Shana carried the box and headed further south of the Fire Guard City. He took a boat ashore from the port of Bay Town, and then embarked on the road back to his hometown.
He left along this road back then, and he returns along this road now.
He saw the outline of the Fire Guard City from a distance.
Twenty years have passed and Fire Guard City has changed a lot. The trade route between Bay Town and Fire Guard City has also become more prosperous.
There are towns along the way, and new cities have been built.
"I wonder what's going on in Yoan Town."
Shana was once afraid of returning to his hometown, but after killing Carmon, he had a strong desire to go back.
He has been wandering for too long.
He has been lost for too long.
He was like a lonely boat lost at sea, eager for a place to dock.
Carmon was his former friend and later the enemy he wanted to kill the most.
But the last words he said touched the depths of Xia Na's heart.
"You can also have your own life."
Why did he desperately want to kill Carmon, and why was he so obsessed with everything that had happened.
I just want one.
Belongs to oneself.
A truly free life?
Go home and start all over again.
Everything in the past has passed, and every day from now on is a brand new day.
The Shaner family no longer has a mission, nor does it have any strings to bind them.
As Shana walked forward, he saw a crowd of people.
He saw the familiar mill in Joan Town and the new windmill in the mill.
He even faintly heard the clanging sounds coming from the blacksmith shop in Yoan Town, and heard the sounds of children playing...
Twenty years have passed in Yoan Town. There have been a lot of new faces in the town, but there are also a lot of old faces missing.
Although the life span of Snake people is theoretically long, most people cannot live to that theoretical value.
"Who is this?" The young man didn't know Xia Na at all.
"Anyone from outside the town?" On the street, people kept poking their heads out of their rooms to look outside.
"Looks familiar." Some people thought Xia Na looked familiar, but they failed to recognize at a glance that this down-and-out man was the child of a lord who once lived in the town.
One of them recognized Shana and shouted at him.
"Xiao Shana?"
"Is it Xiao Shana?"
But as soon as he shouted it out, he immediately changed his words.
"No, it should be Lord Xana."
The Shaner family is the lord of this town, and the heirs will usually be granted the title of Oathsworn in a nearby small village when they reach adulthood.
Shana heard a familiar shout and looked over.
He is the son of a blacksmith and Shana's childhood friend.
And now he is the father of three children.
When the blacksmith saw Xia Na looking at him, he was finally convinced.
He rushed over excitedly: "Are you back?"
Shana nodded.
The blacksmith asked him: "Will you leave again?"
Shana replied: "Maybe..."
He hesitated for a moment, then nodded and said, "I'm not leaving."
"I won't leave again."
The blacksmith was happy that Shana could come back: "That's great. Tell me how a nobleman like you ended up like this. Can't you just stay in Yoan Town?"
Shana smiled.
It was the first time in so many years that he smiled so happily.
"yes!"
"Can't you just stay in Yoan Town?"
"But sometimes, there is always no way to do it well."
Seeing that the blacksmith didn't understand what he said, Xia Na patted him on the shoulder: "But it's fine now."
Shana and the blacksmith were talking. The blacksmith rarely saw his childhood friend, chatting endlessly about their childhood.
At this time, the blacksmith's sons came to the door with another young man. One of the young men looked at Shana's back and shouted excitedly.
"Father."
"you are back?"
Xia Na looked at the young man in his twenties in confusion and didn't realize it for a moment.
"Who are you?"
Suddenly his pupils shrank, and he noticed that the face of the young man in front of him was almost exactly the same as his own when he was a child.
Shana immediately understood who the young man in front of him was.
He is the next generation of the Shana clan.
Shana stepped back unconsciously and moved the hammer hanging behind him.
He stared at the young man in front of him, his whole face was numb, but his heart was in turmoil.
"what happened?"
"How did you..."
He didn't understand why the other party was still there.
He clearly destroyed the entire underground palace and killed the old guy who manipulated everything.
Why is a new Shana clan born?
Shouldn't this reincarnation be over?
For Xia Na, this feeling was like a bucket of ice water poured on the top of his head.
"How do you know it was me?"
Shana's "son" told him: "I met you when I was a child, father."
"It seems to be when I was very young, when was it?"
The young man also looked puzzled and finally said.
"I don't remember either."
Shana immediately recalled that when he killed the old man, the child wrapped in the cocoon opened his eyes.
They looked at each other, one was innocent, the other was full of fear.
Except for that one time, it was impossible for them to meet again.
Shana's "son" didn't know what he was thinking at this moment, but he still said to him happily.
"Father!"
"You have been away from home for so long, and you are finally back."
"If grandpa knew, he would be happy."
Shana suddenly raised his head. The word "grandfather" was equivalent to "nightmare" in his mind.
"grandfather?"
Shana swallowed: "Is he still there now?"
But the moment Shana asked this question, he roughly understood that the grandfather should be his father.
But even he himself didn't dare to completely confirm whether the other person was his so-called "father" or the weird old man he once was.
The young man took Shana's hand and said, "Grandpa is at home now. He has been waiting for you to come back."
The "father and son" headed towards the Shana family's castle together. The "son" was filled with joy, but as a father, Shana's mood was extremely tense for a moment.
Who is the "grandfather" in the family?
Is that old guy really dead?
The moment Shana saw his "son", the future he thought was full of uncertainty.
Shana's "son" suddenly asked him at this time, with longing and expectation in his voice.
"Father!"
"Have you fulfilled God's mission?"
Xia Na looked at the other party, that childish and young face.
He seemed to be like this when he was a child, and he never doubted what God's mission was.
When faced with the other party's questions, he answered incorrectly.
"I thought I accomplished something."
"But it seems..."
Shana looked at his "son" with doubts in his eyes: "Everything is still going on."
The "son" didn't understand it at all, but thought it was a very profound sentence.
By this time we had arrived in front of the castle.
The gate opened and the servant stood in the yard.
"Son" rushed into the courtyard and shouted to the head of the Shana family standing on the stairs.
"grandfather!"
"grandfather!"
"Father, he is back, he is finally back."
Shana raised his head and saw the figure on the steps.
The elderly Shaner was walking on crutches, and he was moving very slowly.
But in Xia Na's eyes, he seemed to see a shadow covering the sky and sun from under the opponent's feet, trying to wrap him up and hang him in the darkness.
The figure and eyes were almost exactly the same as Shana's grandfather.
But Shana didn't notice that his current embarrassment and vicissitudes were exactly the same as those of his former "father".
Waited for a long time.
The old man slowly came to Xia Na.
The old man's eyes were cloudy, but there was a terrifying look in these cloudy eyes.
The old man stared at Xia Na with a hook-like gaze, weighing him down like a huge mountain.
Neither of them spoke, they just looked at each other.
To ordinary people, this atmosphere would appear to be a touching scene of a father and son reuniting after many years. The two were speechless and could only shed a few tears.
But Xia Na almost couldn't help but take action directly, he was screaming crazily in his heart.
"This is the old thing."
"This is him!"
"He's alive again, he's alive again."
"He is still..."
His fingers couldn't help but tremble under his sleeves, the muscles all over his body stiffened into a ball, and his cheeks were unconsciously strained by the bite of his teeth.
Just when Shana was about to lose control.
In the end, it was the old man who spoke first, speaking to Shana in a hoarse voice.
"came back!"
"my son."
-------------------
After a "warm" family dinner, the old man raised his head and looked at Shana.
"It looks like it's almost done. Come with me later."
Shana's "son" raised his head: "What's the matter?"
Old man: "Your father and I have something to say."
After speaking, he added another sentence.
"About your coming-of-age ceremony in a few days."
The old man looked at Shana's "son" with expectant eyes: "That's when the time comes."
"You can leave Yoan Town and go outside to perform your duties."
Shana's "son" was very excited, his face flushed under the light.
Middle-aged Xia Na followed the old man to the depths of the corridor, passing paintings and stone carvings one after another.
The old man stopped and pushed open the door with the ancient words engraved with "When the Creator returns, the gods will awaken."
The familiar slope leads to the depths, like a big mouth that swallows everything.
The two of them walked down the long slope.
The old man asked Shana: "How is Carmon?"
Shana answered him: "Kamon is dead, and all the Kamon clan have been killed by me."
Xia Na looked at the old man and meant something.
"The threads that tied us no longer exist. It's over."
Old man: "Really?"
There was a look of envy in the old man's eyes: "Very good, they have completed their mission."
"All that's left is to wait for the last moment."
Shana didn't understand what the old man meant, and the old man didn't continue the topic.
Xia Na's eyes were still fixed on the old man, and he asked directly.
"who are you?"
"Is it Shana from the previous generation?"
"still?"
He looked into the old man's eyes. The ruthlessness in his eyes and the despair that traveled through the ages were like hooks that hooked into people's hearts.
These are a pair of eyes that should not belong to humans.
While the old man was in action, he told Xia Na some past events.
"When I was young, I also had a friend. I rode a dragon with him across the plains of animal husbandry to see the legendary frozen plateau. The Mirror of the Sky is really the most beautiful place in the world, so holy.
Flawless.”
"Before that, I had a friend; he was a captain, and I went on an adventure on the sea with him. Together we wanted to cross the stormy sea. As a result, everyone died in the sea, and I was the only one alive.
Come down."
"A long time ago, I started a family and gave birth to several children. Unfortunately, I didn't get to watch them grow up because I had to complete my mission."
"Longer ago."
"..."
Xia Na was stunned. He had heard some of the stories and some had not.
However, the timeline spans more than a hundred years, and it cannot happen to the same generation of Shana.
The Shana clan themselves are not powerful people, and can only rely on the power of props, so their lifespan is similar to that of ordinary snake people, or even lower.
They cannot even accept magical powers such as gifts of power, because they are not living people; they cannot be transformed into ghosts, bone demons, or abyss monsters, because they are essentially puppets.
Shana: "No!"
"This is not one person's story."
"This is the story of one generation after another. There are stories from decades ago, and there are also stories from a hundred years ago."
The old man's hoarse voice spoke again: "Then let me tell you my story from hundreds of years ago."
"besides."
"A story from thousands of years ago."
Xia Na suddenly didn't understand and couldn't understand the old snake man in front of him.
"What kind of monster are you?"
The old man stopped and they just reached the end of the road at this time.
The old snake man suddenly turned his head to look at Shana. The two people's eyes seemed to be shining in the darkness, and the old snake man suddenly burst out laughing.
"Don't you understand yet?"
"Shaina!"
"One day you will become me and have all Shana's memories."
"We have always been one person, we don't differentiate between each other."
"We are born from the same personality, and will eventually end up with the same memory and destination."
Xia Na vaguely understood.
The Shana clan is not a living being, not even a group of puppets.
The root of all Shana clan is a certain person's personality. When they are old, they will retrieve all their memories and become true and perfect Shana.
"Is this the secret of the Shana clan?"
The middle-aged Xia Na should not know this, but at this moment, the old Xia Na told the middle-aged Xia Na.
It seems that after generations of reincarnation, it has reached a certain critical node at this moment.
Shana's head was numb at the moment, and it was difficult for him to accept this answer.
Although he understood Shana's existence mode, he didn't understand why he did this.
He doesn't understand.
What is the meaning of the existence of the Shana clan, what kind of people created them, and why they were created.
"Why?"
"Why are we created like this?"
"for what?"
"Is it for that so-called mission?"
Shana raised his head and looked at the back of the old man's head.
"Why do we have to stick to that mission? Why do we have to complete it?"
The old snake man didn't answer, and the two of them walked into a stone room together.
Go down inside the stone chamber and stop and open it after a long time.
The underground palace built by the Shaner family for thousands of years is long gone, leaving only a mess.
A cave filled with rubble and an underground pool.
Shana saw densely packed threads intertwined together, eager to find a new carrier.
And in the center of the pool, where the white silk threads meet.
You can see a newborn snake child wrapped in a cocoon, waiting to be conceived.
The old snake man pointed to the cocoon and said to Shana.
"look!"
"That's why."
Shana came to the edge of the pool, and his eyes were splitting as he looked at the newborn Shana clan in the cocoon.
"What exactly is going on?"
"How come a new Shana is born?"
He roared at the old man, wanting to kill this guy immediately.
"What exactly do you want to do? Why do you want to create puppets named Shana from generation to generation?"
"That so-called mission must be completed?"
"Can't you let yourselves go and let us go?"
The old man told Shaner: "The mission must be completed."
Shana vehemently retorted: "But there is no line anymore, and there is no Camon."
The old man looked at the childish Shana and shook his head.
"The line is not our enemy!"
"Shaina!"
"We are just chasing the same end point, looking for the final relief."
Xia Na calmed down and was no longer as impulsive as when he was young.
"I'm waiting for your answer."
The old man's voice seemed to have magic power, transporting Shana to a long time ago and telling him a truly desperate story.
"Millions of years ago."
"A god has fallen."
"Although the god died, he left behind a plan to resurrect himself. His former believers and huge forces began to work hard for this plan."
"He left a prophecy."
At this time, the old man pronounced this language in the language of the Sanye people.
"The day when the Creator returns will be the day when the gods awaken."
This sentence also means that He will be resurrected in the era when the Creator returns.
"The god's plan is to create a special item called the Destined String Couple, with the purpose of resurrecting himself."
"The line is from the Kamon clan, and I am from the Shana clan."
"All stories start from here. Resurrecting the gods is the mission of Shana and the Kamon family."
Shana stepped forward: "Where is this prop? Why don't you find it?"
"Is that why we have to fulfill our mission?"
The old man put his hand into the water and looked at himself in the reflection.
"I have no idea."
"It's like I don't know how to catch this reflection in the water."
The Shana clan doesn't know.
After mortals die, they will turn into the dream of life and return to the sea of dream stars. The dream of life is condensed by the laws of creation and will never dissipate."
This is a law set by the Creator.
But this god used the laws of the Creator. He planned to integrate the props into the dream of life at the moment when the dream of life was condensed. This was also part of the manufacturing of the props.
This set of rituals is very complicated. First of all, it requires a person to be willing to do it; and this person has a strong belief that will not dissipate due to falling into a nightmare. He paranoidly believes that God will be resurrected and run this dream of life that belongs to faith.
The dream of life is born due to the law of creation, and it will immediately ascend to the dream realm of the gods.
But also because the dream of life has become part of the prop, he no longer belongs to the complete dream of life at that moment.
Therefore, it cannot belong to the dreamy sea of stars in the kingdom of the Creator God.
No one can find this dream of life that disappeared outside the dreamy sea of stars, not even the goblins, not even the forest fairies.
From then on, this prop will always linger on the edge of the dream world.
Like a ghost wandering beyond life and death.
Reflections rippled in the water, and the old man continued to tell the story.
"But we know that the destined couple will draw a thread from an unknown place and release it into the mortal world."
"Wherever the thread is, a new pair will be created."
"This is the endless reincarnation purgatory of the Kamon and Shana clan."
The old man stretched out his finger and pointed at the new generation of Shana clan in the cocoon.
His hands were shaking at the moment, and his eyes were filled with endless despair.
"Have you seen?"
"Even if I die, even if you die."
"We are still being reborn."
"Even if you are not born here, you will be born somewhere else."
"If you fail to complete your mission, the cycle will keep repeating itself."
The old man's voice was extremely desolate: "Even!"
"Is there a thread? Is there a Camon?"
"We are all the same, and we have to follow the same mission."
"We must complete it. Only by completing it can we be freed from this reincarnation."
The old man's voice became louder: "What really controls us is not the thread."
"Shaina!"
"It is the will of God and the fate of the Shana family from generation to generation!"
Shana's whole body froze in front of the pool, and then slumped down little by little. He felt that his strength was being drained away little by little.
He never imagined that everything would be like this.
He suddenly looked at the old snake man and asked him: "Can't it be changed?"
The old snake man told Shana: "Even death can't change it."
"No, death does not belong to us."
"Because we have never lived."
The old snake man's crutch broke the ripples in the water: "Xiana!"
"We are just a couple, we..."
"no future."
The old snake man lowered his body and crawled in front of the pool with Xia Na in despair.
"The only way."
"The only way to end this cycle is to complete the mission."
"Unable to start the resurrection ceremony of God, no one can find the true destined couple."
"Only by starting this ritual, the destined couple will become a part of the ritual and a part of the gods."
"And we."
"We will also enter eternal peace together and be freed from this endless cycle."
When the old snake man said this, he grabbed Xia Na's hand.
"but."
"This is the last time."
"This is the last reincarnation."
"You have found the wisdom of the gods, and the Kamon clan has welcomed back the spirituality of the gods."
"The final ceremony is about to begin, right in Meiya City."
"You will inherit the memories of me and all Shana and execute the final plan."
The old snake man clutched Shana's hand tightly, with endless anticipation in his eyes.
just like.
A worm struggling desperately in a glass bottle, a hungry dog licking poison in a cage.
"The mission of resurrecting God is entrusted to you."
"Shaina!"
"The last moment has arrived. Shana, Carmen, the couple and everything will return to the gods."
"All reincarnations will end, and nothing will be reborn."
"Complete the final mission and don't let a new generation of Shana be born again."
"We are very tired."
"Should……"
"it's over."
Xia Na was completely stunned. He had never heard such a desperate story.
So desperate.
Even the word death sounds so pleasant to the ear.
After the old snake man said this, he patted the back of Xia Na's hand.
He walked toward the end of the pool.
He reached out and pressed the cocoon on the pool, and the cocoon and the Shana clan inside slowly disappeared.
It's like a dissolved egg.
He was telling Xia Na that as long as the mission was completed, there would be no more Xia Na clan.
After the old snake man finished doing this, he was wrapped in a white cocoon and gradually devoured and melted.
at the same time.
The thread in the pool also entangled Shana.
The memories in the old snake man's mind are constantly being transmitted to the next generation's Shana's mind. The memories are being synchronized through threads. The old snake man's voice can appear directly in Shana's consciousness without even speaking.
It's like having a conversation with yourself in your mind.
The real world disappeared, and the two figures stood in a world full of white on all sides.
One is slowly becoming staring, and the other is slowly disappearing away.
The white world suddenly changed, and countless pictures came from all directions, together with the old snake man's voice.
"look!"
"Shaina!"
"This is our memory."
"Have you ever felt that we are so similar? When you saw the next generation of Shana, did you also think of your past self and the past me?"
"Because we have exactly the same personality, we always make the same choices."
"Although we are experiencing different lives, we are making the same choices."
"Countless forks in the road."
"We are ultimately choosing the same path."
The old snake man's voice became farther and farther away, and Xia Na even felt that the voice gradually turned into his own voice, that he was speaking.
"When we are young, we look for our destiny."
"When we are young, we change our destiny."
"In old age, we accept our fate."
"We wander around in destiny again and again."
"We are wandering in the labyrinth of destiny, finding neither a way out nor an end."
After the old snake man said these words, he completely disappeared into the underground cave where the Shana family had hidden secrets for thousands of years.
The older generation of Shana died, and no new generation of Shana was born.
It also means that this endless cycle is beginning to come to an end little by little.
The endless ring begins to break from this node.
Then from the breaking point, it is annihilated bit by bit.
After the endless cycle of three generations of Xana, there are now only two Xana clan left.
Shana himself was overwhelmed by endless memories. He saw dense white threads connecting the two stones.
Two stones are inlaid on a stone slab with a string-carrying puppet painted on it.
"The fateful couple." Shana said its name.
But the fateful couple he saw was just an image in his memory, not a real Sequence 19 prop.
Shana felt countless strange and ancient species memories wash into his mind, and saw the reincarnation of Shana generation after generation.
The pain and loneliness of the eternal cycle are thrown into consciousness.
Directly crush Xia Na.
Xia Na's body was shaking violently, and his face was filled with fear and despair.
Xia Na helplessly hugged his head.
He kept repeating one sentence: "The mission must be completed."
"Got to get it done!"
"Must...must...finish it..."
"We must complete it at all costs. It's time to end...it's time to end..."
"It's...over..."
And the oldest memories keep pouring in, stretching back hundreds of millions of years.
Shana was in pain like an insect struggling on the ground, but at this moment he suddenly realized that the world around him had changed.
He raised his head weakly and found that he had once again arrived at the "Lost Country".
The city where the gods descended.
In front of the Palace of Wisdom.
He once again stood among the crowd of gods from the previous era, and in front of him stood the three-leaf man he had seen in his fantasy.
His eyes fell on him across eternity, and he spoke the nightmare-like question again.
"Shaina!"
"Have you waited?"
Xia Na looked at the other party, and this time he suddenly understood.
The other party is the beginning of everything, the other party is the existence that created this eternal nightmare.
He looked at the other party in despair, tears constantly falling from his eyes.
He questioned the other party, he sobbed and roared.
"Why?"
"who are you?"
"Why are you doing this?"
"Why?"
"Why do you torture us like this?"
He wanted to grab the other party's clothes, but the illusion in his memory had reached its end.
He jumped into the pool, and the cold water brought him back to reality.
Shana has aged a lot, and his straight body has collapsed and become a little rickety.
He raised his head.
These are a pair of eyes that should not belong to humans, revealing the despair that has traveled through eternity.
------------------
The castle of the Shaner family.
The new generation of Shana is having a coming-of-age ceremony, and only his father is performing it for him.
Shana of the previous generation passed away due to illness, and the funeral had just been held.
Although Xiao Shana was very sad because of the passing of her grandfather, she was also excited about the coming of age ceremony.
In his eyes.
It reveals a yearning for the outside world and expectations for the future.
During the ceremony, he asked his father.
"Father."
"What is the mission of the family? How should I do it?"
"Father" told him: "God will guide you."
"Xiao Shana!"
Xiao Shana looked confused, but could only pretend to understand.
"Father" took out the Stone of Wisdom and integrated it into Xiao Shana's body during the ceremony, and extremely powerful power surged out of him.
Xiao Shana was stunned and looked at her father in ecstasy.
"What a powerful force."
"Father" told him: "This is a gift from God."
He was excited to experience his own strength, and when he turned around, he happened to look into his father's eyes.
The father opened his mouth, wanting to ask something, but closed his mouth again.
After much hesitation, his father asked him.
"Shaina!"
"You will fulfill God's mission, right?"
Xiao Shana nodded: "I will definitely do it."
Xiao Shana's young heart was very restless. He combined his desire and expectation for the outside world with the expectation of completing his mission.
After the ceremony was successful, Xiao Shana couldn't wait to pack her luggage and start setting off.
Go to a distant place.
Shana, who had become a "father", stood in front of the castle and watched his "son" go away.
Suddenly he said to himself: "Will he do it?"
"Will he be resentful?"
"Resent himself?"
From his perspective, generations of the Shaner clan appeared behind him.
They have the same personality, but different memories.
Shana asked other Shana: "Why don't we just tell him?"
Others responded to him.
"Then he would have no motivation to pursue his mission."
"And that would just bring despair to an early stage, and it would be meaningless."
"Even if it is short-term happiness, at least I have had it before."
In front of the castle, there was only silence and despair.