Chapter 18 §Part Two§ 16

Just before dawn, Brown.Lamia was fast asleep.Her dreams were filled with images and sounds from other places that she didn't hear clearly, and that she didn't quite understand, and Mena.Greystone's dialogue, a room that seemed to float in mid-air, a group of men and women walking in a corridor; Between the dream and the fragmented images, there is that maddening feeling, as if Johnny and her Johnny are by her side, so close.Lamia cried out in her dream, but those cries were drowned out by the various echoes from the cold stone walls inside the Sphinx and the sound of moving sand and dust.

Lamia woke up suddenly, fully conscious as if a physical tool had been activated.Sol.Wen Chaobo was supposed to be on guard, but now he fell asleep at the door of the room where the group of people lived.His baby girl, Rachel, was sleeping between two blankets on the floor beside him.His buttocks were kicked, his little face was pressed against the blanket, and there was a small saliva on his lips. Lamia looked around, in the dim light of a small wattage light sphere and the dim lighting of the weak sunlight reflected from the four-meter-long corridor, she could only see another pilgrim traveling with her, one sleeping on the The black figure on the flagstone floor, Martin.Cylenus lay there snoring.Lamia felt a wave of terror, as if she had been abandoned in her sleep, and Selenus, Saul, the baby she realized only the Consul was missing.The pilgrimage group of seven adults and one baby has been diminishing: Hite.Mastine, missing on a sailboat across the Sea of ​​Grass: Rainer.Hoyt was killed the night before; Kassad was also missing that night. Consul Where is the Consul?

Brown.Lamia looked around again, made sure that the dark room was filled only with backpacks, rolled up blankets, sleeping poets, scholars and babies, and stood up to find herself among the pile of blankets. With her father's automatic pistol, she took out the taser from her backpack, and slipped away from Wen Chaobo and the baby into the corridor outside. It was already morning, and it was so bright outside that Lamia covered her eyes with her hands, and then she walked from the stone steps of the Sphinx to the hard path leading to the valley.The storm has passed.The Hyperion sky was a crystal-clear, deep azure cyan, interspersed with a bright white point source of green, the Star of Hyperion, rising just above the cliffs to the east.The shadows of the rocks mixed with the silhouettes of the time mounds at the bottom of the valley, and the jade mounds shone brightly.Lamia saw new sand streams and dunes formed by the storm, white and red sand in colorful curves, also around the stones.There was no trace of where they had camped the night before.The Consul sat on a rock ten meters down the hill.He was looking into the valley, where the white smoke rose from his pipe.Lamia pocketed the pistol and the stun baton together, and walked down the hill toward him.

There was no sign of Colonel Kassad, the consul said as she approached.He didn't look back. Lamia looked towards the valley where the crystal monolith stood.The formerly smooth surface was now riddled with holes. Twenty to thirty meters of it seemed to be missing, and the debris piled up at the bottom was still smoking.There are burn marks and potholes on the ground about half a kilometer between the Sphinx and the monolith.It looks like he left after a big fight.she says. The Consul snorted, and the smoke from his pipe made Lamia hungry.I kept finding the Jingmo Temple two kilometers away in the valley, and the consul said: It seems that the only place where the fire is fought is the monolithic monument.There's still no access to the surface layer, but there are enough holes now to allow you to see the inner structure shown by the deep radar.

But no sign of Kassad? Not at all. What about the blood?Or charred bones?Or did he leave a note saying he'd come back after he'd sent his laundry? nothing. Brown.Lamia sighed and sat down on a gravel next to the rock where the consul sat.The sun shone warmly on her skin.She squinted her eyes toward the opening of the valley.Hey, shit, she said: what do we do next? The Consul took down his pipe, frowned, and shook his head.I tried the comm connection again this morning, but there was still no response from the spacecraft.He poured out the ashes.Also tried the emergency channel, but apparently we couldn't get through.Either the spacecraft could not receive the signal, or the spacecraft was ordered not to respond.

Are you really going to leave here? The Consul shrugged. He had swapped the diplomat's dress he had been wearing for a rough wool jumper with gray twill trousers and high boots.Calling the spaceship here will give us the opportunity for you to leave, and I hope others will consider leaving as well.After all, Mastine is missing, Hoyt and Kassad are gone and I don't know what to do next. A deep voice said: We can try to get some breakfast. Lamia turned and saw Sol coming down the path, Rachel in the baby carrier on the scholar's breast, the sun shining on the old man's bald head.Not a bad idea, she said: Do we still have enough rations?

Enough for one breakfast, Wen Chaobo said: The extra ration bag brought by the colonel can also allow us to eat a few more cold food bags, and then we have to eat google bugs and each other. The consul smiled reluctantly and put the pipe into the pocket of the pullover. I suggest that we go back to Fort Time before that. We have already eaten up the frozen dry food brought by Benaris, but there are still more in the fort. warehouse. I was glad that Lamia spoke, but was interrupted by a cry from inside the Sphinx. She was the first to reach the Sphinx, automatic pistol in hand before even entering the door.The hallway was dark, and the room where they slept was even darker, and it took her a second to realize that there was no one in it.Bram, Lamia squatted down and turned the gun to the dark and winding corridor, when Selenus' cry came from out of sight again.Hi!Come here!

She turned her head and saw the Consul coming in through the entrance. Wait there!Lamia shouted, and then quickly walked along the aisle, leaning against the wall all the time, with the gun in her hand stretched forward, full of energy, and the safety was released.She stopped at the door of the small room where Hoyt's body was placed, squatted halfway, turned around and walked in with the gun raised. Martin squatting next to the corpse.Cylenus looked up.The plastic fiber cloth they used to cover the priest's body was in a ball, and Selenus held it in his hand. He gave Lamia a look, looked at the gun without interest, and then turned his eyes back to to that corpse.Do you believe there is such a thing?he said softly.

Lamia put down her gun and came closer.The Consul looked behind them.Brown heard Saul.Wen Chaobo was in the aisle, and the baby was crying. My God, Brown.Lamia said, in Reina.Crouched down next to Father Hoyt's body.The sad face of the young priest turned into that of an old man in his sixties: high forehead, long aristocratic nose, thin lips with joyfully upturned corners, high deaf cheekbones, Pointy ears peeked out from beneath gray hair, and large eyes with pale, parchment-thin lids. The Consul is squatting next to them, and I've seen the hologram, and this is Paul.Father Duhet.

Look, Martin.Senorens said.He pulled the cloth down, stopped, and turned the body over on its side.The man had two small crosses glowing pink on his chest, as Hoyt had done earlier, but nothing on his back. Sol stood at the door, gently shaking Rachel, comforting her in a low voice, telling her not to cry.After the child's crying stopped, he said: I thought it would take three days for the Bikura to come back to life. Martin.Selenos sighed. It has been more than two hundred years since the Bikura people have been resurrected from the dead in the shape of a cross.Maybe it will be easier the first time.

Lamia asked if he was. alive?Selenus took her #hand and felt it. The man's chest rose and fell extremely weakly.Under the touch, the skin is warm, and heat is transmitted from the cross shape under the skin.Lamia withdrew her hand back. Six hours ago it was Rainer.The thing in Hoyt's body opened its eyes. Father Douhet?Sol said and walked forward. The man turned his head, blinking his eyes, as if the faint light was dazzling, and then made an indistinguishable sound. Water, said the consul, reaching into his coat pocket for the little plastic water bottle he was carrying.Martin.Selenus held the man's head and asked the consul to feed him water. Sol came closer, dropped to one knee, and reached out to touch the man's arm, even Rachel's dark eyes seemed curious.Saul said: If you can't talk, blink twice for yes and once for no.Are you Du Hei? The man turned his head to the scholar.Yes, he said softly, his voice low and cultivated, I am Paul.Father Duhet. Breakfast consisted of the last morsel of coffee, some meat roasted over the open heater, a spoonful of grain mixed with powdered milk, and the last remaining length of the last loaf of bread, divided into five pieces.Ramia thought it was very delicious. They sat on the edge of the shadow of the outstretched wings of the sphinx, using a low, smooth gravel as a table.The sun rose around ten o'clock in the morning, the sky was always clear and cloudless, and there was no sound, only the occasional clink of forks or spoons and their soft conversation. Do you remember the old days?Saul asked.The priest was wearing a spacesuit worn by the Consul.A gray jumpsuit with the League of Legends logo on the left chest.That uniform was a little too small. Du Hei held the cup of coffee in both hands, as if preparing to sacrifice it.He looked up, his southern eyes filled with equal parts wisdom and sadness.Before I die?Du Hei said.The Italian aristocratic lips parted into a smile.yes, I remember.I remember my exile, the Bikura he cast down his eyes, and even the Tesla tree. Hoyt told us about the tree.Brown.Ramia said.This priest once nailed himself to a living tesla tree in the forest of flames and endured years of suffering, death, resurrection, and death again, rather than allowing himself to live easily under the influence of the cruciform come over. Du Hei shook his head.I thought in those last few seconds that I had won over that thing. That's right, the Consul said: Father Hoyt and others found you, and you did drive that thing out of your body, and then the Bikura planted your crucifix in Rainer.on Hoyt. Du Hei nodded: Can't find that child now? Martin.Cylenus pointed to the man's chest.Apparently that fucking thing can't defy the Law of Immortality.Hoyt's pain was so intense it dragged on for so long he just wouldn't go back to where the thing wanted him to go He never could what the fuck do you call it?Double resurrection. No effect, said Duhei, his smile sad.The DNA parasitic in the cruciform has infinite patience.It can even take several generations to rebuild a host if necessary.Both parasites will find a home sooner or later. Do you remember what happened after the Tesla tree?Saul asked calmly. Du Hei drank the last bit of coffee in his cup, remember death?Remember Heaven or Hell?He smiled genuinely, not remembering, gentlemen and this lady.I wish I could say I remember.I remember pain eternal pain followed by relief.Then there is darkness.And wake up here.How many years do you say it has been? Nearly twelve years, said the Consul, but only half that time for Father Hoyt.He spends a lot of time traveling between the stars. Father Duhet stood up, stretched his limbs, and paced back and forth.He's a tall man, very thin, but he looks powerful, Brown.Lamia was impressed by his presence, because of that strange and inexplicable charisma of character, which has caused a few people to suffer or gain power since the beginning of history.She had to remind herself, number one, that he was a priest, and the church they belonged to required them to be celibate.Second, an hour ago he was a corpse.Lamia watched the old man walk up and down with the grace and ease of a cat.And she found that those two points were true, but they did not detract from the attractiveness that the priest exuded.She wondered if those men felt it too. Du Hei sat on a piece of gravel, stretched his legs straight forward, and rubbed his thighs with his hands, as if to eliminate the feeling of cramping.You told me who you are and why you are here, and he said: Can you tell me anything more? Several pilgrims looked at each other. Du Hei nodded.You think I'm a monster myself?Is it under Demon God Jing?Even if you think so, I don't blame you. We don't think so.Brown.Ramia said.Jing Demon God doesn't need to borrow other people's hands to do what he wants to do.Besides, we already know you from Father Hoyt's stories about you and your notes.She glanced at the others.We found it difficult to explain why we came to Hyperion, impossible to repeat. I wrote down a lot of things on my communication recorder, and the consul said: It's quite brief, but you can probably see our past and the history of the Balian for the past ten years, why Wanxing.com and the Ousters fought, and things like that.If you want to watch it, you can watch it, it should not take an hour. That would be much appreciated, said Father Duhet, and followed the consul back to the Sphinx. Brown.Lamia, Saul, and Serenos walked to the front of the valley, and from the saddle between several low cliffs, they could see the sand dunes and barren land stretching all the way to the mountains of the Bridle Mountains, in the southwest of them Less than ten kilometers away.Two or three kilometers to their right, along a mountain range gradually engulfed by the desert, the cracked orbs, minarets and decadent columns of the ruined city of poets were clearly visible. I'm going to walk back to Time Fort to get some rations.Ramia said. I don't want our group to be separated, Saul said: We can go back together. Martin.Cylenus folded his hands on his chest. Someone should be here in case the colonel returns. Before anyone left, Thor said: I think we should search the rest of the valley again.The Consul did not check beyond the Monolith this morning. I agree, said Lamia: Let's do it before it's too late.I'm hoping to go to Time Keep to get supplies and get back before dark. They went down to the Sphinx just as Dohey and the Consul came out.In one hand the priest held the consul's comm recorder.Lamia explains the search dog project, and both agree to join them. They walked down the corridors of the Sphinx again, beams of flashlights and laser pointers illuminating wet stones and eerie corners.After returning to the midday sun, they walked to the jade mound three hundred meters away.Lamia found herself shaking as they entered the room where the thorn demon had appeared the night before.Hoyt's blood left rust-like brown stains on the green jade floor, but there was no trace of the transparent opening in the underground labyrinth, and there was no trace of the Jing Demon God. There were no rooms in the obelisk, only a central shaft, in which a spiraling ramp, startlingly steep, spiraled upward between the sooty walls.Even whispers echo here.This small group kept conversation to a minimum.There were no windows, and the outside could not be seen. The top of the slope was about fifty meters above the ground, and the light from their flashlights could only see the darkness under the curved roof above their heads.The ropes and chains that have been installed for tourists over the past two centuries have allowed them to descend the slopes without worrying about falling and falling to their deaths.They stopped at the entrance, Martin.Cylenos called Kassad's name one last time, and the echo followed them out into the sunlight. They spent more than half an hour inspecting the damage around the Crystal Monolith.Pools of sand turned into glass, with a radius of nearly five to ten meters.Iridescent in the midday sun, reflecting heat on their faces.The face of the monolith, cracked and now riddled with holes, still dangled with strands of molten crystal, looking like the target of a frenzied strafing, but everyone knew Kassad must have been desperate.There is no door there, and there is no entrance to the inner labyrinth. The results of the instrument detection show that the inside is as empty as before, and has no connection with the outside world.Reluctantly they left there and climbed the steep path to the base of the northern cliffs, where several cave mounds were lined up at a distance of not more than a hundred meters from each other. Early archaeologists thought these were the oldest time mounds because they were so crude.They walked into the first cave amid Thor's words, and the light of the flashlight saw thousands of unidentifiable patterns carved on the rock.Each cavern was no more than thirty or forty meters deep, and each cavern ended in a stone wall without any further excavation or radar imagery of other spaces. After emerging from the third burrow, the group sat in what little shade they could find and shared water and protein biscuits from Kassaddo's field rations.The wind picked up and passed through the cracks in the rock above them, making a sound like a sigh or a whisper. We can't find him, Martin.Selenos said: That goddamn Thorn took him. Saul was feeding Rachel with one of the last packets of baby food.The top of her head was pink from the sun, despite Thor's best efforts to shield her as they walked outside.He's probably in the same time tomb as we are, he said, if some part of it isn't in sync with us in time.That was the theory of Arendrez, who believed that the time tomb is a four-dimensional structure with extremely complicated turning points in time and space. Great, said Lamia: So even Feldman.Kassad is there, and we don't see him either. Hey, the Consul said, sighed wearily, and stood up.Let's at least get this done, there's only one thing left. The Jingmo Temple is one kilometer further into the valley, lower than the other tombs, and is blocked by a bend in the cliff.The whole building is not big, smaller than the Jade Tomb, but the complex structure of cornices, spires, buttresses, and chaotic and orderly arched or arc-shaped pillars make it look much larger than it actually is. Inside the Bramble Temple was an echoing chamber, an irregular floor made up of thousands of curved, joined parts that reminded Lamia of the ribs and spines of some fossilized creature.On the fifteen-meter-high top, the dome is criss-crossed with dozens of chrome blades, each piercing through the walls and other sharp blades, protruding from the entire building, like steel thorns, the building material of the dome itself is a bit egg white , so that the space below has a rich, milk-like luster. Chimia, Selennos, Consul, Wen Chaobo, and Du He all started calling Kassad, their voices echoed again and again, but there was no response. No Kassad or Haight.There's no sign of Mastine, the Consul said as they walked out the door.Perhaps this will become the pattern. We disappear one by one, and only one remains in the end. And in the end, as said in the legend of Jing Demon God Sect, will his or her wish come true?Brown.Lamia asked.She was sitting on the rock bed facing the Jing Demon Temple, her short legs were dangling in the air. Paul.Du Hei raised his face to the sky.I don't believe that Father Hoyt's wish was for him to die so that I could live again. Martin.Cylenus narrowed his eyes at the priest.What would your wish be, Father? Doo Hei has no hesitation: I will hope and pray that God will remove the twin evil war and thorn demon gods from the world forever. In the silence, the afternoon wind sounds like sighs and groans.Now, Brown.Lamia said: We must get some food, or we shall learn how to live on air alone. Du Hei nodded.Why did you only bring so little food? Martin.Cylenus laughed and chanted aloud: ∮ He does not drink, neither ale nor stout, eat no fish, neither chicken nor meat, The sauce is no different from rice bran in him, No toast to pigs, Dirty jokes don't make him laugh, Among the crowd, he was not seen promiscuously. This pilgrim's soul longs only for the brook, Though I ate some violet petals now and then, His food is nothing but forest air. ① ①This is John.Keats Poetry <Charles.Second paragraph in Character of Charles Brown.This poem was written in April 1819. Du Hei smiled slightly, obviously still puzzled. We thought the first night would win the battle or kill us.The consul said: We don't intend to stay here long. Brown.Lamia stood up, dusted off her trousers, and I left, she said: If there are field rations or the stocks we saw, I should be able to bring back four or five days' worth of food. I will go too.Martin.Cylenos said. There was silence.In the past week, the poet and Lamia have almost fisted each other more than a dozen times.At one point she even threatened to kill the man.She looked at him for a while and finally said: Well, first we go to the Sphinx to get our backpacks and water. The small group made their way back down the valley, and the shadows on the western rock face began to lengthen.