Steel steam and flame

Inside the train carriage, only the girl with dull eyes was left sitting on her knees. It took more than ten seconds after Cassia fell down before she remembered something extremely important, and her body still struggled to stand up. She wanted to sit there forever, covering her eyes with her hands and crying loudly. But she knew that such a thing would never happen, and she would have to deal with everything in the future by herself.

Picking up the rough red cloth, it seemed that the girl was the only one in the whole train who was not affected by the strangeness. Whether it is because of natural institutional factors or if there are other reasons, even the girl herself may not know. The skull was carefully wrapped in cloth again, and the bagpipe-like sound slowly weakened as the red cloth was wrapped until it completely disappeared from the carriage.

The girl put the wrapped skull and the thrown clothes into a black box and placed them beside the aisle. She walked towards Cassia who was lying on the ground, also knelt down in front of Cassia's head, and stretched out her hand to turn Cassia's body over. However, the surgeon's unusually high weight was too much for the girl, and despite efforts, no substantial results were seen. In the end, the girl had no choice but to abandon the tedious process, put her two small hands on Cassia's temples, kneaded them, and said something silently.

But Cassia couldn't feel anything at the moment.

When the scene appeared in his eyes, the surroundings were already pitch black. Ice-cold rain fell from the sky, hitting his naked upper body and making him shiver a few times. It doesn't hit the body, it seems to hit people's hearts. The rain has the same weird feeling and effect as the atmosphere in the train.

Cassia looked around and saw no light. After stepping on the ground, the ground was as hard as rock, no longer mud that people could sink into. There was the sound of wind and the sound of raindrops falling on the ground. The temperature should be around a few degrees below zero, and the sky was also pitch black. In addition to the rain hitting his body, Cassia felt a clear sense of touch, as well as the heavy feeling of the earth under his feet. Vision, smell, and even hearing were all here. It seems that they have lost their original function.

"Is this in the mud?" Cassia suddenly thought of this, and the surrounding darkness also gave him a familiar feeling at this time.

A flame "spiked" in front of him on the left. The fire was like a cover made of light, struggling to support a small space in this dark world. Cassia stood there and looked at it for a while. It was a small fire that could be built with a pit and a few burning-resistant logs.

During the period of observation, there was no change in the fire, and nothing unusual happened. Cassia then moved and walked over. Entering the dim yellow light range of the flame, the temperature was also transferred to his body along with the light. The warmth beside the fire was not the kind of fire he knew. It was far warmer than he had imagined. In other words, everything in this world is beyond his knowledge, just like the sudden appearance of a fire.

The fire was in a crudely dug shallow pit. A few logs burned very vigorously. The sparks followed the flames and flew into the darkness high in the sky. Then they lost their bright red color and turned into gray-white embers. I don’t know where it landed in the surrounding darkness. The flames leaping from the wood and swaying in the wind were also eerie things. The drizzle had no effect on it, and it took almost a minute for Cassia to reach the fire. But the flames on the fire in front of them, as well as the red-burning wood under the flames, still maintained their original appearance, neither decreasing nor increasing.

Mars flew into the sky as usual, and there was still nothing else around. The rain falling on Cassia also slowly decreased under the temperature passed by the flame, and then was completely dried. The coldness on his body was also completely removed. In his surprise, the power that had passed away was quickly restored little by little.

It must have reached a physical critical point, or it was due to the influence of external factors. At a certain moment when Cassia was staring at the fire, an extra person appeared opposite him. I didn't feel the slightest surprise, nor did I say it appeared all of a sudden. Everything is natural, as it should be. Cassia couldn't say she was surprised at all. Instead, she felt that it was inappropriate for her to appear here.

He is something that does not belong here, Cassia thought. The mud swallowing him is also the world's instinctive reaction to the invasion of foreign objects. Just like when the body catches a cold, there will be substances in the body to kill the causative factors.

"Hello, Mr. Gilida Xint, the Thirteenth Holy Emperor?" Cassia moved his eyes from the flame to the person in front of him who had always been there.

It's not the gray hair, wrinkled face, and cloudy eyes that I imagined. In sharp contrast, the person in front of him looked very young, with endless vitality coming out of him like heat. Wearing black combat clothing, and covering key parts of the body, such as the heart, neck, elbows and knees, are armor with strange symbols painted on them. The material of those armors cannot be seen. Although they have the texture and color of metal, in Cassia's eyes, they have something completely different from steel. It was a temperature, just like the temperature emitted by the fire in front of you all the time. It was completely different from the eternal cold feeling of steel itself.

The person opposite sat on a long stone arranged horizontally and used as a seat. Two thick arms with muscles extending from the finger pads to the shoulders rested on the knees of the feet, and the body leaned towards the fire, a standard posture of warming up by the fire. The firelight reflected his face, which was almost as young as Cassia. The drizzle stopped, the flames became a little stronger, and more sparks flashed in Cassia's eyes.

After listening to Cassia's words, the person opposite just snorted coldly, like gold and iron breaking.

"Holy Emperor?" He said, "A puppet-like position is sometimes even worse than a puppet. For puppet masters, they will also spend time to repair the puppets they control and give them a lot of care. But for puppeteers The Holy Emperor is not as good as a captive domesticated animal. To be qualified for this position, you need to be extremely talented. And extremely talented people have ambitions to match. But the title of 'Holy Emperor' is the most A binding cage. As a representative of the deity being enshrined, there are many things that need to be paid attention to, such as wine and sex."

"Give it to me for free, and I don't deserve it." The man in front of him said, and then he looked at Cassia, "So you have recognized the wrong person, the little guy who has not yet broken out of his shell."