Chapter 5

“That’s such a shame—I’ve never seen anything like this before. Is there really no way at all?” Kraft patted his deflated money pouch, unwilling to let go.

The Wood family wasn’t poor, but getting pocket money from his grandfather wasn’t easy; young Kraft had long developed an awareness of arbitrage.

“Then go ahead—I’ll watch how you cut it down,” Ryan crossed his arms, gazing helplessly at the pillar. “Once, a king pulled a sword from stone and founded our Kingdom of Nos. Now, Kraft swings his blade to sever stone—if you ever make it big, don’t forget your dear cousin.”

“Thank you. If I really manage to cut it through, I might consider naming you the next Baron Wood.” Kraft abandoned the impractical idea of taking the pillar home and turned to leave. Ryan hurried after him and clapped him on the shoulder.

“We can’t carry it away, and neither can anyone else. Even if we leave it here, it doesn’t matter—we can let them slowly dig it out, then next year bring Grandfather and Master Anderson to see the full sight.”

………

According to the usual weather patterns of the Kingdom of Nos, heavy snow wouldn’t last long. After sitting indoors for a while, the snowflakes outside had shrunk to the size of fine salt grains; the wind was light, and the distant low hills had a faint flavor of Jiangnan’s rolling terrain—if only he held a cup of hot tea now, it would feel like admiring snow.

Ryan, bored out of his mind, had built a miniature snowman from the snow on the windowsill and was now trying to stick the broken icicle as a hand onto it.

“Next time we come here, we must bring the board game Liubo. I can’t imagine how they endure winters at home.”

Including today, they had been stranded here for four days. Whether or not they could take the thing back, leaving this boring place was good news.

“Yes, yes,” Kraft answered absently—part of his soul couldn’t adapt to a life without a phone; whenever idle, he felt lost. “We’ll leave tomorrow morning. Don’t forget to wake me early.”

“I really hope something happens—anything at all. This is too boring,” Ryan yawned, toppled the lopsided snowman, and rose to return to his room.

Kraft, however, still stared out the window, motionless on the surface but thinking of his phone. The native part of his soul gained no advantage against boredom; instead, knowing the brilliance of another world made it restless. Yet the otherworldly part, while missing his phone, also savored the quiet and natural scenery here.

He watched the already dim sky gradually darken; the spruce forest beyond the wheat field shifted from a cluster of giant Christmas trees into a continuous black shadow, stretching all the way to the distant layered low hills.

This reminded Kraft of his childhood days at his grandmother’s house, mostly during New Year’s, when thin snow blanketed the fields from the village all the way to the distant hills—except back then, he often saw distant lights and occasional fireworks blooming nearby or far away.

Though he couldn’t see them, he knew farther out lay the massive dam and water treatment plant; the entire visible and invisible water supply was swallowed and expelled by this colossal entity.

That immense power, driven by lightning and steel, never ceased, dispelling the ancient fear and confusion before the grandeur of heaven and earth; when you turned on the tap, you felt human strength everywhere—from the distant mountains to right before your eyes.

Here, in this place as if time had reversed hundreds or even thousands of years, the small village and the few surrounding wheat fields were all humanity controlled; in less than ten minutes, you could step from human territory into pure wilderness.

There, spruce and unknown things reigned; mist wandered, and wolf packs and other furred or scaled beasts prowled, watching the human creations from within the vast, ancient darkness—as if inspecting deer herds.

Modern people often mock ancient superstitions and foolish acts, unaware of how terrifying the power of nature and the unknown truly is in such darkness. Even the demons and ghosts in blood-soaked horror films seemed insignificant against this pressure.

From tales of wolf attacks on humans to rumors of remote villages vanishing overnight, the most chilling stories were often discovered long after the fact by wandering travelers—the victims already reduced to unrecognizable matter, devoured entirely by this savage, dark world—and countless more unknown tales swallowed even the discoverers, continuing to disguise themselves as blank spaces on maps.

At this moment, humanity’s most advanced weapon—the sword at his waist—looked laughably feeble, like a toothpick. Even in the most audacious legends, no mortal had ever dared challenge the mountains.

Kraft, the part from another world, once thought the earth beneath his feet was so small that humanity had grown cramped within mere centuries; all magnificent or bizarre legends vanished before technological wonders, leaving only the stars as unsolved mysteries.

Now, he was no longer certain. Unexplainable things had happened to him—two utterly unrelated souls—if they truly were souls—could be fused together. This phenomenon defied explanation in either world; if he spoke of it, he’d be dismissed as a madman’s rambling.

Does this mean this world still secretly hides another face? A more magnificent and chaotic realm, untouched by the technology humanity prides itself on?

It was this mystery that had just lifted a corner before Kraft’s eyes—and that single corner had utterly transformed his life, sharply challenging the worldview he’d built during his brief past.

It was like the tiny dark cloud once hovering over 20th-century physics, a flaw on the perfect celestial sphere, shattering everything once thought unbreakable, demanding an entirely new theory to mend this fatal flaw, less than one ten-thousandth of the whole.

Yet now he stood before a crudely made wooden window, darkness rushing at him, swallowing everything in sight. His limited abilities meant nothing before such primitive terror; even fragments of advanced, out-of-place knowledge from his old world were useless dragon-slaying skills here. This was undoubtedly torture.

Kraft felt an undefined craving surging deep within his body—it may have taken root in some corner of this soul as early as last night, ignoring personality and desire, spreading silently on its own. Only when all was silent did you notice one of its tendrils, realizing it had always been inside you, its vast roots sunk deep into the subconscious.

In silence, Kraft gazed at the dark world beyond the window, its horizon lost to sight; without vision, his hearing sharpened. He noticed—there seemed to be a faint sound breaking his thoughts.