In the middle of a sea of sand, March's expression gradually went blank.
She was finally certain that she really could not understand what this little girl, who had suddenly appeared in this vast desert and looked about the same size as Nero, was talking about.
Although Nero looked like she was listening very seriously and seemed to truly understand what the other party meant, when those words reached March's ears, all she could hear was a large jumble of sticky, indistinct syllables.
It wasn't that the words she heard were as unclear as a baby trying to imitate speech. Rather, the moment that person opened her mouth, she simply never stopped.
The words kept jumping out one after another, with no pauses at all, as if she were reading a huge string of words with absolutely no punctuation.
Just imagining someone speaking like that was enough to make it hard to breathe and even unconsciously bite one's tongue.
From this point of view, this fellow who had suddenly appeared was pretty impressive.
March looked left and right. Apart from the endless sea of sand, she couldn't see anything else, yet she couldn't understand what the other person was saying. She couldn't help feeling that her presence here was somewhat unnecessary.
But there was nothing she could do. She could only sit down obediently, pretending that she could understand, nodding from time to time, or answering with a couple of hums and ahs.
Unlike March, Nero had obviously understood everything.
What he heard was actually quite normal. No matter what language the suddenly appearing fellow was using to convey her meaning, what he heard was all neat and orderly speech that he could understand normally.
On the other hand, the person he saw was also different from what March saw. From beginning to end, the figure he saw had never changed.
In Nero's eyes, what he saw was a somewhat blurry figure, as if reflected light had directly entered his eyes.
It looked like a human figure carved from some special kind of ice crystal or crystal, standing in the middle of the sea of sand, carrying a certain imperial air. From the lofty crown above its head burst a chilling coldness that made one's heart tremble.
The moment Nero saw this figure, he recognized it.
At least, when he had played the game in the past, this figure had left a certain impression in his mind.
The Remembrance Aeon, Fuli.
Even this magnificent figure, Fuli's enormous and spectacular divine form, was completely reflected in his eyes.
From the very beginning, when the storm had risen in this white sea of sand, this was the figure he had seen. He had never seen the old man, the middle-aged man, or some young girl that March saw.
But Nero did not notice that what he saw was different from what March saw. Seeing March's reaction, he even assumed that she, like him, completely understood what Fuli was saying.
However, compared with the message Fuli was conveying, what surprised Nero even more was that Fuli had actually appeared here and stated that she had come to find him, or rather, to tell him how to leave this sea of sand safely and peacefully.
This news quickly made Nero think of some things, and he developed some strange impressions of Fuli, such as this fellow secretly watching him too.
It wasn't that Nero was overly confident. It was simply because there was already a precedent.
According to Secretary Tong's account, that old rascal Aha would come over to take a look at him whenever he had the time. But this kind of behavior did fit Aha's Path. Maybe it was simply interesting to her.
The Fuli before him seemed to have seen what Nero was thinking. Or perhaps, some thought that had just been born in Nero's mind had already become a fragment of this world's memory at this moment, and thus become known to Fuli.
Nero's eyes widened slightly. He was certain that what he saw was not an illusion. Fuli's mood seemed to become complicated for an instant.
Her magnificent body trembled slightly, the crystal beads hanging from her crown shook lightly, and the cold air surrounding her also became briefly disordered.
After another moment of silence, Nero finally heard Fuli speak again.
It was difficult for him to describe Fuli's voice. At least, it did not sound much like a voice that humans could produce. It was more like some kind of syllable. As far as Nero's senses were concerned, what Fuli said and what language she used were actually unimportant.
At the same time as he understood the meaning of Fuli's words, he could keenly sense a brief lag, as if Fuli's words became a part of history as time passed, and as she performed the action of speaking, those traces naturally appeared in his mind.
This made Nero always feel a sense of hindsight when listening to Fuli speak. Although the interval might not even be a millisecond, it still made the perceptive young man experience the illusion that he had forgotten something and suddenly remembered it.
"We have indeed been watching you all this time, but... the only one who observes you almost without pause is Aha."
Fuli's words were very tactful, but Nero still sensed a certain dislike in them.
Perhaps Fuli did not have much of an opinion about Aha, but regarding the matter he had inexplicably thought of just now, this Aeon was ashamed to associate with that Aeon of Elation.
But what Nero cared about even more was obviously something else.
"I get the feeling that the atmosphere between you Aeons is actually pretty harmonious. At least, more harmonious than most people imagine."
"..." Fuli was silent for a moment. "Most of the Aeons you have witnessed are like this. At least Lan and Yaoshi really don't get along very well... As for us..."
"We are not the concepts of the Paths themselves. From Nous's perspective, we are simply a higher-level form of life. In a broader sense, we can even be regarded as a special race."
"When faced with greater external pressure, there is no greater difference between us and other lifeforms or other intelligent races."
Nero blinked, a look of agreement showing in his eyes. "As expected of Nous. Its view is actually so practical."
The cold air around Fuli once again trembled in an abnormal manner. Looking at the young man before her, she was actually somewhat surprised that he would agree with Nous's idea.
But thinking about it carefully, judging from all kinds of information sent by Aha, this was actually quite normal.
At least based on Nero's past behavior, he had never shown any reverence toward the various Aeons. In fact, he wasn't even limited to Aeons. He had no particular awe toward the gods worshipped by the various intelligent races in this universe either.
And just as Fuli's mood was gradually becoming subtle, Nero obviously noticed something else again.
"So, what is this external pressure? The external pressure that can make all of you Aeons get along properly. For this world, it must be something destructive, right?"
Fuli: "..."
Nero raised his head and looked at the suddenly silent Fuli with wide eyes. His gray eyes were filled with curiosity.
After a brief silence, the surrounding memetic substance suddenly began to surge violently. Immediately afterward, Nero noticed that the surrounding scene was rapidly changing.
The sea of sand and the sky gradually connected and melted together, before being smeared into a pitch-black starry sky.
Suddenly, Nero's gaze sharpened, and he abruptly turned his head toward a certain direction.
Something flashed past his field of vision. It looked like a broken human-shaped statue, or perhaps a mass of shapeless, twisted, multicolored paint.
Suddenly, a strange sensation enveloped Nero's mind, as if a layer of fog had covered his consciousness, making his thoughts sluggish.
But the next moment, that sensation quickly disappeared. That indescribable barrier and shadow was like a soap bubble being gently poked and popped, failing to have any effect on Nero's mind.
At this moment, the surrounding scene had also finished changing. Nero knew that this was the effect produced by the memetic substance.
Perhaps what he was seeing was some moment in the depths of the universe from within Fuli's memories. He was quickly captivated by the beautiful starry sky.
Of course, Nero was not the only one who noticed the thing that flashed past in the corner. Fuli noticed it too.
Taking advantage of the instant when the young man's attention was drawn away, she separated a thread of her attention and then saw a certain mysterious Aeon.
Mythus waved at Fuli, then shook his head. After turning around, he disappeared into this gap.
Although Mythus said nothing, Fuli still understood what she meant.
"Can't afford to mess with you guys. I'm out of here."
Fuli: "...?"
Mythus's action was indeed rather abrupt, but when she thought about how this fellow and Aha got along extremely well in certain respects... then it made sense.
Mythus came hurriedly and left hurriedly, without causing much interference to the conversation.
"Huh? Isn't this Little Dragon?"
Nero quickly discovered a familiar figure in this starry sky created by Fuli. A huge creature was lurking in the sea of stars.
It was a three-tailed golden fish with a dragon's head. Its body was enormous but not frightening. Instead, it carried a dreamlike color.
"Little Dragon..." Fuli let out a low murmur, obviously finding the name difficult to comment on.
This kind of thing was better left to Aha. Fuli really wasn't very good at playing the straight man.
However, since she had decided to answer the young man's questions and satisfy his curiosity, she still spoke, "This creature is related to that external pressure.
"At that point in time, the existence of time had already become meaningless. History might occur before the future, so I will only tell you about the memories related to it that had already existed from the instant I was born, countless years afterward."
"It is not a native species of this world, but it is also difficult to identify it as an outsider. This giant beast was born within a distant and prolonged 'gaze.'"
"At that time, 'Voracity' Oroboros had her huge mouth torn open and her teeth pulled out; 'Equilibrium' Ena had her stone sculpture smashed apart, revealing the twins' stone faces; 'The Permanence' Long was almost on the verge of death, her head severed; even 'Nihility' IX failed to escape."
"The lost worlds were like sand discarded by the roadside. 'Elation' Aha was also strangled by the throat, able to make only an extremely hoarse, neither-laughing-nor-crying sound; 'Preservation' Qlipoth's fortress was silently shattered, countless amber pieces smelted together with hundreds of millions of stars; 'Beauty' Idrila's 'death' came before her birth, and the splendid radiance under that gaze was reduced to nothing but a smear of gray..."
As Fuli narrated, Nero could feel the surrounding memetic substance becoming active like a storm, as if doing everything it could to maintain stability while displaying scene after scene before him.
All of these sights seemed to have appeared in a chaotic era. Deep within the universe, a gigantic crack seemed to emerge, with a dark purple light bursting from it and staining the stars the same color.
That crack, which seemed to tear open the edge of the world, was like an eye, gazing at the entire world.
And within that gaze, every scene Fuli described played out one after another, until everything was smelted away under the gaze, until the infant form of Little Dragon took shape within that gaze, as if an innocent child had taken some modeling clay and kneaded every color that interested it into it.
Then, in the next instant, every scene shattered apart. The starry sky disappeared, the sea of sand returned, and the memetic substance went from restless to calm...
As if nothing had happened.
Nero glanced at March. The girl seemed not to have noticed the anomaly just now. Or perhaps, under Fuli's control, those scenes had not affected March. Of course, it was also possible that the fellow who had flashed past had done it. In any case, this was good.
March's dazed appearance reassured Nero. By now, he at least understood the principle that, for most people, knowing too much was not a good thing.
March having heard nothing might actually be safer. But Nero was more inclined to believe that Fuli was reliable. This Aeon had not shown March any of the same things at all.
However, this viewing had made Nero intensely interested in that "gaze." He asked Fuli, "What was that thing? Who was that gaze that took on a whole group of Aeons at once?"
"..."
Fuli looked at Nero and fell silent once again.
Nero: "...? Why aren't you saying anything?"
"..."
Under Nero's completely innocent gaze, Fuli's eyes remained fixed on the young man without moving at all.
One person said nothing, while the other waited expectantly for an answer.
The two of them remained silent like this, locked in a standoff for a long time.
March, who had been staring blankly to the side, finally came back to her senses at this moment.
She seemed to notice the subtle atmosphere between Nero and the old man who had suddenly appeared, so she spoke up, "W-what's wrong? Why did you both suddenly stop talking?"
The silence was broken by March. Fuli glanced at the girl, then looked at Nero and said, "It doesn't matter anymore. At least, the pressure won't appear again for the short term. I've already told you about the situation in this sea of sand, and it's time to leave. I still have other things to do."
After saying that, Fuli ignored whatever Nero might think and disappeared with a "whoosh" right in front of March and Nero.
March immediately widened her eyes in shock. "Huh!? Wh-where did he go? There was such a big person standing here just now!"
At the same time, on the Astral Express, Little Fuli's eyes slowly opened.
At some point, the humanity that had inexplicably risen to its peak within this Aeon was rapidly fading away, gradually being replaced by divinity.
However, no one else noticed this.