Neon is the child of the city. She knows the bland scent of the colorful city and knows the taste of the most flavorful foods.

  Acryl was right, she didn’t have to come with him. But there is another thing Neon wanted to do.

  To finish her mother’s travel journal.

  Neon believed that she was never bound to Songhua City, even if the city was everything she loved besides her family. She had seen the Grand Dome of Euth that stretches to the sky, where she met Acryl, and she had seen the mountains of Siyue, the plain of Euth, but she wanted to see more, to walk beyond what her mother walked. As she was sunk in the memory, Neon was awakened by hunger and somebody knocking on the room’s door.

  “Around seven in the morning…is it the aircraft’s crew? Oh, are we crossing the Prolonged Mist?” Neon said to herself.

  Acryl was still sleeping, reminding Neon of a curled-up puppy.

  Bearing the pain in her back and her slightly dizzy head, she crawled out of the warm blanket that she had stayed in for hours and opened the door. It was the man Acryl had bumped into yesterday. His purple eyes looked lifeless, like a mossy and dusty rock. And Neon is quite sure that mundane Euthian folk’s irises are oval, not keyhole-shaped. For some reason, Neon felt like she had seen this man somewhere, as if he were someone she had walked past in her life.

  “Mornin’, just come to chat…for the Existences’ sake, I’m bored as hell.”

  “Oh, well…have you brought something to kill time with? Like a book or…somethin’ to fidget with.” Neon said, trying to end the conversation as quickly as possible and return to bed as quickly as possible.

  “No…I wasn’t expecting this trip at all,” the man said, looking more tired after he ended his sentence.

  “Wasn’t?” Hearing the man’s words, Neon’s curiosity grew a bit.

  “Yeah, some urgent trouble in Euth.”

  Neon and he talked quietly for a while. The man did not say his name, but talking to him felt like listening to a storyteller on the streets.

  …

  Suiming saw that Neon wanted to go back to sleep and rest. He was bored, indeed, and there was nothing he could do outside, staring at the Prolonged Mist that he was barely interested in. In the end, he told Neon some stories from earlier in his life, as early as around he was charged with the crimes and the Letter-Writer pardoned him, and in return, Neon gave him an empty notebook. When he received it, Suiming suddenly remembered something. Something important. He apologized for waking Neon up and quickly returned.

  Suiming remembered a friend of his who also had a notebook. And that friend was one of the reasons for his trip.

  He went back to his compartment, and the other passenger in there was already gone somewhere. Reached into a small bag that was an arcane item near his pillow and pulled out an envelope through the pile of other things. As he took the envelope, Suiming put some spare change in his waistcoat’s pocket.

  And within his pocket was his monocle.

  To his surprise, it was awfully simple- it could freeze time, unlike most arcane items that require either side effects or some conditions, it needed both.

  It must have time within it, and it must come from something, but Suiming hadn’t figured out what it had to be; at least he tried to scrape time off his arm, but nothing had happened. The side effect of it, however, was more devastating- he cannot use his Realm-art after the time ceases its movements.

  The night sky-colored cross of the dilemma was stamped on the envelope. Suiming doesn’t even need to read the content to know what kind of mess he needs to deal with…at least the Letter-Writer pays more than his previous job.

  Suiming opened the envelope. Even if it was rather thin from the outside, the content in it was enough for him to put them on a board and connect the papers with red threads.

  But Suiming didn’t bother to look at the pictures, he went straight to read the letter.

  To: Suiming.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  When was the last time I wrote to you? Can’t remember.

  I’ll cut to the chase, the survival rate of rural tide exploration this year has been the highest in the last ten years, in fact so high that it is over 100% in one case, four people go into ruin, five come out and before you ask if they recruited another member during exploration or had a child in the ruins-no. The members of those teams think that the ‘new member’ was always with them, with detailed memory and such. I have tried searching for the source myself, although the piles of papers and documents are stopping me. I wish the council would do their paperwork instead of throwing it to the Letter-Writer.

  Need you to come back NOW.

  Regards

  Letter-Writer, Seren the Color Out-space

  PS.

  How’s it going with Nameless? Did you find her? Messengers have no news about her, sorry.

  PSS. Don’t forget to bring me some snacks!!!!!

  Suiming signed. He didn’t know how to react, anger? Confusion? It wasn’t the first time Seren gave him a hard task, and Suiming was sure that it would not be the last one.

  After reading it, he did consider the possibilities, but out of all the bizarre or logical hypotheses, one stood out the most:

  Could it be her? Creating living things out of nowhere, bending reality…no, she wouldn’t do that, but it could be a clue. But most likely some sort of abnormality.

  Thinking about it, Suiming folded everything back into the envelope and put it between the pages of the notebook Neon gave him.

  The envelope of Lily’s brotherhood slipped out of his waistcoat’s inner pocket, he picked it up. Suiming opened it to make sure Lily informed them of anything new.

  Sentences in cursive twisted themselves, reshaping, akin to scorched metal bending as soon as Suiming laid his eyes upon them.

  Forget-me-not.

  Did I forget you?

  Just kidding, do you happen to be going to Euth? If you find Nameless, be sure to give me a call in any way. My shadow is always beside you.

  A journey by the wind, is that how the Siyuenese say it?

  PS. You know me, I am not a god out of a machine, but in situations beyond any flowers(except Rosemary, of course), call out my name and I shall turn the tide.

  Fosfor Luce Oakside Lily

  He looked outside. Suiming never stopped moving forward in his journey.

  From one edge of the land to another, then back and forth. But lately…he felt like he was finding something that he didn’t even know was lost. There was something missing in him. Not accompanied, although he would love that, not passion, which he had never complained to be too little, but something deeper, something so profound that he couldn’t even remember it, only letting it slip through his fingers that reached for a destination. Suiming had gotten used to such feelings, dread from not knowing where he came from and if he was truly immortal. Both the beginning and the end were covered in mist.

  He forgot many things. Things from his past, the tragedy after the First Enlightenment, memories right before the Dome being built, and memories of a world that has already been reborn, he only remembers vague things of that time, the disciples, the sleepless nights. Suiming felt like a whiteboard, whatever he wrote or drew, profanity or poetry, doodles or boring chunks of text, all will be wiped off, only traces of it remaining.

  Thinking about the things he would usually philosophize about at midnight, Suiming had already walked to the aircraft’s deck, he didn’t even realize that he had walked out of his compartment before the sunlight beamed into his eyes through the monocle. Although it was called an aircraft, it was essentially a flying ship powered by factory-manufactured arcane items; after all, no company can afford those rare arcane items from remnant tides. Thanks to this kind of technology recovered from the remnants tide two centuries ago by the Letter-Writer Pegasi, the deck has a triangular field that can let the passengers enjoy the view while not having a strong wind blow against their heads.t

  The Prolonged Mist stretches in all directions. Under it, sometimes a light or shadows resembling nothing from this world appear and disappear. Suiming noticed the mist ‘growing’ at a visible speed. Purple-ish haze stretched up to the handrail like the unfortunate explorers’ hands reaching for Suiming’s leg. Such a thing has never happened before, to Suiming’s knowledge. He didn’t back down, instead, he stomped closer, head over the handrail.

  “Tsk…troublesome. A stub in the toe,” Suiming said as he looked down at the shadow beneath.

  In his mind he compares his height to the abnormality lurking, if that thing stands next to him, he would look like an ant.

  He can’t tell how many of them there are. The mist covers up the thing right beneath it like a curtain. But Suiming can sense it. The scent of an unnamed threat lingers in his mind.

  He had encountered many abnormalities while living in Siyue. Most of them have a similar form to Suiming, and most of them are friendly, but that thing down there, he can tell that it was no different than the creations of Existences or the abnormalities that wander the wild and between the shadow of cities. He had seen them, the powerful ones. They were more like catastrophes than life; after all, they don’t resemble anything to life as anyone would see. Suiming would avoid putting a fight against it if he could.

  So he decided to do what he is best at, observing. By his experience, an aircraft like this would have a team of casters or one powerful caster to take care of such situations. As he confirmed his thought, he went away from the handrails.