Chapter 105: Endless Stairs.

Chapter 105: Endless Stairs

Mo Fei stood near the sweet shop. His gaze locked on the notice as the obsession for the answer of Murphy caught his mind and he slowly turned away from the notice. ’A place where people are to be chosen to walk... I have some personal problems with that term.’

He closed his eyes for a few moments then walked out of the narrow street, eating the bun in his hand. The clouds in the sky hid the sun behind which gave the people a pleasantly cool day as they walked through the streets.

Mo Fei entered a vast pathway which led to the Emerald Town. He looked ahead at the vastness of this path. "I wonder what actually happens there?"

Finally, he leaned against a streetlamp and waited for a carriage while quietly eating his bun. Just then, Kiyori’s voice echoed in his mind. "Mo Fei, morning." Her voice came through his mind, making him drop his shoulder slightly.

"I’m listening." He kept looking at the pathway. "Well, waiting for a carriage."

"What’s cre-ca... Carage." She coughed, trying to pronounce the unfamiliar word, which she had never truly heard before.

Mo Fei hiccuped and paused for a few seconds. "Like... a vehicle."

"Vickle?"

"Yes, vehicle. You saw that wooden wheelbarrow pulled by a slow-moving ox."

"Oh! An ox-cart?" Kiyori’s voice echoed back, a sudden wave of understanding washing through the mental link. "But don’t only the high lords use those to cross the town boundaries?"

Mo Fei took a bite of his bun. "Well, in this world it’s a bit different, Kiyori. Horses are used to move the cart, it’s used a lot at this time."

"HORSES?" Her voice came out in pure surprise. "How are you permitted to use them? That’s a whole insult for the warrior’s companion here..."

Mo Fei pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on. "Different world, Kiyori. Out here in the West, horses are just the local engine."

"En-Jin?"

"I can’t explain every single word, besides that I don’t think it’d be better to give a load to your mind in the morning?" Mo Fei chuckled softly, while a couple passed by him and looked at the man laughing all by himself while muttering words... Well, to them it sounded like a mental problem. Both of them quickly walked away, believing he had lost his mind.

Mo Fei continued. "Anyways, it actually means something that gives ’power’ to a vehicle."

"Power? You can make a horse fly?"

"No, not that way. Engine is like... You actually feed the machine fuel like gasoline, or petrol, basically oil in your words."

"You... feed horse... oil? Won’t that kill them?"

"Not horses, urgh I mean the mechanical thing. I’ll show you someday."

"That sounds incredible." Kiyori murmured.

"I’m going for a town called Emerald Town, so I’ll move kow." Mo Fei continued.

Kiyori’s voice chimed in at the name. "The name is so beautiful!"

"... For the endless stairs where people get chosen to walk and then get missing..."

"I was wrong, okay..."

Suddenly, he heard the voice of the horse’s footsteps, and a voice came. "Emerald Town, sir?" The coachman asked, his voice thick with a London-esque grit.

"Yeah. How much may I have to pay?" Mo Fei muttered, tossing his last bun crust aside and stepping up onto the iron footrest.

The man answered. "25 Shillings, sir."

Mo Fei nodded. "Move."

He thought back to Kiyori as he sank into the cushioned leather interior. "Also, the ’vickle’ moves a hell of a lot faster than an ox too."

Mo Fei watched the city blur past the carriage windows as they moved toward Emerald Town. The industrial buildings loomed over Ciradyl, steam rising from the chimney.

The carriage slowed as it approached a gateway, and above the door, in the board carved into it, were words in elaborate script: "Welcome to Emerald Town."

Mo Fei’s eyes turned piercing grey; Murphy’s identity finally took over again as he fixed his fedora.

The carriage stopped at a plaza where dozens of people stood in orderly queues. All of them held small green tokens in their hands, watching the stairs. Murphy looked at the sky, and it truly was impossibly vast, almost as if it were made to reach the heavens. The green endless stairs, but something about them bothered Mo Fei.

"The chosen will now walk the Endless Stairs." The man in the emerald robe announced, his voice carrying an almost hypnotic quality. "This month’s chosen is..." He took out a ledger and read the name aloud. "Armin Anova."

A man from the crowd walked forward; his expression was serene. He took a step on a grand staircase that spiraled upward, disappearing into a mist that seemed to have no source.

Mo Fei stepped out of the carriage, his grey eyes tracking every detail. The tokens... they seems too expensive for a town that didn’t have any industries or businesses.

A woman in a servant’s dress approached him, her smile too bright for someone who lived in a place that shouldn’t even exist and defied logic. "Welcome, sir. Are you here to receive a green token? To watch the stairs closely?"

Murphy’s instinct was to interrogate her directly, but Mo Fei held himself back: people who believe don’t respond to questions. They respond to belief.

"I’m interested in understanding the process, Miss. How are the chosen selected?" Murphy’s gaze looked over her shoulder, toward the man who was putting back the names.

The woman spoke with the same bright, polite grin. "The chief reads hearts, sir. Every month one of the people from this town gets chosen. Those tokens grant passage to the Endless Stairs. Then when the chief takes out a name, they walk on the stairs, and the name itself comes out of divine will."

"And those who ascend the stairs? What happens to them?"

"They reach paradise, sir. That’s what the stairs are for. To climb toward perfect peace, that’s all for heavens."

Mo Fei’s hands clenched. The certainty in her voice and the absolute belief... a system so elegant that people would die for it.

"Where do I get a token?" He asked.

"You must speak with the chief directly, but you can’t walk on the stairs; it’s only for the people of this town."

Murphy stopped near the crowd, looking at the clouds. He tapped his temple and looked through the spirit threads. "There are alive people..."

Though, the spiritual pressure of the threads was different from a human’s. And they were also slightly thicker than what a human should have. "Kiyori, can you hear me?"

Her voice came through his mind. "Yes?"

"Can you tell if the spiritual pressure is wrong or not since I can’t quite understand it because these threads don’t look like a human or an entity."

Kiyori blinked and stopped in her tracks. "How do I?"

"Divine Serpent, show the spiritual aura to her."

The Serpent’s presence coiled through the spirit world, and a faint silvery gaze settled on Kiyori’s vision. "The spiritual presence is not a human’s. I have never seen a human presence this abstract..."

"You also think that. What do you think of it?"

"I don’t know, but that is not a human or demon... It seems like they are not from this land."

Hearing that, Murphy swept his gaze over the crowd. "That sounds alien to me."

"Al-in?"

"I just heard of them; they aren’t aliens, someone from another planet, but they aren’t human either; that’s a weird thing." Murphy muttered and walked toward the chief. "I’ll talk to you later, Kiyori."

With that, he stood near the chief and gave a nod. "Chief, when will it happen again?"

"Next month." The chief turned toward him.

"What if the divine demands it the next day, don’t you think it’d make them pleased?"

"That wasn’t the deal."

Murphy’s gaze hardened as he heard his words. "A deal, huh? With whom?"

"Divine of course. They give the man heaven in return."

"You are really good at hiding things, Chief... but why don’t you do it again tomorrow? They’d gladly accept it, won’t they?"

"You think that’s not divine? You doubt paradise."

"I doubt the deal."

The Chief slowly straightened his spine, his voice dropping an octave, shorn of all divine warmth. ​"Outsiders who doubt the stairs tend to find themselves walking them sooner than planned."

​Murphy adjusted the brim of his fedora, a faint, dangerous smile touching his lips beneath the shade. "Outsiders aren’t allowed to walk there, are they?"

Just then, a voice came from behind the crowd, a woman’s desperate yelling. As Murphy turned and saw the guards taking her away from the place. He moved toward them with a last glance at the chief.

The woman screamed toward the endless stairs. "It took my both daughters!"

The guards pulled her away. "Your second daughter has just gone missing! There was no name on the board who moved there!!"

The woman tried to escape them and frantically moved her hands. "Lie! She went to find her sister there. I know it’s because of those stairs!"

Both of the guards covered her mouth and practically dragged her away.

Watching this happen, Murphy pulled out his revolver and shot the ground beneath both of them. They stumbled sideways and looked at the detective in front of them, who looked at them and muttered coldly. "Do you rather go down to your paradise with a hole in your chest or wait for the end of your life?"