You can't see the sky, you can't see the ground.

A living body of water walks in the air, and the ship drifts along in it. The light on the bow of the ship pierced through the long night and illuminated the toedless people facing each other. They didn't know that the "monster that ate Anafanta" had two pairs of eyes staring at them.

Separated by a glass of glass, it seems to be separated by a piece of heaven and earth, alienated and distant, like two worlds.

The old water in the transparent box has been drained.

Anafinta turned her head to the humid air, looked out the window in the air, and continued to see the worldly world she was in from a distant perspective that she had never seen before, through the glare of the light that was incomparably luxurious for her.

After she said her request, the man with the fur and horns did not speak for a moment, and she saw that he had changed his tube. She knew that the new pipe would draw fresh water from the tank to the transparent coffin.

The water gradually rose, quickly flooding her hairless sleek body, and then past her eyeballs. Anafanta's eyes, washed by water, resemble two silent pearls, shimmering in the light of the room like the deep blue sky when the sun disappears behind the horizon.

The smell of new water was familiar to her.

Gu Chuan pinched the pipe, wore a dragon heart horn, and said to her:

"You're thinking wrong."

She blinked, fear streaming through her thoughts.

"This is not a world of the dead, but a small world inhabited by the living from different parts of the world. It is now about to fly south. You know the big glowing thing in the jellyfish, and that's where you are right now. ”

Even if they have a dragon's heart, it is difficult for young people to fully convey their knowledge and feelings. Because this is limited by the level of thinking of the toeless person himself. The smooth communication with Ziyuan is because the civilization level of the gear people is extremely high, there are mathematics, science, the study of the world, the structure of language, the four poles of heaven and earth, the past and the present, the knowledge that everything has its beginning and end, and also knows that death is not God who takes people's lives...... Rather, it is the relentless decay that the living body will eventually suffer under the laws of nature.

The Gear Man is no longer inferior to the humans after the industrial age of the earth. And for toeless people, many ideas do not exist.

They don't even have a strict concept of direction, and they don't exist in the Netherworld for these creatures who grow up in the Netherworld. They only use the large clouds as their only guidepost.

"We'll leave here towards the Belt, but farther away than the Belt."

Therefore, Anafanta's understanding is not the same as Gu Chuan's.

"We're in that glowing stone...... Well, this is the palace of the Lord of Death......"

She thought.

So the thoughts read in the dragon's heart quickly changed, and Gu Chuan saw that in her imagination, the death or life number was like a god's palace, taking off freely in the clouds, and soon went deep into the clouds, flying directly with the rainbow-colored winged serpent they had seen at the beginning, monitoring all the netherworld.

Death and the Lord of the Sky never need to be abstract, but can be concrete.

Just as in the mythology of the earth, the high mountains can be inhabited by gods and immortals, and the world of the dead is often in the real underground, not some other time and space.

As for the sun, it is naturally also pulled by people and travels in the air. For Anafanta, the Dead or Alive may have played the role of the Sun Carriage.

Gu Chuan didn't know how to correct her thoughts. Fortunately, he did not stick to such details, and he chose to say to Anaerofinta directly:

"You are free to come back to ...... And, after your return, we may never want you to come here again. ”

Anafinta had a lot of imagination about this sentence.

"But before you go back, I need to ask you some questions, some questions about your world."

In the end, Gu Chuan chose his original demands and thoughts for this toeless man.

"Lord of Death...... Please ask. ”

Anafinta said wistfully.

"Please wait."

After Gu Chuan finished putting the new water, he took off the dragon heart horn and turned around to leave the room. As he left, he saw that Anafanta was always on top of him, as if he was afraid that he would never return.

When the door is closed, the glowing interior falls silent. Anafinta turned her head and looked back at the world outside the window. The lives of the toeless people go on as usual, but she is no longer there.

A minute or a quarter of an hour's wait could be just as long for Anafinta at this moment.

Footsteps were heard in the hallway, and the door opened.

Anafinta saw several faces, the gods living in this mirror-like palace.

This is Gu Chuan who came to this room with Chu Yun and Zaiyan, as well as Mr. Dandan, who came over with Dead Skin.

And he stood at the right hand of the young man and said to him,

"She does seem to be in a much better mental condition."

"Yes, that's why I called you all here, and we should be able to get enough information about the Netherworld from her mouth."

Facing the transparent coffin trapped in Soa Nafanta, Gu Chuan felt in a trance that he was a devil in a TV series who got the news of the Eighth Route Army by torturing innocent people.

This sensation made him exhale, and he put on the dragon's horn again, and under the gaze of the others, said to Anafitta:

"Okay, I have a lot of things I want to ask you, let's move on."

In the transparent coffin, the motherly toeless man nodded softly.

She is willing to state everything.

Sadly, the explorers aboard the Dead or Alive soon discover that the Toeless is not intellectual, or civilized, enough for her to fully account everything she should know.

Mathematics, for example.

"How many people are in your population?"

During the exchange, when the young man asked the question, Anafinta froze. She had a blank expression, and there was a sense of uneasiness and panic in her heart.

It's a simple matter of numbers.

But this concept does not exist in this uncivilized world.

Anafinta may not have a notion of a number of more than ten with her race. The simplest manifestation of this is that it is difficult for a toeless person to count more than ten.

This ignorance is complete, not a linguistic barrier. For example, the mathematical thinking of a race may be based on ternaries, quintals, or decimal systems, or even on multiple bases at the same time...... For example, the Earth's clock is a mixture of twelve, twenty-four, and sexagesimme. Such a race, for ten, I am afraid that it is difficult for them to understand, but as long as it is converted, it is not difficult.

This is not the case with toeless, they also have ten fingers, and they can count those ten fingers, so their thinking is also based on the decimal system, but Anafanta just can't count more than ten.

Numbers above ten mean "many, many" to them, without a clear concept.

At the stage of math learning, Anafinta is still at the level of preschool in mathematics, let alone understanding negative numbers or fractions and irrational numbers, she may not be able to understand "zero" yet.

Naturally, mathematical estimates, such as the size of the population in the population of about 100 or 200 people, she could not give a general answer.

The answer she gave was:

"Many, many, but not as many as the other tribes that inhabit the Netherworld, and at the same time as many of the Netherworld's races."

Zai Yan stood aside, heard Gu Chuan's relay, and remained silent.

He had known this outcome for a long time, as this was the case with most of the Gearmen's communication with the aliens. The Gear Man's research on aliens has never relied on communication, but only on observation.

It is also based on this phenomenon that the two strangers who were able to communicate with them perfectly were finally identified by the Cogwheel People8 as guests from the equivalent and worthy of the civilized world.

"However, the lack of civilization is itself a kind of intelligence."

Gu Chuan said.

He leaned on the dragon's heart and asked Anafanta:

"Is there a race that has lived in a corner of the Netherworld for a long time? It is a life that has lived in a group since your parents' generation. ”

That's a question that Anafinta can answer. The uneasiness in her heart that had been lifted by the inability to answer had calmed down a little.

"Yes."

As she spoke, her thoughts raced as she remembered that before she was sick, her tribe had visited a high cloud on a jellyfish. In that cloud, Anafanta saw stone for the first time—a substance that was neither flowing nor soft, and which the elders called solid.

She remembered touching the solid surface in amazement. She saw that there was a pile of ghostly snow on it, and she swept it away and rubbed her cheek against it.

The solid is cool, but it cannot be eaten, and the teeth will fall out.

"That's a huge board."

Gu Chuan saw the rush of her impressions, and muttered to Chu Yun and Zai Yan.

Between the boards, the sky and the clouds are covered, in Gu Chuan's words, it is like a cave, and there are many people living in it who are different from the toeless people and have scales on their bodies.

At that time, they were performing a ceremony, gathered in a circle, and bowed down to a withered corpse in the middle.

Later, Anafinta learned that the dry bones were what the scaly man looked like after his death, and that they were having a funeral. Anafinta and her tribe were not allowed to attend the funeral, as the corpses were food for the young children of the Scales. The scaly toddlers were already hungry and were crying all the time.

Anaerofinta was also hungry at the time, but she didn't dare to say it, because she was staying in a strange place, because her kindred who had yelled at the scales children had been beaten by the scales.

"The Scales should have lived there for a long, long time, and they should be the tribe that has lived in one place for the longest time." Anafinta said with confidence.

Gu Chuan concealed his disappointment without a trace.

The Scales in Anafanta's thoughts are as miserable as they are, outcasts who have been brutalized by nature. Not to mention that these scales can't be found without a map, and even if they do, I'm afraid they won't know the actual situation of the Netherworld.

"Then you've been drifting like this? Have you ever been back to a place repeatedly? This place must be special. ”

"Yes...... Some ......"

Anaerofinta wondered if those places might be areas beyond death's control.

She bowed her head and said:

"It's a fire, a cloud of fire...... It's a very bright place, much brighter than here. But I haven't been...... I'm going soon, we're going. ”

Fire means an object that glows intensely.

Anafanta had not been there, so her mind could not give her a concrete image.

When Gu Chuan asked why they were arguing, Anafitta's head lowered:

"We're arguing about whether to go to the fire. I think we must go ......."

"Is there any benefit to going to the fire?"

Anaerofinta in the transparent coffin hugged herself tightly:

"The ancestors said we needed to finish a jigsaw puzzle there."

"Puzzle ......" Gu Chuan remembered the word, Anafanta had told him before that she was going back to her clan to complete a puzzle.

"What is a puzzle?"

Anafinta's memories began to spring up again.

She didn't know what the puzzle was, only that she had heard the elders of the tribe say that it was a long, long time ago when they made a rule with the other tribes.

But she knew what the puzzle was for. Because there is less food in the Netherworld than in the Great Wilderness, in order to find enough food, the tribes are constantly on the move. The route is limited, and the success or failure of the puzzle will determine the migration route of different tribes. Some routes are lush and safe, while others are barren and dangerous.

The route cannot be easily changed because the right to move between the big clouds in the middle is not in their hands. For example, jellyfish...... The strength of the toeless people cannot control the direction in which the jellyfish fly, and the jellyfish will only fly in their own direction.

Unfortunately, the tribe of the Toeless, according to the Elders, has already taken the barren route twice. They have been walking a path of apoptosis for a long time in a barren world.

Anafanta's narration amazed the young man.

He asked:

"You fight each other internally, but have you ever fought with other tribes? There should be, right? ”

Fight for food and survival.

Everyone's eyes fell on the toeless human girl in the transparent coffin. She shook her head, soft webbed hands on her chest,

She said:

"That's something that was forbidden a long, long time ago. We cannot solve problems through struggle...... This is an ancient teaching. ”

In her thoughts, the elders of the tribe adhered to this teaching, saying that the tribes involved in the puzzle were once their brothers and sisters.

The ghostly past is hidden in darkness, and history is passed down through the mouths of a few lives. Ancient teachings maintain the peace of the Netherworld, and each tribe follows its own path until a certain amount of time has passed, when they meet in the glowing fires to decide their future migration route with a jigsaw puzzle.

Gear people have always believed that compared to communicating with people, the traces of matter are the best way to explain everything. It's a pity that the traces of matter don't last long in the netherworld.

She or they are both travelers in the world's labyrinth.

Gu Chuan didn't miss the appointment, he was sure that he couldn't get more information from Anafinta, so he chose to let go of this toeless man who couldn't tell if he saved it himself or if he delayed it.

They carried the coffin into the exhaust chamber, then unlocked the coffin, opened the hatch of the exhaust chamber, and threw it out in the water.

The toeless maiden floated in the air, stared at in amazement by her kindred.

This astonishment soon turned into fear of the resurrection.

They did not dare to come near Anafanta, but Anafita rose with more courage than she had had been in the previous strife, and she took a step forward and said to them:

"I have returned from the world of the dead. The hairy, horned, Dead Lord asked me a few questions, and I answered them, so they allowed me to be resurrected. ”

She saw her kindred's gaze change.

And the toeless man, who had supported going to the fire to make puzzles like her, suddenly said something that Anafita herself had not thought of in an excited and high-pitched voice:

"Anafinta is a Sage who has passed the test of death."