"Guarding yourself?"

Tails repeated it with a puzzled look on his face.

But he was extremely confused, like falling into the fog.

Magic Energy Covenant.

Be self-conscious.

Compared to the mysteries of the gods, this rule seems ordinary and ordinary, and it seems that it needs no more explanation.

"A magician must guard himself at all times. ”

"That's it," said the stranger, with a look of rejection:

"For the rest, figure it out for yourself. ”

Well, get it yourself—

Yes?

Tails, who reacted, was shocked!

He looked at the other with a dumbfounded look.

Myself...... Understand?

the groove.

This is a classroom style that drops a sentence and immediately leaves the classroom......

Why is it so familiar?

"Wait, wait, wait! you...... That's all?"

Tails' eyes widened, looking at the stranger who seemed to be about to run away at any moment, and desperately said more, trying to leave him behind:

"What the hell is this? I mean, 'don't look into each other' at least like a practical rule......"

But just as Tails was about to ask questions, the stranger raised his head slightly and looked into the distance.

"You should go," he said coldly, with his hands behind his back.

"They noticed. ”

Tails' eyelids jumped.

They.

Girls

"So fast?"

The boy followed the other's example and looked at the blurry sky that seemed empty to him.

Sure enough, there was still nothing.

But......

Tails said with a headache and chagrin:

"Why do they ...... me? So interested?"

The question silenced the atmosphere for a moment.

After a while, the stranger turned his hands behind his back and spoke silently.

"Don't blame them," the strange words were full of indifferent sadness:

"They're poor children, just like you. ”

"It's just a last resort. ”

Hearing this, Tails couldn't help frowning fiercely.

What the?

Poor child?

Tails still looked confused.

"After all, they have ...... for the world"

Tails heard it clearly, and the stranger sighed behind the vague void, sounding emotional:

"Too much sacrifice. ”

Too much was sacrificed......

Just when Tails frowned at this sentence again, a thrill suddenly occurred in his mind!

A long-lost memory came to mind.

It was a simple temple where he had a conversation with a goddess presiding priest.

[He believes that you are different...... He believes you will do better. 】

He sacrificed too much. 】

Tails narrowed his eyes in confusion, feeling inexplicably familiar.

He sacrificed too much......

Sacrifice......

Wait, sacrifice!

Tails snapped back to his senses!

He remembered.

His breathing sped up suddenly!

Prince, Desert, Dungeon, Assassin, Raid, Captive, Hostage, Alchemy Ball......

Scene by scene, pieces of memories poured into his mind, more and more, filling in the parts he had just missed.

"Ha-ah, ah-ah......"

Tails gasped for air, his eyes glazed over, and he didn't even pay attention to the stranger's gaze.

Worst......

Worst!

There......

Tails recalled in horror the last scene not long ago......

It wasn't by chance that he lost control, ascended the threshold, and knocked on the door......

There......

Yodel ...... Daggers and alchemy balls of drills......

The anxiety and tension in the teenager's heart instantly came to the peak.

The stranger's words continued: "I will help you out of control and send you to a safe ......"

"No way!"

Tails looked up suddenly!

He twisted his face and blurted out loudly:

"I can't just go back! I can't leave ...... The so-called 'out of control'!"

The stranger stopped talking and looked at him quietly.

"I remember, I feel it," Tails' fists clenched tighter and tighter, and he couldn't calm down:

"On that side, something, someone, and something are still waiting for me. ”

Thinking of this, he took a step forward excitedly:

"Tell me, tell me more!"

Tails gritted his teeth and looked at the other party, and said firmly, "You don't have to teach me what magic energy is......"

"But you can teach me the tricks, teach me the methods, teach me how to 'guard myself', how to be in ...... Stay sane in that runaway state. ”

I must be sober and with the power of a magician......

"Them. ”

"They're waiting for me. ”

Tails looked anxious and his eyes were nervous.

But the other party just stared from afar, and did not move, as if he did not hear.

Tails' heart sank.

"It's not something that can be done at once," said the stranger after a few seconds, "You need to practice, reckless action will ......"

"But I don't have time to practice. ”

Under the nervousness and panic, the second prince's tone became more and more excited: "Please teach me...... Please!"

"For the sake of Ashida or 'old friend'!"

This time, the other party stared at him for an extraordinarily long time.

One second, two seconds, five seconds......

But just in the next moment, before Tails could react, the illusory scene of the stranger's whole body shook together, and the momentum was solemn!

The other party took a step forward, and the eyes hidden behind the void lit up with two strong lights, as if they were essentially penetrating the obstacles.

Straight into Tails' eyes, making the boy's eyes darken!

In the space called 'Critical', the surrounding blurred void curtain shattered one after another, turning into a three-dimensional dense fog.

They pressed from all around like life, crushing this side of the world and blocking, dyeing everything in front of them into pitch black, like the huge waves of the ink sea, surging!

Tails took a step back in shock, but felt that the stranger in front of him was becoming more and more domineering.

"The girls are amazing, I can't hide it for too long. ”

Strangers are hard to say:

"You can understand as much as you can. ”

Before Tails could express his gratitude, the other party spoke decisively and without delay.

"First of all, anchors. ”

In the ink-shrouded void, strangers paced around Tails, mysterious eyes glowing from different angles.

"You have to find a good anchor for yourself, and that's the easiest way to 'keep to yourself'. ”

Before he could recover from the shocking changes in front of him, Tails was slightly puzzled:

"Anchor?"

The stranger's footsteps stopped behind Tails.

"I don't like to use metaphors, but even as a junior, you are too far behind, so I can only explain this inequality and non-rigorous way. ”

Tails' heart moved.

Behind him, the mysterious magician in the void said coldly:

"When you wander in a sea of magical energy, feeling the threshold rise and fall all the time, it is far more than your physical body that is affected. ”

"You need an anchor that locks you at all times, and even when you are in danger, pulls you back from the path of ascent back to the most basic physical state, which is the anchor point. ”

The strange thick fog around him flowed with the stranger's words, emitting both a glimmer and a blocking, making Tails feel like he was in an endless sea.

At a loss.

The stranger wasted no time and continued:

"An accurate and effective anchor will not only help you resist your terrible impulses and desires, maintain your self and sanity when you come into contact with magical energy, but it will also take effect even after knocking, pulling you back from your irresistible nature back to your physical state. ”

Tails groaned slightly, "So I need an anchor point." ”

"How?"

The stranger slowly raised a finger, and colorless ripples lingered from his fingertips again, combining visions in front of his blurred face.

"Specifically, an anchor can be anything – a memory, an object, a feature, an event. ”

Memory, Items, Traits, Events......

Recognize yourself.

Resist impulses.

Stay sane.

Return to yourself.

Tails suddenly remembered the inexplicable "knock" six years ago.

At that time, he recalled himself from his so-called true state to Longxiao City......

"But most importantly......"

The stranger continued:

"The anchor has to point directly at your ego. ”

Tails was suddenly stunned, and then a question arose:

"Ego?"

His mind returned to the stranger's previous words.

Be self-conscious.

But......

"Self," the stranger nodded, and the streamer flickered over the side of his skull, bringing out a blurry circle of colorless ripples:

"There are few things in you that cannot be confused by others. ”

The stranger's glowing eyes flashed behind the blurred face.

Now, to answer me: "His voice became so cold and hard that Tails had to pay attention to him:

"Who are you?"

Tails shook slightly.

"Me?"

The boy subconsciously replied:

"Uh, Tate, Tails?"

But strangers suddenly become aggressive.

"Tails?"

"How do you know there's only one Tails in the world?"

He spoke faster and asked coldly:

"What if I told you that one hundred and twenty-three years ago on the south shore of the stars, in a pub in some port, there was also an unlucky sailor named Tyers?"

"Is the anchor going to point at you, or is it him?"

Tails was stunned by his words of compactness.

The stranger said coldly:

"As I said, the self is something in you that cannot be confused with the other. ”

"Tails, is this name you have used for more than ten years your real 'self', or is it a label given by others that you think is 'self'?"

Tails only felt his breathing getting shorter.

"So again, who are you?" repeated the stranger.

The strange fog around it lingered for a long time.

Gloomy and bleak.

Tails gritted his teeth and took a deep breath:

"Well, then...... I was born in 665 in the year of the end calendar, born in the lower city of Yongxing, and was unlucky in the first half of my life?"

He looked up and looked tentatively at the stranger.

"Hmph, the content has been added, the scope of the label has been narrowed, and the anchor point is easier to point, which seems to be very effective, but the problem is, if it works, ......"

The stranger groaned slightly at first, as if he had a feeling, but in the end, he changed his words with sarcasm:

"Why don't you just throw a three-foot-thick biography into it?"

Tails' eyebrows moved.

The stranger's tone was rather disdainful:

"The longer the kite's line, the harder it is to control, and you're putting such a heavy load on the anchor point, maybe it's just positioned to '665' and it's on the storm breaking line. ”

Tails furrowed his brow in a headache.

The stranger makes people feel quite cold:

"What you need is a precise definition, not a redundant description and multiple labels - you're like the protagonist of a vulgar knight, facing an enemy and pulling out a lot of seemingly powerful treasures and titles, but none of them really belong to him. ”

The stranger bent down, his blurred face almost touching the tip of Tails' nose.

The bright light in his eyes is still there, making people unable to open their eyes:

"One more time...... You...... Be...... Who?"

The boy looked at him nervously.

The dense fog and huge waves around him rolled again and again, which seemed to show the other party's mood at the moment.

It also put Tails under a lot of pressure.

Tails shook his heart and gritted his teeth, "Okay, I'm - the magician Prince Tails?"

"Can't be confused, can you?"

Hearing that word, the stranger was silent for a moment, and slowly straightened up.

"Very well, this 'self' seems to be very unique, but," only to hear the stranger snort coldly:

"Is it really accurate?"

Tails was stunned again.

"The three parts are so inseparable, is the self that your anchor points to 'magician', 'Tails', or 'prince'?"

The other party shook his head and said:

"Secondly, your true self can be summed up in these three words?

The stranger snorted coldly and continued to ask:

"So, who are you for the last time?"

What the?

Tyles, who had been battered, was depressed.

The anxious nervousness, the successive oppressive interrogations, and the ensuing rebuttals gave Tails no chance to breathe and ponder, only confused.

He could no longer care about the raging fog around the other party, and he had no time to care about the strange scene in the borderline.

"I don't understand. ”

"How exactly do you determine the anchor point to point to the 'self'?"

Seizing the last chance, Tails asked the stranger solemnly and seriously:

"And what is the 'self'?"

The teenager shook his head honestly: "I really don't understand. ”

The stranger seemed to anticipate his question, and snorted softly.

"Because it's harder than you think. ”

The mysterious magician raised his hands and raised his voice:

"In this world, most people have a hard time recognizing themselves. ”

With his words, the dense fog and ink waves in the critical area obediently gave way to the space, and the colorless waves turned into mini-scenes in the void.

That's a myriad of faceless individuals.

From birth, growth, labor, achievement to death.

It is their birth, old age, sickness and death.

"They live on a myriad of labels – names, occupations, appearances, accomplishments, status, status, blood, relationships, titles, power, wealth, possessions, ......"

Tails stared blankly at his performance.

The stranger moved his hands, and the mirage changed:

"Some labels are given directly by others, and some labels are chosen by oneself later. ”

But whether they admit themselves because of others, self-convince themselves by established habits, and define themselves by their position, they often fall into the trap of thinking that the label represents themselves, but they never know what their true self is. ”

Label......

Self......

Tails frowned, puzzled.

"Directing anchors to meaningless labels, thinking that's the ego, counting on these things to take you home......"

The other party's fingers trembled, and the picture in the colorless waves shattered!

Shook Tails.

The stranger's words carried a faint sense of alienation:

"Historically, many people have lost themselves in this step, disappeared into nothingness, and never came back – we call this the 'wrong anchor'. ”

"No matter how strong-willed a person is, once he takes the wrong path, he will just go in the opposite direction, and he will be wrong again and again. ”

Wrong anchor ......

Lost......

At that moment, Tails felt like he had caught something, but when he looked back, he didn't seem to understand anything.

He scratched his hair in pain:

"The self is not a label, and the anchor cannot be fixed on the label?"

"And where am I supposed to be?"

The stranger snorted, seemingly unimpressed.

"I don't know," the other party stared at him coldly, and a cold light seemed to come from his blurred face:

"You tell me?"

All right.

Looking at the other party's appearance, Tails shook his head in a headache.

He's clearly not the kind of person who likes to shine the answer on to his students.

In the mysterious borderline, the stranger took a deep look at Tails and turned away.

"That's the end of 'self-discipline,'" he left the boy with a lonely back:

"As for how much ...... you can experience?"

Tails was shocked!

"Wait......"

But the other party didn't look back, and saw that he was about to sink into the thick fog.

At the same time, Tails sensed that everything around him was dissipating.

It was as if he was leaving soon.

Tails was anxious.

Damn it!

Anchor, self-...... What the hell does these mean!

He stared at the stranger's slowly disappearing back, desperately thinking that he had to at least find a way to keep him......

In order not to forget, in order to keep sanity.

Find anchors when you get out of control or when you ascend the threshold.

The anchor points straight to the self and pulls me back......

So......

From anchor to self, for example, it is like when I am sailing in the sea, I cast a ......

Wait a minute.

Analogy?

Speaking of this, the young man was suddenly stunned.

He looked up and stared blankly at the fog that was gradually dissipating in the critical line.

"Guide!"

Tails blurted out subconsciously.

At that moment, the ink-colored fog around him seemed to be conscious, and it trembled!

The stranger turned back, and the fog no longer dissipated.

He looked at Tails steadily.

I saw the latter gasp and ask:

"Y-you're Ashida's guide, aren't you?"

Very good......

At least...... I left him behind.

Tails was apprehensive.

Faced with Tails' sudden questioning, the stranger seemed unprepared.

He moved slightly, and his blurred face trembled slightly.

After a few seconds, the stranger asked faintly:

"Why?"

Tails let out a slow breath, feeling the slowly recovering memory.

"Ashida said he hated metaphors," Tails tentatively said word for word:

"You don't seem to like it either. ”

The stranger did not speak.

But Tails felt it was the default.

"Why, why metaphors, why hate metaphors?" Tails asked abruptly, before realizing that something was wrong.

He looked down on the stranger's exact expression, and could only feel the other party's gaze behind the void suddenly move, bringing a few ripples.

But he didn't look offended.

"Because," said the stranger in a strange tone:

"In the most serious and egalitarian discussions, the use of metaphors is a kind of laziness and cunning. ”

Tails' heart moved, and he felt that he had touched something.

Only to hear the stranger continue:

It relies on one-sided commonalities to connect ontology and metaphor, but it is easy to obscure the essence and context of things, connive at the speaker, mislead the listener, exile understanding to the appearance of metaphor, and unconsciously distort the original appearance of things. ”

"It is a scout of sophistry and empty talk, a vanguard of deviation and misunderstanding. ”

The stranger said indifferently:

"Even if there are similarities, metaphor and ontology may not be common, and even if they are easy to understand, the understanding obtained through metaphor may not be in line with the original meaning. ”

At that moment, Tails trembled slightly!

He understood something.

Tails subconsciously spoke, learning the other party's sentence pattern word by word, but changed the object:

"Despite the similarities, labels and self may not be the same, and even if they are easy to understand, the self obtained through labels is not necessarily the real self. ”

Tails said dumbfounded.

The stranger didn't answer, just stared silently.

As the words slowly spoke, the boy's train of thought became more and more unimpeded.

With a little eagerness and excitement, he looked at the other party: "Therefore, to anchor yourself, what you really need is to get rid of all external labels." ”

"Fade away what you said of 'things that are confused by others.'" ”

"Because those labels also blur the essence of things, what the self is, right?"

The stranger remained silent.

Tails' eyes lit up, and he asked again and again: "They are like metaphors grabbed from other similar objects, they contain either too much or too little, the situation is biased left and right, and they can't represent themselves?"

Tails' thoughts became clearer and clearer, and he slammed his fist into the palm of his hand:

"Therefore, I can't rely on external things to set an anchor to find myself, which will be 'wrong anchor'. ”

"It's like in the most serious discussions, you don't like to use metaphors to convey ideas, which distorts the essence without regard to the situation. ”

The stranger looked at him silently.

In the thousands of thoughts composed of demonic energy, a few special thoughts floated.

Maybe you're right, Ashida.

He's really different.

It's not his bloodline, it's not his origin, it's not his qualifications.

But......

Thinking of this, the stranger snorted softly:

Ironically, it's also a metaphor. ”

Seems disdainful.

But at least he didn't deny it—Tails said silently.

This means......

At that moment, Tails frowned.

"Be self-conscious. ”

He subconsciously repeated.

"'Something which cannot be confused by others,'" said the prince, looking up thoughtfully:

"So that's what it means. ”

The stranger folded his arms, his face slightly clouded, making Tails feel like he was smiling.

I'm going to find out that in this world......

Original, complete, true, something that belongs only to me.

"Because he is hell. ”

Tails said dumbfounded.

The stranger's voice was full of confusion:

"What?"

Tails came to his senses and shook his head: "It's nothing, just the crazy words of an old man named Sartre." ”

The stranger nodded, and the fog around him began to dissipate again.

"Then go," the mysterious magician said lightly, "back to the most violent state of loss of control." ”

"Test your anchors. ”

"If you succeed and keep your sanity and self out of control and not get lost, then you have officially settled down in the 'matter' phase and become a 'contact' - although I don't think the magical stage theory has any applicability to you. ”

Tails' expression tightened, he remembered his companions who were still on the other side, in distress, and finally didn't say anything.

But when it came to the end, he hesitated slightly.

"What if I fail?"

The stranger sneered:

"If your anchor fails...... Then you'll repeat the same mistakes and go up the bar like crazy until you knock on the door and wait for the two girls who are gearing up to find you......"

Tails frowned.

"What's more, because you are starting from the critical line, the next unexpected knock will only be more violent, and I think you are likely to be completely lost in your true state and become a kite with a broken string. ”

Tails was stunned for a moment, struggling to understand the other party's words: "A kite with a broken string?"

"So where will I go?"

The stranger shook his head.

"I don't know. ”

The momentum around him changed, and his words were gone:

"Because no one has ever come back. ”

The skeleton of the next chapter has been built, and more than 2,000 words have just been written, and this progress should be updated at twelve o'clock...... bar.

This chapter involves the French existentialist philosopher Sartre (not the invincible monster Big Sartre in Dota 2!, if Dota is not deleted, Dota will perish - ahem), in that era of rapid advancement, his ideas influenced a generation, of course, I prefer his lover (manual squint).

(End of chapter)