by N. Heller
"Read that nameless guy," Lin Sanjiu mouthed to Jade Zhang. Afraid that she wouldn't understand, Lin Sanjiu eyed the man who had curled into a ball and had his back on the wall. "And that tall bloke."
Jade Zhang closed her mouth and looked at both men. For a moment, there was no expression on her round and chubby face. After two seconds, she blinked her eyes as if she was unable to comprehend the meaning of the results she had gotten, "The nameless man is 1.7, the big bloke is 1."
They were related to AYU somehow. They did not need those numbers to prove this relationship. The results only made them more confused and did not help them in any way.
"I want to go to the toilet." Lin Sanjiu looked slightly despondent when she stood up. Walter opened his mouth. He seemed to remember that she had stood guard outside when he went to the toilet previously. However, after deliberating for a few seconds, he was too shy to offer to go to the toilet with a woman. Lin Sanjiu felt very satisfied with this reaction.
The few morsels of food that Lin Sanjiu had on the airship was not even sufficient for her to want to go the toilet. On top of that, due to their constitutions, posthumans could function fine without going to the toilet for seven to eight days. However, being on the airship was so boring that going to the toilet was one of the ways of the passengers to pass time.
However, this wasn't Lin Sanjiu's objective.
Though the toilet was a necessity and was frequently visited, it was constructed very unthoughtfully at the end of the corridor. Its door faced the corridor so anyone in the corridor could see who was coming out. This was exceptionally inconsiderate for the ladies, but Lin Sanjiu had a feeling that the crew of the airship didn't care.
The second Lin Sanjiu locked the toilet door with a click, Mrs. Manas voice rang out in her head. "What are you going to do if this conjecture is wrong?"
Lin Sanjiu sighed. "I don't know. If I still can't figure this out… I can only hope that AYU and whatever she gave birth to wouldn't look for us."
"I even hope that I have a real body, I'm living in a peaceful world and that I'll win the lottery one day," Mrs. Manas grumbled.
Lin Sanjiu ignored her. With some difficulty, she managed to turn her body sideways and look around her. Her wings were even more bothersome in this small, confined space. When they checked the toilet previously, Walter was mainly the person who checked the interior. However, anyone could see the whole poorly constructed toilet in a single glance. A toilet bowl was placed against a wall. There was some suspicious yellow-brown mark on its rusty body. It was disgusting to look at, let alone the stench it emitted. The contractor probably knew that posthumans that could survive and enter this world would definitely have endured worst sanitary conditions. Naturally, there wasn't a basin here. Oddly, there was a mirror on the wall.
Lin Sanjiu looked at herself in the mirror for a few seconds. The woman she saw in the mirror looked very unfamiliar to her—just like when she looked at her own body.
"How long are you going to stay here?" Mrs. Manas asked.
After she entered the toilet, nothing happened. Lin Sanjiu wasn't really sure, "Maybe, I'll wait for another three to five minutes."
When Mrs. Manas kept quiet, it was as if the entire toilet was filled with the bad stench of urine. With every passing minute, Lin Sanjiu started feeling that her idea was stupid.
"Even though the two men disappeared after entering the toilet, you had come here before," Mrs. Manas finally spoke, almost as if to advice Lin Sanjiu to just leave this toilet. "If you were effective as a lure, whatever should happen would have already happened."
"No, you're forgetting something. I have never been to the toilet on my own," Lin Sanjiu reminded Mrs. Manas. "I only came here with Walter and I didn't really enter the toilet anyway."
"What about Walter? Didn't he walk out fine?"
"That was because I was guarding the door that time," she said a little stubbornly after thinking it through. "Right now, there isn't anyone outside."
Since Jade Zhang basically didn't go to the toilet, Lin Sanjiu couldn't use her as an example to refute Mrs. Mana. The other passengers almost only exercised around the corridor. If they did enter the toilet, Lin Sanjiu and Mrs. Manas did not notice.
However, reality seemed to be the best proof of Mrs. Manas' opinion. After being hyper-vigilant and staying for some time in this smelly toilet, Lin Sanjiu had no choice but to give up. Just as she opened the door, she couldn't help feeling that this was a total waste of time.
When she opened the door fully, she looked down instinctively and saw a pair of eyes, with clearly defined whites staring back at her.
AYU's had the same mild smile which made her appear graceful and polite. However, her smile was late by half a second. Lin Sanjiu clearly noticed the traces of astonishment on the woman's face before it was replaced with a smile.
"Why are you shocked?" Lin Sanjiu thought silently to herself and eyed AYU with her amber eyes.
"Are you shocked because I came out so early so I didn't end up like the other two guys?"
"What a coincidence," before Lin Sanjiu could react, AYU spoke first. When Lin Sanjiu looked at her at such proximity, she realized that AYU was not as young as she first thought, as the woman had some faint wrinkles around her eyes. However, AYU had a sort of aura about her that made her seem very young when she talked. "These five days are so hard to endure, don't you agree?"
Lin Sanjiu looked at AYU's abdomen intuitively. AYU was slim and her abdomen was also flat. It had been that way since the start.
AYU didn't seem to notice Lin Sanjiu's gaze and that Lin Sanjiu was guarding against her. She continued smiling, "Oh, I think I still haven't asked you this. Big Sister, which world are you from?"
Lin Sanjiu found it very hard to explain what happened the very next instance. She felt as though she was hit by a lightning bolt. Shortly after, the hairs on her neck stood on end. The next second, her right wing stirred like a monster which had been hibernating under the sea for a long time. With a strong gust of wind, the white bones of her wing whistled as they pierced through the air and lunged at AYU. Before her wing reached its target, Lin Sanjiu had already jumped to the left, slipped past AYU and was heading back to Area R.
The wings, which had been a hindrance to Lin Sanjiu over these few days, swung wide open behind her with a threatening fury. AYU wanted to follow Lin Sanjiu but was forced to retreat. The wings usually looked very c.u.mbersome now loomed menacingly. The wings seemed like ferocious beasts with a life of their own. As they swept through the air, they almost severed one of AYU's arms which she had not withdrawn in time.
By then, Lin Sanjiu had already entered Area R. The flash of thought which struck her had come true.
Since they all knew that AYU was very problematic, Walter and Jade would not react indifferently if AYU stepped into the corridor after Lin Sanjiu went to the toilet. Perhaps, Jade might have her concerns. However, Lin Sanjiu was sure that Walter would definitely follow AYU but there was no one behind AYU just now.
This all led to one conclusion. If AYU was free to do whatever she wanted, Walter and Jade Zhang were definitely in trouble. Most of the people in Area R were still lying on the ground and seemed asleep. Only two people were awake at the moment. However, this time around, the nameless man and the tall man were standing emotionlessly in Area R.
A person with a head of short dark blonde hair was lying by the tall man's side, his remaining body was hidden in the shadows. The nameless man was holding another limp body wrapped in a green dress. That body no longer looked plump.
The most shocking aspect of the two people were their eyes.
No matter what their original colors were, their eyes were black now. Even though their pupils didn't look like they were going to swallow up their whole eyes, four lifeless black eyeballs the size of ping-pong balls were staring at her.
"Relax," AYU's tone of voice was no different than before. "I'm actually not that good at fighting," as she said that she touched h
er almost severed arm. There was no blood. There was no minced flesh. It was just like a drawstring bag was dangling from her elbow, swaying slightly as she moved.
Chapter 310 - 310
"What... what the hell are they?"
When Lin Sanjiu retracted her large skeletal wings slowly behind her back, she felt as if someone was squeezing her heart. Tighter and tighter. She moved her wings uncomfortably and tried to steady her breathing. Even after experiencing more than a hundred battles, big and small, this particular bloodless fight creeped her out the most.
There were ten soft, spineless, flexible things lying haphazardly on the ground. If it weren't for the clothes that wrapped them and their hair, it was simply impossible to identify these things as humans. Or rather, some human parts.
Lin Sanjiu's skeletal wings have proven themselves to be more powerful than any of the weapons she had ever used. They were swift, hard, nimble and sharp. Even the whistling sounds they made as they pierced through the air were painfully sharp. Yet, this level of strength was not even required to dispatch the current opponents they faced.
In fact, AYU and the other two men were just like three pieces of tofu in front of this pair of wings. Their attempts to resist were quickly sliced into a million pieces. When a part of their body was severed, it would lose its natural elasticity and form. They would then turn into tattered pieces of skins which fell to the ground like rags.
Lin Sanjiu used one of the ends of her wings to pick a piece of skin from the ground. Judging from its appearance, it was a part of a person's waist. As the person's clothes were no longer attached to it, Lin Sanjiu couldn't tell whose waist that was. It was empty. The person's internal organs and spine were missing. To be honest, if she couldn't see a navel, it would look like a broad, leather belt.
She fully retracted her wings, and the "waist" fell from the tip of her wing onto the ground. Lin Sanjiu stared at it blankly and did not know what to say. The unknown filling in AYU's body disappeared like smoke each time she was cut, leaving only tattered skin pouches.
Lin Sanjiu frowned and thought for a while. She made a gesture and drew out a card. She looked at the card which wrote "an emptied human pouch", then looked at the things on the ground again and her expression became grim.
"It's too ridiculous to call it a mere coincidence. I wonder if they're related to this Special Item appraiser…" She sighed, "Actually, I wanted to catch them alive, but…"
Quite unexpectedly, her opponents were unbelievably weak. Lin Sanjiu was just testing waters when she attacked them but the three people had already been cut up into sections of human skins, like chopping onions in soup.
"Let's wake Walter and the others first," Mrs. Manas suggested. "Maybe they might have discovered something."
In the beginning, Lin Sanjiu was worried that Walter and the others would be like the other human pouches and wouldn't wake up. Thankfully, after slapping their faces, Walter and Jade opened their eyes.
When they regained their consciousness, the two of them jumped up simultaneously. However, before they could take out their weapons and use their abilities, they noticed Lin Sanjiu and stopped.
"Huh, when did you come back?" Jade Zhang looked stunned. She had not grasped the situation fully, "The two men charged at us just now. Huh? What is this?" She kicked a pile of soft matter, wrapped in a pair of blue jeans, with the tip of her leather shoes. Lin Sanjiu was convinced that that was one of the tall man's t.h.i.g.hs.
"It's a long story…" Actually, Lin Sanjiu didn't know much more than Jade. After seeing that the both of them were alright, she heaved a sigh of relief and her expression mellowed. "I will tell you the details later, we should wake the others first."
The remaining five passengers were just like Walter and Jade. They had fallen asleep without knowing. Stepping carefully into the space between the people who had woken up, Walter walked to the side of the brown-haired woman and shook her shoulder.
"Hey, Lin, come over and look at this."
Just when Lin Sanjiu was planning to go over and help, she heard Jade Zhang's voice come from the other end of Area R, calling her to stop. Jade was crouching at the entrance of Area R, she was holding a piece of skin pouch. It looked like it belonged to AYU. As the light was too dim, Lin Sanjiu couldn't really tell what she was pointing at.
She walked over to Jade's side and bent down to look.
"This is like human skin," the woman clucked her tongue. Her sharp fingernails slid over the surface of the skin. "But, look, there's something here. It's definitely not human tissue…"
Lin Sanjiu squinted and inspected it but she wasn't certain—other than the thing looking a little swollen, she couldn't tell the difference. She gave a dry laughed and said, "I can't tell. Do you know, this piece of skin belongs to AYU…"
Jade was a little stunned and she covered her mouth.
"What's wrong?" Walter asked from behind her.
Lin Sanjiu thought for a moment and replied, "I went to the toilet, right? When I came out, I met AYU right outside the door."
After she said that, the airship suddenly shook a little. It must have hit another turbulence. The fluorscent light swayed above their heads, for a moment their shadows seemed alive.
The next second, before the faint gust of wind behind her back reached her, Lin Sanjiu ducked swiftly. With the momentum from the unstable airship, Lin Sanjiu slid to one side. However, before she could turn her head. A shadow from where Jade was crouching knocked her violently. With no time to react, she blocked the blow with her arm. However, the impact was too strong. She heard the sound coming from her shoulder. It was dislocated. At the same time, Lin Sanjiu was flung against the walls of the cargo hold. If she didn't extend her wings in time to catch her balance, she would have broken through the metal reinforcements of the cargo hold's frame. Even so, she received a very bad blow to the back of her head.
Even though posthumans had a much higher resilience, they were also more s.e.n.s.i.t.i.v.e to pain. Lin Sanjiu gasped from the pain, looked up, and her vision was blurry—though this could also be caused by the anger she felt from being betrayed. However, since they didn't get her with this sneak attack, they were not going to get another chance.
"You...You guys—" Lin Sanjiu gritted her teeth as she spat those words. However, the remainder of the sentence was lodged in her throat.
It was as if someone had just adjusted the lighting to a cooler shade. Dust particles filled the air. Lin Sanjiu couldn't tell what was different. Right now, there were three people standing in front of her.
"You hit her head," the wrinkles at the bottom of AYU's eyes grew more prominent as she spoke with an unhappy expression. "You're so stupid. The effect has been dispelled."
The nameless man who was shorter than Lin Sanjiu took a step toward her. He opened his mouth and exercised his jaw before he used what Lin Sanjiu knew as the most widely used language in the Twelve World Centrum in an unpracticed manner, "It's okay. Let me have a go this time."
Lin Sanjiu heard every word they said, however, she couldn't comprehend anything at this moment.
She had just woken Walter and Jade moments before. They even spoke to her. Yet, both Walter and Jade were still lying limply on the ground now. Just like the other people, their faces were as white as a sheet.
The nameless man walked closer and cracked a wide grin. It was as if he was trying to smile but the angle of his lips was wrong. One side of his mouth was curling upward and the other side was pointing downward. It was as if someone had torn his face right in the middle.
AYU scoffed, "Both of you haven't even familiarized yourselves with your movements. I'll do it."
As she said that, she walked closer. With each step, her dangling drawstring-bag-like broken forearm dangled from her elbow.
"That was a hallucination!" Mrs. Manas screeched sharply in Lin Sanjiu's mind just as Lin Sanjiu had reached a similar conclusion. Lin Sanjiu's body seemed to move on its own volition. As she leaped aside, one side of he
r wing swung open with a whoosh. Light danced across the metallic sheen of her skeletal wing as it stopped the two people in front of her like a furious beast.
The whole series of events which had just happened seemed like reality. It was as if it factually happened. However, this was not the first time she experienced this—
Still, this time it was different. She did not faint and she wasn't fully immersed in the hallucination.
"To be accurate, it is a partial hallucination." Mrs. Manas spoke rapidly when she was nervous. "The environment you're in and your actions are real. Somehow, they only altered part of what you are experiencing."
It is common knowledge that lies made of half-truths are harder to discern. Apparently, hallucinations were the same.
Physical distance couldn't protect Lin Sanjiu from being affected by the hallucinations. Lin Sanjiu couldn't remember how they even got her. She was only certain that AYU could make her hallucinate even if she kept her distance.
"What are you?" Lin Sanjiu shot a question as soon as she calmed herself. She eyed AYU's deepening smile. "There isn't just you three. You have given birth to more things, right?"
AYU was stunned for a moment. She was interrupted by this unexpected reaction. She crooked her head and raised one of her hand to get the other two people to wait. Then, she flashed a loathing smile, "You know quite a lot. Give birth? The way you word it really makes me feel uncomfortable. I'm not their mother… But, from your people's point of view, it seems accurate.
"Yes. Just as you pointed out, I have given birth to nine of my companions. Since I answered your question, it's now your turn. I have been very curious about you… There is a smell of our meat nest on your body. It's really strong. I wouldn't follow you on this airship if it weren't for that smell. Have you seen our people before?"
"Meat nest— Our people— " Lin Sanjiu almost remembered Sajee and the large fleshy cavity immediately.