Chapter 28: I Am Just an Ordinary Person

Chapter 28: I Am Just an Ordinary Person

The beggar picked up the coin, raised his arm, and held it out before Fang Xiaoling’s eyes. "This is what they believe in," he said.

Fang Xiaoling stared at the coin, lost in a daze for a long time. Gradually, the coin vanished. She murmured, "All things in this world exist, yet they do not. If they do not exist, then perhaps they truly do."

She looked again at the beggar, who was shouting something in a panic, but Fang Xiaoling could no longer hear him. The more she concentrated on listening, the less she could hear; the more she tried to focus on the beggar's face, the blurrier it became.

In the beggar’s perception, the deity had vanished.

In Fang Xiaoling’s perception, she had finally awakened.

Opening her eyes slowly, she saw the sea of stars in the night sky flowing like glowing sand. She felt a bone-chilling cold. As she sat up, she discovered she was by a campfire, surrounded by a circle of people.

To be precise, most of them were people.

"She has finally awakened." The old man in the white robe sitting to her right threw a handful of twigs into the fire, making the flames burn brighter. "Now we can know the answer."

Everyone looked at Fang Xiaoling. No one spoke; they all seemed to be waiting for her to say something.

She looked around and saw an endless desert. Everywhere her gaze reached, there were groups similar to the one she was in. Most were sitting around campfires, though some were different—some were dancing in a frenzy, others were embracing, and some stood alone in the flames, belonging to no group at all.

"Say something, then. How exactly did you get here?" a sphinx not far away urged. "Are you someone from a myth?"

"People in stories don't look so ordinary; she must be some great person who truly existed," said a man in armor sitting opposite her. He swung his greatsword toward the campfire, splitting the flames in two, then peered through the gap at Fang Xiaoling. "Are you Madame Curie?"

"I am Madame Curie!" a curly-haired woman nearby said, sounding annoyed. "You are very rude. We have all introduced ourselves, and I still remember your name, Wang Yu of Western Chu!"

"It is Xiang Yu, the Overlord of Western Chu." The man pressed his hands against the pommel of his sword. "My apologies. I don't know why that name suddenly came to mind; I thought perhaps it was the influence of the subconscious that Mr. Jung mentioned earlier."

Fang Xiaoling then realized she might recognize some of the beings sitting around her. She pointed at the sphinx and asked, "Are you the Sphinx? From ancient Egyptian mythology?"

The sphinx raised its head. "You recognize me, which suggests that the era you come from is in the future—at least, it is the future from my perspective."

"That's right." She pointed to a monkey. "You must be Sun Wukong, from *Journey to the West*, right?"

"Indeed, it is I, Old Sun! There is nothing interesting here, so I shall go elsewhere to play!" Sun Wukong had only come here because he had mistaken the Sphinx for the Azure Lion Demon of Lion Camel Ridge. Upon closer inspection, he realized his mistake and conjured a somersault cloud beneath his feet, departing the scene.

"You are all very famous, aren't you? I might even know all of you, though I might not recognize you just by your appearance," Fang Xiaoling said, hugging her arms and shivering. "By the way, where is this place? It’s so cold..."

"Welcome to the Astral Realm, my friend. Only those great beings who are deeply remembered by the people of the real world can come here." The old man in the white robe suddenly held a staff in his hand. He raised his arm, pointing his staff at the night sky. "You fell from the sky and have been sleeping ever since. Such a thing has never happened in the Astral Realm before."

"Beings?" Fang Xiaoling pointed to the robot sitting next to Xiang Yu. "Does that count as a being?"

"Gandalf is simply using the word 'being' to describe us loosely," said a bald, white-bearded foreign old man. "We all crawled out of the desert after waking up. You are the only one who fell from the sky and then fell asleep. Why is that?"

"I don't know. I just traveled through, stared at a point of light, went to a world where I was omnipotent, then my abilities were restricted, then I vanished, and finally, I woke up here." Fang Xiaoling tried to explain it all, but she clearly saw that everyone’s eyes were filled with confusion.

The sphinx tapped its claws on the ground, sending sand flying into the fire with a crackling sound. "Girl, why exactly are you remembered by the people in the real world?"

"I don't know... I'm just an ordinary person." Fang Xiaoling moved closer to the campfire, but she didn't feel any warmer.

"This campfire is an illusion," Gandalf said, thrusting his staff into the fire and pulling it out completely unscathed. "Everything in the Astral Realm is an illusion, including us—in a sense, we are illusions too. Here, only the cold is real..."

Fang Xiaoling stood up and began to stomp her feet, feeling that she might be better suited for the group dancing in the distance. "Can you tell me how to go back?"

"Go back? Back where?" Madame Curie looked at her with disdain. "Don't tell me you mean back to the deepest recesses of people's memories? Aren't you already here?"

"I mean back to the real world, of course! You mentioned the real world earlier, didn't you?"

"Going to the real world is impossible. We have never existed in the real world, so how can we go back?" Xiang Yu also stood up, pulling his greatsword from the sand and shouldering it as he looked around, as if searching for someone. "This place is simply too vast. Consort Yu, please wait a little longer; I will surely find you."

"I’ve said it many times: the woman you are looking for may not have been remembered by the humans in the real world, so she simply isn't here. Don't waste your effort," the sphinx yawned.

Xiang Yu pointed his sword at it. "I have also said it many times! If you dare say such things again, you beast, I will slay you!"

The sphinx licked its paw and retorted, refusing to back down, "Try it if you can. Even if we aren't illusions, you are not necessarily my match."

"Stop! Don't fight yet," Fang Xiaoling intervened, saying to Xiang Yu, "You said you never existed in the real world? How could that be? You are different from the Sphinx; it is from ancient Greek mythology, but you are a living historical figure! The Overlord of Western Chu—how could you have never existed?"

"This..." Xiang Yu seemed to know what was going on, but he couldn't put it into words. Finally, he sighed and said, "Alas! It is a pity that my strategist is not by my side."

The robot sitting next to Xiang Yu stood up, walked stiffly toward Fang Xiaoling, and its diamond-like eyes suddenly flickered.