My house is on the edge of a forest by the sea. Throughout the year, whether the foliage of the trees in the forest is painted with deep green or covered with snow, these tall cedars keep only their broad, wrinkled trunks in view. Although it is near the sea, even if you stand in front of the gate and look into the distance, you will not see any trace of the coastline. Only the faint smell of the sea reminds you that this is the realm of the sea.

Remember to bolt the door when you go out. You can walk out of the woods along the long-trodden trail – a route used to be taken by the former owner of the hut, a hunter – and within a three- or four-minute walk you can already feel the gradual sea breeze. The sea breeze surged towards you, and when it touched the hem of your raised garment, it turned suddenly, wrapping around your body, and flowing slowly and sluggishly like a stream of Mill hitting a stone. Nearby, when you pass by a huge dark black stone and turn to the right-hand side for another two minutes, you will see the seemingly endless scene in front of you as the Northern Sea.

It's still winter, and I'm wearing heavy plush clothing to protect me from the cold. The cold here is different from the ordinary dry cold, the dampness allows the cold to envelop countless tiny droplets, and when the cold touches your slightly bare skin, small droplets of water attach to your body, and continue to exude cold under your skin. This cold persists in your bones, and once you have been contaminated for too long, it is as if your bones have been completely frozen, and the slits are covered with tiny ice crystals, and every slight movement will cause your flesh to be scratched by the sharp blades inside, and you will have to endure the creaking sound of cracking and the sharp pain coming from the bone marrow with every step you take.

Of course, the living fire ignited by Milder's firewood was enough to lift the cursed ice. I've always lamented that the Mill area has the best things and the most disgusting things, like the water. But it must be noted that only living fire is the sharpest blade against the cold, and death fire is not. Definitely not. These are empirical statements, conclusions that we have come to through both physical and spiritual suffering.

I was standing on the edge of a cliff, and the vertical distance from here to the sea was about twenty meters. The top of the cliff is more protruding than the bottom, and if you let go of your feet and take a big step from here, there is no gentle slope to give you a foothold. The remaining snow on the cliffs has not been removed. I picked up the stone at my feet and threw it far into the blue-black rushing sea. No sound was heard. The waves of the northern sea swelled like a dense crowd of people holding dark silks. All the visual messages to my brain tell me that this is a sight to be afraid of. However, there was not a single sound coming from the sea. My cochlea looked like it was malfunctioning all of a sudden. I could hear the cloudy wind of liquid texture slowly pounding against my coat, I could hear the pestilence beneath the soil gnawing at the cliffs that I had been blown away, I could even hear my own breathing, and I could hear the small particles of salt condensed on my eyelashes falling one by one in the blink of an eye. But I could not hear the sea, nor could I hear three-quarters of the world that occupied my eyes. That's why the Northern Sea is called the "Desert of Sound" and the "Silent Sea" by travelers.

The heavy brim sealed almost my entire face. But despite the limitations of my vision, I could see the vastness of the Northern Sea, and was once again struck by the sight I could no longer have been familiar with.

The air pressure drops sharply, and the rhythm of the breath changes due to a great sense of oppression. In the distance, at the horizon, the originally scattered and sparse milky white clouds seemed to be driven by some kind of presence, gradually converging, and the light seemed to be distorted and intertwined, and was hidden under the clouds that had become thick black cumulonimbus clouds. From a point in the distance, black spread over the far sea, and the clouds flowed and converged, and I could see the lightning leaping and roaring wildly in the cumulonimbus clouds like a caged beast. Time seemed to speed up suddenly, and the restless cumulonimbus clouds anxiously splashed the black over every stretch of the high sea, and the sea breeze sped away from its sticky touch, and the sound of the air flowing like a moan was heard in my ears, and the sharp tips of the wind cut like jagged teeth across my eyelids.

The sea had turned gray. In the open sea, the waves began to spread outward from one place, and as time passed, the waves became larger and larger, and they continued to surge in all directions. It was as if the incomparably huge invisible hand of God stretched out from the air into the sea, stirring rapidly without stopping, creating these countless monstrous waves that violently expanded their sphere of influence, close to dozens of meters high. In the open sea, violent stormy convection pumped the water into the air, and between the dark cumulonimbus clouds and the dull water, several manic waterspouts were rolled up without anything controlling them. The wind is furious, and the thunder is thunderous. Everything seems to have gone crazy, and around some unknown realm there is a bonfire dance that only giants of the Origin can dance. Only the sea is silent.

Clouds and waves were coming toward the shore, engulfing the cliff and me at unimaginable speed—

The wind suddenly stopped. The waves freeze for a moment. Everything was silent for a moment.

Snowflakes suddenly fall from cumulonimbus clouds.

It's like countless white flowers, dancing from hell.

As the snow falls, the clouds and waves gradually calm down.

This month's "sacrifice" is over. "Sacrifice" is what northern hunters and harbor fishermen call this scene, but I don't know why.

Every time I witness this scene, I feel as if some kind of existence is gradually breaking free. Suddenly I remembered the legend that circulated among the hunters of the north. It is said that this sea does have its own voice, but it is not very inaudible. A half-deaf bard once passed by, and he said that in the silent sea he heard the howls of pain that resounded throughout the northern towns.

Now that the clouds have completely dissipated, the sky is still a hazy white after the fog that has dispersed. The sea is still silent.

I jotted down every detail I saw today and didn't miss anything.

Maybe next time they will let me go to the middle of the open sea. They would give me a small boat and an oar, and they would let me go there and record everything I saw. I vaguely understood where the previous owner of the cabin, the northern hunter, had gone.

But it's always better than having no destination. It is better to die than to be crushed by their useless flesh and inflict the pain of eternal division of the soul.

I burst into tears, and I didn't know why. Maybe there will be tears falling on my notes, but that has nothing to do with me anymore.