Chapter 5: Things Are Getting Strange

"That's such a pity. I've never seen anything like this before. Is there really no way at all?" Kraft patted his deflated money pouch, feeling somewhat unwilling to give up.

The Wood family's finances were not tight, but getting pocket money from his grandfather was not an easy task, so the young Kraft had early on developed an awareness of making a profit from the price difference.

"Then go ahead. I'll just watch how you chop it down." Ryan crossed his arms, looking helplessly at the pillar. "In the past, a king drew a sword from stone and established our North Kingdom. Now, Kraft draws his sword to sever stone. If you ever become wealthy in the future, don't forget your dear cousin."

"Thank you. If I really can chop it down, I might consider making you the next Baron Wood." Kraft abandoned the unrealistic idea of taking the pillar back and turned to leave. Ryan quickly followed him, patting his shoulder from behind.

"We can't take it away, and others probably can't either. Even if we leave it here, it doesn't matter. We can let them dig slowly first, and next year we can invite Grandfather and Teacher Anderson to see the full picture together."

According to the usual weather patterns of the North Kingdom, heavy snow like goose feathers would not last long. After staring blankly indoors for a while, the snowflakes outside the window had shrunk to the size of fine salt grains. The wind was very light, and the distant low hills rose and fell with a touch of the Jiangnan hills. If one held a cup of hot tea now, it would create the perfect atmosphere for admiring the snow.

Ryan, already bored, had made a miniature snowman from the snow on the windowsill and was now trying to stick a broken icicle into it as an arm.

"Next time we come to a place like this, we must bring backgammon. I really don't know how they endure winter at home." Ryan finished his snowman; the snow on the windowsill was used up, and he had no immediate plans to go out and roll a large snowman.

Including today, they had been stranded here for four days. Regardless of whether they could take anything back, being able to leave this boring place was good news.

"Yes, yes." Kraft answered unconsciously. This part of his soul was completely unable to adapt to a life without a mobile phone. Once idle, he felt at a loss. "We set off tomorrow morning. Remember to wake me up early."

"I really hope something happens, anything at all. This is too boring." Ryan yawned, knocked over the crooked snowman, stood up, and went back to his room.

Meanwhile, Kraft continued to gaze out the window. He appeared motionless, but in reality, he was missing his phone. The native part of his soul offered no bonus against boredom; instead, knowing about the prosperity and brilliance of another world made him somewhat restless. As for the part from another world, while missing his phone, he also somewhat enjoyed the current tranquility and natural scenery.

He watched as the already dim sky gradually turned darker. The spruce forest beyond the wheat field transformed from a group of large Christmas trees into a continuous black shadow, stretching all the way to the distant layered low hills.

This reminded Kraft of the days he spent at his grandmother's house as a child, mostly during the New Year. The fields covered by thin snow spread from the village to the distant hills. The difference was that back then, one could often see lights in the distance, with sporadic fireworks blooming either far or near.

Although he couldn't see them, he knew that further away lay a massive dam and a water treatment plant in the mountains. The water supply for both visible and invisible areas was handled by this giant.

That mighty power, driven by lightning and steel, worked day and night, dispelling the confusion and fear faced by humanity before the vast heavens since ancient times. When you turned on the tap, you could feel human power everywhere, from the distant mountains to right before your eyes.

But here, in a place where time seemed to have flowed backward by hundreds or thousands of years, the small village plus the few surrounding wheat fields constituted all the territory controlled by humanity. In less than ten minutes, you could step from human territory into purely primitive lands.

There lay the domain of spruces and various unknown things. Where the cold mist wandered, wolf packs and other unknown beasts clad in fur and scales roamed, watching humanity's tiny creations amidst the vast, eternal darkness that surrounded them, no different from inspecting a herd of deer.

Modern people often mock the superstitions and foolish acts of the ancients, unaware of how breathtaking the power of nature and the unknown is in such darkness. Even the evil spirits and ghosts in gory horror movies seem insignificant under such oppression.

From stories of wolf packs attacking humans to rumors of a remote village disappearing overnight, even more chilling contents were often discovered by chance by travelers long after the events occurred. The victims had long since turned into indistinguishable matter, swallowed entirely by this dark, barbaric world. And more unknown stories were swallowed along with their discoverers, continuing to disguise themselves with the blank spaces on maps.

At this moment, humanity's most advanced weapon, the sword clipped to his waist, seemed as laughably powerless as a toothpick. Even in the most arrogant legends, there was never a mortal daring to challenge the mountains.

Kraft, the part from another world, had once felt the earth beneath his feet was so small that within just a few hundred years, it made humanity feel crowded. All magnificent or bizarre legends were laid bare under technological miracles, with only the mysteries in the starry sky remaining waiting to be explored.

But now, he was somewhat uncertain. Unexplainable things had happened to him. Two completely unrelated souls—if they were indeed souls—could be mixed together. This was a phenomenon that neither side could explain; speaking of it would only be dismissed as the ramblings of a madman.

Did this mean that, in fact, this world was secretly hiding another side? A realm even more magnificent and chaotic, a part that human technology, which they took pride in, had not yet touched.

It was such a mystery that had lifted a corner before Kraft. Just this single corner had completely changed his life in an unimaginable way, raising sharp doubts about the worldview he had built during his short past life.

It was like the small cloud that once hovered over the physics community in the twentieth century, like a flaw on a perfect celestial sphere. It shattered everything previously unbreakable, requiring a completely new theory to patch up this fatal defect, which was less than one ten-thousandth of the whole.

But now he was standing before a roughly crafted wooden window, with darkness rushing at him, swallowing everything in his line of sight. His limited talents were insignificant before such ignorant and terrifying darkness. Even some scattered, out-of-context professional knowledge that surpassed this world was here nothing but a dragon-slaying skill out of place. This was undoubtedly a torment.

Kraft could feel an unknown craving surging deep within his body. It might have sprouted in a corner of this soul as early as last night, ignoring a person's character and desires, spreading silently on its own. Only when everything was silent and you noticed one of its vines would you realize it existed within your body, with massive roots diving deep into the subconscious.

In silence, Kraft gazed out the window at the dark world where his line of sight found no resting point. Having lost his vision, his hearing became sharper. He noticed that a faint sound seemed to break his contemplation.