Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Lin Sanjiu took a few cautious steps forward and stopped beside the aquarium. Soulsqn’s outline was bizarre in the black of night, and the fuzzy face in the aquarium followed her wherever she went. All of it made Lin Sanjiu feel like she was being placed under the illusion of a silent nightmare.
“How did you know that he is not Maxin himself? And how did you manage to get him in there?” Lin Sanjiu whispered several questions as she reached for the edge of the tank. “Tell me more about it. What the hell is going on?”
She had been scanning her surroundings with her Hypersensory, so nothing, not even a slight movement, could escape her now. Even without turning her head around, she knew that Soulsqn had curled herself up on the floor.
“Seriously? Are you really asking me that? Let me ask you then: have you ever seen a living person that could fit himself into a wall clock?”
Soulsqn raised her voice and spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. “He was already in there when I saw him. At that time, he was mumbling something, but since he was inside the wall clock, I could not hear him well. Maybe he wanted me to help him out, I don’t know, but as the Queen of the Souls, how is there any possibility that I would fall for this? This is definitely not Maxin, so I threw the wall clock into the aquarium.”
“So you are the one who opened this cover?” Lin Sanjiu asked as she observed Soulsqn through the corner of her eye. If the flesh worm nodded, Lin Sanjiu would make her open the lid again. However, Soulsqn flatly denied, “No, it was already open when I was here. I’m the one who closed it.”
Lin Sanjiu stared down at the human face inside the aquarium tank that stared back at her. She could see a little of Maxin’s shadow in that face. The probability of him being Maxin was half-and-half, and with two layers of glass blocking her vision, she could not tell very well.
“When did this happen?”
“Roughly ten minutes ago.”
Lin Sanjiu had yet reached here at that time, so it was unlikely for her to catch the noise they had caused.
“Then why are you still lurking around here? Besides, why didn’t you come out when you saw me?” Lin Sanjiu turned her head to see Soulsqn slithering towards her. The rustling noise of her dragging her massive body filled the air.
“Nope. I went away right after I got rid of him,” the flesh worm said, putting her face closer to the glass tank as she observed the human face in the wall clock. “But it occurred to me that I clearly underestimated this stupid maze. Eventually, I lost my way. Just as I was going around in circles, I stumbled upon a figure—you. And then, I suppose I don’t have to tell you the rest of the story, right?”
Lin Sanjiu could not find fault with Soulsqn’s statement in any way, but she could not trust the flesh worm just yet. After all, the highest god had already analyzed Soulsqn, and this one in front of her might just be a copy.
“I want to know what he is trying to say.” With those words, she took a step back towards the side with her arm held high. Then, before Soulsqn could say anything, she crashed her palm onto the tank cover, smashing the lid and the glass tank in one downward swipe. A splinter of glass shards and wood chunks were sent indiscriminately across their surroundings, almost catching Soulsqn in their explosive wake.
“What the hell are you doing?” the flesh worm shouted angrily. “Why aren’t you listening to me?”
There was now a band of jagged glass shards lined along the edge of the fish tank like the teeth of a great white shark. Gleaming in the dark with a cold light, they looked so sharp that they could cut open one’s skin with a light touch. Lin Sanjiu turned dead ears towards Soulsqn’s accusation and peered into the messy aquarium. After that, she went around and stretched her arm into the tank without turning her head away from Soulsqn.
After all, she did not welcome the consequence of being pushed into the belt of sawtoothed glass shards while she was busy scooping the wall clock out of the aquarium.
“Be careful not to break the clock.” The flesh worm took several steps back when she saw Lin Sanjiu buried her head into the pile of whatnots. The tornado that Lin Sanjiu conjured up earlier on had laid waste to a large portion of furniture and cleared up an open space for them, granting them a larger area to move around.
“Who knows what will come out.”
‘She is right.’
Lin Sanjiu took stock for a moment. She did not take the wall clock out immediately but instead pricked up her ears and listened. Like what the queen said, it was really difficult to hear anything through the layer of glass. The voice had been so deafened by the layer of glass that it sounded as if it was coming from a faraway place. She could not even tell whether it was Maxin’s voice or not.
‘What should I do now?’
Since her Higher Consciousness had not recovered yet, she could not use it to lift it up.
As she thought, she pinched the side of the wag-on-the-wall and pushed it slightly, bringing the back of its black, plastic-like case into the light. Just as she lifted it up from the pile of rubbish, Soulsqn’s voice wafted into her ears. Lin Sanjiu had no idea why, but she picked up a little fear in her voice.
“Erm…” The flesh worm took a few more steps back. Right now, she looked like a shadow that could talk. “He is gone.”
‘What?’
“He is gone,” Soulsqn repeated.
Startled, Lin Sanjiu hurriedly turned the round wall clock over. The glass in front gleamed for an instant with a white streak in the dim sky. Then, before Lin Sanjiu knew it, she caught a faint tick-tock wafting from the wall clock in her hand.
She looked into the transparent case. There, she found a circle of numbers, a white dial plate, a minute hand, and an hour hand. The human face was nowhere to be seen.
She tossed the clock away and looked around in the fish tank again and again. However, she could not find the human face anywhere.
“Where is he? Where has he gone?”
“Don’t you find your questions silly?” the flesh worm snapped. “Why don’t you ask yourself how a living person could get inside a wall clock?”
For Lin Sanjiu, she would never waste her time mulling over a problem that she did not know how to solve.
Standing stock still in front of the wasteland, she let out a breath and began to take in her surroundings. Countless wasted pieces of furniture scattered and piled haphazardly across the floor. Set against the dark background, she could not recognize any single one of them. There were many abysmal, gaping crevices between each broken piece.
“I already told you, he wasn’t Maxin,” said Soulsqn half-heartedly. She snaked across the pile of wreckage, her upper body upright as if she was trying to see what was on the other side of the wreckage. As she moved away, she exclaimed, “Why didn’t we think of this earlier? Look how easy it’s for us to walk now after all of the furniture had been destroyed.”
Lin Sanjiu mouthed a reply, but she pondered something else.
Regardless of whether the flesh worm in front of her was the real Soulsqn, as long as she had a mouth and could speak, then she could activate the [Pygmalion Choker]. Even if Soulsqn could not remember, Lin Sanjiu could read the description out, and the flesh worm just needed to repeat after her. Since the highest god was not here, now was their best chance.
However, in the case where the flesh worm refused to do it, it would save Lin Sanjiu even more effort. As she would not have to waste her time worrying that the Soulsqn might be a fake anymore, she could just kill her without any qualms.
“I suggest that you destroy all the furniture there as well,” the flesh worm said as she looked down at the ruin in front of her, leaving only the back of her head facing Lin Sanjiu. “Otherwise, there won’t even be a spot for us to stand.”
“Queen,” Lin Sanjiu gritted her teeth and called out to the flesh worm.
“What?” the queen replied, but she did not turn her head around.
“About the ability I want you to describe for my choker, remember?” Lin Sanjiu asked. “The ability of the Veda to—”
“Veda?” Soulsqn wheeled her head around when she heard the word “Veda.” Her body released a squishy noise with every flex of her muscle.
It was at this moment that Lin Sanjiu sensed something from the air and all her hair stood on their ends. Before her brain could give any instructions, she deactivated her Hypersensory and raised her hands to cover her ears. Her heart galloped wildly underneath her ribcage. She recoiled clumsily, and as her back bumped into something, the penny dropped in her eyes.
The flesh worm’s layers of mouthparts were opening up. The two tendrils inside the gaping maw rubbed against each other to release a stentorian soundwave. Since she was covering her ears with her palms, and with the loud thumping of her heart, Lin Sanjiu could hardly hear anything. However, it did not deter her from knowing what the flesh worm was saying.
She must be describing an ability, and that ability must be a useless power.
Perhaps she saw that Lin Sanjiu had covered her ears with her hands, for the “flesh worm” stopped talking. Her layers of mandibles slowly closed up like a crimson flower closing its bloom. Even though the raw flesh on the creature’s face did not permit her in making any human expressions, Lin Sanjiu could still vaguely make out a huge grin that almost occupied her entire face.
‘No,’ Lin Sanjiu huffed. Her voice resounded clearly in her ears. ‘She is not the real Soulsqn.’
Why didn’t she think of this earlier?
Soulsqn had basically forgotten everything about her choker, which was the reason why she wasn’t able to describe anything to Lin Sanjiu when the latter asked for her help to activate the choker in the sea arena. When the highest god had analyzed the flesh worm, the memory about the choker he got was incomplete. Hence, when she asked the “Soulsqn” in front of her to describe an ability to her choker, it filled up the hole in the highest god’s memory about the choker.
Gritting her teeth, Lin Sanjiu covered her ears as hard as she could. Nevertheless, she knew that such a maneuver was useless when the sound was loud enough to bypass her hand. All she could do right now was clatter her teeth to drown out all the sounds from the outside.
Worst of all, “Soulsqn” was not the only one who might shout out a description for an ability to her right now.
Everything that crawled or lurked under the furniture or inside the crevice might jump out at her. The best example would be the Maxin who escaped from the clock through a slit.
So the question of the day was this: did Lin Sanjiu have to abandon her hearing to traverse through this dark and perilous furniture cemetery?
