Charles and Tuba walked quickly in the emerald green inverted kelp forest.
Charles' body was still so broken, and the little blood left on his body slowly spread into the sea.
Although he was under the sea, Charles did not feel suffocated. Although he was in the water, he did not feel any buoyancy, as if he was standing on the ground.
The inverted sea water was very clear and transparent. Walking through the emerald green seaweed forest made Charles feel like he was walking in an empty park in the early morning.
Everything was quiet around. There were no sea urchins, sea otters, fish, or any living creatures.
"How far is it?" The vigilant Charles touched his prosthetic limb, which had turned into a chainsaw, with his right hand, which was missing two fingers.
The young boy Tuba was holding a few pieces of paper in his hand, folding something. "We are almost there. I can feel them. They are circling to the east. We will catch up with them soon."
After staring at the boy's focused face for a long time, Charles continued to look at the inverted seaweed in front of him.
"Tuba, there are only two of us here now, can you answer a few questions for me?"
"What?"
"When we were around 010, what did you mean when you asked me if I had breakfast?"
"Also, you left me a message on the doctor's tablet earlier, telling me to be careful of the Pope. What did you say? Don't try to guess riddles with me. Just tell me directly."
Although Charles did not show it, he always had this in mind.
Tuba, who is not crazy, has the ability to predict the future. He must know something when he said this. Charles felt that this seemed very important to him.
Tuba stopped what he was doing and looked at Charles, confusion on his handsome face. "What's the matter?"
Charles was very surprised by Tuba's reaction. "Huh? The two people before were obviously you! Could there be several Tubas?"
"Well... the Foundation did consider using my genes to clone different units to use as oracles, but I think the two people you're talking about are me."
Tuba waved his hand to stop Charles from continuing.
"Don't accuse me of being inconsistent. That was indeed me, but I had memories from before. I have already managed to get rid of those memories, and I have thrown them away in a very far place. So don't ask me what I meant by what I said before. I don't know."
"Why do you want to lose your memory?" Charles asked with a frown.
"Because I have too many memories, covering so many diverse things," Tuba's answer surprised Charles.
At this moment, a trace of melancholy appeared on Tuba's face. "You don't understand how painful it is for an omniscient person. Do you think the world you see is the real world? Just like a river flowing on and on?"
"That's not the case. Human cognition is too one-sided. The world is not static. Every judgment and every choice made by all living things will instantly create tributaries in this river."
Hearing Tuba's words, Charles suddenly remembered Lily's identity and the other world of the V12 shelter.
Tuba beside him continued to talk, with an inexplicable fear in his eyes. "And it's not just a matter of memory. The previous me must have touched upon some kind of taboo... some kind of knowledge that humans are absolutely not allowed to touch..."
"There are things chasing me outside. Even though I have lost all my memories, they are still chasing me. So I must escape to this angle and then perform the turning ritual. Only then can I survive."
"If the old me really warned you that you'd better follow his instructions, it means that I must have seen some terrible scene at that time. He wanted to control the direction of the flow of this long river to prevent it from leading to an extremely terrible future."
Charles frowned as he thought about everything Tuba said. "If I continue to cooperate with the Pope, will some terrible scene happen in the near future?"
He felt that he had to think about this issue carefully.
"Will the Pope's going to the surface cause a great disaster? He said that his God of Light just wants to leave here, but if what he said is a lie, then all this makes sense."
"The Holy Light Cathedral has been occupied by the Futan Cult. He is now fighting with them. If we can get rid of them now, it will be a great opportunity."
"As long as I find the key, I will have the initiative. But he is so powerful. If I really anger him, I'm afraid there will be big trouble."
This was a big problem, and Charles knew that if he really wanted to take action, he had to think carefully.
"Look up! We've arrived." Tuba's sudden words made Charles look up suddenly, and the scene in front of him made his pupils shrink to the extreme in an instant.
Right above their heads, there were hundreds of large rings. The material that formed those rings was nothing else but sleeping sea otters holding hands.
The sky was filled with giant living rings spinning slowly, which was both spectacular and eerie, but that was not the reason why Charlton's pupils constricted.
On top of the big ring, where the seabed should be, sits a huge, magnificent inverted city.
Magnificent office buildings, skyscrapers shining with neon lights, slums made of iron sheets, black Gothic churches,
Buildings of different styles are crowded together, and appear particularly brilliant under the support of various bright lights.
Facing such a scene, Charles really didn't know how to describe it. Magnificent? Magnificent
With his excellent eyesight, he even saw humans moving between cities. There were people living in this city!
"Quick, stop staring at them, wake up the sea otters! As long as there are no sea otters, they will collapse back to their own angle!"
Tuba said as he pulled out a paper rabbit from his arms, threw it on the sea and rode on it.
As he twisted the rabbit's ears hard, Charlton's entire perspective instantly turned upside down, and he followed Tuba and fell rapidly towards the Sea Otter Ring above the city.
The giant rabbit jumped hard on a seaweed tree and sent Tuba to a huge sea otter ring.
"Click!" Tuba took a pair of paper scissors and gently cut the sea otter's head.
"Pop, pop, pop~" It seemed to have caused a chain reaction, and the sea otters in the entire ring disappeared instantly like balloons poked by a needle.
Then, Charlton, who was hanging on a seaweed with one hand, saw several buildings in the huge city below him suddenly collapse.
Seeing this scene, Charles reacted instantly. The "they" Tuba was talking about was this city! It was this city that drove him crazy.
(End of this chapter)