by N. Heller
While in the center—according to Lin Sanjiu's speculation—of the swathe of vast land, a rocky mountain had risen steeply from the ground. It seemed about 1,000 meters high, and its peak was very close to the mist. Then, roughly three to four meters below the fog was the sandy area where Lin Sanjiu had fallen.
Having a loose structure, the sand did not provide much for Lin Sanjiu to hold on to. The reason she could hold for so long without falling was all thanks to Mrs. Manas' quick response of using her Higher Consciousness to hold Lin Sanjiu in place. However, it was also due to this constant consumption that she couldn't muster up enough Higher Consciousness to pull them out of the predicament.
Of course, Lin Sanjiu was not bold enough to climb up either.
Compared to being crushed to death by the "God's" finger, she was more than willing to push her luck and think of a way to go down to the human city below. After all, there were so many survivors down there. She was certain that they must have a method to counter God.
"Do you think the [Tornado Whip] can offset the momentum of falling?" Lin Sanjiu huffed. With every syllable she spoke, she felt her body became denser.
Her grand prize emitted an incoherent grunt of disagreement. Apparently, he did not favor this idea very much, "... Getting thrown into the air before falling straight down to our death? That's not a good idea, sis'." He paused for a moment before asking hesitantly, "... The [Battle Item] can only imitate Special Items? Can't it mimic a parachute?"
"No, it can't."
"Then, how about a Special Item with a parachute—"
"I have no idea which Special Item has that ability or looks like that," The vein stood out in Lin Sanjiu's temples, "... Besides, without a reference, I couldn't activate the [Battle Item]."
The grand prize fell silent. He was caught in between a devil and the deep blue sea.
"Or perhaps I could extend a bone hook from my limbs," Lin Sanjiu muttered dubiously, "... Then we can make use of the hook to climb down the cliff, but…"
The last bone whip had taken her half a month before she could completely retract it into her body. If she makes changes to her body again this time, she might not be able to undo the transformation anymore, just like her height. However, now wasn't the right time to be indecisive. Her Higher Consciousness was being consumed at an alarming rate and that was, by far, the best possible way that she could think of right now.
In order to realize her plan, Ji Shanqing had to crawl from her leg to her back first.
Her grand prize was tired; his limbs were aching, and he had been holding onto her with his fingers so tightly that he couldn't stretch them. He was now so terrified even to open his eyes, let alone to perform such a challenging acrobatic move. Lin Sanjiu had to both threaten and encourage him for a long time before her grand prize finally agreed to allow her to raise the leg that he was clutching on.
"Are you ready? I'll now bend my leg. When you see the chance, let go of your hand immediately and jump onto my waist. You copy?" Lin Sanjiu ran through the thing with her grand prize again, "... Throw away your fear. Remember, you have only one shot."
Ji Shanqing let out a shaky, incomprehensible guttural voice. Nobody had the slightest idea of what was he talking about.
Lin Sanjiu heaved a sighed, "Okay, I'm bending my leg now."
Her grand prize grunted in reply.
His voice was instantly washed away the moment it came out from his lips. Waves of vociferation that shook the heaven burst forth like a massive tidal wave from the ant city below, hitting the wall of the cliff and causing a serial of reverberation in the air. It sounded as if tens of thousands of people were yelling at the same time.
"What happened?" Lin Sanjiu was startled by the sudden roar, "Why are they shouting?"
The grand prize did not dare to lower his head. He narrowed his eyes and listened.
After a short while, the mishmash of noise which had no meaning began to unify and synchronize, as if it was conducted by something. Soon enough, both of them could finally make out a word amidst the maelstrom of roar and shout, "Deva! Deva!"
Lin Sanjiu's heart tightened, and she raised her head instinctively to find that the sky was still shrouded in the white mist. Neither the finger nor the bloodshot eye could be seen.
Suddenly, she caught something with the corner of her eyes and she froze.
"Deva! Deva!" The crowd pulsed with excitement, both outraged and thrilled at the same time, "Deva! Deva!"
"Sis'… Sis,'" Ji Shanqing's trembling voice slashed through the turmoil of sound and reached Lin Sanjiu's ears, "O—o—on y—your l—left."
Lin Sanjiu turned her head slowly.
A pale, delicate face had appeared around 200 meters away from them in the air. She rested her forehead on the cliff while her eyebrows were hidden in the mist. She was now looking at them, and her eyes that were as long as the sky bridge slowly curved into arcs.
When "Deva" smiled, her blood red lips curved up to above her nose bridge. On her face was a thick layer of white powder, and nobody could tell whether the skin color underneath the alabaster painting was closer to human or not.
As Deva brandished her arm that reminded Lin Sanjiu of the world trade center, she raised a violent gust of wind. Lin Sanjiu was almost blown away by the gale, but she hung on in the end. In an instance, the roar from the crowd below ceased and all of them became silent.
"Oh," Deva's lips split her face into two parts like a zipper, and a voice like a man speaking with his nose pinched came rolling out from her mouth. It was a loud, assaulting voice, "My prodigal sons who had answered to my call… As the one and only true God in the world, I assure you, that you will finally find peace in my embrace."
Lin Sanjiu stared at the face that floated in mid-air. Her brain had stopped functioning for a moment as her mind was flooded with a thought.
"There are two "true gods" in this world?"
"Sis'!"
The call of her grand prize had snapped her out from her daze. She turned and saw a massive hand was coming straight at them. She could feel the strong wind that accompanied the sweep of the arm even before the arm reached them.
Lin Sanjiu's heart seized. "Hang on tight!" After she had warned her grand prize, she loosened her grip. As her grand prize yelled in horror, both of them fell straight into the abyss below. Lin Sanjiu summoned her [Tornado Whip] in her left hand and flourished it towards the large incoming hand.
Her heart pumped so fast that it was on the verge of exploding. She mustered all the strength and unleashed a tornado that was way stronger than any of the tornadoes she had released before. The cyclone had enshrouded the sky in black and even covered the face of Deva.
Then, a couple of snow-white fingers came out from the tornado in the next second.
The owner clenched the fingers, folding the tornado into her palm.
"My poor children who have been blinded by the fallen demons," the sharp and saccharine voice had given Lin Sanjiu a gooseflesh, "... As the only true God, I forgive you all."
"Screw your forgiveness!"
Lin Sanjiu was still descending fast. The wind roared past her ears. She cursed aloud and turned her body. She raised her [Tornado Whip] and unleashed a wind towards the ground.
Then, she stopped, along with her grand prize, both of them hovered in mid-air. Neither of them could move their body. They could only see in awe as the hand destroyed yet another tornado.
The long and pallid face grew closer and stopped beside them. Compared to "Deva," both of them were only as large as the tip of her nose.
The smile on Deva's face grew larger and larger. She used her finger to pinch the two and lift them.
It was only then Lin Sanjiu heard clearly what was the crowd had been shouting all along.
"Baptize! Baptize! Baptize!"
Chapter 509 - Female Infidel
Lin Sanjiu realized she was wrong.
She had always thought that the giants were the reason for the downfall of the world.
She only realized how wrong she was until Deva pinched both of them in between her fingers.
On the long white face with a pointy chin, the muscles on Deva's cheeks were so thick that she couldn't open her eyes more than a slit. Her breath had a fishy smell, and each of her inspirations stirred up hot and humid air.
For a moment, the image of her being crushed like a squashed gr.a.p.e was there in Lin Sanjiu's mind before she even knew, but the colossal Deva, who stood at the height of a thousand meters just picked them up fondly. Her eyes were full of tenderness, much to her surprise.
After that, she bent down and scratched both of them down from her finger as if she was picking her nose using her fingernail, sending them falling straight into the city of ants below. Throughout the whole process, Lin Sanjiu's body was as stiff as a wooden block. She could not move any parts of her body aside from her eyes. Both she and Ji Shanqing were now like two paralyzed patients—their mobility was utterly stripped away from them.
"Could this be the "divine power" of a God?"
The ground was approached at a mind-boggling speed. When the imminent had arrived, she smacked hard on the slate, her eyes blackened, the world disappeared in a swirl of black, and her bones rattled as though they had been shattered.
The next thing she knew before she fully recovered from her grogginess was footfalls coming from all directions flooded her ears. When the dust settled down, faces, one after the other, slowly came into sight like bamboo shoots after a spring rain until they filled up every inch of her vision. The faces were both expressionless and moribund.
From a single glance, all of them were so much alike that it was impossible to distinguish them from one another. Eroded by the wind and sand all year round, their faces had turned yellowish and their skin dangled, flabby and loose from their bones. They looked as like a bunch of older a.d.u.l.ts with one foot in the grave.
When five slightly muscular men made their way through the dense crowd and picked them up, only then did Lin Sanjiu realize that the eldest people amongst the populace might probably be in their thirties to forties.
As they lifted them, Lin Sanjiu turned her eyes, and to her surprise, Deva was nowhere in sight. She vanished as quickly as she appeared. The only thing that remained there was the towering rocky mountain with its peak that almost stabbed into the thick white fog.
Lin Sanjiu couldn't help but think of the finger that shrunk into the white fog.
"Oh?" A parched voice came from the owner of the hands, "It's a woman."
Another man replied, talked with a similar cracked and rasping voice, "Oh! You're right! Hey, you over there; go and call the warden."
Somebody from the crowd cleared his throat and answered. Then, the next thing she heard was footfalls that were getting further and further away. All of their voices were raucous and coarse. Recalling the babel of sound she had heard during her fall, Lin Sanjiu surmised that these people must have damaged their vocal cord due to excessive yelling.
So, what was wrong with her being a woman?
Lin Sanjiu had no idea what Deva had done to their bodies. It had already been thirty minutes, yet their mobility still hadn't returned to them. Her heart was sinking deeper and deeper into her stomach as despair began to take hold of her mind. Her eyes ached as no matter how hard she strained her eyes, everything that came into her sight was merely the blanket of non-ending white fog in the air and the chin and nostrils of the person who was carrying her. The world in her vision bobbed up and down. The man who took her continued to move forward. Judging from her kinesthetic sense, it seemed to her that they were going down a slope. And after what it felt like ages, the man stopped, and they were placed on the ground.
"Hold them up," a voice that she had never heard before rang out above her head not far away. The man's voice wasn't as harsh as the other people's voices, but it wasn't pleasant either. It sounded like two bones rubbing against each other, "... Which one of these is a woman?"
With that, somebody positioned Lin Sanjiu and leaned her upper torso against something. They finally had a more unobstructed view. However, before Lin Sanjiu could take in their surroundings, a man next to her pushed her grand prize forward and said, "This is a woman."
"Great," the sound said before asking again, "How about this?"
As the question raised into the air, Lin Sanjiu lifted her eyes.
There was a duoluozhong standing at about ten steps ahead of her. Its skin was arctic-white, and it had no hair. It wore a long robe and its body seemed empty. Its two eyeballs were sunken into the sockets, and its lips were parched and dry like a black hole on its face.
Behind the duoluozhong called "warden" stood a cl.u.s.ter of people. Some of them were duoluozhong , but most of them were human. Like the people outside, their skin had a yellowish tinge and they wore a similar weary look. None of their robes were as clean as the one wore by the duoluozhong standing in front. Behind them were concentric rings that made up the wall, appearing like an enlarged version of the Roman Colosseum except, instead of seats, each of the rings were carved with many holes that the people treated as their dwelling spaces. From there, it seemed to Lin Sanjiu that they were now at the bottom of the city of ant-like people.
"I guess this is a woman, too," the warden walked closer. Its eyes rolled, flattening the creases on its forehead. And somehow, the confirmation of her gender had stirred up a murmur from the crowd.
The duoluozhong studied Lin Sanjiu from her head to her toe before stretching its two long, dead-branches-like arms wide, "... It has been a long time since we last came across a female infidel. I suggest delaying their baptism."
"Warden," the man who carried them whispered a question to the duoluozhong he called warden, "Wouldn't it be too risky not to baptize these infidels immediately? After all, the stigma…"
"Stigma? Is it that thing that makes us unable to move?"
"This must be a test from Deva," its two eyes rolled around, "Rest assured; I'll make a decision before the stigma goes away."
All of the raw-boned crowd with dirt-laden face lowered their head and murmured something in unison.
"At least the baptism won't happen now…"
Before Lin Sanjiu could relax, her heart tightened again the moment the duoluozhong moved to a side, and the people behind it fell into her sight.
There were women there also — many of them. Their hair was disheveled and dry and their eyes were vacant and glassy, looking like two swirls of black scribbled by pen.
What surprised her the most was almost all of the women, no matter how old or young, were either pregnant or holding a child. Their stomachs were so large that it contorted their body. The extraordinarily large sphere had placed too much strain on their flimsy frame, giving Lin Sanjiu an impression that they would fall to the ground at any time.
When her glance caught a glimpse of a pregnant woman with a head of white hair and wrinkled skin, her stomach churned, and she quickly averted her eyes away.
She wanted to turn to check on Ji Shanqing's condition, but her body wouldn't listen to her command. Her fists laid beside her legs, and although there was nothing in her palm right now, her brain was running fast filtering which Special Items she had that could save both of them without moving her body.
The duoluozhong nodded. It spun around and waved its hand, "Bring them to the shrine."
Two statues of Deva stood at the entrance of the staircase. Each of the sculptures was as tall as a human. When Lin Sanjiu was being carried down the stairs, her eyes accidentally met with Deva, and it's smiling eyes spooked her to the core.
When both of them were thrown on the ground of the shrine, from the ill-lit space came a low groan. Lin Sanjiu hurt her nose when the person flung her to the ground; she winced in pain as she raised her eyes. Through the help of some light, she was able to make out a figure that was laying on the ground.
The smell of blood assaulted her nostrils. As the rustle of fabric drifted into her ears, one after other feet, whi
ch could only belong to duoluozhong walked past them.
"... You will now witness his baptism," a duoluozhong whispered from behind them, "He's a posthuman we caught, by ourselves."
Chapter 510 - Encountered With A Nice Person
When all of the sconces were ignited, the flame came to life from the wall and completely lit up the entire underground shrine. The gas emitted from the burning lipid weaved around Deva's idols, reminding Lin Sanjiu of the tainted breath of Deva.
"Human fat," a duoluozhong bent down and whispered to them when it walked past them, "Those torches are soaked with human fat."
Then, it left. Without any reason. It seemed that it just wanted to tell them the details.
Lying on the floor, Lin Sanjiu couldn't emit any syllables. She fixed her eyes on the leaving duoluozhong with a searing stare that would burn the latter with her gaze alone. More and more duoluozhong came in from the entrance, filling the shrine like a swarm of locust descending on an unfortunate farm.
However, even with the mass of the duoluozhong , it's still couldn't compare with the number of idols in the room.
… Lin Sanjiu swore that she had never seen so many statues in her life.
The underground shrine was vast. Even with her enhanced eyesight, she couldn't see the end of the ceiling. The farthest corner was still shrouded in darkness as the fire couldn't reach there.
In this enormous underground space, there were a plethora of Deva's statues made of different kind of materials, filling the temple to its brim.
Clay, mud, wood, rock, iron: it seemed like any material that would make a good idol was used to depict Deva. Even the wall was embossed with a high relief of her. The idols came in various sizes. The largest was about the size of a man while the tiniest came about the size of a finger.