The Strange Adventures of Hearn the Believer

Pandora realized that the tip of her nose was less than ten centimeters away from the cold floor tiles. She was absurdly frozen in mid-air, and everything around her turned into an ominous gray.

Take a deep breath, loosen your stiff body, and then try to roll over.

"Heave-ho!" She successfully rolled over less than ten centimeters off the ground, but at a cost; the pain in her lower back made her hiss and gasp for breath.

It's so cold.

The next moment, almost at the same instant she successfully turned over, the bleak gray faded away, and everything around her regained its color. The fluorescence emitted by the luminous fungi dyed the entire space with a hazy, eerie blue. The piles of bones in the four corners of the room had been covered in dust for a long time, but no bloodstains were visible.

Pandora was once frightened by these skeletons, but she has become somewhat numb to them by now. The skeletons, whether in terms of torso, limbs, or skull shape, are much taller and more slender than humans. They are the original owners of the underground ruins of Ys City—the Grey Elves.

Pandora extinguished the small oil lamp in her hand, making sure there was enough fuel for her journey home. In a pale blue glow, she stepped out of the room where bones had piled up like mountains. There were three such rooms, symmetrically arranged, surrounding a circular courtyard. The courtyard was divided into four sections by perpendicular paths, each section covered with expensive and rare flowers from the city of Ys, displaying four colors ranging from azure to deep purple. Pandora would occasionally pick some to sell, but never too many, partly for fear of attracting the church's attention, and partly out of reluctance. This small courtyard was like a secret belonging only to her; she genuinely didn't want to share anything about it with anyone.

As for why flowers bloom in a place where there is no sunlight all year round, she had thought about it, but in the end she could only attribute it to the magic of the gray elves.

Grey elves can cast spells.

A slightly dilapidated, yet much more intact domed building than anywhere else in the ruins sits right in the center of the crossroads, at the heart of the circular garden. Its tall spire points straight up to the cave ceiling, densely covered with luminous plants. The white jade-like exterior of the building is already covered with chalky dust. Pandora had tried to clean it in the past, but had to give up because she was too short.

She walked through the courtyard filled with blooming azure flowers and stepped into the interior of the Grey Elf Temple. The temple was not spacious; an adult could reach the opposite wall in about twenty steps if they took their best strides. The inner walls were covered with murals that even Pandora couldn't understand. If they were written, she might have been able to try her luck.

The interior of the Grey Elf Temple rises higher and higher as you walk towards the center. Each step of the smooth, white jade-like staircase is very high. Pandora endured the burning, rotting sensation on her back and the tearing pain in her skin as she slowly stepped onto the twelfth step. Above the twelfth step, in the center of the white jade-like platform, there stood a strangely shaped spring pool. It was surrounded not by stone platforms but by soil blooming with azure wildflowers, and it had never changed since she first stumbled upon this place.

As for why it is considered strange, it is because the outline of the eye pool has no trace of artificial construction whatsoever—if viewed from above, it looks like a drop of clear water falling from a height onto the ground, presenting a completely irregular radial outline.

While learning aircraft blueprints from those swindlers, Pandora gained some understanding of drafting and design concepts. Now, in her view, the grey elves seemed to have built this temple courtyard around this irregular spring.

As for why they didn't smooth out those irregular radial cracks, it's probably because the gray elves don't have obsessive-compulsive tendencies like humans.

But the courtyard was built so perfectly rounded.

Pandora sometimes thought the outline of the spring was rather ugly, like a scar eroded into the earth, never to heal.

The Great Hollow where Ys City is located is the same, as is the Bottomless Abyss in the Grey Elf Ruins.

The entire interior of the temple was bathed in an almost pale, bluish-green light—the color of the spring water in the pool. Pandora quickly removed all her clothes, placing her grey cloak beside the pool. Then, gritting her teeth, she forcefully removed the gauze and cotton pads tightly wrapped around her waist to stop the bleeding—this would undoubtedly tear apart the semi-cold scabs that had failed to heal along the way. However, she no longer needed to worry about that. The blood seeping from her wounds slid down the girl's snow-white skin like a crimson snake. Before it could wrap around the girl's slender, delicate calves, Pandora took a step forward, lowered her body, and then slowly submerged into the radiant spring water, leaving only a striking crimson stain on the surface.

……

A few minutes later, the girl surfaced and leaned against the edge of a gently sloping pool. Her breathing was steady, and her wet bangs clung to her forehead. She brushed them aside with her hands. The almost pale blue light tinted her thin platinum blonde hair into a slightly bluish-silver color. The spring water was much more viscous than normal water. It flowed through Pandora's hair, dripped onto the girl's fair skin, slid down her skin, and finally returned to the pool.

Pandora carefully reached her right hand down to her lower back, trying to touch the area where the previous wound had been. As expected, there was no pain. The skin her fingers touched was as delicate as a baby's, just like the rest of her body.

Some inexplicable force completely healed her physical wounds and, incidentally, wiped away the cheap gray dye from her hair—one of her father's regular tasks. As for the reason, she was almost thirteen and knew more or less about it.

“When you grow up and get married with a clean conscience, you’ll thank these cheap dyes.” That’s what her father would say every time he dyed Pandora’s hair, and then he would casually smear some boiler ash on the little girl’s nose. He said it was a specialty of the heating boilers and that ordinary people weren’t allowed to use it. “Also, you’re not allowed to have long hair. The downtown area is full of scum.”

Pandora and her father, Fradil, had an unspoken agreement: every time her father hit her, only the first blow was real, sending the little girl flying. She had actually learned defensive techniques from her father, so taking that punch wasn't a big deal. Her father would send her flying to a corner away from the window, and from the second punch onwards, he would subtly reduce his force, stopping short of hitting her. All she had to do was cry out loud, crying as pitifully as possible, like she was putting on a show for others.

“Growing up… even if I grow up, I won’t find happiness in a place like this.” Pandora leaned against the edge of the pool, the warm spring water making her feel cozy. The girl let out a soft sigh, a mixture of contentment and regret. Actually, she had thought about growing up. When she was nine, she accompanied her father to Dr. Robert Gwen's house next door to treat a work injury on her arm. During their conversation, to spite her father who always dyed her hair gray, she casually asked Dr. Gwen about the connection between "growing up and getting married" and "being innocent." She imitated her father's tone, which made both adults extremely embarrassed. Finally, under her father's murderous glare, Dr. Gwen chose a more tactful way of putting it: "Pandora, growing up means that on the night of a girl's wedding, the boy uses a syringe to inject...blood into the girl's body. That way, they become husband and wife. But such behavior is not allowed before marriage. If it happens, you are no longer 'innocent.' So Pandora, you should listen to your father. Don't run around at night. Cut your hair if you need to, dye it gray if you need to. You can just smear some boiler soot on it; it won't leave a mark. Just wash it off when you get home. Your father is right about one thing—the downtown area is full of scum."

She looked up at the temple dome, which had rarely attracted attention in the past. The dome was carved with murals, just like the inner walls of the temple. However, unlike the narrative poems and paintings on the inner walls, whose symbolic meanings were too ethereal and difficult to interpret, the murals on the dome were much purer.

It was a series of twelve irregular rings radiating outwards from the inside, with ancient scripts engraved in the gaps between each ring. They were not the runes of the Upper Ages, but a hieroglyphic script belonging to the Grey Elves, which had long been lost. At least Pandora had no idea what it was called—but that did not prevent her from deciphering them.

She was born with the ability to understand texts that others couldn't. This ability allowed her to know more than others from a young age, but it also caused her to suffer more hardship and psychological torment than others.

Bathing in the azure-silver spring water, Pandora tilted her head slightly, her gaze sliding from the outside in through the layers of rings. Her cherry-like lips murmured softly, slowly reciting the incomplete prayers that surfaced in her mind.

"Hear our call, last surviving child of the Source of All Things, return to the mortal realm those who have received divine grace..."

You are the storm, the raging fire, the source of water, the dust, the embodiment of the four elements of earth, fire, feng shui...

You are the plague, the war, the famine, the death, the apocalypse, the end times, the divine punishment that afflicts the earth...

You are the Baptist of St. John, the Lord and Holy Spirit of the Trinity, the Anointed One, the Shadow Son of the Blood Sacrifice of Living Beings…

You are the primordial evil of the world, the originator of the seven deadly sins, Cain who murdered his brother, the black serpent in the Garden of Eden...

You are the second crown atop the Kabbalah Tree of Life, the primordial wisdom, the pure principle, the foundation of creation, the source of destruction…

You are the child of the void and chaos, the guardian of the abyss, the primordial god of darkness, the lord served by angels and demons, the plunderer of death and souls, the finality of all things…

You are the primordial, almighty, and eternal Lord, King of the endless void, God of the future and time, Lord of countless radiances, Source of all origins, Origin of all things, Supervisor of knowledge, Keeper of truth, God of all knowledge and all vision...

Amen!

……

Chapter 67 The Silence of the Lambs (Part 4)

Due to the indescribable geological formations, a chilling wind blew through the abyss. In a ghostly blue twilight born from the luminous plants of the underground world, in the silent courtyard of the grey elves, a small figure straightened up from the circular flowerbed.

Pandora counted the few azure flowers in her hand that she couldn't name, her face conflicted and reluctant.

Admittedly, in this harsh, frozen wasteland, lush vegetation and flowers can fetch a good price from most of the Issu people who have no access to the church plantations, and money is indispensable for an ordinary single-parent family in the lower city.

Pandora's father was just a maintenance worker for the heating system in the downtown area. His meager but barely enough salary couldn't even help the father and daughter survive any unexpected accidents.

Just like two days ago.

If she hadn't kept the secret about this courtyard and that spring, Pandora felt that with a little thought, she could probably guess what would have happened to her.

She went from being an annoying little girl to a silly girl who was a laughingstock.

Literal meaning.

It seems to mean nothing to the world—or rather, to the city of Ys.

The addition of a father who drinks heavily out of grief, and a little girl who suffers brain damage from a high fever, are indeed nothing to this ice city situated on the bitterly cold frozen land.

Pandora didn't like this feeling of being dispensable.

I felt so insignificant, so insignificant that even if I died someday, no one would come to mourn me.

It's quite heartbreaking to think about leaving my father alone to live in this hell on earth.

So two nights ago, no matter how painful the journey was, and how many times she was on the verge of fainting, she still trudged alone, leaning on her cane, slowly making her way into the depths of the city of Yisu, plunging into the abyss, and finally arriving here.

"Ugh……"

Pandora sighed softly, wrapped the few freshly picked flowers in a soft cloth, put them in her handbag, adjusted her patched newsboy cap, and carefully stepped out from between the azure flowers, leaving the flowerbed and walking along the ivory-white courtyard path.

It's time to go back.

Climbing a towering cliff with bare hands and reaching the top is impossible for a kid who is not even 13 years old.

It's impossible for adults as well.

The way back is through the temple in the center of the courtyard, a path I've walked countless times before.

Pandora strolled back to the temple where she had bathed in the spring. Inside the temple, roughly opposite the main entrance, there was a crack that was even more profound than the dark blue outside. It was shaped like a broken mirror and emitted an almost ominous blue-purple liquid light. Its outline was as unstable as water ripples. From the outside, the inside was pitch black and dim.

Behind the crack is the inner wall of the temple, which is no different from other places and is carved with indescribable murals. In other words, this "crack" that is taller than a person is an alien object that is independent of the material world.

Although still young, thanks to her innate ability to recognize words, Pandora, who had secretly read many forbidden classics over the years, had some basic understanding of this one-way "rift" that could send her back to the surface—this thing was by no means an ordinary object that could be exposed to sunlight; it was a heavily contraband item that would be labeled as heretical by the upper mechanical church, including Pandora herself, who frequented this place for many years…

This is also the reason why the little girl sighed just now.

Containing a touch of selfish possessiveness, a compromise for survival, and a fear of the unknown—Pandora knew that if she continued to sell the flowers picked from the Grey Elf Garden for money, one day this secret that belonged only to her would be exposed by someone with ulterior motives. At that time, let alone preventing others from exploring this secret garden that belonged only to her, it would be hard to say whether she herself could even remain unscathed.

A sacred spring that can bring the dead back to life?

A rift that leads to the underground world?

The little girl who jumped into a bottomless abyss and survived?

Stop joking! Those three points alone are enough to get Pandora hanged a hundred times over on the cliffside gallows in front of the Highland Church! And the kind where the entire city of Ys watches.

The Highland Church's location was exceptionally advantageous, practically the prime location in this godforsaken place of Is. Every household in Is, unless their orientation was too skewed, would have a window that, upon waking up each morning and drawing back the curtains, offer a direct view of the iron and wooden gallows hanging in front of the Mechanical Church in the Upper City. In windy years, the stench of the desiccated corpses hanging there could be smelled from a thousand meters away.

Pandora felt she could never accept being hung up there and turned into dried goods, so she decided to quit after finishing this job to supplement her family's income and become a harmless little girl who no one loved anyway. The school had long since given up on disciplining her, and she spent a lot of time every day in the depths of Ys' underground world, enjoying this secret courtyard in the dark blue twilight all to herself.

With such unfounded associations in mind, Pandora hummed the Ys nursery rhyme that Lady Vanessa had once taught her, and walked lightly into the crevice.

Within the crack lies a world of interwoven darkness and brilliance. When you are outside, you can't see anything when you look in, but once you are inside, you can look up and see the starry sky.

No, rather than seeing the starry sky, it's more like walking among the stars. Even on the clearest night in Ys, no one has ever seen such a brilliant Milky Way. A band of light, woven from the glow of billions of celestial bodies, whether hot or cold, lay beneath my feet and above me. It was so far away that it was impossible to measure the distance in light-years, yet it seemed so close.

It was like a corridor without boundaries. Pandora never dared to stray far from the path. Each time, she would silently repeat "I want to go home" in her heart and move forward in a straight line based on her senses and intuition. She also never dared to look at the dazzling Milky Way for too long. It was too magnificent and dazzling, making people linger. Every time she went home, Pandora was actually a little afraid. She was afraid that because she looked at it for too long and too deeply, she would eventually get lost in the embrace of billions of lights and completely forget the way home.

Those dazzling lights are like poison that leads people astray; they are the tests she must undergo to preserve her possessiveness.

Pandora simply closed her eyes and began to silently count the numbers in her mind, as always, regarding her steps—keeping a straight line without deviation, recording the number of steps all the way up to thirteen. The dazzling light gradually dimmed, and the warm fire and the sweet aroma of pastries guided her home...

and many more……

dessert?

Her father, a rough but meticulous fellow who was mostly as burly as he appeared, was not good at baking. In fact, Pandora's family rarely had such luxurious food throughout the year. Her family's composition was exactly the same as most residents of the lower city of Ys, without a trace of petty bourgeois hedonism or affected whining.

Realizing something, Pandora suddenly opened her eyes and found herself in a warm and cozy living room. Soft fur sofas were casually scattered around, and a sweet aroma emanated from a plate of freshly baked exotic pastries and wisps of black tea on the coffee table. A fire was burning softly in the corner, and the white noise was not at all unpleasant.

"I've always believed that a good story needs a warm house, a fireplace, a soft sofa, delicious tea and snacks, and a blizzard outside, and of course, a relatively quiet listener."

On the sofa beside the fireplace, someone put down the book they were reading, smiled, and glanced sideways.

What do you think, Pandora?

……

Chapter 68 The Silence of the Lambs (Part 5)

Someone's there!

It was discovered!

Pandora instinctively took a step back, her back making intimate contact with a wall. She felt her legs go weak and she almost couldn't stand up, which made her, who was already short, look even smaller.

In the brief moment between breaths, countless images flashed through her mind, and those recurring memories all ultimately settled on the cold, mechanical church cliff—the high cliff guarding the high church, the ironwood stakes at the church entrance polished to a gleaming shine, and hanging miserably on the gleaming ironwood gallows, her miserably dried up by the winds of Ys…

"Waaah..." Thinking that she would soon be hung on the gallows at the church entrance for all of Ys to see as a warning to others, Pandora couldn't help but choke up. She wasn't particularly brave to begin with, and her wickedness and drive were forced out of her by the harsh living conditions in Ys. Fortunately, in the less than thirteen years since she was born, she had never been caught and punished. Otherwise, no matter when or where she was caught doing those things in secret, she would have ended up in this miserable state.

"Pandora, you've been caught red-handed. Come with me." The voice came from afar.

"Eek..." Realizing someone was coming, Pandora huddled desperately in the corner, clutching the brim of her already oversized newsboy cap tightly, hiding her head under the brim like a quail, not daring to look up.

A warm, sweet fragrance wafted past her nose, mixed with a relaxing floral scent, though she couldn't quite place the exact floral notes.

"Sweets can relieve anxiety to some extent, want to give it a try?"

The person's voice was very close, and the other person also squatted down, the two of them were very close.

Whether it was the aroma of the sweets or the magic of His voice itself, the little girl huddled in the corner stopped trembling, and even her left hand, which had been tightly gripping a dagger and hidden in front of her chest, involuntarily relaxed.

She slowly raised her head, and a hint of hysteria that contradicted her tears was fading from her teary-eyed face. Through the veil of tears, Pandora felt as if she could see the starry sky once again.

"Ah, do you know what happens to a seemingly harmless lamb like you in the shepherd's Garden of Eden?"

"?" She subconsciously returned the questioning gaze.

"The black lamb will carry the many sins of mortals and go to the wilderness."

……

After a short rest, it was still the same little house with a warm fire burning in it. The wind and snow outside were heavy. Pandora sat on the sofa by the fire. The warmth of the fire through the air made her feel comfortable and drowsy. And clearly, Pandora was not the only one who liked this feeling.

The person sat on another sofa opposite her, in a relaxed and languid posture. There was a step between them, with a corner of a coffee table between them.

Pandora's gaze kept darting to the small snacks on the coffee table, but she remained remarkably well-behaved, more so than she had ever been in Mrs. Vanessa's class.

“I don’t think you need to be so overly self-disciplined. The desserts on the table are neither a delicacy made from a mixture of little girls and the entrails of frogs and snakes, nor am I the kind of old witch who can maintain her youth by deceiving the souls of lost young girls—or, in your opinion, do I look like one?”

After a tense silence lasting several minutes, He put down the classic text in his hand, looked up, and smiled gently.

Pandora reluctantly turned her gaze away from the pastries and onto the other person's face, her eyes revealing a restrained curiosity and longing, as if she had been gazing at something dazzling and radiant. She shook her head.

"Then, is there something on my face? Since the beginning, your gaze has been sneaking over here thirteen times while you're looking at the snacks, the same number of steps you should take to get home. Your gaze doesn't really look like you're looking at a person, it's so bright and shiny. I can only assume you're looking at a flower. To be honest, this makes me very embarrassed."

"Yes, I'm sorry!" Pandora quickly lowered her head and apologized upon hearing this.

"Are you forcing me to become a bad person by making a girl under 13 apologize to me?"

"Waaah..." Pandora was about to cry again.

"I understand. As an apology, how about we play a game? One-sided."

Pandora looked up in confusion, then quietly glanced at the other person's face again.

"..."

"!"

"...It seems that a muscular man who is 1.95 meters tall is more in line with Miss Pandora's aesthetic standards than a pretty young lady who is 1.49 meters tall?"

Upon hearing this, Pandora shook her head vigorously, as if it were a rattle drum. Although she herself did not know why she was shaking her head, there seemed to be a kind of magic in the other person's words, as if every word she said might come true in the next moment.

Across from Pandora sat a girl who looked two or three years older than her—by that standard, referring to a normally developing thirteen-year-old girl plus two or three years. One reason Pandora kept staring at her was because of her unusual hair color—slightly wavy, waist-length hair that transitioned from light brown to pale pink and finally to pure silver from left to right, casually draped down her back. Beneath a side-swept fringe that partially obscured her eyes were a pair of azure eyes reminiscent of icebergs on the distant sea. Her features were delicate and petite, proportionate to her face and figure, and she wore earrings... She wore a pair of silver earrings—like hollowed-out, twisted five-pointed stars, with a silver key hanging between them; she wore a light pink jacket trench coat, paired with a gray-black lining with vertical black stripes and brown trousers, and an asymmetrical black leather belt casually hung around her slender waist, revealing a sliver of skin on both sides of her waist, fair but without the sickly pallor of the inhabitants of the frozen tundra. Even indoors, she was still wearing white thigh-high heels that looked inconvenient to walk in, and Pandora had noticed the jet-black heels, which were as sharp as thorns.