"This is... awfully delicious!" Phillips finally slowed down after gobbling the food for quite a long time.
People who pa.s.sed by were all shocked at the boxes of hamburgers and egg tarts piling up on their table. These food was apparently enough for five or six people. However, they only saw three people sitting here and two of them were slender, attractive girls who did not seem that they could eat a lot. Given this, most people pa.s.sing by thought it must have been the man who had devoured so much food and despised him for being such a greedy glutton.
Seeing those disdainful looks on their faces, Roland felt helpless but at the same time rejoiced over his wise choice of picking a cheap fast food chain store instead of an expensive restaurant. Otherwise, this meal with Phyllis would definitely bankrupt him. He said to Zero, "Wipe her mouth."
The little girl took out a wet wipe to remove the tear and oil stains on Phyllis" face. Thanks to the natural beauty of a witch, she did not need any make-up. Otherwise, she would look terrible after eating this brunch in a flood of tears. This was probably the first time for the little girl to meet so miserable a person that even a KFC meal would bring her to tears. Her att.i.tude toward her totally changed because of a sudden flush of compa.s.sion.
Seeing her finish the brunch, Roland took a sip of his c.o.ke and said to Phyllis, "Here"re some ice cream cones, but let"s talk about the Dreamland first. Before you entered it, did you find anything unusual?"
"But..." She glanced at the little girl sitting beside her and hesitated.
He blinked at the ancient witch and said, "That"s alright. It"s just a dream you had in your childhood."
She immediately got what he meant and said, "Oh, well. It happened long before. Let me think... No, nothing special. I just leaned on the wall and disconnected myself. In this way, I can quickly refresh myself without being totally off guard."
"Can you sense the changes in the surroundings even after disconnecting yourself?"
She nodded. "Yes. By doing so, I just stop my control over the body and send my consciousness into the darkness. In the dark, I can still sense the dangers nearby, but I don"t see or hear them. This feeling is hard to describe. It"s like someone else reminding me of the dangers in the dark. Celine calls this phenomenon a subconscious connection. Only when we"re kept in soul containers will we truly become unconscious."
Zero twitched her mouth. "What"re you talking about? Who"s this Celine?"
"A shrink. Don"t interrupt when adults are talking." Roland gave her a glance and continued. "If you get bored by this, go to the park to watch people fis.h.i.+ng or flying kites, but don"t walk too far away from us."
She snorted and left unhappily with an ice cream cone in her hand.
Looking at the little girl through the French window, Phyllis asked, "Is it safe to let her go out alone."
Roland shrugged and said, "It"s fine. It"s pretty safe in this era, and she"s not easy to deceive. Let"s go on."
"Yes, once I"m in a deep sleep, I won"t be able to do anything except drifting about in the endless darkness where there"s no light, no sound, nothing at all." The ancient Witch paused. "However, this time, in my deep sleep, I saw your residence in this Dream World. My astonishment was beyond description at that moment. Fortunately, I saw you soon."
After a little thought, Roland said, "Well... The only special thing about your deep sleep this time was that you slept in my castle."
"Yes, just that." Phyllis swallowed her last ice cream cone and heaved a long sigh of satisfaction.
Seeing the cone disappear into the ancient witch"s mouth, Roland suddenly thought of an idea. "Beams of the light!"
"What?"
"You told me that when I fell asleep, there would be a beam of yellow-orange light as huge as the city wall, didn"t you?"
Phyllis was startled and then seemed to realized something, too. "Yes, I did."
"And you also have a beam of the light, don"t you?"
"You mean... our beams of the light overlapped?"
"Yes. The lord castle of Border Town is just an ordinary stone building. It doesn"t have the power to bring you into this Dreamland. I"ve thought this thing over and over. Only our beams of the light can do that." Roland suddenly clapped his hands. "But I guess the overlapping is just one reason for this. Meanwhile, you"ve also got to cut off your consciousness to get here. Otherwise, Anna, Nightingale and some other witches would have come to this Dream World long before you."
At the same time, Roland thought of something else. He had been baffled about the word "soul" in Taquila witches" stories.
They had transferred their souls into different sh.e.l.ls, such as G.o.d"s Punishment Warriors and those strange carriers left by the underground civilization. In this way, they had successfully controlled these sh.e.l.ls, but they had never explained to him what souls were.
Based on his understanding, a person"s soul was his or her thoughts and memories, which were generated by the communication between neurons through electric currents. He had believed that a soul was not something real or something which could continue to exist when it left a human body. However, the Taquila witches had told him that the underground civilization"s soul core could not only extract one"s soul but also transplant on something else.
He had attributed this to the wonders created by magic power, but now he thought it differently.
What if memories and minds could be a.n.a.lyzed? Supposing beams of the light and magic power all come from the b.l.o.o.d.y Moon, these so-called souls may also come from it. Once the soul core is activated to extract someone"s soul, his or her memories and minds will be somehow copied and stored in the b.l.o.o.d.y Moon. The beams of the light just serve as the transmission pa.s.sages in this process. That"s how the Soul Transfer works.
Pasha used to say that as the process of transforming magic power into something real was extremely complicated, the deities took over this job and gave different witches beams of the light in different sizes. No matter she was right or wrong, her theory, to some extent, can explain why the beams on the heads of the G.o.d"s Punishment Witches became much thinner after the Soul Transfer. Transmitting someone"s mind and memories is much easier than transforming magic power into some effects or some objects in the real world. Given that, this Soul Transfer process won"t need a wide transmission pa.s.sage.
My Dream World is far more complicated than most of the witches" abilities. That"s why my transmission pa.s.sage, namely, my beam of the light is as wide as the city wall. When Phyllis cut off her consciousness within my beam of the light, her thoughts and memories stored in the b.l.o.o.d.y Moon overlapped with my Dream World. That"s how she got into this world.
Roland was thrilled at this discovery, since this theory seemed to be able to explain all the things that had puzzled him for a very long time. If overlapped beams of the light did bring Phyllis into the Dream World, that meant this world was also a part of the b.l.o.o.d.y Moon. Through Zero"s Soul Battlefield, he somehow created this world in the "Divine Domain" of magic power.
When he was about to tell this discovery to Phyllis, a loud bang broke out in a restaurant next door, coupled with lots of gla.s.s window fragments flying out. People fled the place in panic, crying and screaming, making the diners in the KFC restaurant nervous and confused.