Chapter Seventy: Returning Home

When the dawn broke and the sun rose through the clouds, Mana Mizuhara left that desolate mountain called Arana.

Though she had spent barely a single night there, as she descended, Mana Mizuhara felt as if an era had passed.

At the final step down the mountain path, as her feet touched the woodland of the countryside, Mana Mizuhara turned to look back.

Arana still stood behind her, towering in an eternal posture, gazing down upon all beneath as if unchanged since time immemorial.

It was a mountain neither too high nor too low, not particularly remarkable compared to others in Japan.

Yet the sacred tree within, and the deity incarnate dwelling there, seemed to stand upon a summit loftier than any earthly peak, gazing serenely upon all creation.

…

In truth, when Shiguya had told her, “You will stand at the same height as Mio Ito, and see the world through her eyes,” Mana Mizuhara had a question in her heart—something she wished to ask:

“If that’s so… then at what height do you stand? What kind of world do you see?”

Perhaps Shiguya would not have answered, dismissing it as idle chatter with a laugh.

Or perhaps, intrigued, he would have explained, describing it to her as he once had in the bookstore—yet that vision was surely too grand, too unfathomable to truly grasp.

So Mana Mizuhara never spoke the question aloud.

Just as she did not now.

Mana Mizuhara tightened her grip on the crystal-like drop of blood in her pocket.

Though she had not become, like Mio Ito, a monster surpassing human limits in every respect,

those days spent with the pendant had nonetheless elevated her physical abilities severalfold.

With a mere thought, Mana Mizuhara could sense the stress threshold of that crystal blood.

A gentle squeeze, and it would surely shatter.

And then—

What would happen then?

She did not need to be told; Mana Mizuhara could imagine it herself.

It was the scene she had once dreamed of—standing before the gateway to occult mysteries.

A fantasy shared by billions across the globe.

In that moment, she would become the supernatural being she had once yearned for.

…And yet, she could not bring herself to decide.

In the end, the girl simply held the crystal blood, silently returned it to her pocket, and walked away through the fields toward the distant horizon.

Behind her, the mountain still loomed.

…

“In fact, there are some errors in your thinking about this.”

“If you were to ask me—about the height at which I stand, the sights that I see—such questions would not bore me. Not only would I answer, I would answer with utmost care: vividly, lively, with a reality so palpable you would feel as though you stood within it yourself.

“But I am certain—unless your brain has evolved to a far higher level, you would not wish to see what I see.”

High atop Arana, Shiguya appeared to be muttering to himself.

But only he knew that he was not speaking to another persona, nor to any imaginary friend, but was answering the question that had just arisen in the girl’s heart.

In Shiguya’s eyes, with all his sensory faculties unfurled, the world unfolded in dimensions and scales beyond human imagining—splendors that the ordinary mind, let alone the eyes, could not begin to comprehend.

—The compacted soil beneath him resolved into countless individual grains of sand, each gap between them vast enough to hold a mountain.

Beneath the sand, layers of earth, groundwater, mineral veins in the crust, deep into the mantle and core—at a glance, the entire Earth from surface to center was revealed, even the deepest molten rock flickering at the edge of his vision.

On a still smaller scale, molecular and atomic structures appeared with perfect clarity, the outlines of electron clouds forming vague shapes in his sight, which, the instant he observed them, became certain reality.

In that instant, all five senses unified exquisitely, at once reaching toward the macrocosmic and the minute—sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch blending perfectly. Shiguya could smell the steadfast bonds between particles, hear the crisp fragrance of electron transitions, see the quantum collapse of matter around him blossom in a single Planck instant like a flower unfurling with sound.

Sight was hearing, hearing was taste, taste was touch, touch was smell, smell was sight. The five senses converged and diverged; one sensation was all sensations; all sensations dissolved into one.

Both wave and particle—the world that ordinary humans could only describe by probability in equations became, in Shiguya’s vision, a half-real, half-imaginary realm of infinite possibility.

“Though I have not yet attained the absolute limit of the microscopic…

“…Quantum observer…

“…Have my senses, my vision, evolved to this point already?

“Perhaps one day, when I can truly see the quantum cloud in its entirety—in that moment, all possibilities, all futures will be within my grasp, to shape as I wish.

“But—what a tiresome existence that would be.

“So—show me more possibilities, let me witness more of life’s potential.

“…The world, and the universe.”

Shiguya murmured to himself, and in the next instant, his figure vanished from where he stood.

…

Qingjiang Provincial Police Headquarters.

Once more, in office 527 of the “Behavioral Analysis Division.”

On the computer desk, a stack of at least several dozen files was piled high beside the monitor. The corners of the topmost few hundred pages were already frayed, evidence that their reader had pored over them countless times.

Beneath the desk, dozens of empty document folders lay scattered, but each bore the same label:

“8/12 Major Case Materials (Internal Use Only) (Confidential).”

At the desk, a young man named Lin Heng picked up a file, cross-referencing it with the investigation record on the screen, and resumed his monk-like analysis.

Lin Heng’s eyes were bloodshot as he flipped through the file. Who knew how many times he’d read this set of interviews by now. Yet, after dozens of minutes—as expected, he found nothing, just as he always did.

He rubbed his eyes, set the file aside, and slumped back in his chair with a sigh—something he had done hundreds of times in recent weeks.

Since the manor explosion in Qingxia City and the formation of the “8/12 Special Task Force,” as the only Behavioral Analysis Division in the provincial headquarters, he and the section chief had been drafted into the team.

He had thought it would be a chance to show his skills and crack a major case, but instead…

More than two months had passed, and still nothing!

No, it was worse than nothing—there wasn’t even a single solid lead. It was as if he were a mule circling a blind alley, with not a shred of hope in sight.

(The End of This Chapter)