The Creatures That We Are

Inside wasn’t a small storage room, but a wholly unfamiliar world.

Although Gao Yang knew this was an illusion created by Qilin, the vividness of it still shocked him.

Like an Anywhere Door[1], the storage door stood on the land of gray earth on its own. All around it was a vast, endless wasteland. The sky was a thick, muddled dark blue. It could be dawn before the first ray broke, or night right after the sunset.

The blurred line between the sky and the earth evoked an empty and desolate feeling.

Gao Yang looked up ahead and was stunned by what he saw.

A pair of gates.

A pair of giant light gray gates made of Black Gold stood before him like a towering mountain. Gao Yang eyed it and estimated that it was at least a hundred meters tall with a width of over seventy meters. He couldn’t tell how thick it was since he was right before the gates.

Under the gates was the same gray earth, and surrounding it was a circle of faint blood fog, rising and falling silently like breaths exhaled by the gates.

“The Gates of Closure,” Vermilion Bird uttered with deference and awe, looking up at it.

“Yes.” Qilin walked toward it with his cane. “Let’s get closer.”

Gao Yang and Vermilion Bird followed him.

After a good while, they reached the Gates of Closure and finally got a good look at the patterns on them. Gao Yang enhanced his vision to inspect the gates closely.

The gates were etched with abstract reliefs. The center of the gates, especially, was covered densely in all sorts of monsters.

They tangled together with differing expressions, looking like they were both at each other's throats and huddling together. The monsters combined to form a circle.

Within the circle, delusion monsters were the most numerous, resembling humans of different sexes and ages. They were either laughing in joy, crying in heartbreak, scowling in anger, or looking completely numb.

Among them was a summoner in the form of a wolf, howling with its head tipped up. Its howl might be the reason for the range of emotions the delusion monsters were feeling.

And many delusion monsters’ necks and limbs were wrapped by tentacles—the devourers among wrath monsters were attacking them.

Slaughterers in lizardman form had also joined in the orgy of violence. With their arms and legs transformed into blades, they stabbed at the other monsters and splattered blood everywhere.

There were also frog-like greed monsters—freeriders—tipping their heads up in an amusing manner with their distorted large maw widened, splattering blood onto all monsters like fountains. Meanwhile, the overtakers, covered from head to toe in smooth scales, pierced the other monsters with bone stings morphed from their fingers.

There were also the pride monsters, of course. Circling the monsters along the border, they watched them with an impassive look on their faces. The other monsters rained down attacks on each other, but never at them.

Gao Yang stared at the sculpted relief of a myriad of monsters. He could almost hear the cacophony of excited, chaotic, and mournful cries, like the monsters had been thrown into a massive cauldron in hell.

And it looked like it too.

The grappling monsters formed a circle, and above the circle was a large standalone relief, portraying a feminine face with a gentle, loving smile. Her hair scattered in all directions like seaweeds, while she extended her long arms to embrace the monsters tearing at each other, as if she was embracing her own womb—in the form of a see-through circle.

Under the womb was another humanoid monster.

There was no determining its sex since there was only a skeleton left. It extended its arms fully too to prop up the womb filled with delusion, wrath, greed, and pride monsters.

Notably, the skeletal hands had seven fingers, four on the left hand, and three on the right hand.

That was what the reliefs on the Gates of Closure portrayed.

The light gray reliefs looked chaotic, distorted, mad, but also sacred and dignified in a way that exerted pressure, reminiscent of the mysterious, cold, and absurd universe.

Gao Yang felt shaken to the core in a way he’d never experienced before.

“The woman at the top...” Vermilion Bird softened her voice instinctively, as if she was worried about alerting the reliefs. “Is that a life monster?”

“And the skeleton...” Gao Yang chimed in, his tone colored by a hint of dread. “Is that a death monster?”

“Yes,” Qilin said calmly. “At least that’s what I believe.”

“Guildmaster, did you name the life monsters and death monsters?” Gao Yang asked.

With his back to Gao Yang and Vermilion Bird, Qilin shook his head slightly. “Of course not. ‘Greed, wrath, delusion, pride, life, and death.’ That was long known in the world of awakeners. I only realized that the words were referring to the six types of monsters when I saw the Gates of Closure.”

Gao Yang’s heart sank. Could it be Baili Yi?

Who exactly was Baili Yi? It felt like he was the true observer or the one pulling the strings behind the scene, nudging the way the Mist World developed.

Perhaps Baili Yi had said what he said to Gao Yang to different people at different times and locations. Gao Yang was merely one of the many pawns on Baili Yi’s board, and with each pawn acting as a node, the web of fate would be weaved.

Gao Yang fell into thought again.

“Come on, let’s get closer.” Qilin continued to walk with one hand holding his cane.

A minute later, the three of them were standing ten meters from the gates.

Only then did Gao Yang feel the enormity and presence of the Gates of Closure, as well as the sacredness that deterred anyone from challenging or defiling them.

Standing at the center and looking up at the gates that were completely shut, Qilin had conjured a Rune Circuit at some point—the Miracle Rune Circuit.

He raised his hand, and soon, the Miracle Rune Circuit radiated an eye-catching but airy golden light, which looked like energy in motion.

Then the Rune Circuit flew up from Qilin’s hand and didn’t stop until it reached the relief at the center of the Gates of Closure, the circular womb held by the life monster and the death monster.

At the center of the monsters tearing into each other was the howling summoner. A circular notch appeared on its throat, like its Adam’s apple.

The Miracle Rune Circuit slowly fit itself into the notch. It was a perfect fit.

Rumble.

The gates seemed to tremble. Gao Yang knew it wasn’t a trick of the eye. Triggered by the energy from the Rune Circuit, the Gates of Closure started generating ripples of intangible resonating energy.

The reliefs on the gates disappeared at that moment like a wrinkled sheet of paper getting smoothed out, and the reliefs disappeared from the giant Black Gold gates.

Where the Miracle Rune Circuit had fit into, a giant hexagram appeared. Then a vertical line of light split the pattern into symmetrical halves, like a gap between the gates.

Eleven symbols emerged around the hexagram, the lines flickering in golden light, each depicting the world tree, flag, fangs, fist, shield, flower, urchin-shape, eye, fire, book, and hourglass.

1. A gadget in the manga/anime Doraemon that can lead to any location of your choice. ☜

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