Chapter 1532 — Facing the Trial Head-On

Deep within Violet Island, at the edge of the barren wilderness where Ashfall City was supposed to stand, the two exploration teams of Cecil and Typhon had finally joined forces. After some negotiation, they had pitched their camps on two clearings only a hundred meters apart. Trained Steel Rangers and Vagrant Guards began patrolling the perimeter, checking the traps and alarm runes set nearby—all of it had to be finished before the last gleam of sunset vanished behind the mountains.

Dusk was deepening into night, and every member of both teams, Cecil and Typhon alike, felt their nerves pulled taut—though the gods' power had long since withdrawn from this pocket of reality, hundreds of thousands of years of dream-erosion had permanently reshaped the island's environment, even its natural laws. The shadow power here was dense and violently active; wherever shadows overlapped, strange and unnameable dangers tended to lurk.

Perhaps a rift into the Shadow Realm, perhaps a bizarre play of light that could gnaw at the mind and drive a person briefly insane, perhaps even a passage through which shadow-dwellers might invade the waking world… Here, in the shifting light and shadow, phenomena never encountered in ordinary life were the rule rather than the exception. And as sunlight faded and night fell, the odds of such strangeness peaked—the anomalies that surfaced after dark were enough to make any intruder understand, with painful clarity, why the goddess who held dominion over shadow bore the name Lady Night.

Of course, the Cecil team had a legendary adventurer of Mo Jin Wilder's caliber—powerful and battle-hardened—sitting watch. Even so, the soldiers dared not blindly trust that the old mage alone could fend off every danger the island held, because Mo Jin himself did not believe it either…

While the soldiers in both camps sharpened their vigilance and braced for another night on the island, the leaders of the two expeditions gathered together to discuss how to proceed through this uncanny place—and how the two teams ought to coordinate.

Dai Lan came over to the Cecil camp. Since the two camps stood only a hundred meters apart, she had brought no entourage. She now stood before the temporary partition on the camp's northern side, gazing out with Maggie and Mo Jin at the dark expanse of wilderness beyond—and all around them stood high-output mana-crystal lamps, their charged brilliance scattering the dark and making the whole camp bright as day.

Between the Typhon and Cecil camps, the soldiers had even built a special "light corridor," illuminated so that personnel could move safely through the night. This was one reason the two camps had been pitched so close together: at a hundred meters, each team kept its independence while still allowing safe passage between them, and the cost of lighting the road was saved.

"To spend a night safely on Violet Island, you have to keep the lighting seamless—no gaps," Maggie said, glancing back at the lamps scattered through the camp and shaking her head with a sigh. "When night falls, the shadow power blends with ordinary darkness and erodes body and mind without a sound. During our first explorations we had no experience—one soldier slept in a spot the lamps couldn't reach, and part of his flesh was simply 'erased' by the dark, gone as if it had never been. Two more fell into temporary madness and had to be pulled from the expedition… The gods' residual aura is stranger and harder to guard against than we ever imagined."

"Same on our side," Dai Lan said gravely. "Our advance scouts lingered too long under the tree canopy; one of them nearly 'walked into' the depths of shadow. The few we managed to drag back are still in the rear receiving treatment. Fortunately, the intelligence you generously shared afterward let us avoid a great deal of danger on our way into the deep forest."

Maggie gave a slight nod. "Think nothing of it. We share the same mission—working together raises everyone's odds of success."

Dai Lan murmured an acknowledgment, then turned her gaze once more to the distant wilderness, now being swallowed by the heavy curtain of night. The tangled weeds and jagged rocks were losing their outlines in the dimming light, and from the distant forest came the occasional bizarre cry of some unknown creature, making the night seem all the more eerie. After a long look, she broke the silence: "You've been circling here for four days. Why not pitch camp deeper in the wilderness instead of staying at the forest's edge? Is there something out there?"

Maggie glanced back toward the camp and lowered her voice a little. "Master Mo Jin insisted on it. Because… he's worried Ashfall City might suddenly 'pop up.'"

"Worried Ashfall City might suddenly pop up?" Dai Lan was taken aback. She checked the load on her mind-core before going on. "What does that mean?"

"He believes this wilderness is exactly where Ashfall City stands—only for some reason it hasn't appeared before us," Maggie explained patiently. "He's afraid that if we camp deep in the wilderness and Ashfall City suddenly manifests in the real world, we'd be crushed directly beneath the city in our sleep…"

Dai Lan fell silent for a moment. Maggie heard several whirs and grinding noises of machinery from within her body, but at last the lady nodded. "…In a sense, what Master Mo Jin fears is possible. It's a rather bold conjecture… but he has indeed seen a world broader and stranger than ordinary people know."

Maggie thought it over, then nodded. "A remarkably tactful and sincere assessment."

As they spoke, night finally settled in. The last gleam of sunset at the horizon faded with astonishing speed—at the very end it was almost as if the sunlight were fleeing the sky—and shortly after, magnificent brilliant stars emerged from the black vault of night.

Perhaps because they were far from the neon-soaked city lights, perhaps because no clouds or mist obscured the view, the starry sky deep within Violet Island seemed extraordinarily magnificent—and out over the wilderness it was even more dazzling than over the forest. Countless stars were set into the dome like crushed diamonds. Dai Lan tilted her head back, gazing at the sky full of stars as if lost in thought, while Maggie remarked idly beside her, "The stars look brighter out in the open, don't they?"

Dai Lan seemed not to hear, still staring somewhat blankly at the stars. Meanwhile footsteps came from not far off: Mo Jin, in his plain mage's robes, walked over from the tents, shaking his head and sighing as he came toward Maggie—plainly, his attempts to locate Ashfall City through observation and phase magic had not gone well.

"Nothing at all," Mo Jin began muttering as soon as he reached Maggie. "I tried observing the convergence of shadow power to judge whether there's a material projection out on the wilderness, but there's no sign of material disturbance in the shadow power at all. I briefly shifted myself into shadow state and entered the Shadow Realm to look for clues—just an empty field there too. Elemental interference, arcane positioning, spatial distortion detection—I ran every test I could think of, and they all gave the same result: there's nothing out there on the wilderness—is she frozen up again?"

Halfway through his muttering, Mo Jin seemed to notice Dai Lan standing beside Maggie, head tilted back to watch the sky. Seeing that she was motionless and had shown no reaction to his arrival, he immediately suspected the ancient iron woman had malfunctioned again. But just as he finished speaking, a faint hum came from within Dai Lan's body, and one of her eyes began to glow softly, as if she had switched into some special mode. She stared fixedly at the stars a while longer, then suddenly turned her head. "There's a slight problem with the stars' trajectories. I'm cross-referencing the data recorded in other regions of Violet Island."