81 Key
Beside the serpentine river outside Cordu Village, under the piercing sunlight, Aurore, clad in a casual blue dress, sat on the ground with her eyes closed, listening to Lumian’s conjectures and analysis.
She remained silent for a while, as if lost in thought.
After nearly a minute of contemplation, Aurore spoke, “If something truly occurred during the ritual on the twelfth night, causing the hidden entity’s power to disperse and trigger a time loop in Cordu and its surroundings, I believe that the people and even the spirits in this area at that time wouldn’t have been spared.”
“What do you mean?” Lumian, also seated on the ground, struggled to grasp his sister’s reasoning.
Aurore elaborated, “I mean that it’s both power and corruption. Once it disperses, everyone in this area will endure the corruption on relatively equal footing. Only those bearing the black thorn symbol or under the protection of other high-level entities can barely remain unaffected.
“Consider this: isn’t it like a dam bursting, flooding the entire place up to the rafters? Unless a boat was prepared beforehand, we’d undoubtedly be drenched.”
Lumian envisioned such a scene and hesitantly inquired, “So, does that mean everyone in the village has been tainted by the dissipating power, effectively becoming a component of the loop?”
By “component,” he didn’t mean participating in or being affected by the loop. More precisely, people became part of the loop’s structure.
Aurore, her eyes still closed and her blonde hair tied up, gently nodded.
“I suspect that not only will killing the padre result in a reset, but also slaying other villagers in Cordu will trigger a similar effect. It’s like trying to dismantle the loop’s components. There will surely be a reaction to such disruption.”
“But we just killed the midwife yesterday afternoon…” Lumian trailed off before finishing his sentence.
Suddenly, numerous thoughts raced through his mind, and he hesitantly proposed, “Is it because the people in the castle are protected by other high-level entities?
“Is that why Madame Pualis claimed she could leave the loop at a specific moment?
“She wasn’t tainted by that power. She’s not part of the loop. She’s affected, but she can exploit loopholes or seize opportunities to escape?”
Aurore sighed softly. “That’s why she said she can’t save us or take us with her. We’ve already been corrupted and are fused with the loop.”
At this, she managed a bitter smile. “Or rather, we’re already dead. We’re merely existing in the form of loop components.
“No wonder that mysterious lady said that if she forcibly ended the loop, everyone here would die. That’s because we are the forcibly dispersed loop itself.”
Lumian fell silent. He yearned to contradict his sister and argue that they shouldn’t be so pessimistic, but her words aligned with the mysterious woman’s.
What he couldn’t comprehend all this time was that, given the woman’s ability to freely enter and exit the loop and her audacity to mention the hidden entity, even if she couldn’t break the loop without causing any harm, it ought to be simple for her to safeguard two or three people and facilitate their departure.
Now, there was a more plausible and disheartening explanation to this conundrum.
After a few seconds, Lumian found a counterargument.
“Ava, Reimund, and Naroka are all dead, but their deaths didn’t cause the loop to restart.”
Aurore, her eyes still closed, offered a complex smile. “Perhaps they died before the loop began, so without participating in the ritual on the twelfth night, they weren’t tainted.”
Her implication was clear. In the timeline before the loop transpired, Naroka had perished before Lent, while Ava and Reimund had been sacrificed during the celebration. They didn’t survive until the twelfth night and were not part of the loop.
She paused for a moment and continued, “Jean Maury, who vanished today, might be in a similar situation. According to normal developments, he should have discovered something abnormal after Lent and before the twelfth night. He wanted to escape, but was silenced. Our investigation merely expedited this event.
“The only thing I don’t understand is that Reimund’s corpse was sacrificed, right? He shouldn’t have been in the loop from the start…”
Hearing his sister’s words, Lumian instantly recalled the events beneath the cathedral.
The invisible figure in the black robe was composed of Reimund and the others’ spirits!
Lumian combined his knowledge of mysticism and attempted to speculate.
“Maybe the Lenten sacrifice wasn’t made directly to the hidden entity, but to the altar. It’s part of the twelfth night’s ritual, so Reimund’s spirit appeared beneath the cathedral.
“His body is useless, but before the loop began, Pons Bénet and his associates could leave Cordu. To stop those downstream from finding the body and alerting the higher-ups, they might retrieve it after completing the ritual of sending it downriver.
“Once the loop started, the power had limits. It can’t cover the area where Pons Bénet and the others recovered the body. They’re affected by the corruption in their bodies and won’t consider leaving this area.”
Aurore pondered for a moment and nodded in agreement.
“In the past few days of the loop, other than you, the three foreigners, and Madame Pualis and her subordinates, none of the villagers have thought of leaving Cordu to hunt or gather wild fruit.
“If you hadn’t reminded me, I would’ve been the same.”
Aurore revealed a desolate, self-deprecating smile.
“We’re already a group of monsters. We’re barely surviving as humans by relying on the loop.”
“No, there must be a way for redemption. That lady said it exists!” Lumian interrupted his sister’s self-pity.
Aurore exhaled slowly and stated, “Can’t you let your sister be vulnerable for a few minutes?”
She continued, “Based on this line of thought, we can only rely on ourselves. Breaking the cycle with external forces is equivalent to killing us.”
Lumian sighed. “Unfortunately, there’s no way to verify this speculation at the moment. We can only confirm it on the twelfth night.”
“We can verify it, but it’ll waste a lot of our time. Besides, I can’t do it,” Aurore replied.
That’s true… Lumian roughly grasped his sister’s meaning and plan: Kill a villager not currently on the padre’s team to see if it would trigger a reboot. If it did, they could find a way to lure one of the three foreigners into a death trap and see if it triggered the cycle. If not, it would validate Aurore and Lumian’s guesses. Most people in Cordu Village had been corrupted and were part of the loop. Those who came later were only affected by the loop and had a chance to escape it with the help of loopholes or external forces.
However, that would squander many of the past few days, and Aurore wasn’t the type to kill innocents, especially those they had a good partnership with.
Lumian had no moral qualms in this regard. From his perspective, dying in the loop wasn’t true death. There was a high chance of only residual problems. That was much better than being trapped in the loop.
Of course, if he really wanted to do so, he wouldn’t try to murder Leah and the others. Instead, he would reason with the three foreigners.
With Valentine’s fanaticism and piety, he was confident he could persuade him to commit suicide.
The siblings exchanged glances and fell silent, unsure of what to say.
After a while, Lumian changed the subject.
“Grande Soeur, what do you think is the key to ending the loop from the inside?”
Aurore had been pondering this question. As she thought, she said, “We can’t just end the loop from the inside. We have to use this situation to remove the corruption in everyone’s bodies. Otherwise, what’s the difference between this and suicide?
“Yes, according to my previous guess, something happened to the ritual, causing the entire village to enter a loop. And the reason an accident occurred was that you bear the mark of that great entity. It was activated and sealed the heavy corruption in your heart…”
Aurore assessed her brother as she spoke.
Lumian instantly grasped her meaning.
“You mean I’m the key to ending the cycle?”
...
Aurore nodded. “The source of the accident lies with you, so naturally, the key to ending the cycle is with you.
“Of course, this is only a guess. Perhaps the key to the loop is the vessel that will bear the power of the hidden entity’s descent during the twelfth night’s ritual. For example, the padre or someone else…”
Aurore suddenly fell silent and looked at her brother for a few seconds.
“Could these two speculations be equivalent? You are the vessel? Otherwise, as an auxiliary sacrifice and contaminant, even if something unexpected happened, the ritual wouldn’t have failed disastrously and its power dissipated uncontrollably.”
Uh… The more Lumian thought about it, the more he felt that his sister’s guess made sense.
He muttered to himself, “That black thorn mark on my chest is darker than the padre’s was…
“So when the priest tried to deal with me, he showed signs of losing control, allowing me to kill him…
“Therefore, that mysterious lady never said how to end this loop. She just told me to explore the dream ruins and figure out their secrets…”
Aurore got a little pumped. “Yeah, that’s probably a clue!
“Maybe the dream ruins stem from the corruption in your body or are closely linked to it. So you can rely on the black thorn mark to take down every monster you run into there.
“Once you unlock the secrets, you can rein in or safely tap into the power in your body to some extent and siphon off the corruption from everyone in Cordu. The loop will break on its own.
...
“Yeah, maybe this can only be done at certain times. Like at the ritual on the twelfth night.”
Lumian leapt to his feet. “I’m heading back to dream now!”
“No rush.” Aurore slowly sat up. “Aren’t you hurt? Aren’t you going to rest?”
Lumian patted his chest.
“The liquid Madame Pualis sprinkled healed all my wounds and restored my spirituality.”
“Oh, was that pomelo sago… child-giving Guanyin…” Aurore muttered.
“Huh?” Lumian didn’t get it at all. His sister was speaking a totally foreign language.
Aurore smiled with her eyes closed.
“What I mean is, go home, fill your belly, take a nap, and explore your dreams!”