Chapter 19

Ever since entering Winterless Town, Luo En had been seeing visions.

In his own words, he felt like he’d suddenly turned into some kind of prophet.

But when he asked the System whether he’d gained a special ability, it flatly denied it.

The Mayor had also said that everyone who arrived in town saw visions—nothing more than the town’s true past playing out before their eyes.

Yet as the days dragged on, Luo En grew more and more convinced that something was off.

The visions did include the town’s past, but they didn’t stop there.

At one point the young man inside the vision reached out and gutted him like a fish; Luo En jerked his hand back as if he’d been shocked and blurted, “Holy crap.”

When he came to his senses, he realized he hadn’t cursed at the System, hadn’t stepped forward—and naturally, hadn’t been disemboweled by the young man frozen in ice.

He studied the figure inside the sculpture carefully, and his expression shifted from wary to astonished: the face was a dead ringer for the son in the Mayor’s old photograph.

But the Mayor had sworn his son was dead. Did being sealed in ice count as death?

A squirrel rubbed its tiny paws over its face in front of Luo En, then scurried away as if its errand were finished.

Luo En took a few tentative steps, and the visions swallowed his sight again.

He was trying to sort out what was happening now from whatever precog nonsense the town was feeding him.

He simply wasn’t awesome enough to cope with such a ridiculous point of view.

Right now Luo En only wanted to know one thing: should he tear the scroll or not?

Option one: follow every other visitor’s fate and die in the town’s temporal prison.

Option two: rip the scroll and unfreeze every ominous figure around him.

Neither sounded like a winning plan.

Just then the System’s red alerts shrieked in his ears, as if screaming that seeing endless visions was seriously dangerous.

[Warning: Otherworlder, you are engaging in Parallel Resonance without System protection. Cease immediately.]

[You possess the potential of Warrior First-Rank. System assessment: you cannot withstand the second possibility.]

Luo En had wanted to ask for ages what these “parallel possibilities” actually were.

[Is your point of view currently disoriented?]

“Forget disoriented,” Luo En snapped, “just tell me how to break this spell.”

[To dispel the magic, simply destroy the magic scroll. The scroll itself is extremely fragile.]

The System offering a straight answer surprised him; he’d expected the usual runaround, same as the Mayor.

He lifted the scroll from the ice sculpture’s hand, hesitating. In the visions, tearing it in half woke the figure—and then the figure tore him in half.

Thinking about that made the scroll feel like a burning coal.

A sharp crack interrupted his thoughts—the sound of ice shattering.

Splinters of frost hissed across the ground.

The sculpture that had been holding the scroll now spider-webbed with fissures; molten rock seeped from the face embedded in the young man’s chest, oozing through the cracks.

And Luo En still hadn’t torn the scroll. Events were already diverging from what he’d foreseen.

“Did I break the spell?” He backed away, eyes locked on the cracking figure.

[No, wise host; you merely weakened the spell’s effect.]

“What happens when the spell weakens?” The splintering grew louder.

[An overactive Evil God Spawn will rouse its host. You will face imminent danger.]

The System’s words had barely registered when the sculpture exploded.

The man inside, asleep for years, opened his eyes—clear as untouched lake water.

The remaining ice collapsed in a white cascade; he stepped out, frost shedding from his shoulders with every stride.

The face of the Evil God on his chest twitched, opened its mouth, and vomited flame.

This was the creature the Mayor had described: a parasitic tumor revered as a god by countless worshippers.

To a modern, upstanding youth like Luo En, the whole thing was incomprehensible.

The young man radiated the pressure of a waking lion; the fiery mask only made him more uncanny.

Ignoring Luo En, he studied his own palms, confirming something.

A slow inhale, and he accepted that he had truly awakened.

Then he looked past Luo En and spoke in a calm, deliberate voice, “Father... it’s been a long time.”

Following the man’s gaze, Luo En saw the Mayor—frail as paper—standing behind him in the clearing, leaning on a cane.

How the old man, who could barely lift a bowl of soup, had followed Luo En here was a mystery.

The squirrel that had fled earlier now perched on the Mayor’s shoulder, rubbing its cheeks as if it had expected this all along.

After all, the Mayor had sent the squirrel to bring Luo En here so the spell could be undone.

Things had gone slightly off-script: the scroll remained intact, yet someone frozen had awakened anyway.

In another sense, though, this was exactly what the Mayor had hoped to see—

a chance to behold his child again without freeing the other madmen locked in ice.

“Drian...” The Mayor uttered the young man's name in a hoarse voice.

And just as Drian had said, he was Drian's father.

They hadn't seen each other in who knew how many years. The father was now old and decrepit, while Drian remained as youthful as ever.

This should have been the face the Mayor knew best, yet he felt his son was a complete stranger now.

“Father, you deceived me. You made me seal everyone away in ice myself.” Drian stated this harsh truth in an unnaturally calm tone. “How many years did you freeze us for?”

The magic had been borrowed by the Mayor, but the one who actually used it wasn't him—it was Drian.

“Drian... it's been a hundred years...”

All their “great achievements” were built on a foundation of lies.

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