Ryan stepped onto the deck.
The wooden planks creaked softly.
The boat was not large.
Compared to the cargo ships of East Port that easily weighed hundreds of tons, it looked more like an old, near-shore fishing boat. Its gunwales were covered in cracks left by wind and sun, and its iron anchor chain was thick with dark red rust.
There was no name on the bow, only a moth relief that had long since worn down to the point of being nearly unrecognizable.
Strangely, the moment Ryan actually set foot on the deck, he suddenly felt his surroundings grow quiet, as if the entire world had been cut off by the thick fog.
The sounds of hauling in the port, the rumbling on the iron rails, and the shouts coming from the docks all seemed to have sunk to the bottom of the sea.
Chris expertly untied the mooring rope and, with a gentle push of both hands, the small boat slowly drifted away from the pier.
The small boat slowly left Moth Port.
No one waved goodbye, and there were no lighthouses to guide their way.
For there was no such thing as a shipping lane here.
Ryan stood at the bow. The sea breeze blowing against his face was cold, yet it lacked even a hint of salt or fishiness. Instead, it carried an extremely faint herbal aroma.
The scent was like a forest after the rain, or a newly opened old book, mixed with a hint of damp soil and pollen. It was completely different from the coal smoke that perpetually hung over East Port.
He looked down at the sea.
This was not a sea in the ordinary sense.
The entire sea was an indigo blue so deep it was almost black, yet it was not murky at all. It was exceptionally clear—so clear that one could peer through dozens of meters of water to see dark shadows slowly flowing in the deeper depths.
Those shadows were very long.
They looked like fish, yet they did not. They had no fixed outlines.
Sometimes they were a school of silvery-white fish swimming beneath the boat; the next instant, they would stretch out their bodies and transform into countless white moths floating quietly in the seawater, before gathering once more to become fish again.
There was no pause in the entire process of transformation, as if fish and moths were inherently the same thing.
Ryan stared, slightly dazed.
Chris merely chuckled softly.
“First-timers always like to stare down there.”
Ryan did not look away.
“Because there's something down there.”
“Of course there is.”
Chris sat at the stern, slowly lighting his pipe. A spark flared briefly in the gray mist before quickly dimming.
“This is the sea of Moth.”
“To be precise.”
“Everything here once belonged to Moth.”
As he spoke, the boat continued to glide forward on its own. There was no wind, no waves, and no one rowing, yet the hull maintained a steady speed, as if something beneath the water was cradling the entire vessel, sending them deeper and deeper.
“Do you know why it's called Moth Port?”
“You said this is a market of dreams. I suppose it's a transit station similar to a port.”
Chris exhaled a puff of smoke.
The cloud of smoke did not disperse.
Instead, it slowly transformed into a white moth, fluttered once around the two of them, and dissolved back into the air.
“Because there really is a port.”
“It might be a wasteland today and a city tomorrow, but what never changes is this sea.”
“In the beginning, there was only the sea.”
“Later, someone discovered there were fish in this sea, and so Moth Port was gradually built.”
As he spoke, he took two fishing rods out of the cabin.
The fishing lines were not silk, but an extremely fine silver metal.
The hooks had no barbs either, looking more like slender Lantern-needles.
Ryan took the fishing rod and found it much lighter than he had imagined; it had almost no weight at all.
“No bait?”
“There is.”
Chris opened a wooden box.
Inside, there were no earthworms or shrimp, only a layer of fine white powder.
He reached in with a finger, lightly dabbed a bit of it, and smeared it onto the hook.
The moment the white powder touched the metal, it actually melted slowly, ultimately transforming into a fingernail-sized white moth that rested quietly and motionlessly on the tip of the hook.
“Moths like moths.”
“So they will take the bait.”
Ryan did not speak.
He simply copied his movements and lowered his hook into the sea.
The hook seemed to pass directly through the surface of the water, dropping into another layer of the world.
Then, they waited for the entire sea to return to silence.
After an unknown amount of time, Ryan suddenly felt the fishing line vibrate slightly.
It wasn't a fish biting the hook; it felt more like someone very far away had gently plucked the line with a finger.
A second pluck.
A third pluck.
The vibration became more and more distinct. The rod began to bend, and Ryan slowly reeled in the line.
As the silver fishing line rose out of the water inch by inch, a palm-sized silver fish finally leaped from the surface, tracing a beautiful arc in the sunlight before landing on the deck, flopping incessantly.
It was incredibly ordinary—so ordinary that it was almost hard to believe.
Silvery-white scales, transparent fins, rounded eyes, and a tail that kept beating against the wooden planks.
No matter how one looked at it, it was just an ordinary sea fish.
Ryan squatted down and reached out to touch it.
Cold.
Wet.
He could even feel the subtle texture of the fish scales rubbing against his palm. It was no different from a real fish.
But Chris smiled.
“Does it seem very ordinary?”
“Yes.”
“Because right now, it is a fish.”
He spoke as if it were a matter of course.
“Moth never fixes itself in place.”
“A fish is simply the form it chooses to take today.”
“If no one looks at it,”
“it might turn back into a moth.”
“And if someone believes it is a bird,”
“it could very well become a bird.”
“Moth's greatest gift is not flight, but change.”
Ryan listened quietly.
Moth symbolized change.
It symbolized metamorphosis.
It symbolized discarding the old self.
It symbolized all existences without a fixed form.
Thinking of this, he suddenly looked down. The silver fish was still struggling on the deck, but then, the sunlight hit its eyes.
Ryan clearly saw its pupil briefly split open, and countless tiny white scales drifted from the corners of its eyes, looking exactly like the dust on a moth's wings.
In the next second, everything returned to normal, as if it had been nothing more than an illusion.
Chris had already expertly cleaned the fish.
The blade sliced open the fish's belly, but there were no organs inside.
To be precise, in the space where the organs should have been, a cluster of folded white moths now rested quietly. They huddled close to one another, not flying away, and as they came into contact with the air, they melted back into translucent fish meat.
The entire process was devoid of a single drop of blood or a single bone, as if this fish had never been a living creature, but rather a constantly shifting mass of Moth.
Chris sliced off a piece of the fish meat, put it in his mouth, and chewed a few times.
He smiled.
“Eat.”
“Don't worry.”
“Moth won't harm you.”
“At least not today.”
Ryan took the piece of fish meat.
He put it in his mouth.
It had no flavor. To be precise, there was none at first.
But the moment the meat melted, an incredibly familiar sensation slowly welled up from deep within his body.
It was a strand of light, extremely faint and gentle.
Like the first ray of dawn piercing the morning mist, or a kerosene lamp suddenly lit in a dark library, it flowed slowly along his mind. There was no impact, no violence, only a quiet illumination of the small speck of Glory that already existed in the depths of his consciousness.
Ryan suddenly closed his eyes.
In his consciousness, the Glory belonging to the Lantern Principle grew slightly brighter than before.
The increase was minuscule.
It did not strengthen his body, but it brought his mind a step closer to The Glory.
Ryan slowly opened his eyes, his gaze behind his lenses clearer than before.
He looked toward the sea before him.
This time, the silver fish swimming continuously in the sea were no longer just fish.
He could vaguely see that beyond the outline of each fish lay an extremely faint, almost imperceptible shadow of a white moth. They overlapped and separated, constantly shifting between sea and moth, never truly fixed in a single moment.
Chris saw his expression.
He smiled and nodded.
“It seems the Lantern has chosen what it ought to consume.”
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