Comet Dragon, breaking into the gravity field

In other places, this matter is unremarkable.

But it's different here.

A young shrine maiden whose face was untouched by time, a shrine where only one person lived but could cleanly provide the food offerings of a hundred households overnight - their disappearance was undoubtedly a heavy blow to the believers on the island.

At first, panicked people tried to find out the truth.

But as time went by, they faced the reality and stopped thinking about it. The shrine, which was once very popular, became deserted and became a story used by the older generation to deceive children and outsiders.

After recounting the unrecorded history, the woman's face looked a little tired.

Taking the warm tea offered by the maid beside her, she suddenly asked, "What did the person Ruihui saw before she fainted look like?"

"Eh, that..." racking her brains to recall her fleeting glimpse, Toyokawa Mizuho answered uncertainly, "It seems like, long purple hair?"

"is it?"

There was no fluctuation in her eyes, but her tense fingers were not as calm as the woman looked.

"Then we are here now because..."

Before she could finish her words, Mizuho Toyokawa seemed to realize something and looked down at her clenched and unclenched hands.

Thinking of the bitter medicine she had to drink and the doctors who visited her home from time to time, Mizuho Toyokawa fell silent.

——"Mizuho was born weaker than other children..."

——"Just like her mother used to be..."

——"A genetic disease? This is going to be difficult..."

"A body blessed by God will return to its original state after God leaves... That makes sense." The pale-skinned lady murmured to herself after taking a sip of tea.

Sitting on the bed, the girl turned her head with a feeling in her heart and looked at the closed door a few meters away.

On the other hand, outside the wooden door, Shoko Toyokawa, who was using the scales in the air to observe the situation in the room from multiple angles, was startled.

"If that's true, will it be the same as before..."

In her nervousness, she just missed a whisper from the woman.

Trying to calm the palpitations caused by the mistaken belief that she had been exposed, Shoko Toyokawa looked at the wooden door in front of her, thought for a moment, and made a decision.

Taking a deep breath, she adjusted her sunglasses one last time and then knocked on the closed door in front of her.

99. Light doesn't just travel the shortest path.

"Are the Toyokawa family a bit too welcoming to actually invite us to rest here tonight?"

After looking at the furnishings in the guest room, Ritsu Narose turned to look at Shoko Toyokawa who was standing blankly by the window.

　After coming back, she would occasionally look absent-minded.

Her sunglasses were dangling from her collar, and her long blue hair, once tied into a ponytail, had fallen loose. Through the window, she could see the forest not far from the villa.

Toyokawa Shoko's face was slightly dazed, as if she saw the phantom of the past left on this land.

"She...grandmother seemed to sense something." After a long time, she came to her senses and murmured.

"Recognized you?"

"That's not the case," Toyokawa Shoko shook her head, frowning slightly and giving a wry smile, "but she seemed to have connected us with the shrine on the mountain."

Then she told the inside story that she had heard outside the room.

After talking about the inside story of the Toyokawa family, Shoko Toyokawa sighed and turned to mention what happened after she took the initiative to knock on the door.

"They plan to go to the mountains tomorrow and have invited us to go with them."

Shoko Toyokawa still has confidence in her and Ritsu Narose's acting skills.

But the problem lies at the shrine.

That strange ancient dragon doesn't seem very reliable no matter how you look at him.

After obtaining information from both sides at the same time, Toyokawa Shoko has completely sorted out the story of the "Island Mountain God".

People often fear the unknown because the unknown often hides unexpected dangers.

As for Toyokawa Shoko, after learning the truth, she did not feel the slightest bit of respect for Gu Long, who had a dejected look on his face and had intended to disguise himself as a human but forgot that he would not age like humans.

That guy was a complete idiot who relied on his little skills to cheat people, and ended up making a huge mistake that was difficult to clean up...

If they went up the mountain together tomorrow, and that guy, with whom they were not very close and who couldn't read their expressions, came over to say hello to them, they would have no way to defend themselves.

Although she had concealed her appearance in front of her mother, she was not mentally prepared to deceive her.

Thinking of this, Shoko Toyokawa couldn't help but sigh.

When she looked up and saw Ritsu Narose lying on the bed and even stretching lazily, the melancholy girl's mood suddenly became complicated.

"Is Xiangzi too nervous?"

"It's impossible not to be nervous at a time like this, right?"

Sitting on the other side of the bed, Shoko Toyokawa tried not to think about how she would spend the night with Ritsu Naruse in a room with only one big bed, while forcing herself to focus on the highlight of the night.

"Go out to collect blood, come back to sleep - it's that simple." Turning over in bed, Naruse Ritsu's voice came muffled from where his face met the pillow, "Everything is going according to plan."

These words sounded like those of an old general on the stage, but everything went as smoothly as Ritsu Narose had expected.

When he dodged and blocked the sight continuously, avoiding the sight of everyone in the villa and successfully adding ingredients to the teacup without anyone noticing, the biggest obstacle of this plan had been overcome by him.

Late at night, estimating that the medicine should have taken effect, Ritsu Naruse and Shoko Toyokawa went to the room she had visited before.

There was no one else in the room. The two people in the room - Mizuho Toyokawa and her mother who was guarding her bedside - had both fallen into a deep sleep.

After Toyokawa Shoko personally straightened the figure leaning crookedly on the chair, Naruse Ritsu took out the needle and test tube that had been prepared long ago.

A subtle part was chosen, and as the needle pierced the skin, dark red blood began to flow slowly along the tube.

Judging from the appearance, this is normal blood.

"I suddenly thought of a question." Looking at the blood gradually filling the test tube, Ritsu Narose suddenly spoke.

"what is the problem?"

The room was pitch black. With the help of the moonlight coming in from the window, Shoko Toyokawa saw Ritsu Narose looking at her seriously.

"Will the properties of sleeping pills affect the components in the blood?" After blinking, Ritsu Narose's tone remained steady.

"You..." Shoko Toyokawa raised her hand, opened her mouth, and then let it hang by her side.

Seeing the full test tube next to her, she could only express her dissatisfaction with her eyes.

"But according to the controlled variable method, it shouldn't have much of an impact..."

After a few embarrassed excuses, Ritsu Narose quickly sealed the two tubes of blood he had collected, and quietly returned to the room that temporarily belonged to them with Shoko Toyokawa.

After going out to deliver the collected blood to Belmont, Ritsu Narose returned to the room through the window and saw Shoko Toyokawa staring at the dark brown wall in a daze.

He tiptoed to the ground, and when Naruse Ritsu stepped on the floor again, he broke the silence in the room: "Shoko, do you want to stay here for a while?"

"They plan to go up the mountain tomorrow, I..."

Her usual decisive demeanor had completely disappeared. When faced with matters related to her family, Toyokawa Shoko rarely showed the indecisiveness that was consistent with her age.

On the one hand, he was worried that his thoughts would cause trouble to Ritsuhei Narose, and on the other hand, he was reluctant to say goodbye to his mother whom he had not seen for a long time and his grandmother whom he had never met.

Seeing her dilemma, Naruse Ritsu asked, "Are you planning to change anything?"

"From what I understand, humans are generally quite enthusiastic about this kind of thing." He continued, his attitude was completely different from when he came to the past.

"I... once saw an experiment in a magazine." As if recalling something, Shoko Toyokawa looked up at the ceiling above her head.

"That experiment claims that light doesn't just travel along the shortest path, but rather that after trying all possible paths, only the shortest path remains and can be observed. At the same time, the phases of paths other than the shortest path cancel each other out, making these eliminated paths unobservable."

After a moment of silence, Toyokawa Shoko continued, "If you accept the theory that 'light cone is destiny,' then this experiment is almost equivalent to acknowledging the existence of parallel worlds."

"Parallel world?" Hearing the term commonly seen in human science fiction novels, Ritsu Narose repeated it subconsciously.

"Yes. If that experiment really goes as it says, the matter waves of all matter in the universe can interfere with each other in any way, the phases of different worlds will cancel each other out, and ultimately only one universe will remain for our consciousness to observe. More importantly, this nearly infinite possibility is still happening all the time."

After a moment's thought, Naruse Ritsu understood Toyokawa Shoko's deeper meaning: "Are you worried that what you're doing is in vain?"

The fear in her heart was revealed, and Shoko Toyokawa pursed her lips tightly, then slowly nodded.