I Will Teach You How to Hunt Gods

Ten minutes.

Half an hour.

An hour...

Yun You searched the entire room, but still couldn't find anything left by Aurora.

Recalling that the mayor had mentioned something about "cleaning" before, she thought that Aurora's used and abandoned items were probably destroyed by the town's people.

But on the other hand, the degree of this cleaning seemed excessively thorough.

Yun You didn't even find a strand of hair or a nail.

Aurora seemed to have never lived here, except for the damage she did to the house itself, leaving not even a trace of personal belongings.

"Could it be that she really left nothing behind?"

Yun You thought for a moment, feeling that it was unlikely.

Aurora was a smart girl who liked to record her experiences and thoughts, and was willing to share information.

If she really lived here, it's impossible for her to leave without a trace.

"She must have left information, I just didn't notice it."

Yun You sat on the edge of the bed, thinking and observing.

"Think carefully, Yun You, if you were Aurora, knowing that you couldn't leave any personal items, what method would you use to record some information?"

"Ink? No, writing it down would definitely be easily discovered by the villagers."

"Could it be the scratches on the floor? Doesn't seem likely... They appear completely random, even a chip couldn't decipher them."

"The vegetable juice on the ceiling? That's not right either."

Yun You tried to put herself in Aurora's shoes, thinking from her perspective.

But clearly, purely in terms of decoding ability, Aurora was indeed far stronger than Yun You... so the little girl racked her brains for quite a while and still couldn't solve the mystery.

As she thought, a warm beam of sunlight slowly passed through the window and landed on Yun You.

The golden sunset, like a lightweight shimmering veil, draped over the girl's already fair and rosy skin, making her look like a maiden from a fairy tale.

At the same time, it also fell on the floor, shining on the shattered chairs and tables, forming a shadow.

"Wait!"

Looking at the shadow, Yun You's pupils shrank, as if realizing something.

"Could it be..."

She swiftly got up, cautiously staring at the tables and chairs, pacing around the shadow slowly.

Soon, Yun You stopped at the left side of the table and chairs.

And here, what she saw was not the chaotic fragments of furniture shadows, but two crooked symbols.

One was the ancient character [下], and the other was the ancient numeral [IX], meaning "nine."

"Down... nine..."

Yun You muttered the meanings of the two symbols.

She understood the character representing direction.

Below or behind this thing was precisely the floor that Aurora had tampered with.

It was covered with twisted patterns, which also emerged under the sunlight as a shadow.

But unlike the furniture shadow which could form symbols, the shadow patterns on the floor remained in chaos, completely unrecognizable.

"Sunlight inscription..."

"Nine."

"Nine... What could nine represent?"

While pondering, Yun You suddenly widened her eyes.

"Could it mean the sun at nine o'clock in the morning?"

The little girl raised her head, squinting toward the sun.

It was already six in the afternoon; although the sun was still in the sky, it was setting, emitting a faint red sunset, and would completely set in half an hour.

Evidently, it's not possible to make it resemble the blazing sun effect at nine in the morning.

But Yun You thought of a solution.

She simply drew the curtains, allowing the room to become completely dark.

Then she took out her phone, turned on the flashlight, and covered the screen with glue.

"The sun at nine o'clock is in the southeast direction, and this window faces directly south, so the light source should be located at the left center of the window."

"Let's stick it here and see..."

Yun You placed her phone against the window, then turned back to look at the floor patterns.

The result confirmed her suspicions.

In the illumination of the white flashlight, the previously chaotic shadows recombined, quickly transforming into decipherable ancient characters.

They silently stood on the floor, as if written on a large "note" using the ground as paper.

This was undoubtedly Aurora's handiwork.

The little girl used sunlight as ink, and the irreparable floor as paper, to write a valuable message.

Such a wonderfully clever method truly deserved admiration.

However, there was no time for sentiment now, so Yun You silently praised in her heart, then patiently read the note.

[Temporary Notes]

[Time: 3 p.m., August 15, 2077 (First day in Yangshan Town)]

[Recorder: Aurora Miles]

[Hello, latecomer]

[Seeing this "note," you must be curious about why I used such an odd method to leave messages, right?]

[Actually, it's a last resort]

[Upon entering the town, I wanted to leave records using paper and pen]

[I wrote a lot, but when I went out, those notes were destroyed by the villagers under the pretext of "cleaning"]

[I experimented later and found if I went out for more than half an hour, the personal items left in the room would be cleared away one by one]

[It started with hair and sweat, then moved on to notes and books, and eventually clothes and toiletries...]

[This cleaning is silent and highly efficient, leaving nothing behind except room equipment]

[Honestly, I don't believe that residents of Yangshan Town could achieve such a level of cleaning...]

[You see, machines capable of perfectly cleaning hair and sweat in Nest City were invented only after 2030. How could these "natives" with technology not even reaching 1900 achieve this?]

[So I boldly speculate, those doing the cleaning might not be villagers, but rather some other existence beyond our understanding, possibly invisible...]

[However, there are some flaws in this cleaning method, such as the lack of "intelligence"]

[They will remove furniture intentionally arranged into text shapes, but if the arrangement isn't "deliberate," or is "encrypted deliberate," they cannot discern the pattern's meaning and won't clean it]

[Thus, I damaged furniture and floors and left this "note" through a method of double encryption]

[These villagers cannot decrypt it; they lack the capability... but if you've successfully passed the tunnel, you can definitely understand]

[Alright, no more unnecessary words, back to the main point]

[Before sharing the information I know, I want to ask you, who've already settled here, a question]

[That is: do you think the words spoken by Yangshan Town's people, and their ancestral teachings, namely the "rules of living" and "not going out at night," are trustworthy?]

[Which pieces of information do you think are reliable, and which are not?]