One day, as usual, Li Donggui stood inside the spire's attic, his eyes unfocused and his thoughts wandering. It was a method he had gradually learned to keep himself from going insane.
The Soul Sea suddenly darkened. The abrupt gloom startled Li Donggui awake, and the Soul Sea's colors turned gray and bleak. Leo's breathless voice came from the yellow fog. The images in the firmament shook, showing Leo stumbling as he ran home.
The carefree days were always short-lived. Wind and rain had shattered Leo's life, and the peace of his Soul Sea with it.
Leo's father, Bert East, a dockworker who loaded and unloaded cargo, died in the summer of Year 48 of the Order Calendar. Bert East was an ordinary middle-aged man prematurely aged by years of toil. Even when he gave everything he had, he could do no more than keep food on the table for his family. Years of punishing physical labor had left his face covered in wrinkles and his body racked with illness.
The images in the firmament were no longer bright. Tears often blurred and obscured them. The yellow fog of sound was almost stagnant, and Leo's mother and little sister could often be heard sobbing late at night. Leo's Soul String swung with unusual heaviness, and Li Donggui's mood sank with it.
Even the most ordinary father was the support of a household.
After a period of mourning, Leo pressed down his sorrow, and the Soul String's movements grew even more powerful. As Leo's mother put it, Leo had grown up.
Li Donggui would occasionally look up to watch what was happening outside. Through his father's coworker, Steve Doug, Leo also became a dockworker. As the son of a dockworker, Leo had had little opportunity for an education. He could only find work as quickly as possible.
The son of a dockworker could only become a dockworker.
Blackport City was home, as its name suggested, to a black port. It was the most prosperous harbor in the southwestern part of the Audrian Continent. There were many fleets in the harbor, but only Captain Angus was willing to take in the half-grown boy for old Bert's sake.
The cargo on the docks was simply too heavy for Leo, who was still a boy. Leo carried the least and earned the least. Uncle Doug looked after him very carefully at the docks and would occasionally help him out financially as well.
Leo was clearly working as hard as he could, yet life was becoming more and more difficult. The family's meager savings had been spent on his father's medical treatment, and Leo's mother was already considering whether they should move into a wooden shack outside the city.
She had often complained about the filth and disorder of Blackport City's southern district. She had never imagined that even their low wooden house would so soon become an unattainable luxury. The low wooden house where Leo's family lived in the southern district cost as much as fifty copper pennies in rent every month.
“Ten sacks for one copper penny. If only these sacks could become lighter. I'd carry ten of them!”
Hearing Leo mutter, Li Donggui wished just as much that it could become reality.
Unless this otherworld has magic, how could a sack possibly become lighter?
Suddenly, Li Donggui's body shuddered for an instant, beyond his control.
He felt the wind!
Fifteen years. It was the first time Li Donggui had felt anything different. The sensation made him tremble, made him intoxicated with delight!
The wind had entered from outside the attic. Feeling it more carefully, he found that it was like rippling water, with crests and troughs, brushing up and down over Leo. Rather than wind, “waves” would have been a more fitting name.
Without even deliberately searching, Li Donggui immediately found the source of the anomaly!
Leo's Soul String!
That enormous pillar reaching from earth to sky was like a harp string plucked without warning. Its vibration was so violent that dense afterimages formed on both sides of it.
Looking closely, Li Donggui realized that it was not the entire string that was vibrating. One section of the Soul String had become more active and powerful, driving the rest to vibrate like the spine of a long dragon.
Then Leo's Soul String spread apart like a tangled hemp rope. For the first time, Li Donggui noticed that it was actually made up of five thinner strings twisted together. The main string spread like a vine, while five slender Soul Strings coiled around one another in a spiral!
The most active of the five gradually broke away from the others and became independent. The other four strings tightened again, forming a main string somewhat thinner than before. The main string still stood like a pillar supporting the heavens and the earth, swaying slowly.
Although the slender string had separated, it remained bound by some force, forming a single spiral around the main string. It was that independent slender string that was vibrating at superfrequency. The vibration sent countless waves radiating outward.
Those waves reached Li Donggui, giving him a sensation like wind brushing over him. The waves entered Li Donggui's body without the slightest resistance. The strange vibration made his body lighter. The pressure of his weight vanished from his ankles, much like the feeling of weightlessness on a roller coaster in his previous life.
Li Donggui instinctively gripped the marble railing. His legs could no longer exert any force, and every muscle in his body tightened. He even felt that he was about to float up to the roof.
Fifteen years. For the first time, Li Donggui felt that he truly existed.
If these waves can affect me, then…
Li Donggui whipped around and stared at the Calamity Bell. The enormous bronze bell swayed faintly amid the waves, dragging a shifting shadow across the firmament's phantasmagoric light.
It seemed that the bell needed these waves to drive it. But they were far from enough—nowhere near enough to make the Calamity Bell ring.
Li Donggui turned back again. The main string still resembled a pillar, while the slender string was now like an active swimming dragon, coiling around the main string in a spiral.
At the same time, the images in the firmament showed Leo carrying sacks at a faster and faster pace, striding as if he were flying. Captain Angus immediately noticed that something was wrong with Leo. He and a group of his men gathered around him.
“I wasn't slacking off! I didn't deliberately choose the lighter sacks to carry…” Leo stood helplessly in the middle of the crowd. “I don't know why, either. These few sacks are half as heavy as the others…”
Captain Angus's first mate tested the weight of a sack and found it extremely puzzling. In his hands, the sacks were full-weight, not as if some unscrupulous merchant from the West Continent had cheated them.
Captain Angus was a well-traveled man. After questioning Leo carefully, he said:
“Leo East, you must have become a mage. They say fifteen is a threshold for mages; the vast majority awaken before they turn fifteen.”
“Poor old Bert… he never got to enjoy a single day of happiness, and he didn't live to see his son become a mage.”
“I've heard that mages believe ordinary people's souls are strings, while their own souls are superstrings. That's why they all call themselves Superstring Mages.”
“Every mage is a precious asset of the nobility. Go to the Duke's Unicorn Legion. They'll tell you everything.”
Leo stared at Captain Angus in shock. A Superstring Mage?
Li Donggui heard the term in the Soul Sea as well. Remembering the superfrequency vibration of the Soul String just now, he had to admit that “superstring” was a very accurate term.
Following Captain Angus's directions, Leo made his way to the Duke's Unicorn Legion's garrison. There, he officially became a student of Cavendish Military Academy and learned that he truly had awakened as a mage.
The Cipher Mage, one of the five schools of Superstring Mages, possessed the ability to alter the density of objects. That was why, on the docks that day, Leo had unconsciously changed the density of the cargo inside the sacks. The sacks had become lighter even though they were full of goods.
After a short period of study, Leo immediately discovered a secret he could tell no one: there was another soul in his Soul Sea!
…
The Third Law of Order Superstring Mages: the Final Entrustee Law.
Every person's death leaves regrets. A soul on the verge of death may designate one Superstring Mage as the person to whom it entrusts its final wishes—the Final Entrustee. The Final Entrustee fulfills the dying soul's final wish, and the soul gives its spiritual power to the Final Entrustee.
…
It was a fair exchange.
Leo often murmured at midnight:
“Stranger, I don't know when you appeared in my Soul Sea, but I know you exist.
Please let me be your Final Entrustee. I will fulfill the final wish you entrust to me…”
All that awaited Leo was endless silence.
After murmuring those words, Leo would always feel a pang of sadness, but he was certain that the sadness did not belong to him. Within the Soul Sea, Li Donggui's thoughts drifted far away…
He did not know what he should entrust to this boy named Leo.
A can of chilled Happy Water[1] in summer? Or a cup of Mixue Ice City[2] in autumn?
The Huabei balance in Alipay[3] that never needed to be repaid? Or a package at the delivery station that he had not had time to collect?
Leo, it's not that I don't want you to complete the Final Entrustment ritual. But do you really understand what I have entrusted to you?
Across mountains and seas, through the stars—perhaps my final entrustment lies somewhere so far away that even light cannot reach it…
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[1] Chilled Happy Water: Internet slang for a cold soda, usually cola.
[2] Mixue Ice City: A Chinese chain known for cheap ice cream and sweet drinks.
[3] Huabei: Alipay’s buy-now-pay-later service, jokingly imagined as debt that never needs repaying.
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