The Creatures That We Are
Chapter 1269: Realm of Detachment

Chapter 1269: Realm of Detachment

“Welcome to the Realm of Detachment. I’ll wait for you at the door to the next room.”

Cerulean Dog’s voice grew distant. Gao Yang opened his eyes to a blankness.

After entering the tree hole, it didn’t feel like he had been transported through time or space. It was as if he had merely lost concentration for a moment, and the next thing he knew, he was already in a different place.

“Holy shit!” Zhang Wei’s startled shout was again the first voice to break the silence.

Visually speaking, the Realm of Detachment was even more astounding than the Black and White Corridor. From a human perspective, it looked like a world with a grey sky and nothing else—the grey was barely visible, like a single drop of ink that spread across a vast rice paper until the pigment was just short of fading. While it seemed clear and clean, it also instilled the loneliness of a wandering soul without a tether.

And the sky was all there was to the world. There was no land. Everyone hovered in the air—the space contained everything that existed in the human world as well as all human constructs, but there was no human here.

Gao Yang and his companions were the only human presence, and they were visitors.

Now, they stood on the battlement of a medieval castle. It wasn’t isolated, but connected to large constructs above and below. It looked as if God were playing Tetris. Being a terrible player, the blocks stacked higher and deeper infinitely.

A thunderous cry of sorrow rang. They turned to the source and found an ancient-looking whale floating not far below them. Its massive, soft body seemed like a grey-blue island. Its tail rose and sank in a slow, undulating motion. It was clearly trying to swim, but couldn’t.

It howled because its tail was slowly disintegrating. Its flesh and bones scattered into particles and instantly dissipated in the grey sky.

Soon, the disintegration spread to the whale’s stomach, and schools of fish and other marine animals escaped like aimless flies. They, too, dissolved into fine particles, not fast enough to avoid the same fate.

At that moment, they realized why the grey sky unnerved them so. It was infinitely vast and infinitely cruel. All would be disintegrated and diluted, becoming a part of the grey.

“No...no...” Raven Shark sobbed, mourning the whale he had known for less than a minute. The others felt a sympathetic sorrow.

Then rumble. The betterment they were standing on shook violently, toppling to one side.

They tried to stand firm. The mote and the bottom of the architecture were quickly dissolving from the same level as the whale. They realized that the invisible force was rising like water, and all that hovered in the air would be disintegrated without discrimination once submerged.

Or it could be interpreted as the world sinking continuously into its final destination: an intangible dimension shredding machine none could escape from.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Zhang Wei shouted at Nainai, “What are you waiting for?! Fly!”

“Mortal, watch your words when addressing this Empress!” Nainai activated Gale.

“Don’t,” Gao Yang stopped her. “We’ll slowly go up. We have time.”

Vermilion Bird agreed. “Yes, don’t panic. Let’s walk and observe to find the question and the answer.”

They moved away from the crumbling part of the betterment and took an external spiral staircase up a tower. The tip of the tower connected to a modern high-rise, which connected to a hospital, and the tallest building of the hospital was linked to a train station.

They ascended continuously through the haphazard structures unceremoniously smushed together. Soon, they had put enough distance between themselves and the disintegrating force for some reprieve.

They noticed during the walk that while the inanimate objects hovering in the air were suspended in place, the living creatures “swam” up instinctively. Unfortunately, they were too slow to avoid an eventual death.

They continued up. They no longer felt the threat of the dimension-shredding force, and the environment around them no longer fascinated them. They felt their patience tested.

Wang Zikai fared the worst; he didn’t have much patience to start with.

He grabbed a rearview mirror and an antique comb, fixing his hair and appreciating his handsome face, but it didn’t take long for his own handsomeness to get boring, too.

“Gregor, have you not figured out the question yet?”

“Hey, I’m just a mouthpiece and nothing else. You’ll have to turn to your bestie there.” Gregor remembered Wang Zikai’s insult.

“Dogshit!” Zhang Wei held a megaphone he had grabbed randomly and declared at the sky, “The question is dogshit, and the answer is inedible!”

Liao Liao played with a yo-yo while advancing. “Give up. You can’t just say something random and expect it to work.”

Zhang Wei finally gave up after making hundreds of random guesses. He threw away the megaphone. “Mr. G, it’s your turn to take the stage.”

“Ha, I’m Mr. G when you need something, and Mouthpiece G when you don’t.” Gregor could hold a grudge.

“I’m sorry, Mr. G! I apologize! You are the top warrior and scholar. Brother Yang and Brother Kai all came after. Had Mr. G not been born in the world, human history would be a persistent night!”

Zhang Wei silently apologized to Gao Yang and Wang Zikai in his head.

“Alright, alright. You’re going way overboard.” Gregor knew it was all meaningless flattery, but it still felt good. He lit a cigarette and said, “I’ll speak whatever comes to my mind.”