No.12 night

It seems like a paradox: Sometimes you miss someone you hate when you don't see them for a long time.Minos went to Athens, and I don't know the date of return yet, but I had to stay on the island, living a life that was increasingly uncertain.I have never tried to escape from Crete, not to mention whether a prisoner in the legal sense can take a boat without permission, and I can't adapt to the outside world without being connected, not to mention there are too many mysteries left here, and they all spread to me. attractive.

Babylon was happy to tell me everything about the Royal Rose Garden, but he knew as little as Calludia, let alone a figure like Rugenis who had passed away many years ago.He only remembered that this rose garden was built a long time ago to supply flowers to Athens judges in name, but it was actually equipped with cutting-edge facilities to act as a protective barrier for the court.

But I still have a doubt.

"Was Aspros's assassination successful?"

Dieter looked at me: "No. What's wrong?"

"But Ballendyne said he succeeded. He succeeded in full view. The victim was not Sage, but his brother Bai Li."

"That's not surprising. Asi asked Judge Sage for an interview, and tried to assassinate him when he was off guard. Fortunately, he was detected by the Divine Consciousness Library, so he had to give up."

I also asked Ballendine in this way before, and his answer was no different from that of Dejere. "It's nothing surprising," he said. "Judges are inherently high-risk occupations, and the chance of sudden death from exhaustion is far greater than homicide."

I finally understood one thing.The things that Dieter and Ballendine understand can be compared within a limited period of time, and if they go forward, different interpretations will appear, and they do not realize what is wrong.

If these two people have misaligned thinking, then Biak, Kaludia, and Babylon are likely to be no exception.That is to say, the world they depend on is unconsciously reshaping their cognition.Thinking of the hostility shown by the black-clothed citizens who participated in the riot to the spiritual consciousness system, my forehead felt a little cold.

But at the moment I am more worried about what step Minos has done to me.Since that night, the image of Jabofika would appear in my mind from time to time. Most of the time, he just sat far away on the edge of the window sill, resting his chin, lifting his leg lightly, and looking at the scenery outside.Even if he always does nothing like this, I can't stand my body being influenced by others all the time.

Once I walked up to him directly and asked him to stop pestering me.

"You love him, and he loves you, and that's all very well; but what does it matter to me? If Judge Minos' pleasure consists in creating a Pygmalion-like image, and then compulsorily transplanting it to others, Then I have nothing to say about his love."

He could only shrug his shoulders apologetically: "I can't persuade him. If I can talk to him directly, I must beat him so that he can no longer mess around outside."

I wondered: "Can a ghost that resides in someone else's mind also be dissatisfied with the person who built it?"

Abfika didn't mind my words being offensive.

"It's like this. Minos has always been pampered. If he fights purely with physical strength, he can't get cheap." He raised the corners of his lips, "And Crete is the most unsuitable place to use auxiliary weapons."

Like me, he likes to directly call the Mountain by its original name, which is like scraping off several layers of carvings to reveal the plain embryo underneath.

And this does not prevent me from wanting him to stay away from my will: "I have said enough, I will trouble you to go back to where you should go."

He lowered his eyes, giving me the illusion of being in a state of despair for a moment, but soon I knew that I was thinking too much.

"Don't you want to inquire about something from me, say,—the Royal Rose Garden?"

I gritted my teeth.Indeed, I have always been driven by my thirst for knowledge, and I even temporarily gave up defending myself; but now I am not sure whether I want to explore all this out of will, or it is a nervous reflex produced by people's control.

"Don't rush to instill your creed in me, I want to get this information through my own way."

Jabofika clasped her hands together, seeming to appreciate my decision.

"Choosing to stay in Crete is a very wise decision. You can enter the inner core, but no one on the island can do it at the moment - neither can Radamandis, and the quasi-judges are not considered real judges until they officially take office .”

I tremble a little.This person can see my next plan, and he is more unpredictable than Minos in his posture.I do plan to return to the core of Heraklion. What I have to consider now is not only the search for details, but more importantly, to draw up a list of major events in the past few decades as soon as possible. I want to know since when people The time axis has been misaligned, and Minos will not be a vested interest in this incident.

"You're bewitching me." I stared at him.Although I can't describe his face, I can still imagine him as a beautiful woman.

"Sisyphus is dead, Minos has left Crete, and there are no other judges here; you are free for a while, and if you want to go, no one can stop you."

I suddenly stretched out my hand to grab him, but the image of Jabofika disappeared in an instant.Before that, he also gave me a suggestion: "Maybe Dever can answer many of your doubts, why not try to communicate with him first?"

He did not know that Deftolos disappeared on the day of the murder.We can find no record of this man's departure from the islands, and in fact no one but myself has seen him since the meeting.Ballenda searched Dever's temporary apartment in Crete and found several withered rose leaves in a drawer.

Things seem to have come to a conclusion here.Deftolos' unabashed jealousy for Sisyphus, and the scars from his brother's incident, were enough to drive him down the road of no return. □□It can be prepared in advance, what Devere lacks is just an opportunity; since the conflict at the banquet was caused by the rose of Rugnes, it naturally gave birth to his idea of ​​using roses to assassinate.

Rada's makeshift court held that Deftolos fled in fear of crime, but it would be better if he could be caught on the spot - and the body would be good, otherwise they would not be able to convict him of murder.Fortunately, Athens is on the verge of collapse, and Crete does not need to rush to give an answer.When the court was adjourned, Babylon asked me if it was possible to partner with Dever in the crime, and then kill him to push the crime.

"That's a good idea." I answered him coldly.

***

For a while, I would be obsessed with certain strange causal chains. For example, if Sisyphus had not died unexpectedly, Athens would still be in peace at this moment; If I don't withdraw and leave, I will not freely enter and exit the core as a prisoner.Minos was right, the chances of this world always work together, and I should be proud of myself.

The moment I stepped into the database, all the previous unhappiness and suspicion were washed away, and I could feel the fluorescent walls unfolding in front of my eyes one by one, like flowers waiting to be pollinated, blooming eagerly for visitors.As the center of the Magic Mountain, Eraklion, even if it is not a place of pilgrimage for guests from outside the region, still has a strange power to cleanse the soul.

The interior furnishings have not changed much compared to last time. The only thing worth mentioning is that the lines in one area suddenly become very dense. I speculate that it is likely to connect to the direction of Athens.After a little groping, I did find several familiar names around it.

Then I saw Bai Li, folded into a very small side, lying quietly at the bottom.When he opened his profile, his age was not shown, but it was mentioned when he became a judge—exactly 51 years ago.If I remember correctly, it was the year that Minos' court was built, either by coincidence or by a logical progression of Minos' occupation of Bailey's workplace.

Next up is Aspros.I would have thought that Deftolos' file would be placed with his, but the brothers seem destined to be far apart.It shows that this is a 25-year-old young man who was born in the northern Balkans. He received the glory and blessings from the Divine Consciousness Bank, and was raised as the heir of the Athenian judges since he was a child.In addition, there is another item: Aspen has been in charge of the management of the library of the Athens Court for a long time, where all the bibliographies that people can collect in history are stored there.

Dieter once said to me that Aspulos possessed all the knowledge of this world, and it seems to be true.Such a person would commit the absurd act of assassinating a judge. It is really incomprehensible, and his age is completely out of line, so I continued to read.

No assassination records were found.

What is left on the pages of Asprous is a visceral blankness, all interrupted on the day he resigned from the library, not knowing what has happened since, or what caused him to leave Athens, and Deft Lowes isn't even mentioned throughout.

The paradox doesn't stop there.I reopened Rugnes' dossier, and there was only the original copy left, and the copy that recorded Yabofika's brief life had disappeared.

It is unlikely that Minos removed it intentionally after this. The main control of the database is the data channel. I guess it is because I have disturbed the information flow here that it erased the fake copy.However, Yabo's consciousness is still stored in me. When he appears next time, he will ask me directly, which may be more efficient.

I spent the whole afternoon sorting out the materials in the Athens area, arranged them in order, and picked out the ones I thought were important to memorize one by one, ready to confront Minos at any time.

When I came out, Babylon was standing outside the door, looking at me maliciously.

"Welcome back, Mr. Question."

I told him I wasn't in the mood to talk to him about the mob in Athens.

He looked very surprised, but couldn't hide his excitement: "You must not have imagined what happened outside."

Only then did I realize that the lights in the distance were different from usual. "what is that?"

"I bet you haven't experienced anything like it before," he replied. "It's a festival from the East."

***

Nights on the Magic Mountain can be regarded as a hodgepodge in a certain sense. Every year, weird customs from all over the world gather here, and they are staged in sequence as the months progress.

And tonight belongs to the Obon Festival, an event rooted in Buddhist legend.

Relieving the suffering of the ancestors hanging upside down, crossing the hungry ghosts of the ten directions, this ritual has been imported from India for thousands of years, and today it has long lost its original meaning.Now that it has landed in far away Crete, it naturally takes on some mixed colors. Several water streams in the island are also regarded as the Styx, leading directly to the residence of the dead.

I went down one of the rivers alone. There were many people along the way. The water surface was full of lotus lamps floating high and low, occasionally mixed with a few soaked paper cranes and extinguished candles; half-colored sky.Further forward is the mouth of the sea, and the oily yellow light spots spread out, leading the souls of the dead to the blissful realm.

The scene in front of me was so beautiful that I stopped for a while and held my breath.At this time, there were not many visitors on the shore, and there were few who were late and left alone. After getting off the boat, they also rushed towards Knossos.I was quite sorry about this, and I looked down at the surrounding fields, and just like that, I saw a person by the sea.

He was stuck on a fence, showing no intention of leaving.In terms of appearance, this person is several years younger than me, with simple clothes and short dark blue hair to welcome the sea breeze.I didn't want to greet him, but a sound came out of my mouth involuntarily.

"Are you also sending your relatives?"

He glared back at me and turned to leave.

"Boring people," someone said behind my back.I turned around and it was Babylon.

"Don't get me wrong, I didn't come here specifically to find the prisoners of Minos——I just happened to pass by, and I didn't expect to meet someone I didn't like to see."

"You know him?"

He was a little annoyed: "How should I put it? That's Huihuo, a troublesome guy with terribly bad taste."

Papillon likes to classify people according to taste. People like me are judged by him as "lost the basic aesthetic ability due to excessive curiosity", while Minos is evaluated as "has relatively high taste , but pretentious".I couldn't resist asking him who would preside over the puja, and he replied, "I'm not obliged to know—maybe it's Asimo, but this time it's more likely to be Azapoku."

He uttered several names that I had never heard of before, with strange pronunciation, which sounded unlikely to be European, but rather like cardamom and sandalwood from the ocean.

The assembly of Knossos was not presided over by a fixed person. Minos adopted a laissez-faire attitude, and anyone who wanted to take turns could take the stage.It is said that this Yu Lan Festival was originally prepared for Sai Qi, who passed away not long ago, but he did not expect that it would come in handy for Judge Sisyphus so soon.

But Babylon doesn't care much about that.He told me that the Yu Lan Conference was the highlight of the day.

"That is to say, several parties at the meeting invite their own representatives to debate on a certain topic. ——Winners get no prizes." It was Kaludia who answered the conversation, and he just changed into a bright yellow windbreaker , extraordinarily spiritual.

I've grown fond of him since the Sisyphus incident, so I went over to say hello to him right away, but he didn't seem to get along well with Babylon.

"The upper classes pay attention to the confrontation of minds, while the philistines only care about gains and losses." Babylon said in a strange tone behind him.

"Then I can only say that you don't understand the rules of the debate." Kaludia took out an apple polished like a mirror from his pocket, and shook it at Babylon, "If you hold such an apple Only by thinking can you become a high-class person, I would rather nest in a mound of dirt and plant this for the rest of my life."

To a certain extent, Kaludia was right. Even though the Yu Lan Conference was in the name of debating, it did not forbid the people below to bet on it, and sometimes even the debaters themselves would participate in the betting.

Although Babylon sneered at this kind of behavior, he was soon infected by the surrounding atmosphere.With his nimble hands, he squeezed through the obstacles, looked towards the innermost circle for a while, and then returned to me: "I'm afraid they've run into trouble. The one on the opposite side is Azapo, the most eloquent man in the entire Eastern Region." people."

Kaludia shrugged and said, "Many times you can't win with your tongue alone. I'm more optimistic about Asimo."

I remember these two names, it seems that neither of them is today's host.

"It's impossible for him to argue against the living Buddha." Babylon confronted, "You know that guy's weight is not enough for the first round of warm-ups by Azawa."

Kaludia threw the apple upwards, and immediately caught it firmly, like tossing a silver coin: "Then let's bet—"

Babylon blinked: "I'm not that stupid, if I bet on this with you, wouldn't I be reduced to the same taste as you?"

I didn't get involved in their argument anymore, and someone in the corner caught my attention, now he had changed into a crimson silk robe and a black jade hair crown.That was the previous glow.

"I will be in charge of this year's Yulan Basin." He suddenly walked up to the front desk, shaking his skirt.I saw Babylon showing a disappointed expression.

"I guess he did it all for his brother's sake. What better way to express your heart to the dead than to preside over the Yu Lan festival yourself?" Papillon muttered beside me.

The topic of this debate is "the way time runs", but Huihuo believes that the debate needs to be back and forth, and the problem is too easy to prove that it will lose the original intention of the Yulan Conference, so the topic of the debate becomes "the possible running of conceptual time." Way".There is no doubt that this is an unsolvable situation. Asimo believes that time will repeat its own trajectory, while Azawa holds an objection.

"Look, whether time is limited—whether space has extension, the Buddha never answered such a question." Azawa has a smooth head and no hair, "but I might as well mention one or two points for you—— that time There is a certain cycle, and even as a guideline for life, this is mysticism that is not beneficial to the future, and only certain ancient peoples hold such an idea."

"But the Buddha didn't deny reincarnation." Asimo had dark skin and a kind face. Correspondingly, he was unlikely to be a match for Azavako.

"What the Buddha is looking for is the true knowledge of Prajna, not these things that can only be called the scum of the world." A Zhava is always smiling, not arrogant, but still gives people a condescending attitude, "Circular The concept of time originated from the observation and imagination of nature. The ancient Egyptians made a calendar based on the rise and fall of Sirius, which would accumulate tiny errors and be corrected by the earth's axis every 460 years, which is called the Sauter cycle. For them It is said that this is a long and magical repetition, so their world is also born of mud and lotus, and dies with lotus and mud, and repeats itself. Ancient Greek astronomy conceived of a celestial sphere of stars surrounding the earth, doing it without stopping Circular movement, which makes the Greek-style big year even more extreme, 'permanent reincarnation', it believes that those philosophers, politicians, and slaves who have passed away can reappear in a new cycle. If you want to see some other examples ——The Mayans regarded time as an organic life, extending or shortening according to the way people participated; while in Africa, there was event time, which replaced timekeeping according to daily activities, and some places never even had the concept of past and future. Since they, too, can live without harm, it makes no qualitative difference whether one conceives a cyclical pattern of time or pursues another view of time."

"What you say just supports my thesis. If nature is always in an indeterminate manifold, if there is no repetition of events, then all the progress in the world so far cannot be achieved. We are constantly moving forward in the same place." A Simmo was not willing to show weakness. He was trying to find the other party's loopholes, his voice trembling slightly.

But A Zhapo immediately retorted: "You may have confused one thing. The sun, moon, and stars rise and fall in an orderly manner, not because of the arrangement of fate, but because they are in a natural state. On the contrary, if you believe too much in the cycle of time and space, On the contrary, it blocks the desire to move forward. The history of ancient India is difficult to judge because people here hold a stubborn view of circular time, and their records lack a time scale, and it is difficult for us to judge the sequence of events purely based on narratives.”

He also cited two cyclical patterns, strong and weak, where historical events are strictly cyclical in the former, and certain historical features are repeated in the latter, "—these are nothing but tricks played by philosophers. Besides In addition, there is still a disordered and vague view of time, which does not define the way time operates, but is inherent in life itself. This is a chaotic time. Ancient China generally held such a view of time , so there are yin and yang and five elements born out of nature, between fluctuations, all things are born." A Zha Pozhu turned to the audience, "Do you understand? Our understanding of the world depends largely on the understanding of the concept of time .It shapes our cultural life."

Finally, he turned to his debater: "Don't you think that it is Shiva's dance that makes time and space come and go, and then count the cycles of reincarnation based on the time when Vishnu blinks, right?"

Ashimo's face turned pale. Obviously, this was his first appearance, and he still didn't know how to deal with the eloquent Azapo.

Seeing that the Yu Lan Conference was about to come to an end, at this time someone from below interjected: "What we observe is the original nature, or can we only touch the world of karma that is closely entwined with us? ——If this question cannot be answered, how does time work? There is no proof at all.”

Unexpectedly, there was another debater in the line after Ashimo. When we looked at him, we felt that our eyes were golden.

"Ashmita, the blind man, practiced in India in his early years." Someone introduced.

Ashmita nodded and clasped his hands together, and smiled at Azawa: "I didn't come to participate in the debate; I was just motivated by knowledge, so I came to the debate stage."

I noticed that he keeps his eyes closed all the time, probably equipped with some kind of equipment to see the external images through brain wave transmission.

A Zhapo stopped smiling. He returned the courtesy and his expression became serious: "What I believe in is the supreme truth. If I can use the help of worldly karma to finally reach a higher level of true knowledge, then that's all right."

Ashmita's face is still warm: "Azha, I admire your determination, but is the truth in the world really as you said? Life has accumulated tens of billions of years in the vast universe, and finally appeared in the ancient ocean; It took another hundreds of millions of years to break through the barrier of self-awareness. After that, it took only tens of thousands of years for people to form their own society, a thousand years of civilization, a century of science, and now the information flow under the repository of consciousness is loaded Logging out is only a snap of the fingers. We can not only visit the past, but also see the distant future. All-round knowledge sharing is the greatest efficiency that human beings can achieve. With the help of new tools and concepts, time and space can be arbitrarily compressed and Extend; and when this boundary is also broken, our world will rush towards the unknown, and the concept of time will be reshaped."

A Zhapoju no longer had the reservedness he had when facing A Simmo. He lowered his head and fell into thought: "No, of course I don't think that time 'should' be linear. In fact, isn't it the first Judeo-Christian Has the theological system brought a linear view of time? The one-way time makes people fearful, but it also makes people fearless, because people understand that once the 'now' is gone, it can no longer be retrieved, and they are facing the uncertainty at any time. world. But I also don't agree that time will be involved in the loop...Let me think about it again, I think..."

So far, the dialogue between the two has gone beyond the scope of debate and entered a certain mysterious realm.Ashmita's voice lowered: "Time is the manifestation of the motion of matter - this view has been developed under the scientific innovation, and it has increasingly made us think that time is an arrow with only one direction. But modern physics has made time and space intertwined. Together, since space can be cyclical, why can’t time? There is no time at the particle level, and the arrow of time has meaning only when it goes up. show step by step."

"You said that life is limited. This is the result of a linear worldview. The circular worldview is naturally continuous, and it-supports life forever?" As if suddenly realizing something, Azapo looked up in surprise.

Ashmita sighed: "Azha, can nature really be external to people?"

This time it was Azapo's turn to stay silent. He looked at the other party, and his heart was changing.

"When what I see is not limited to the current world, when I can see another meaning of time, I am only one step away from the supreme knowledge." Ashmita left under the eyes of everyone, "Azha, You haven't gotten there yet."

Crete has been abnormally humid these past few days, and soon there were raindrops in the sky, like the tears of sea snakes.People stood at the gate of Knossos saying goodbye, and I looked at Mount Eraklion behind me. For some reason, I suddenly remembered the last words of Deftelos.

The storm is coming.