Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The grass swayed along with the gentle breeze that blew across the land. It looked serene, yet at the same time, it felt solitude.
Both Puppeteer and Sanduria were gone. No matter how hard Lin Sanjiu pierced them with her searing stare, they both disappeared into the white mist in the blink of an eye. The grassy plain was empty and boundless. She could even see the vague undulating shapes of mountain ranges far in the horizon.
Sitting on the grass, Lin Sanjiu extended one of her legs, putting it on the face of the “little girl” to stop her from getting any closer to her. The moment Puppeteer was gone, Soulsqn charged at Lin Sanjiu like a wild galloping horse, startling the latter.
“What do you want?” asked Lin Sanjiu. She felt a sense of enervation welling from her heart, coursing through every nerve ending from her brain to her toe. “He has released you, so leave now. I’m not going to take you along.”
She recalled the Souls had an ability called “hormones” that could knock people out cold. According to Mrs. Manas’s suggestion, Lin Sanjiu threw on the Defense Forcefield, concentrating most of it around her mouth and nose.
After receiving a kick from Lin Sanjiu, half of Soulsqn’s face caved in.
“Cheater! How can you make such a vain promise that you cannot keep?” The little girl’s face was livid with rage. Her two tongues twisted in anger as she lashed out her resentment at Lin Sanjiu. “We cannot defeat that guy or escape from him. Do you have any idea how tough our life has been for the past few years? We got through it somehow, and now we finally get to see you. Yet, now you ask us to leave?!”
Time passed, and the situation changed. Initially, Lin Sanjiu cooperated with the Souls because she wanted them to deal with Puppeteer. Unfortunately for her, things did not go as planned. The Souls were out of Puppeteer’s league as well. Since they had no use for her, Lin Sanjiu did not wish to stick her nose into their lineage problem anymore. She countered sarcastically. “Duh!”
The mounting anger almost caused Soulsqn to burst out from her human suit.
However, as the queen of a species, she kept her anger at bay. She took a deep breath, then said in a grave tone, “Don’t you want to know where the cat doctor is?”
Lin Sanjiu quickly took her feet off her face. She straightened her body and inquired dubiously, “Do you know where he is?”
Undeterred by the footprint on her face, Soulsqn gave Lin Sanjiu a cold smile, “Of course I know where the cat doctor is. I also know that you got something Puppeteer sought for. And he wanted to use the cat doctor as an exchange for the thing. You don’t want to give him the thing, but you want the cat doctor back… Did I left out anything else?”
Lin Sanjiu did not answer. Her face was non-committal, giving nothing away.
“Bring your friend that can alter the human body over here. When I see her, I’ll tell you where the cat doctor is.” Lin Sanjiu sneered as she stood up from the ground.
“Hey, where are you going?” Soulsqn cried out loud.
“If you really know where Puppeteer keeps the cat doctor, do you think he will let you come back? Even if you do know where the cat doctor is, I believe that Puppeteer has already shifted locations while we’re talking here,” said Lin Sanjiu. Be that as it may, she still hoped that Soulsqn would know something. “However, if you can lead me to the cat doctor, I’ll take you to my friend. Otherwise, you’re useless to me. There’s no way you can talk me down.”
With that, Lin Sanjiu turned around and left.
She walked for a few steps, and at the tail end of her eye, she saw a small figure pouncing at her. Lin Sanjiu had been prepared since she knew Soulsqn would be pissed off. She swerved to the side and took out the Nostradamus Card.
The card did not get to absorb anything, but the words Soulsqn said left Lin Sanjiu stunned.
“Where did you find this Soul from?” The pallid-looking little girl opened her eyes wide, causing her eyes to appear nightmarishly large. “But why I don’t recognize this Soul?”
“Soul?” Lin Sanjiu parroted. Then, she quickly untied the elder brother from her back and dropped him. Unable to move, the elder brother fell into the grass like a rock. A blade of grass was stuck in his eyes, but it did not hinder him from rolling them around and fixing his gaze on the Soulsqn.
“He’s a Soul?” Lin Sanjiu repeated, but she soon realized this was impossible. “That’s not possible. Every organ a normal human has, he has it.”
Squatting down, both Soulsqn and AYU gathered near the elder brother and began to study him. Perhaps because their lives were really terrible after Puppeteer abducted them, they looked like they had not changed their human suits for a long time. The current suits they were wearing now looked loose and saggy. When they lowered their heads, their scalps and hair would slip forward.
“This is… Interesting. You’re right. He isn’t a Soul,” Soulsqn affirmed as she glanced at the elder brother’s stomach and poked at his exposed white vertebrae with her finger. The elder brother rolled his eyes as he sensed her movement. Unfortunately, he could neither speak nor make an expression, so nobody knew what was he thinking.
“What makes you think he is a Soul?”
“As Souls, we survive by overtaking bodies,” Soulsqn responded without raising her head, “Hence we are very familiar with human skin. Whether or not it is a living organism, we’ll know just by a single glance.”
‘The elder brother is not a living thing?’ Lin Sanjiu thought to herself.
“But I can’t turn him into a card,” Lin Sanjiu refuted, “This means that he is alive. Besides, before he becomes like this, he can walk and talk just like you and me.”
“I’m a pro at distinguishing human suits, but you beat me in the league of not keeping one’s word,” Soulsqn chimed in, “I said he is not a living organism. I didn’t say he is dead.”
“What do you mean?”
“He is alive, but at the same time, he isn’t a living creature.” Lin Sanjiu was even more perplexed. When Soulsqn saw her dumbfounded face, she continued to explain, “Take your friend as an example. If she can create a flesh that can breathe, have a heart, and a fully functional blood circulatory system but has no consciousness, no soul, no feelings… Can it be still considered a living creature?”
“Maybe not. But this fella has self-consciousness,” Lin Sanjiu said doubtfully.
Soulsqn did not reply. It seemed that she had the same question as well. She lowered her head and kept muttering as she flipped the elder brother’s body, “This can’t be right. I can feel it. I can feel it.”
The elder brother could not move. He could only watch helplessly as Soulsqn studied his body. She opened his mouth, then flipped his eyelids. When she went for his abdominal skin, she jumped up. Then, the little girl with twin ponytails turned her head to Lin Sanjiu and asked, “Did this guy have genitals before he became like this?”
“Why do you think I’d know that?”
Lin Sanjiu sighed. She then looked at the elder brother. He looked miserable after having gone through a bumpy journey. He had lost most of his internal organs, and all he was left with was an empty body. “I suppose so.”
“Great!” Soulsqn’s eyes glowed.
Before Lin Sanjiu could question her sudden mounted enthusiasm, the little girl lowered her head, and her cheek quivered. A hole then appeared and split her suit from her forehead asunder. By the time Lin Sanjiu came back to her senses, half of Soulsqn had already emerged from her human suit, her worm-like body crawling over the elder brother’s body. There were lots of white matter running down her body, dripping mucus as she made her way on top of the elder brother.
“Jesus Christ! Was it so hard for you to give me a heads-up first?!”
This was the first time after so many years that Lin Sanjiu saw the true form of the Souls. Even though she had seen it before, she still could not help but shift her gaze away. Nevertheless, she soon forced herself to turn back to face the wriggling fat worm and asked, “What are you doing? You cannot use his skin. He’s broken!”
“Let me answer in my queen’s stead,” answered AYU, who had been silent for the entire time, “My queen said something is inside this human suit, and the method it uses to wear the human suit is different from ours. After devouring our host’s internal structure, we recreate something similar, but the recreated structure will never include reproductive organs. Simply put, it’ll just be a package of skin hanging outside of the body that has no function at all.”
The elder brother’s lower jaw dislocated as his mouth opened to a shocking degree, splitting to both sides up to his ears. Even so, the hole was still too small for Soulsqn, who was about the size of an average human.
Looking at his eyes, Lin Sanjiu had never been so sympathetic toward an enemy before.
Since Soulsqn was too busy fitting herself into the hole, AYU continued to explain to Lin Sanjiu, “However, my queen said this guy is different. His human suit has everything a normal living human has, so we suspect that the reproductive organs should be complete too. If my queen can get in and figure out what’s going on inside, it will benefit my species greatly.”
Lin Sanjiu shuddered at the sight.
By right, this should be an excellent opportunity for her to leave as Soulsqn was distracted by the elder brother, Lin Sanjiu did not run away. She sat at the side as she was equally curious about the elder brother’s identity. Besides, she had nothing else to do.
‘Should I go now and find the grand prize?’ Lin Sanjiu asked herself, but she soon killed the thought as she knew Puppeteer must be watching her somewhere. As she combed through her situation, Lin Sanjiu found herself trapped in a dead alley. With her current combat skill, she could never best Puppeteer in a match. Even if she was able to defeat him by luck, there was still Sanduria, the Titan that Puppeteer had personally nurtured, for her to deal with. Lin Sanjiu did not have the confidence to defeat a Titan. On second thought, she had no idea what would happen to the cat doctor and the grand prize if she did not make her move soon.
However, looking on the bright side, if she could figure out the real face of the gods, then perhaps she might stand a chance against Sanduria should they end up facing each other in a duel.
Even though she had thought it all through, it was still a gruesome scene to see Soulsqn take over a human’s body.
She did not go into the elder brother’s body through the rear of his head the way she had been using in the past. Instead, she squeezed her body through his mouth. There were times where her girth was too large to cram in, so AYU, who had been standing quietly aside, went forward and tore the elder brother’s cheeks apart, releasing a shriek that caused Lin Sanjiu to scratch her cheeks subconsciously.
The beefy worm continued to wriggle down the elder brother’s body. Then, suddenly, Soulsqn stopped moving.
“What’s wrong?” Lin Sanjiu jerked up and asked.
Frowning, AYU said hesitantly after a few seconds, “My queen said she’s found a spot in this body that’s different from other human beings.”
“Where is it?”
“Under the cranium,” AYU responded quickly, “My queen devoured his lower jaw and his facial bones, but she found no brain underneath the cranium. There are only bone pieces. It kind of looks like a box in there.”
Lin Sanjiu’s heart pounded harder the more she walked closer. However, she could not see anything other than the elder brother’s bushy ebony hair.
“My queen said the box has broken, and that thing is stuck.”
“Then, what are you still waiting for? We gotta open his head.”
This time, Lin Sanjiu did not hesitate anymore. She called out a blade and helped AYU to cut open the elder brother’s forehead.
In the next second, something unseen flew out from between the skin and the Soul.
The moment the thing entered the air, it disappeared, leaving only the whistle of the wind behind as it shot toward the sky. Lin Sanjiu quickly formed her Higher Consciousness into a net and sent it toward the thing as she leaped into the air.
In the next second, Lin Sanjiu felt like she had caught something with her Higher Consciousness, but it did not stop it from flying upward. It continued to fly at breakneck speed into the sky. Looking from below, it was as if Lin Sanjiu was flying.
Lin Sanjiu somewhat heard AYU yelling something amidst the roaring wind. Feeling that there was some extra weight on her feet, Lin Sanjiu lowered her head, and her irises shrunk into pins. Soulsqn had wrapped her tail around her ankle while her wormy body wriggled in the air.
That thing seemed to be unaffected by the weight of two adults. It continued to fly at high speed, carrying Lin Sanjiu and Soulsqn straight into the white mist. In the blink of an eye, their figures could no longer be seen from the ground.
