Chapter 362: The Fountain of Youth (19)
Grant was cautious by nature. Although Everly also had a fragment of the meteorite, and he had stolen her memories and knew exactly where that fragment had come from, the key he submitted was the one he himself had placed inside the wooden box.
This alone was enough to show that, aside from himself, Grant trusted no one.
The guard took the stone into its chest cavity. After scanning it, it gestured toward Grant, indicating that he could proceed.
“You are authorized to ascend the stairs.”
Grant nodded at the robot. Everly could feel her body curl its lips into a smile.
He was in an excellent mood.
The troublesome witch was dead, her body reduced to ashes. Within the mental world, the remnants of Everly’s consciousness had also undergone extensive assimilation. And before him, the staircase leading to the heavens lay open. Before long, he would finally obtain the immortality he had dreamed of for so long…
Aside from the fact that his new body was the wrong sex, there was probably nothing in this world left that could trouble him.
And Grant’s ability was precisely the power to change bodies. As long as he took enough of the Fountain of Youth’s water with him, he could simply find a new body after leaving and switch into one that better suited his preferences.
As far as Grant was concerned, the road ahead was completely unobstructed.
He strode forward calmly, making his way unhurriedly to the foot of the stairs. Stepping over the witch’s remains, he placed his foot on the first step of the staircase leading to the heavens.
It was a rough stone staircase. The gray-white steps were arranged in neat rows, winding from the foot of the mountain all the way to the summit of the tower-shaped peak. A quick estimate put the total at more than a thousand steps.
As he climbed, Everly was also overcoming one obstacle after another.
Under the guidance of the “Blessing,” she observed and imitated him, successfully and gradually transforming her consciousness into a form identical to Grant’s.
Grant did not suspect a thing.
After all, he had read Everly’s memories and knew that she was merely an ordinary person with little experience in training her mental strength. Given the strength of her soul, it was only natural that she would have been completely devoured and assimilated by him long ago.
“You did very well. Next, infiltrate his consciousness and read his memories… The warriors of the Winton people would dress themselves in deer hide, smear themselves with deer feces, and follow the tracks of their prey day after day until they understood their habits and learned their weaknesses. Only then would they launch their attack…”
“Go, hunter. Descend. Descend. Descend! Journey to the deepest reaches of his consciousness and find the memory he fears most—the one that terrifies him above all else!” the hunter said.
“Do not be afraid, child. Remember my words. As long as you keep your core steady and always remember who you are, you will never lose yourself…” the old voice from before continued.
“We’ll help you from the sidelines, too!” the cheerful female voice added.
Everly gave a mental “Mm” and, following the voices’ instructions, voluntarily opened her consciousness. In a completely unguarded state, she gently wrapped herself around one of Grant’s tendrils of consciousness.
The instant they touched, it was as though two drops of water had merged into one. Everly entered Grant’s mental world.
She fell into a pitch-black, fetid abyss.
There was no sound, no wind, and no light. No matter where she looked, all she could see was impenetrable darkness and cliff walls that pulsed continuously like flesh.
As she fell, Everly repeatedly collided with strands of webbing. They were blood vessels and fleshy growths sprouting from the cliff walls. They burst at the slightest touch, spraying thick, filthy, foul-smelling fluids that transformed into chaotic masses of turbulent consciousness and poured into her. Within her mental world, they released desperate, shrill cries.
“Father, why are you doing this to me?!”
“No, no… Get out! Get out of my body!”
“Hahahahaha… So it was all a lie…”
Accompanied by these screams, hideous and terrifying faces flashed past Everly’s eyes. Their eyes had been gouged out, their facial skin was rotten, and the flesh around their mouths had fused together. Whenever they opened their mouths to scream, strands of flesh stretched between their upper and lower jaws, growing thinner and thinner until the pitch-black cavities of their mouths were exposed.
Deep within those mouths lay fragments of memories of death—the final echoes left behind in this world by the consciousnesses Grant had once devoured.
The deeper Everly fell, the greater the resistance from the webs became. Gradually, the devoured consciousnesses that had crashed into Everly’s mind also began to reveal their savage, bloodthirsty nature.
They tugged at Everly, scraping at her ankles with emaciated, fleshless bone claws. Their mouths stretched as wide as they could, desperately trying to swallow Everly whole.
Everly kept the “Blessing’s” instructions firmly in mind: she was a part of Grant disguised as him, infiltrating the depths of his consciousness, and she could not possibly “fear” herself. So no matter how violently those fragments of consciousness assailed her, she steadfastly guarded her mental core. She neither wavered nor retreated, neither fled nor faltered, continuing her descent without pause.
Falling, falling, falling…
After crashing through countless layers of sticky obstructions, an old, rotten stench finally rushed into her nostrils, and Everly landed at the very bottom of the abyss of memories.
She saw Grant’s past.
…
Grant was born in 1851.
Although the impression he gave people was very much that of an old-fashioned aristocrat from Brita, the real Grant had come from a poor family in the United States.
His father was a shoemaker, his mother a milkmaid. He was the eldest child, with six younger brothers and sisters.
If nothing unexpected happened, Grant would have followed the same path as his parents. He would have grown up learning some humble trade, married an ordinary but capable village woman, fathered a brood of hungry children, and spent his entire life hovering around the poverty line, living out a mundane and uneventful existence.
But fate took a turn when he was seventeen.
By chance, he rescued a wealthy merchant who had been attacked by bandits.
What happened next was practically like something out of a dream.
The wealthy merchant had no son. After spending some time with Grant, he developed an immense fondness for the exceptionally intelligent and handsome young man. He married his daughter to Grant and treated him as his own son, carefully nurturing and educating him.
Grant was exceptionally intelligent and possessed a remarkably high emotional intelligence. He quickly became the wealthy merchant’s right-hand man. He also got along well with the merchant’s daughter, and together they had a clever and adorable son.
America was in the midst of an industrial boom in the nineteenth century, with opportunities everywhere. Grant always seemed able to sniff out the trends of the times, seize the most lucrative opportunities before anyone else, and claim the sweetest slice of the pie. Under his leadership, the merchant’s business grew larger and larger.
By the 1890s, the beginnings of a commercial empire spanning railroads, oil, steel, pharmaceuticals, and numerous other industries had taken shape in his hands.
However, it was also during this period that Grant, still in the prime of his life, unexpectedly contracted tuberculosis. At the time, it was the dreaded “White Plague” that terrified everyone, and with the medical technology of the era, there was virtually no hope of a cure.
Grant was sent to a sanatorium, going from a highly sought-after figure in the business world to a seriously ill patient whom no one cared about.
Only his wife and son would occasionally visit him at his bedside, bundled in layers of protective clothing.
From his wife and son, Grant learned that after he had fallen ill, his son had taken over the business empire he had built.
The son he had personally raised, the son who had learned all of his business skills, the son he had valued above all others—despite taking over for the first time, he had handled everything perfectly.
So perfectly that people gradually forgot about Grant, wasting away in the sanatorium.
So perfectly that even his own father began to feel an intense jealousy toward him.
What a wonderful body…
So young, so healthy, so strong. That overflowing vitality that he couldn’t even hide…
How wonderful. How enviable.
I want it. I want it so badly…
That was his son. As a father, wasn’t it only natural for him to enjoy everything his son had?!
Perhaps the oppressive life in the sanatorium had warped his mind. Or perhaps Grant had always possessed a fundamentally selfish nature that regarded everything with indifference.
Before he even realized it, a horrifying thought began to take root in his mind.
The sanatorium had a library filled with books for patients to read and relax. One day, Grant happened to find a book about summoning demons among them.
He had originally scoffed at all forms of superstition. Yet after the thought of taking his son’s body had entered his mind, the contents of that book inexplicably kept resurfacing in his thoughts.
In late autumn of 1897, Grant set fire to the sanatorium.
At the cost of the lives of more than a hundred doctors, patients, and staff inside, he successfully summoned a demon and obtained a dagger from it.
“This is a cursed dagger. Place it in your son’s hand, then have him kill you, and you’ll obtain everything you’ve ever dreamed of… But remember, taking over another body comes with severe aftereffects. If you want to live a long time, you must search for suitable bodies whenever possible. The more compatible a body is with your soul, the milder the aftereffects will be.”
With that, the demon let out a sinister cackle, flapped its wings, and flew into the night sky.
After obtaining the dagger, Grant tricked his son and successfully seized his body.
He soon discovered the dagger’s first side effect: after a body was taken over, the consciousness of its original owner did not simply disappear.
His son’s consciousness remained within the body. Whenever Grant embraced his son’s wife, his son would violently resist, causing a dull ache to throb through Grant’s mind.
Fortunately, when it came to a battle of wills, the ruthless Grant was far more formidable than his son. Like a hyena, a cheetah, or a venomous snake, he showed not the slightest regard for the bond between father and son. Bite by bite, strike by strike, he viciously tore into and devoured the remnants of his son’s consciousness, assimilating them without mercy.
Before long, he had successfully swallowed the last remnants of his son’s will.
Triumphant, Grant wore his son’s body and reveled in his brand-new life.
But that smooth and comfortable life did not last long.
The dagger’s second side effect appeared thirteen years after he took over the body.
That year, at just thirty-five years old, the first of his teeth fell out.
In truth, there had been signs of it all along.
After his body crossed the thirty-year mark, Grant began developing gray hair unusually early, while deep wrinkles and pronounced nasolabial folds appeared around his eyes and across his face. Grant had always assumed that his son simply had a poor constitution and that the premature aging was caused by overwork, so he never gave it much thought.
The loss of his teeth finally made Grant suspicious. He put aside all his work and summoned a doctor for a comprehensive physical examination. The results were astonishing—not only were his teeth deteriorating, but all of his organs were showing signs of abnormal aging. Based on the examination data, the body was already biologically over sixty years old.
It had to be because his son’s body was incompatible with his soul!
Remembering the demon’s warning, Grant was plunged into deep panic.
He began searching for a new body.
As long as he had the dagger, theoretically, he could switch bodies an unlimited number of times.
This body also had two children, a son and a daughter, but they were both still young. Grant didn’t want to be burdened by the constraints of raising children, so he set his sights on the young orphaned son of a distant relative.
He brought the orphan into his home and cared for him as though he were his own child, tending to his every need and constantly checking on him. He even went against his wife’s objections and drew up a will leaving all of the company’s shares to the orphan.
Everyone thought he had gone mad. The family argued over it day after day, and there was never a moment of peace in the household.
No one noticed that the very person responsible for all the turmoil was constantly watching the orphan’s young, healthy body from the corners of his eyes, his gaze filled with greed.