Chapter 83: Key (Second Update—Requesting Monthly Tickets)

Beside the winding river outside Cordu Village, under bright sunlight.

Sitting cross-legged, Aurora wore her light blue long dress, eyes closed, listening to Lumian’s feedback and deductions.

She remained silent for a long while, as if lost in thought.

After nearly a minute, Aurora carefully spoke:

“If something went wrong with the Twelfth Night ritual, causing the power descended by that Hidden Entity to leak and create the time loop encompassing Cordu Village and its surroundings, then everyone and every spirit in this area at the time would have been unable to escape.”

“What do you mean?” Lumian, also seated on the ground, didn’t follow his sister’s logic.

Aurora explained in detail:

“I mean, that power is also contamination. Once it leaks, everyone in this area will equally bear the contamination—only those protected by the Black Thorns symbol or other Higher Entities can barely avoid it.

“Think of it like a dam breaking, floodwaters swiftly drowning the entire place, even rooftops. Unless you had a boat ready, your body would inevitably get soaked.”

Lumian imagined the scene, hesitating:

“So everyone in the village was contaminated by the leaked power, making them part of the loop?”

His use of “part” didn’t mean merely affected by the loop—it meant one of its constituent components.

With eyes closed and golden hair loosely tied, Aurora nodded slightly.

“I suspect killing not just the parish priest triggers a restart, but killing any other villager in Cordu would cause a similar reaction—essentially attempting to destroy a component of the loop, inevitably provoking a reactive change.”

“But we killed that midwife only yesterday afternoon…” Lumian’s sentence trailed off, stopping himself.

He instantly recalled many things, hesitating to say:

“Is it because the people inside the castle are protected by other Higher Entities?

“Is that why Madame Pualis said she could escape the loop at specific moments?

“She wasn’t contaminated by that power, isn’t part of the loop—she’s merely someone affected, able to exploit loopholes or opportunities to leave?”

Aurora sighed softly:

“That’s why she said she couldn’t save us, couldn’t take us out—because we’re already contaminated, fused with the loop.”

Here, she gave a bitter smile:

“Or perhaps we’re already dead, currently alive only as components of the loop.

“No wonder that mysterious lady said forcibly breaking the loop would kill everyone here—because we are the loop itself, forcibly broken.”

Lumian fell silent. He had wanted to refute his sister, to say it wasn’t so bleak—but this perfectly confirmed the mysterious lady’s words.

What he’d never understood was this: given her ability to freely enter and exit the loop, and her willingness to speak of the Hidden Entity’s rank, even if she couldn’t break the loop without damage, protecting two or three people to escape should have been effortless.

Now, a more reasonable—and far more despairing—explanation had emerged.

After a few seconds, Lumian searched for a counterexample:

“Ava, Raymond, and Naroka are all dead, yet the loop didn’t restart.”

With eyes closed, Aurora’s expression was complex:

“Perhaps they died before the loop began, never participated in the Twelfth Night ritual, and thus weren’t contaminated.”

Her meaning was clear: in the original timeline before the loop, Naroka died before Lent, Ava and Raymond were sacrificed during the festival—they never reached the Twelfth Night, and therefore weren’t part of the loop.

She paused, then added:

“Jean Moreau, who vanished today, might be the same case. Under normal development, he should have discovered the anomaly after Lent but before the Twelfth Night, tried to flee, and was silenced. Our investigation merely accelerated this.”

“The only thing I can’t understand is—Raymond’s corpse was sacrificed, wasn’t it? He shouldn’t have existed at all when the loop began…”

Hearing his sister’s words, Lumian immediately recalled what had happened beneath the church.

The “Invisible One” clad in the black robe was formed from the spirits of Raymond and others!

Combining his existing esoteric knowledge, Lumian ventured a guess:

“Perhaps the sacrifice during the Lent festival wasn’t directly offered to the Hidden Entity, but to the altar—which is part of the Twelfth Night ritual. That’s why Raymond’s spirit appears beneath the church.

“His corpse was useless, but in the original timeline, Pons Béne and others could leave Cordu. To prevent downstream people from discovering the bodies, reporting them, and triggering investigations, they likely retrieved the corpses after completing the ‘drifting downstream’ portion of the ritual.

“But once the loop began, that power had its limits and couldn’t reach the place where Pons Béne and the others retrieved the bodies. They, however, were affected by the contamination within them, unable to form any thought of leaving the area.”

After thinking it over, Aurora nodded in agreement:

“In all these days of the loop, except for you, the three outsiders, Madame Pualis, and her subordinates—all villagers have never left Cordu Village, never thought of hunting in the mountains or gathering wild fruits.

“If you hadn’t reminded me, I’d have thought the same.”

Here, Aurora offered a bleak, self-mocking smile:

“We’re already monsters, barely clinging to human identity through the loop.”

“No, there must be a way to save them! The lady said there was!” Lumian interrupted his sister’s self-pity.

Aurora slowly exhaled:

“Can’t you let your sister be fragile for a few minutes?”

She then said:

“According to this logic, we can only rely on ourselves—external force breaking the loop equals killing us.”

Lumian sighed:

“Too bad this theory can’t be verified yet—we can only confirm it on the Twelfth Night.”

“We can verify it, but it would waste a lot of our time—and I can’t bring myself to do it,” Aurora replied.

Of course… Lumian roughly understood his sister’s meaning—or her plan:

Kill a villager not in the parish priest’s group and see if it triggers a restart. If it does, then try to trick one of the three outsiders into dying to see if it activates the loop. If it doesn’t, it confirms Aurora and Lumian’s guess—that most people in Cordu before the loop were contaminated and are now components of it, while later arrivals were merely affected and might escape through loopholes or external aid.

But that would waste all the days they’d already waited—and Aurora wasn’t the kind to kill innocents, especially those who had cooperated well with her.

Lumian had no moral barrier to this—he saw death within the loop as not true death, merely leaving behind some lingering issues, far better than being trapped forever.

Of course, if he truly intended to do this, he wouldn’t attempt to murder or trap Lyra and the others—he’d reason with the three outsiders directly.

Given Valentine’s fanaticism and piety, he had good odds of “convincing” the man to try suicide.

The siblings looked at each other, falling into silence, unsure what to say.

After a while, Lumian changed the subject:

“Sister, where do you think the key to breaking the loop from within lies?”

Aurora had been thinking about this, and as she pondered, she spoke:

“We can’t break the loop from within merely by undoing the loop—we must use this to remove the contamination from everyone’s body. Otherwise, what’s the difference from suicide?

“Hmm, according to our earlier guess, the ritual went wrong, causing the entire village to enter the loop. And the ritual went wrong because you bear the mark of that Great Entity—it was activated, sealing your heavy contamination in your heart…”

As she spoke, Aurora studied her younger brother closely.

Lumian instantly understood:

“You mean the key to breaking the loop is me?”

Aurora nodded:

“The source of the anomaly is you. The key to breaking the loop may well be you too.

“Of course, this is only a guess—perhaps the key lies in the vessel that bore the Hidden Entity’s power during the Twelfth Night ritual—like the parish priest or someone else…”

Aurora fell silent suddenly, studying her brother for several seconds before saying:

“Is it possible these two theories are equivalent—that you are the vessel? Otherwise, as a discarded offering, a contaminated object, even if something went wrong, it wouldn’t cause the ritual to completely fail and the power to leak uncontrollably.”

Hmm… Lumian found his sister’s guess increasingly plausible.

He murmured to himself:

“So the Black Thorns symbol on my chest is darker than the parish priest’s…

“So when the parish priest fought me, he suddenly lost control—and I killed him…

“So that mysterious lady never revealed the key to breaking the loop, only told me to explore the Dream Ruins and uncover their secrets…”

Aurora listened, growing more excited:

“Yes, that might be a hint!

“The Dream Ruins may originate directly from your contamination—or be closely tied to it. That’s why, there, you can suppress every monster you encounter using the Black Thorns symbol.

“And once you uncover its secrets, you can control—or safely trigger—the power within you, reclaiming the contamination from every person in Cordu Village. The loop would naturally break.

“Hmm, perhaps this can only be done at a specific time—like during the Twelfth Night ritual.”

Lumian stood up abruptly:

“I’m going back to dream now!”

“No need to rush,” Aurora said, pushing herself up with her hands. “Aren’t you injured? Don’t you need rest?”

Lumian patted his chest:

“Madame Pualis’s water healed all my injuries and fully restored my spirituality.”

“Uh… Yangzhi Ganlu… Guanyin of the Child-Bearing…” Aurora murmured.

“What?” Lumian didn’t understand at all—his sister had spoken a language entirely unfamiliar to him.

With eyes closed, Aurora smiled faintly:

“I mean, go home, eat something, take a nap, and explore in your dreams!”

ps: Second update—requesting monthly tickets~ Thank you to Zhuri Yiran for the Silver Alliance donation

(End of chapter)