Chapter 1109: 96. Playing Ghost

“Hiss...”

The candle flame went out, and Theodore almost collapsed into the chair.

His temples throbbed with sharp pain, as if they were about to split open.

Communicating with the existence called the Goddess of Night was probably already the most inconceivable thing in all of Annabawei. Even using the swaying candle flame as a medium, the pressure it brought him was still enormous.

Whether physically or mentally.

His body was corroded by the Goddess’s power, cold as a dead man.

And just the terrifying hissing and temptation hidden between Her words was enough to make any ordinary person whose mind was not firm completely collapse.

Fortunately, he was not an ordinary person.

He was the president of the City-State United Pioneering Association.

A person without powerful strength, a person whose mind was not firm, absolutely could not sit in this position that led a group of people on the verge of despair forward.

“The consumption is even greater than I imagined.”

Theodore endured the pain, picked up the teacup, tilted his head back, and poured the tea dregs inside into his mouth.

He chewed.

Bitterness and tea fragrance surged into his mouth together. Two completely different sensations collided on the tip of his tongue. The tea fragrance rose upward, soothing his trembling mind, while the bitterness sank downward, stimulating his body, which had gone numb under divine intimidation.

Only after a full ten minutes did that indescribable sense of weakness recede like a tide.

The sharp pain gradually disappeared, and his body also returned to the control of his consciousness.

“I told you this tea was precious.”

Looking at the empty teacup, Theodore gave a helpless bitter smile, and suddenly felt glad that Bear King, that rough brute, had eyes but could not see.

The tea was actually only ordinary tea.

No, in Annabawei, the mere existence of something called “tea” was already not ordinary. After all, the last tea tree had long since withered away in the endless Long Night more than twenty years ago. It was a true treasure, where every leaf used meant one leaf fewer.

When he said ordinary, he meant that this tea did not contain any special power. It was only a placebo, something that could help him forcibly stabilize his mind on the edge of collapse.

Yes, the edge of collapse.

No matter how firm his mind was, even if he was the nominal leader of many Pioneers, he still could not suppress the trend of his spirit slowly walking toward ruin under this long-term pressure and burden.

Anyone who stayed in this endless night for too long would become a little abnormal.

But...

Theodore poured himself another cup of water and, through the rippling surface, stared at his own blood-red eyes, which were covered in veins.

“I don’t want to go mad like the Goddess,” he murmured.

At least, not now.

He still had the most important thing unfinished.

Theodore firmed his heart, drank all the water in the cup in one gulp, and quickly took out a sheet of paper to write and draw, shaping the last bit of the idea in his mind into form.

It was a new road, one that had never existed before... or perhaps, over the past several hundred years, someone had mentioned it before, but no one had ever thought it could be completed.

Just as Bear King had said earlier, it was a mad plan.

Could it succeed?

It could.

Definitely.

Because very soon, they would have no road left to choose.

“The key lies with that outsider. He is the key to breaking the situation.”

Theodore tore up everything he had written, directly ate it into his stomach, and for him, ordinary paper was also decent food.

Then he tapped his fingers and thought seriously.

“Although I do not understand why he can break the situation, since it is the Goddess’s instruction, it definitely cannot be wrong.”

As he thought, Theodore rose and pulled open a narrow gap in the curtains that had originally been tightly covered, gazing into the distance of the street.

Naturally, the outsider’s figure was no longer there.

“I stole a glance at him just now and almost got discovered by him.”

Thinking of what had just happened, Theodore still felt lingering fear.

With only one glance, he had nearly been locked onto.

Fortunately, as the president of the Pioneering Association, his strength was not too bad either. At the very least, among the many Pioneers, he was one of the outstanding ones. If he only stole one glance, of course he would not reveal any traces.

It was not as if that outsider could really have eyes growing on the back of his head.

“It seems Grandma Meg saying that he was powerful was not baseless. That makes sense. If he were an ordinary person, he could not have entered this place, nor could he have become the key to breaking the situation that the Goddess spoke of.”

“He should arrive here tomorrow with that little girl. When the time comes, I can try making contact with him.”

Theodore carefully planned the details after that bit by bit. He knew his current state no longer allowed him to make any mistake.

“The initiative must be on my side. Otherwise, it will be very hard to feel at ease.”

Fortunately, Theodore was very confident in this aspect.

After all, under circumstances where information was unequal, if he still could not seize the initiative, then he had no need to be president anymore.

“I’ll quietly wait for tomorrow. That will be the beginning of everything... and also the end of everything.”

Letting his words scatter with the wind, Theodore turned and left the room.

This was only the place where he worked, so naturally, he would not stay here all the time.

Moreover, in order to welcome that moment, he felt that he should also sleep properly for once after a long absence and replenish his mind.

Thus, along with a slight clack, the room completely returned to silence.

There was no light, and no person existed there. The empty room was like time had frozen. Aside from the dust flying freely everywhere, there was nothing here that could move.

Creak—

But suddenly, the chair Theodore had been sitting in just now moved on its own.

Theodore was a meticulous person. Before leaving, he had put away his documents, his personal belongings, and even pushed the chair he usually sat in close to the desk with not the slightest carelessness.

But now, that chair moved outward on its own, moving several dozen centimeters away from the desk. Then it suddenly shook, as if pressed down by some heavy object.

Those documents flew up one by one, then returned to their original positions after all of them had been flipped through once.

Even the desk drawers opened on their own. The can Theodore regarded as a treasure was taken out and shaken in the air a few times.

“All empty? What a pity. I originally wanted to taste what real tea here tasted like.”

The tea can was stuffed back in.

Just like that, inside the room where there was originally no one at all, those things were turned over one by one, then placed back one by one. From time to time, something would even float in midair, only to fall back down after a very long while.

A terrifying scene like a haunting.

If someone had been here, forget any president with a firm mind—even Bear King Theresa, who was always bold and careless, afraid of neither heaven nor earth, might have been frightened into a heart attack.

What scene had they not seen before? Crossed out.

They really had never seen a scene like this.

“So that’s how it is. The power of that Goddess of Night really is not as strong as I imagined. If the light source being mobilized does not reach a certain degree, it will not draw Her spying. I was being too cautious before.”

A faint glimmer of light vaguely flashed, and the air before the desk twisted for a moment.

It revealed the handsome blond figure sitting upright in the chair.

He had practically touched everything in the room, yet had not left even a single fingerprint behind. He interlaced his hands, propped up his chin, and quietly stared at the empty tabletop.

“Interesting. I really saw an interesting scene.”

Theodore was extremely meticulous, and had even carried away the candle he had just used with him, but the corners of Muen’s mouth still could not help curving up.

“The dignified president of the City-State United Pioneering Association actually hides alone in his room and secretly contacts the Goddess of Night? Several hundred years ago, that would be one thing. Back then, after all, She was still an object of faith. But the current Goddess of Night, for the people here, should be a taboo, right?”

Did this count as communicating with the enemy?

“No, they were just... ‘communicating.’”

Although due to some interference from miscellaneous noise, Muen had not clearly learned what that president and the Goddess had said.

But this behavior alone was enough to analyze many things.

“That president’s reason does not look affected, and he can actually communicate directly with the Goddess of Night. Which is to say... the Goddess of Night also possesses reason. She has not gone completely mad. Instead, She is in a state of sometimes being lucid and sometimes being deranged?”

“If that is the case, then compared with the fairy-tale story of Lord Alan taking back daylight from the Goddess of Night, this can indeed explain the difference between the Daylight Period and the Long Night Period more clearly.”

“Then the Goddess went mad and kept going mad, Her condition worsened, and only then did tonight’s darkness descend early?”

“So, taking advantage of the fact that She had not gone completely mad yet, the Goddess hurried to contact the humans here... and put forward a certain request?”

Muen imitated Theodore and tapped his fingers, thinking constantly.

The scene just now had made many outlines that were vague to him become clear.

“Everything is reasonable.”

“I, this outsider, seem to have been targeted a long time ago, and I will also have to play a very important role in some matter. Unlike the deranged Goddess who sent out evil cultists, the lucid Goddess of Night does not seem to want to kill me. Otherwise, this president would have to set a trap for me instead of thinking about taking advantage of me tomorrow.”

“But before all of that, regarding the Goddess’s lucidity and madness...”

A bizarre hypothesis began to surface in Muen’s mind.

“No.”

Muen suddenly closed his eyes.

“That should only be me overthinking.”

There was no need to think that deeply.

Although, from the current view, the truth of this Annabawei was still covered in some kind of fog, and one wrong step might bring danger, this matter was significantly different from the Salvation Society incident in the royal capital.

He was only an outsider, a pure outsider. He did not need to be responsible for anyone. His first priority was only to preserve himself... and as it happened, what he was best at was escaping and saving his own life. For the time being, there was still no existence here that could truly threaten his life.

Searching for those strange existences was only a goal he had incidentally set in confusion after being inexplicably thrown into a place like this. It was not some necessary option where the world would be destroyed if he failed to complete it.

And most, most importantly, this time, he was not fighting alone.

No matter what, Miss Dragon would definitely cover the bottom line.

An existence that had been hunted by her for a full eight hundred years—she would not fail to act, nor could she possibly completely hand this matter over to him, one poor, weak, helpless, ordinary yellow-haired man.

She was definitely his strong backing!

Although, right now, he still did not know where exactly that backing had run off to...

“Ha... I’ve never fought such a rich battle before. Just thinking about it makes me feel relaxed.”

Muen stretched and temporarily pressed all the miscellaneous thoughts down into the bottom of his heart.

Including certain... guesses he deliberately ignored.

“In any case, I’ll go sleep first. No matter what the Goddess of Night and that president are thinking... tomorrow is the day Marcie has been looking forward to most.”