Xyrin Empire
Chapter 494: The Truth of the World

Chapter 494: Chapter 494: The Truth of the World

"How do you feel?"

I reached out and pulled up the still-confused Sasaki, asking with a faint smile.

"Awful..."

The swordsman vigorously shook his head as if trying to shake out the buzzing noise inside, "If it’s just an introductory briefing for a new job, does it need to be this complicated?"

Looks like the transformation was quite successful.

"My head is a mess, all that jumbled stuff is piled up," Sasaki said, shaking his head after resting his eyes for a while, "I didn’t expect you guys to be such a big deal, ha, although changing bosses doesn’t really mean much to me, but are you planning to go to war with my former boss? It doesn’t seem quite like that."

"We’re here to help, but it seems those two don’t really appreciate it—hey, stop swaying, you’re making me dizzy."

Sasaki gave a wry smile, pointing to his head, "The problem is, in my eyes, it’s you guys who are swaying."

So you sway back and forth at the same frequency to stabilize your vision?

"I understand the feeling you get right after a transformation," Rider said with a sympathetic tone, looking at the nearly unstable Sasaki, "At first, because the technology wasn’t mature, my situation was even worse."

It was then that Sasaki noticed there was another "special Heroic Spirit" like himself standing in front of him, and he couldn’t help but become curious: "I seem to remember seeing you in those documents, uh, my head’s splitting... How long does this last? How did you endure it back then?"

Rider replied, "It’ll pass shortly, the pain eases after the worst of it, besides, this thing really helped me back then."

As she spoke, she casually pulled out that treasured handheld gaming console, a small gift from Bubbles that Medusa couldn’t get enough of. Now that she was actually willing to share it showed how much she valued this first comrade in hardship.

"Distract yourself with this for a bit, just don’t touch the red box on level four. Bubbles put a cheat-like monster in there, and you absolutely can’t beat it unless you have a hand speed of three thousand per second."

As Rider reluctantly handed over the gaming console to Sasaki, she warned him carefully, making him break out in a cold sweat and nearly knocking the rest of us over with shock.

Damn, woman, you’re too strong!

"Alien uncle! What the hell are you guys talking about?"

Tohsaka, who had been utterly mystified by the events until now, finally couldn’t suppress her confusion and burst out with questions. Sasaki, who had seemed like an enemy just a moment ago, now seemed like an ally? Two Heroic Spirits were even starting to discuss game strategies? More importantly, what did her sister just do?

This barrage of questions made Tohsaka’s head spin, and the most effective way to resolve these questions was, of course, to ask the alien uncle who seemed to have orchestrated it all.

"I’ll explain it to you later," I smiled and pushed Tohsaka, who was unwilling, back down, "Anyway, it’s to your advantage."

Tohsaka wanted to say something more, but Sandora suddenly interrupted her, "Ah Jun, it’s almost time."

Immediately, everyone fell silent.

"Can you really pin down the cause of the anomaly this time?" The mere one-minute wait now felt interminably long, and Emiya tried to find a topic to break the deadlock, but almost at the same moment his words fell, the Leaving World Garden activated.

It was just a small experiment, locking a weapon capable of attacking the entire universe onto an insignificant planet, which didn’t even qualify as a formal attack— at most it was a random release of energy during the adjustment process of the Law Weapon, yet the scene that unfolded in an instant was still startling.

The entire Yododani Temple disintegrated before our eyes.

To disintegrate - this term might be more fitting. In fact, the temple before us was floating entirely in the air; the variously-sized paving stones, the buildings, all as if they had lost gravity, floated, simultaneously randomly breaking into fragments both large and small, as if a nameless Yododani Temple made of jelly was cut into tiny pieces with an incredibly sharp knife before being scattered in a gravity-less void, the broken cluster of buildings drifting steadily in the sky a hundred meters above our heads, while the red moonlight poured down through the gaps of the scattered wreckage.

Wait, red moonlight?

I suddenly realized that I was still standing outside the gate of Yododani Temple, supposedly a place where mutation shouldn’t occur, so why did I see a Giant Moon in red!?

"Ah!" Just as the question surfaced, Tsuruya’s cry of surprise quickly diverted my attention. The girl, seemingly frightened by something, suddenly plunged into my arms, almost knocking the wind out of me.

"Brother... brother... behind you...!"

I turned around, puzzled, and at the same time a collective intake of breath reached my ears.

Fuyuki City... destroyed!!!

The entire city... no, there was no trace of a city left, only bits and pieces of wreckage floating in the air that faintly showed the remnants of human civilization, a desolate land, the scarlet traces of melted material meandered past the horizon like wriggling millipedes, magma everywhere, huge rifts, craters several kilometers in radius that were bottomless, not a shadow of the once Fuyuki City was left— all had disappeared into this hellscape that resembled a meteorite strike, and high above, massive chunks of stone or even Floating Islands hovered, slowly rotating with a rumble; comparing with the huge rifts and cavities on the ground, it was clear these floating pieces were torn violently from there, the enormous blood-red moon so close to the ground that it covered one-fifth of the sky in our view, its ominous red light tinting everything with the color of blood, giving me the illusion that those floating islands had broken free from the earth due to the gravity of the immense moon, and now, they were falling toward the moon...

"Wood, that’s no illusion."

A voice suddenly echoed across the sky, snapping everyone out of the shock from the dreadful scene before us; it was Lin Xue, who had directly intervened in this world through the Leaving World Garden.

"On the far side of the world, gravity has become unbalanced, the stability between celestial bodies has been destroyed by something, the celestial body you see is not the moon, but a larger red planet; the real moon is hidden behind this odd celestial body, already reduced to half its volume for unknown reasons, this red celestial body is of a very special nature, with its erratic speed and a position in outer space that doesn’t follow the normal physical laws, and its gravity is constantly fluctuating, because of the erratic gravity fluctuations, life on Earth’s surface has been hit by annihilation, even the ground has been torn into fragments, what you’re seeing now is the moment when the Red Moon’s gravity intensified, but soon, I can see, in just a few seconds—"

Lin Xue’s voice slowed down, she was waiting, waiting for something from her Prediction to happen.

"The Red Moon’s gravity is decreasing."

As Lin Xue’s voice faded, the giant floating islands, rocks, and architectural debris in the high sky began to fall all around us, as if another continent was collapsing above our heads. The phrase "the sky is falling and the earth is splitting" couldn’t even begin to describe the scene before us. Having experienced the battle of Kepulu, we naturally had some immunity to such sights, but Tohsaka and the others let out cries of alarm in unison; Ilya even burrowed into my arms with a cry, having just witnessed a mountain-sized floating island tumble before her eyes, terrifying the "little girl."

"The gravitational fluctuations of the Red Moon are irregular, but they essentially complete a cycle of intensification and diminishment within a very short time. Hence, it’s rare for objects on the ground to truly fall onto the moon due to gravitational chaos. They are often pulled to a very high position before crashing down hard. According to the analyses from the Leaving World Garden, the force between the Red Moon and the Earth is weirdly distributed to the extreme, so much so that even within a one-square-meter area, the gravity might be uneven. This causes those objects that have broken free from the ground to collide and bump into each other mid-air. Uh, there are many other chaotic phenomena. And it’s not just the Red Moon causing chaos in this world; for example, the Yododani Temple behind you is also a manifestation of the twisted world. Avalon can’t analyze things that haven’t happened yet. I still need time to organize the data," Lin Xue explained.

While Lin Xue was explaining, I was observing the floating islands and boulders that continued to plummet from the sky. Who knows how many times they’ve raised up and fallen, should have already turned into dust, but some unknown force was keeping them intact. Even during those grandiose "landings," not one floating island was seen to shatter upon hitting the ground. This must be one of the many chaotic phenomena Lin Xue mentioned.

The entire falling process took about thirty minutes, not overly long. And with layers of protection, our position on the mountaintop was never struck even once, but this doomsday-like "meteor rain" still left Tohsaka, Ilya, and a few other girls pallid with fear. Even Emiya looked to be in a state of utter shock. When everything finally calmed down, I casually asked into the air, "Lin Xue, what in the world is going on with this place?"

"The underside of the world, I’ve mentioned it before," Lin Xue’s voice still echoed in the sky, giving rise to an eerie association in my mind: as if we were inside a tiny transparent glass box, placed on a research stand, with Lin Xue being the observer outside the box. She could see everything but couldn’t interfere with what’s inside the box. Meanwhile, we could interact with our immediate surroundings, but all we saw was Chaos.

Shaking my head, I finally managed to push this bizarre idea to the back of my mind.

"The structure of this world is really interesting. Thanks to the Leaving World Garden; otherwise, we would have never discovered this huge secret. Of course, it was Taville who truly discovered it all. I just helped her observe some things that science couldn’t grasp."

"The Fate world is composed of two parts."

"The Outer World, prosperous and full of vitality, where everything is orderly—that’s the world you and I see. And here, this is its underside, the destroyed Inner World. Various signs indicate that this hell-like place once harbored life. It might even have had some sort of synchronous connection with the Outer World. We scanned the city ruins that remain here, which almost identically match the bustling metropolises of the Outer World. But the Red Moon destroyed everything. Seeing how it obliterated the entire Inner World was simply disastrous..."

I listened, stunned, to this tale that resembled a fanciful fiction. A world naturally divided into an outer and inner part? Does such a structure even exist?

"It does not!" When I posed this question to the expert, Little Thing immediately asserted confidently, "Although Dingdang is at the bottom of the class, it still knows the most basic world structures. It is impossible for an inner and outer world structure to arise naturally. Furthermore, using such a structure to lay out an entire world would result in very poor overall stability, completely incompatible with Divine Realm quality management system certification!"

Excuse me, Lord God, is your certification mark three C’s?

Through scans from the Leaving World Garden and observations by Lin Xue, the two parts of the Fate world, outer and inner, should be completely separate under normal conditions. If one needs an analogy, the Inner World is like humanity’s subconscious recognition of the world, a conceptual place. It’s in perfect synchrony with the real world, almost reflections of each other, but they would never intersect. But now, two events have occurred which even Taville couldn’t explain:

First was the emergence of the Red Moon. If the Inner World is the shadow of the Outer World, then there is no reason for such a celestial body, which shouldn’t exist, to appear and destroy everything. This huge celestial body, hovering between reality and fantasy, has an inconceivable structure that even the Empire’s scanning devices cannot penetrate to see what is inside. It’s truly incredible.

Second was the anomaly of Yododani Temple. Yododani Temple is one of the few human relics in the Inner World that the Red Moon hadn’t utterly destroyed—at least, when compared to those that had been reduced to rubble, Yododani Temple was a lucky survivor that still had debris left. For some unknown reason, it had become the place where the Inner World and the Outer World merged. At that moment, I finally understood why we saw the great Red Moon in the sky that day at the temple, why we saw the deathly still temple riddled with gigantic cracks, why only in the temple courtyard did we witness such bizarre scenes. Undoubtedly, it was the fusion of the reality we live in with this floating, fractured ruin hanging in the air before us.

"Excuse me, has anyone noticed me?"

An overlooked voice suddenly broke the silence. Sasaki, now relegated to a mere passerby, innocently raised his hand. "At least, could someone explain what on Earth you all are really here for today?"

Sasaki was probably the most tragic figure tonight. He was supposed to be the guardian of the Yododani Temple and the main character of tonight’s counter-invasion operation. Yet he was abruptly dragged onto this pirate ship for no apparent reason, and now he stood, completely in the dark as to what these people, whom he couldn’t tell if were friends or foes, were really doing here today.

"We’re just passing by," I turned my head and replied with a radiant smile. "A very assertive passing by."

"Don’t listen to this alien weirdo’s nonsense," Tohsaka glared at me before turning to Sasaki, "Seriously, where is the person who summoned you? Are you truly unaware of the anomalies occurring within the temple behind you?"

"I have no need to lie," confessed Sasaki, "There’s no point in hiding anything now. I was summoned improperly and cannot move beyond the temple gate and the stairs in front of it, so of course, I can’t set foot in the temple I’m supposed to guard, let alone know what is happening inside. The one who summoned me is an incredibly irresponsible master. She has hardly shown her face since hiding in the temple. God knows what she’s researching in there..."

"Oh? Your sword has been tampered with, hasn’t it?"

I didn’t doubt Sasaki’s honesty, considering that even his origin had been bound to the World Tree. However, what I remembered next was the Ghost Energy longsword he wielded, which had given Saber such a difficult fight. How could a Heroic Spirit’s weapon carry Ghost Energy?

"If you’re referring to this..." Sasaki lifted the bamboo pole in his hand, "It indeed underwent some changes, but those were powers it had from the moment I was summoned. Tch, it’s pretty handy, anyway."

So, does that mean we really need to find the summoner?

"Miss Xue, I know you’ve seen it, where is that summoner?"

Lin Xue’s giggling voice echoed across the sky: "Hehe, she’s hiding in this world’s ruins, but she should come out on her own, I imagine. After all, it’s been broadcasted in the sky for so long now, even a fool would know this world has been invaded. Well, since you’re listening—"

The rest of Lin Xue’s message was clearly intended for both us and Sasaki’s summoner.

"So, let me set up a meeting place for you. Do you see that patch of light? Let’s use it as the rally point. Caster, you’d better cooperate. From where I am, your and your master’s hiding place is quite obvious; I can even see a grey stain on that man’s left shoe."

Lin Xue pointed to a location not far from the base of the mountain. There she had drawn a Crayon Shin-chan with her beacon, which was more than conspicuous.

And as her voice reverberated in the sky, I perceived an energy fluctuation rapidly approaching from the east, evidently Lin Xue’s remarks had the intended effect.

So, they were hiding in the Inner World, no wonder all the probes we sent out earlier couldn’t find traces of Caster. How did she manage to gain access to this world?

Our entrance into the Inner World relied on the Law interference power of the Leaving World Garden, which caused the whole Earth to undergo a phase shift relative to us. Therefore, rather than saying we entered the Inner World, it would be more accurate to say the entire world had flipped over to expose its backside to us, and a mere Caster certainly couldn’t possess such power. Does this mean she had obtained a key?

I pondered these things calmly as I walked towards the base of the mountain.

But only Xyrin and Sandora, the outliers, moved without haste. Tohsaka and Emiya’s journey had indeed been anxious. The reason was simple:

A mere few hundred meters of mountain path were scattered with dozens of Void zones and artificial gravity zones.

The chaotic state of the Inner World revealed its new peculiarities, where air might suddenly disappear, and gravity would abruptly increase or decrease. The Xyrin Apostles remained unfazed as they moved through alternating vacuum and intense gravity zones. In contrast, Tohsaka and the others could only tread on a thin line along the safe routes marked by Tsuruya. Thus, on the empty mountain path, Tohsaka, Emiya, and Ilya, much to our stifled amusement, engaged in a muted comedy of sorts—now stiff as boards, now leaping through the air, now rolling on the ground...

They really suffered today.

(To be continued, for more please visit www.qidian.com. More Chapters are available; support the authors; support genuine reading!)