The cold potion slid down his throat, bringing a numbness to Klein, a numbness that reached deep into his soul.
His dance steps had already ceased, his spirit inexplicably elevated, his entire person seeming to have ascended high up into the sky, looking down upon the broken Resurrection Plaza and the panicked Kukwa City under the repeated lightning strikes.
At this moment, his emotions became inexplicably restless. He felt that every passerby below had an invisible thread connected to his hand, and following his direction, they performed various acts of happiness, anger, sorrow, or joy.
Similar feelings had often come to Klein recently, and he understood that this was the perspective of a "Director," treating all participants as puppets, as actors, trying to manipulate or guide them into staging a grand drama.
Grasping that familiarity, Klein quickly adjusted his mindset, completely detached his emotions, and observed everything with a cold, indifferent gaze, unaffected by the emotions in the drama.
As a "Director," one should follow the script, refer to reality, make rational analyses, and make trade-offs, keeping the accumulation of emotions, progression of events, and deployment of clues under control.
His mindset settled, his spirit immediately calmed, and he felt the power of the potion disseminate inside him like a net of sharp threads. Suddenly, Klein felt his spiritual body along with his flesh being sliced into countless tiny parts, and unable to endure longer, he let out a cry from the depths of his soul:
"No!"
His thoughts were then also severed, becoming fragments, combining with different flesh to create their own consciousness: there was a Klein in pain, an arrogant Klein, a cold Klein, a tender Klein, a self-amusing Klein, and also Zhou Mingrui, Sherlock Moriarty, Gehrman Sparrow, and Dwayne Dantès!
His entire spiritual body seemed to have been tossed into a shredder.
Not far away, Leonard, his cheeks unconsciously streaming with tears, first saw Captain Dunn, who was embracing Daly Simone, transform back into Klein Moretti, and then noticed that on his face, neck, back of the hands, and elsewhere, pale flesh buds were protruding, as if they had their own vitality, continuously growing outward, turning into transparent worms, while beneath his clothes, there were also undulating traces.
This gave Leonard the feeling that in the next second, Klein would disintegrate into a mass of transparent worms, each rushing to a different place!
He was about to do something when his head suddenly spun, and he instinctively closed his eyes, not daring to look any further.
The transparent worms growing out of Klein's body shone with one three-dimensional layered mysterious symbol after another under the sunlight. They connected to higher layers and the underlying laws, directly representing abstract concepts such as weirdness, madness, change, power, and knowledge.
In the howling cold wind, one illusory black line after another appeared around Klein, intertwining to form strange "tentacles."
As the tentacles spread, all his spiritual body, astral spirit, mind body, and etheric body turned into fragments, respectively merging into different worms. Klein's various thoughts were noisy, chaotic, contradictory, seeming in a light, airy way to be flying toward an infinite height, where countless phantoms surrounded distorted enormous buildings, playing music, or lecturing, or roaring, or whispering.
In Klein's scrambled myriad senses, everything around layered together, as if transformed into the Spirit World, but with living people moving about and a star shining.
At this moment, in his numerous thought fragments, the same memories appeared, vivid memories.
That was the scene of the Angel King Adam praying with closed eyes, making a stunning appearance;
That was the scene of pressing the "Death Knell" revolver against Ince Zangwill and firing, blowing his head off;
That was the scene of revealing a "Clown" smile and saying in a low voice, "This shot is for the captain";
That was the scene of "Spectator" Adam watching the conclusion of the drama with clear, innocent eyes;
That was the scene of transforming into Dunn Smith's appearance and inviting Daly Simone to dance the final dance.
They were so vivid, especially the gaze of "Spectator," which seemed to have substantive feedback and attraction, gradually helping Klein regain his self-cognition.
I…
Who am I?
This question, Klein had answered during the "Faceless Person" stage, and without needing to think much, he quickly understood his identity:
A person from Earth, reshaped by the memory fragments of Klein;
A person deeply affected by his experiences as a "Nighthawk";
A person who steers clear of danger and is afraid, yet can give everything for his convictions;
A guardian, a pathetic fool.
Strange senses not originating from the spirit body or mind body gradually extracted from the split fragments, condensing into Klein's new thoughts, cold, calm, detached, overlooking thoughts, able to see the truth of the world from more angles and aspects.
He understood that this might be divinity, and without resisting, he used this to connect the original spiritual body fragments one by one with black threads, slowly gathering them back into a whole.
Only at this moment did he understand the role of the advancement ritual.
It was a brand and an anchor. Compared to other Pathways, the "Faceless," whose spiritual body splits, needed an anchor earlier!
However, this did not yet require faith to support. On the contrary, faith was too complex, too chaotic, too full of personal emotion, and could easily erase the humanity of the advanced person who was essentially still only Sequence 5 in the split state of this ritual, leaving only divinity.
A magnificent, profound drama, with the gaze of many spectators, was enough to serve as an anchor!
Although there were few live spectators this time, as the most powerful existence on the "Spectator" pathway, Adam alone could equal tens of thousands of ordinary spectators; he could even imagine a theater of spectators to produce the effect.
The whole finally formed. Various kinds of knowledge surged from the depths of the demigod's spiritual body, sweeping through Klein's mind, bringing an indescribable impact, his head seemingly about to burst.
However, he, already possessing divinity and having undergone it many times, passed this stage relatively easily with his detached, overlooking attitude.
The transparent worms on his face, hands, neck, and under his clothes retracted into his body, and he turned back into the black-haired, brown-eyed Klein Moretti.
He glanced at Daly Simone, who was gradually cooling in his arms, then picked up the lady, walked step by step to Leonard Mitchell, solemnly bent down, and laid her on the ground.
At this time, Daly no longer had black scales and white fur; she had returned to her original appearance, her eyes gently closed, the corners of her mouth slightly upturned, as if she were in the deepest and sweetest dream.