newbobooks Chapter 39 Stone Language
Chapter 39 Stone Language
Kay carried the Northern Lord onto his horse.
The lord's eyes were open, his breathing even, his heartbeat steady. His eyes would occasionally dart around, as if tracking a moving object in a dream.
Apart from that, it is no different from a warm statue.
"Forty-seven men, all the same." Gawain walked out of the side gate of the castle, carrying the last unconscious soldier in his hand.
"They're all alive with their eyes open."
He gently placed the soldier across the horse's back, the Sun Sword glowing faintly at his waist, a light that had never gone out since he entered the castle.
Tristan pointed to six locations on the Northern Lord's makeshift map.
"The distribution of the stones is irregular; at least, I can't see any pattern."
He still held the bow in his left hand; he had never let go of it since entering the castle.
Lancelot crouched at the foot of the city wall, his palm pressed against one of the grayish-white stones.
His eyes were closed, and his sword lay across his knees; he had maintained this posture for nearly fifteen minutes.
"Lancelot." Arthur walked up behind him.
Lancelot opened his eyes.
"This thing is breathing."
Kai frowned: "Stones don't breathe."
"This part will be..."
Lancelot stood up and brushed the stone dust off his palm.
"The inhalation time is about thirty heartbeats, and the exhalation time is forty-five breaths. I counted four rounds, and it was exactly the same."
He drew his sword and gently tapped the stone surface with the tip.
No sound.
The sound vanished the instant the sword tip struck the stone; it was utterly and completely "non-existent."
Lancelot's sword struck the stone, the vibration traveling along the blade to his wrist, but there was no sound in the air.
"Where did the sound go?" Gao Wen asked.
Lancelot did not answer. He sheathed his sword and turned to walk toward his horse.
Arthur crouched down and placed his palms on the stone surface.
It was cold, dry, and rough, no different from any other stone that had been weathered by wind and rain in the wilderness for thousands of years.
But the moment the Longli River touched the stone surface, his fingertips trembled slightly.
Inside the stone.
The flow rate of the gray fog has changed.
Yesterday evening in the wilderness, the gray fog was rotating very slowly, so slowly that it was almost invisible. Now it has sped up.
It was still very slow, but the "flow" could be discerned from the "stillness." The direction of the vortex had not changed; it was still moving inward, pointing towards the pure black core.
What does it mean when the flow rate increases?
Arthur withdrew his hand and stood up.
"Walk."
Five people, ten horses, several carriages, and forty-seven living "sleepwalkers".
The group left the northern lord's castle and turned south along the route they had come from.
Arthur rode at the back of the line.
He glanced back at Hadrian's Wall, the ancient stone wall stretching silently in the afternoon sun.
It stretches from the eastern coast all the way to the western mountains shrouded in mist.
The stones distributed along the wall formed a discontinuous gray-white dotted line in his dragon-like vision, like some kind of script he couldn't understand.
The chill within him maintained the same rhythm as the gray fog.
Inhale at 30 heartbeats, exhale at 45 heartbeats.
Lancelot is right.
into the night.
The group camped at an abandoned Roman post station, and Kay unloaded the Northern Lord from his horse and let him sit against the wall.
The lord's eyes remained open, reflecting the light of the campfire like two thin sheets of ice.
Gawain used the lingering warmth of the Sun Sword to heat the dry rations. No one spoke. Tristan sat by the campfire, tuning his harp, plucking one note before stopping.
"wrong."
Kai looked up: "Is that wrong again?"
"The tension of the string hasn't changed, it's the echo that has." Tristan laid the harp flat on his lap and tapped the body of the instrument with his fingers.
"The stone walls of the post station, built in the Roman style, should produce an echo within 0.3 seconds when struck."
The second echo will return within 0.6 seconds. The return time of the first echo is now…
He paused for a moment.
"0.5 seconds."
Gawain put down the dry rations he was holding: "What does an extra 0.2 seconds mean?"
"It means that the echo has traveled a path that 'does not exist.'" Tristan's fingers slowly glided across the body of the violin.
"The sound entered the stone wall and, before returning, passed through some kind of... crack, which wasn't inside the stone wall but somewhere else, yet the sound could find it."
Arthur stood up.
He walked to the entrance of the post station and placed his palm on the stone wall.
The Longli River seeped into the wall.
The Roman masonry method involved a three-layer structure: an outer layer of square stones, a middle layer of crushed stone and lime, and an inner layer of plaster.
Longli River Channel can clearly perceive the density, thickness, and water content of each layer.
But in addition to the three-layer structure, there is a fourth layer.
A very thin, almost imperceptible "gap".
It is not a gap in the physical sense; there are no voids between the lime and gravel, and the plaster is applied tightly.
But that gap does exist, existing on the level of magic. When dragon power flows through it, it will briefly "disappear" and then "reappear" from another point.
The disappearance lasted for an extremely short time.
But that's enough to delay the echo by 0.2 seconds.
Arthur withdrew his hand.
"There's a stone in the inn too," he said.
Kai immediately stood up: "Where?"
Arthur walked out of the post station, around the stable, and stopped in front of a pile of discarded stones.
Those stones are remnants of the collapsed south wall of the post station, mostly covered with moss, and look like they've been lying there for decades.
He moved the top square stone.
There was a grayish-white stone pressing down on it.
It was exactly the same as the one in the northern wilderness, with a grayish-white surface, weathered cracks, slowly swirling gray mist inside, and a pure black core.
Gao Wen followed, squatted down, and stared at the stone for a long time.
"This thing..."
"It's spreading," Arthur continued.
Gao Wen raised his head.
"The Lord of the North reports that Pickett's scouts are active south of the Wall, and they are looking for these stones."
The Picts were one of the oldest tribes in Britain; they knew what these stones were and that they shouldn't be south of the Wall.
Arthur's fingers moved slowly across the stone surface.
"But the stone is already south of the Great Wall. There is one in the wilderness, six in the castle, and one is buried in a pile of stones in a post station that has been abandoned for decades."
He withdrew his hand and stood up.
"They weren't 'moved' here by someone; they 'appeared' here on their own."
Tristan emerged from the post station, harp in hand. His gaze fell upon the stone, and he remained silent for a moment.
"If they appear on their own, what are the conditions for their 'appearance'?"
No one can answer this question.
After the campfire died down, Arthur took his first night shift.
He sat at the entrance of the post station, leaning against the door frame, with the Stone Sword across his lap and the Dragon Power River kept at a minimum deployment, sensing the movements around the camp.
Arthur placed his hand on his chest; the four beats of the Dragon's Furnace Heart and the breathing rhythm of the gray mist inside the stone were now perfectly synchronized.
Inhale for thirty beats, exhale for forty-five beats, and the furnace core and ash mist resonate.
Two originally independent rhythms automatically adjusted to the same frequency after approaching a certain distance.
The slight chill in his body was a product of resonance.
His own Dragon Power Riverway is "conversing" with the gray mist of the stones.
This conversation began on the night he awakened his dragon heart... no, perhaps even earlier.
Perhaps from the moment he was born, this chill was buried deep in his blood, waiting for the right moment to awaken.
The stones are looking for him.
Or rather, the pure black core inside the stone is looking for him.
Arthur opened his eyes.
The embers of the campfire flickered in the night wind, their dark red light reflecting on the Northern Lord's open eyes.
The lord's eyes were darting around; he was dreaming, an extremely long dream from which he could not wake up.
The gray mist seeped into his magical circuits, enveloping his consciousness in layers of "gaps".
That gap is exactly the same as the fourth layer of structure in the stone wall of the post station; it exists on the level of magic and is not physically perceptible.
But it's enough to delay the "echo" of consciousness by 0.2 seconds.
A delay of 0.2 seconds is enough to drag a conscious person into an eternal dream.
Arthur stood up.
He walked up to the lord of the North and knelt down.
In Long Tong's vision, the gray mist in the Lord's magic circuit was slowly rotating, flowing much slower than the gray mist inside the stone.
But the direction is the same, inward, pointing to an invisible center that is not within the lord's body, but elsewhere.
The fog is a passageway.
This is not the end.
Arthur stretched out his hand and touched the Northern Lord's forehead with his index finger.
The Dragon Power River extends from his fingertips, tracing back along the flow of the gray fog.
The particles of gray mist parted to the sides under the force of his dragon power, revealing the interior of the passage.
An extremely narrow tunnel made up of countless layers of "gaps".
At the end of the tunnel was that pure black core.
The instant Arthur's dragon power touched the core surface...
The lord of the North has awakened.
His eyes stopped moving, his pupils refocused, and he saw Arthur. His lips moved, and he let out an extremely hoarse groan.
"……king."
Then his head lolled to the side, and he truly and completely fell into a deep sleep.
This time it's not a dream, but sleep, a rest for both body and mind.
The gray mist dissipated from his body.
Arthur withdrew his finger.
Something has appeared in his Dragon Power River.
The chill was still there, but next to it, there was a tiny, pure black light.
It was "rubbed" off from that pure black kernel.
It floats quietly in the depths of the Dragon Power River, standing alongside that trace of coldness, like a pair of symmetrical imprints.
Coldness is the rhythm, blackness is the direction.
Arthur gripped the hilt of the sword in the stone.
He didn't know what it was, but he knew one thing.
That pure black core is waiting for him.
Wait until he finds it.
He went in by himself.