Chapter 173: Chapter 177 Madness Threshold
After a thunderous boom, the world went quiet.
Maurice felt his consciousness drifting, seemingly completely detached from his shell. He didn’t know where he was, what year it was, and, for an instant—or possibly for a long stretch of years—he even forgot his own name. He simply floated, mindlessly, in an abyss of chaos and nothingness, surrounded by incomprehensible streams of light and shadow and a silence as deep as death.
It took Maurice an excruciatingly long time to piece back together his shattered thoughts and mend the incomplete humanity within him—
He remembered now. His name was Maurice, resident of the Plunder City-State, a historian by trade. Today, he was to visit an antique shop in the Lower City District to discern what nearly claimed his daughter’s life.
He figured it out.
It was the warm family of Subspace.
Countless roars and ear-splitting noises like the earth tearing apart finally erupted again in the void of quiet chaos, things he could now perceive, almost shattering his newly coalesced humanity once more. However, just before total obliteration could occur, he “saw” a cloud of chaotic nothingness suddenly converge from all directions, enveloping all his senses.
This “smoke” shielded his mind, isolating him from the surrounding noise and the erratic flow of light and shadows with a protection called “Ignorance and Dullness.” Once again capable of thought, Maurice peered through that smoke and noted that he could no longer discern the maddening knowledge and truths. Deep within the endless fog, only a twinkling light captivated his attention.
It was a glow made of many large and small light sources, with a red light at the center the size of a human head, surrounded by dozens of blue, green, and red specks, flickering rapidly in a pattern that seemed random yet contained some sort of… “reason.”
Amidst the myriad streams of light and shadow, these methodically twinkling lights became the anchor that completely stabilized Maurice’s mind. After a moment of shock, he realized what the flickering lights were—
He was facing the God of Wisdom, Rahm.
In every university and laboratory of the Academy of Truth, depictions of Rahm were present, and Rahm’s Scripture also contained corresponding verses—this deity, who held both wisdom and foolishness, bore no human form, hiding in the mist, occasionally revealing an outline that was a plane dotted with lights, with dozens of points circling a round glow.
“My Lord!” Maurice jolted to attention, quickly paying homage to the matrix of lights that had sheltered him, “Are You guiding me?”
However, those flickering “lamps” didn’t respond to the old scholar, only emitting a vague, deep tremor. After some time passed, Maurice finally heard Rahm’s “voice” in the recesses of his mind—
“Return, touch, understand, convey…”
“You…”
Maurice looked at the cluster of lights, perplexed. He couldn’t comprehend Rahm’s intentions, but the elusive God of Wisdom didn’t grant him the opportunity to inquire further—within the next second, a strong rejection surged, and in an instant, Maurice was “ejected” from this chaotic and terrifying place.
His body wobbled, his brain seething like boiling liquid, as the mundane world’s information flooded his senses—the cacophony of traffic on the streets, the distant tolling of bells, the chill wind, the clear ring of a bicycle bell.
Then came the rapidly approaching footsteps, the concerned voice of a girl—very familiar, it was his “student.”
“Mr. Maurice?! What brought you here… Are you alright?”
Maurice, in a daze, looked up to see Nina standing before him, but in the next second, the girl in front of him transformed into a blaze of arcing flames, its surroundings engulfed in ashes that seemed to cover the entire City-State—then morphed back into human form.
His gaze rigidly shifted to the side, spotting a giant shimmering with starlight looming over him. The giant’s interior swarmed with maddening light and shadow, yet this giant suddenly turned into a middle-aged man with a familiar face, looking down at him with concern, his eyes filled with the shadows of Subspace.
The distant streets trembled, the ground beneath his feet writhed, the storefronts’ windows and doors went from normal to void-like black caverns, the sky hung down askew, cascading flames and amorphous limbs flickered in and out of the clouds; a passerby on a bicycle rushed past nearby, his body momentarily transforming into fragmented concrete before returning to normal.
Maurice struggled to lower his gaze to his wrist.
On it was a bracelet strung with colorful stones, four in total.
But the stones didn’t continue to crumble, nor did his sanity slide any further towards madness. The world in his eyes was severely distorted, yet his ability to think and judge had recovered… at least partly.
The old scholar swiftly discerned his current state—under the protection of Rahm, he had attained a temporary balance known as the “Madness Threshold.”
He had gone mad—yet the god allowed his madness to assume the guise of sanity.
Perhaps he could recover, but he must find a way to do so before Rahm’s protection ended, before all the pebbles shattered; otherwise, the temporary Madness Threshold might collapse at any moment, and no one would be able to rescue his sanity from the frenzy.
As Morris pondered slowly and with difficulty, Nina and Duncan were also looking with concern at the old man, whose state was clearly askew.
They had been practicing cycling when they suddenly saw Morris standing on the empty ground next to them. Nina had intended to run over to greet him but realized halfway that something was wrong with the old man’s expression.
Blank, hazy, unresponsive to the world around him, he looked as though he was standing asleep with his eyes open.
“Could it be sudden dementia?” Duncan muttered, waving his hand in front of Morris’s face, then turned to look at Nina, “Has your teacher been like this at the Academy these past few days?”
“No, not at all,” Nina shook her head, supporting the old man’s arm as she spoke, “The teacher has always been in good health; how could he suddenly become demented!”
“People of advanced age are unpredictable,” Duncan said, taking the other arm of Morris and then glancing up at the sky, “Let’s not talk here any longer, looks like it’s about to rain; let’s get the old man inside first.”
“Nina responded with a sound of understanding and together with Duncan, they supported the bewildered Morris into the shop. She then ran back to the open space outside, moving the bicycle indoors.
Duncan eased Morris down on a chair beside the counter. At this moment, it seemed as though the old man regained a bit of his ability to think. He sat down with a rigid expression, his head slowly turning left and right until his gaze finally settled on Duncan.
“Return, touch, understand, transmit…”
Rahm’s voice resonated abruptly in his mind.
The vestiges of Morris’s sanity seemed to grasp these few words.
Was this the will of the God of Wisdom? To continue contact with this… “entity” in front of him?
In Morris’s eyes, Duncan momentarily stabilized into a human shape. Although all the scenery around him continued to tremble and warp, at least he could not see the true form of the stellar giant for the moment, and reason was gradually gaining the upper hand.
Morris had realized that this ordinary-looking “antique shop owner” definitely should not exist in the real world.
And even his “student,” the girl who always smiled gently, eternally sunny and optimistic, was not a normal human being.
To keep staying here, to keep interacting with this “family” meant he might soon surpass the balance point of the Madness Threshold and slide into the abyss of permanent madness.
Yet the voice of the God of Wisdom seemed to take root in his mind, compelling him to sit motionless. Meanwhile, a more audacious thought began to gradually fill his heart.
In the “Madness Threshold” under divine protection, even if his sanity veered toward lunacy, it would not completely lose control. As long as he didn’t cross that critical point, he could even confront the Subspace while maintaining his self, preserving his humanity…
It was said that the greatest yet maddest seekers of knowledge in the Cretan Kingdom would actively use this, and after a lifetime’s preparation, they would embrace the “Madness Threshold” through potions and rituals. In the sole opportunity of their lives, they would peer into the truths of Subspace and bring precious knowledge back to the human world, then nobly accept death.
Now, it seemed he stood on the same “battlefield” where those sages of the Cretan era once stood.
Slowly, a change came over the old gentleman’s blank and stiff face. He began to smile, his cloudy eyes looking at Duncan, and he spoke slowly, “Good day, Mr. Duncan.”
Duncan looked at the changes in the old man’s expression and suddenly felt a chill run down his spine.
This old man… why does his smile suddenly seem so terrifying?