A jumble of sounds swirled in my mind, and I began to believe that in a direction unseen by the eye, some even more terrifying constellation must be commanding the stars arranged in a semicircle to spin and roar wildly in the infinite abyss of ether, crushing all the nebulae in their path, which is why it makes such strange sounds that seem like murmurs, noises, mockery, or calls.

I opened the book in front of me—a book that seemed to exist with such self-assurance, as if it had been there since the beginning of the universe—and read a sentence on the rough paper, recognizing a familiar manuscript title on the old cover.

"Beyond the gates of gray fog and the abyss, amidst the stars, a chilling current blows, leaving people nowhere to escape but to shiver in the dark and desolate place."

—Voynich's Historical Manuscripts, Volume XV, page 921.

I knew perfectly well that this sentence had never appeared in any sentence or paragraph of the manuscript, and that there had never been a fifteenth volume to this book. But as my thoughts wandered, more sentences appeared on the page, wantonly altering the originally imprinted text.

“I often wonder if most people would deliberately pause to recall the important meanings that occasionally appear in dreams, or to recall the obscure world to which they reside.”

"I've always believed that dreams are merely wondrous illusions created by experiences while awake, but now I must abandon this shallow view and begin to seriously consider the flaws in them..."

As language gradually faded, my running consciousness finally outpaced the speed displayed on the paper, and I clearly felt that a kind of restraint in my consciousness was suddenly broken!

The consciousness that truly belongs to "self" rises from the surface of the mind at this moment, like a pitiful person who is almost drowning, breathing air with fierce enthusiasm, satisfying the "lungs" that are almost drained by the heart and coughed up.

I realized that I had collapsed into the third layer of dream realm as described by the dream-entry technique, a third layer that was even more chaotic than the stable original white dream realm and the gorgeous colorful dream realm—the twilight dream realm.

What is twilight?

It is as if the blazing sun, symbolizing clear consciousness, is gradually losing its brilliance, hanging on the western mountain at the boundary between existence and nothingness, about to collapse and fall into the black abyss.