by N. Heller
Perhaps the God wanted to hand her directly to the duoluozhong, so he was cautious. He clenched his fist tight enough to leave no slits for Lin Sanjiu to escape through while still keeping it loose enough not to hurt her. Lin Sanjiu had tried her luck and attempted to escape, but each time it was in vain.
No, perhaps it should be said that it wasn't the fist that prevented her from running; it was her mind that prohibited her from escaping.
When she was first caught, she struggled with all her might. She even had her abilities all prepared. It was just that given the God's immense size and her low amount of Potential Growth Value, [A Twinkle In The Sky] might be useless against him, but it wasn't the same case if she used her [Mosaic Censorship].
She held the elder brother's body under her arm, and just when she had both her hands free and was about the activate her ability, her legs suddenly gave away, and she fell on the palm. The next thing that came into her sight when she turned her head around was two pieces of brown-colored skin, filled with many vertical stripes. The God had moved them closer to his lips.
For a moment, Lin Sanjiu thought she was doomed, as she felt that the God was going to devour them; all other chronicles talked about how passionate a titan was in eating humans. While she was overwhelmed by the thought, the deep-brown lips parted. The hole got bigger and bigger with every ticking second.
When she flipped her body over and pressed her hands firmly on the pinkish, line-laden palm, a fishy and moldy smell came pouring out of the mouth. Assaulted by the malodor, she heard the God talk with a throaty voice, "...You don't want to escape."
She looked at her hands, gawking. "Eh…?"
Lin Sanjiu's mind was clear, and the thought of not knowing where the God was taking her still made her heart plunge deep into her stomach. But somehow, once she tried to think about "escape" or something related to it, some unknown force would instantly kill the thought. It felt as if somebody had f.o.r.c.i.b.l.y extracted the thought out of her brain. No matter how much she tried to think about it, she wouldn't succeed.
She forced herself to keep thinking, but all she got into her mind was various kinds of confectionery recipes instead. She could not even form a proper escape plan, so how was she going to run?
In this manner, Lin Sanjiu sat idly on the God's hand, and the God continued to move forward to wherever he was heading. A plethora of thoughts flashed across her mind, but whenever the thought of running away popped up, it would be bumped away by other ideas: the identity of the elder brother, the whereabouts of her grand prize... She even thought about the cat doctor, who loved to eat spam but feared that it would harm his glossy fur.
She had no idea how long the brown lipped god had been walking. But when he suddenly came to a standstill in front of a jungle, she was startled, and the first image that popped up in her mind was that of her grand prize. Immediately, she jumped up and peeked over the edge of the hand. She had forgotten that she was now high in the air; she could see nothing but a large patch of tree crowns that spread far into the distance like a green-colored sea. She could not even recall if she had been to this jungle before or not.
"It is impossible to see anything from this height," Lin Sanjiu couldn't help but mutter.
Never once would she have thought that after those words were uttered, the world in her vision would plummet like an elevator going down a building, the tree crowns getting closer. She continued to descend, only coming to realize that the God had squatted down after she penetrated through the dense foliage and saw the ground.
"Eh?" She emitted a sound of confusion. She turned her head, and the scales dropped before her eyes.
The God had squatted down not because he had heard her request. With his knees pressed firmly to the ground and a hand to support him, he laid his upper body very low, concealing his entire being behind the shade of trees. "He looks just like a frog." Lin Sanjiu had no idea why but the idea kept emerging from the depths of her mind when she saw the God's posture. The God remained still for a long time, as if he were waiting for something.
From this distance, Lin Sanjiu finally had a clear view of the jungle that laid before her eyes. It was a dense jungle, so thick that it blotted out the sun and sky when one looked up from the forest floor. "Is this a tropical rainforest?" She mused. Initially, she thought she had never set foot in here before, but now, she could not be so sure. She attempted to scope the forest down; part of her hoped that her grand prize would suddenly pop out from somewhere, but the other part of her did not hold much hope.
The wind that blew past the forest was hot and humid, reminding her of the murky Amazon River. Occasionally, Lin Sanjiu could hear the chirping of birds, but she never saw any sign of those birds. In fact, she had yet to see an animal ever since they had arrived in this jungle. There was, however, a muddy river that laid before them. But the river did not flow, merely sitting in the middle of the wilderness like a long stretch of dead water.
The God was tenacious. He was able to stay completely still for a long time without turning his eyes.
"...Hey, you're not afraid that they would let the duoluozhong kill you?" whispered Lin Sanjiu to the elder brother, who was scrunching in the purlicue, staring at her.
Just when she was about to say something more, a commotion burst from the distance. Lin Sanjiu instantly turned her head in that direction. For a moment, the piece of jungle quivered and crashed; a second later, a face appeared amidst the chaos, broken tree trunks and branches rolling down her face.
It was the face of a female god with a protruded mouth, like the beak of a bird. On her face, one of her eyes was higher and larger than the other, and they looked like two black dots that somebody accidentally spilled on a piece of paper. The beaked goddess craned her neck and looked around. Surprisingly, Lin Sanjiu could somehow read the perplexion on her face.
In the next second, Lin Sanjiu was flung into the air. She rotated a few times in midair and then fell hard on the forest floor. As she succ.u.mbed to the pain, she heard another thud. Raising her head, she saw that the elder brother had fallen next to her.
And the God who had been holding her captive pounced at the beaked goddess.
Lin Sanjiu's heart seized. She swallowed down the pain and helped herself up to stand on her feet. The moment she wanted to take another step, the sensation of getting her thoughts extracted once again infiltrated her mind, causing her brain to go blank. She stood still on the ground and basked in the memories of that bookstore she once visited in Red Nautilus that collected different kinds of strange books from different apocalyptic worlds.
It was only when the beaked goddess screeched that she snapped out of her reverie.
"Over here!" The beaked goddess leaped into the air, avoiding the brown lipped god's ambush. The goddess wasn't any smaller than the brown lipped god, so her action shook the entire jungle. "Come here, quickly! He is here!"
Before the wind could carry her words away, a face popped out of the white mist far away, followed by his shoulders and his body, and finally his legs. Looking like an upside-down spider and even moving like one, the God charged at a high speed towards the battlefield.
It seemed to Lin Sanjiu that this was an ambush designed by the two Gods. It was just that the brown lipped god had already seen through their plan.
Since she could not run now, Lin Sanjiu heaved the elder brother and took cover under the dense foliage of the rainforest. The fight between the three Gods had shattered the tranquility in the jungle. The forest floor trembled, and the trees fell one by one. Lin Sanjiu had no idea which of the Gods had stomped on the ground, but the river water, leaves, and broken twigs in the air came raining down on her, causing her much pain.
"This is not your territory," the God who had captured Lin Sanjiu said, his voice a furious roar, "You lied to me! You lied to me, the only True God!"
"A True God that has no territory and lives by sneaking up on other Gods?" The beaked goddess laughed, "Preposterous! The only True God is�
�"
The last word must have been "me," but the beaked goddess swallowed down the word after glancing at her ally.
A fluke surfaced in Lin Sanjiu's mind, " If I can take a chance while these Gods are busy fighting themselves, perhaps I can—"
Then the thought disappeared; what filled the void instead was the pleasant sensation of her last hot bath.
But the beaked goddess' next words snapped her out of her reminiscence.
"Crocodile, it's your time to show up!"
Accompanied by the splashing of water, Lin Sanjiu turned her head to see a large gaping mouth emerge from the muddy river behind her. Rivulets of water lined the God's face. He turned around and locked eyes with Lin Sanjiu.
She could not run as the giant maw came straight at her.
There was an arm in the crevice between his teeth, looking like a strand of meat that got stuck after having a meal.
Chapter 554 - Earning A Praise From Boss
Lin Sanjiu had no idea whether to cry or laugh at her destiny. Heaven seemed to have a particular liking in toying with her. Recalling the chain of incidents following her exit of the Pocket Dimension, she found that she had constantly been on the run, getting injured and then caught...
There was only darkness all around her. The commotion of the fierce battle outside had left her behind. In this completely silent space, she could only hear the pumping of her heart and the flow of blood in her blood vessels.
The air was laced with the putrid smell of decaying flesh, but Lin Sanjiu still took a deep breath nonetheless. One reason was to soothe the pain in her body while the other was that she had no idea when she would be stripped of the ability to smell again.
Lin Sanjiu closed her eyes and began to recall the scene that had transpired just a second ago. At that time, a whirlpool suddenly appeared on the surface of the river, and the next thing she knew, a massive maw had come straight at her. The moment she took out her [Tornado Whip], a force pushed her towards the god's mouth, and before she could react, she was already inside. Lin Sanjiu jumped, landing on the slimy tongue just as the god crunched his teeth, severing numerous broken twigs into halves.
Then darkness fell. What followed after should have been the mastication. However, Lin Sanjiu ended up waiting for a long while, but the teeth and tongue remained still.
Since she was inside the god's mouth, she could feel the god moving his head. It seemed to her that he, like the other two gods, had joined the fray, and although his movements were rather vigorous, the inner side of his mouth was relatively stable.
Lin Sanjiu opened her eyes and stood up. Her clothes were all wet and coated in saliva. She pressed down the urge to vomit and fumbled about in the dark on the shambolic mess of broken twigs, soil and rocks. Then, she touched the body of the elder brother. Since he had been right next to her when the god appeared, there was no doubt that he was also swept into the mouth.
Huffing, Lin Sanjiu summoned her [Ability Polishing Agent]. The silvery light instantly cast the darkness away, revealing a person—no, it should be half of one—under its flare.
Aside from those twigs and tree trunks, the elder brother's legs was the other thing the god had bitten off. His body from the waist down was gone. The upper half of his body lay silently in the mess of twigs and tree trunks, looking like a murder scene. Despite his sorry state, his eyes remained wide open, looking straight at her and reflecting the light of her Ability Polishing Agent.
"You're not dead yet?" Lin Sanjiu began to feel sympathy for him. "If I were you, I would rather die."
The elder brother blinked his eyes, but Lin Sanjiu had no idea what he wanted to convey.
"Looking at it from another perspective, it's good that you are still alive. Perhaps you could be of use to me by shedding some light in this place."
Lin Sanjiu then took out from her card the rope that she never had the chance to use. She slipped the rope under his arms and tied him onto her back. With that, she did not have to carry him with her hands anymore.
Lin Sanjiu jumped a few times to test the sturdiness of the knot. Then she raised the [Ability Polishing Agent]. As she began to study the heavily coated tongue and teeth, which were even taller than her calves, she wondered why the god did not eat her but held her in his mouth instead. She turned around, and the light fell on something that took her a few seconds to recognize.
It was a face.
At the same time, she conjured a small tornado and sent it towards the face.
Suddenly, the mouth cavity swayed, as if the god had tilted his head. Lin Sanjiu lost her balance, and her foot slipped on the slimy tongue. The face was still there when she finally came to a stop. There was a smile on the face, "It's no use."
With the aid of the silvery light of the [Ability Polishing Agent], Lin Sanjiu could see that there was a gaping hole at the bottom of the silkworm-like face, which should have been the place where its voice had come from. On its face, there was no nose, and the two spots that should have been eyes had degenerated into two skin-wrapped bags due to prolonged stay in the dark.
"You... You are a duoluozhong ?"
"Yes," the silkworm-like face nodded, "Not only me, but all of us."
Lin Sanjiu shifted the light to the other side, and she became tongue-tied. From the esophagus (Lin Sanjiu supposed it was one), an endless stream of duoluozhong fanned out. Just like a horde of beetle, they soon flooded half of the mouth cavity in masses. Lin Sanjiu found that unlike the duoluozhong outside, every duoluozhong here were indistinguishable. Their eyes had degenerated into two meat bags, and their heads, faces, and bodies were engulfed in a chrysalis-like outer layer. Without some imagination, one would find it hard to believe that they had also once been humans.
After that, another duoluozhong that just had crawled up from the throat chimed in, laughing raucously. "Don't worry, you will soon join us."
At this moment, Lin Sanjiu finally saw the light of why the god had not eaten her after shoving her into his mouth. The realization shook her to the core. She immediately put the [Ability Polishing Agent] away and exchanged it for the [Mosaic Censorship].
"It's no use." After losing her light source, she could only register vague shapes in the darkness. She didn't know which one of them was talking. "No matter which abilities you use, they won't work on us."
Before she could ask why, Lin Sanjiu felt a strange yet familiar power coming straight at her like a tidal wave. Her body glowed as she concentrated the [Defense Forcefield] in front of her. Nevertheless, even with a layer of protection, she was still hurled by the power towards the teeth at her back. Thud. If it weren't for the elder brother, who had cushioned the blow, Lin Sanjiu was confident that she would've been knocked out already.
She slid down the teeth, hissing out in pain. Then she got up to her feet.
"Drop dead!" Another duoluozhong yelled, followed by an attack that whistled through the darkness. Then the whistle went dead, and silence returned.
"Hm?" A commotion spread across the duoluozhong . "Is she dead?"
"Let's try a few more—"
Following that, screeches of power alongside murmurs from duoluozhong zoomed to the front like a meteor shower, lighting the mouth cavity with kaleidoscopic beams of light. After that, everything settled down and turned silent again.
The air was deadly still. There was nothing there, as if there had never been an attack before.
"I guess she is dead? After all, who could survive after being bombarded by so many powers?" a duoluozhong said.
It was then that a guttural voice was raised from the shade, which was followed by a moment of unified silence. The noise was intermittent and weak, as if the person was seriously injured but still clinging onto consciousness. Both encouraged and startled by the sudden sound, more and more of them showered the front with their respective powers, but it was to no avail, as all of their attacks dissipated into the darkness as if nothing had happened.
The silence continued to reign over the spac
e above the tongue until a susurration of fabric shattered it.
"Thank you."
Followed by the woman's voice, a light shone, once again filling the entire mouth cavity with silvery radiance. Holding the [Ability Polishing Agent] in her hand, Lin Sanjiu appeared to be unscathed. She waved and fanned out the piles of cards to the duoluozhong as she grinned at them, offering them a peek at her row of bright white teeth. "...I'm so surprised to see you guys use God's divine power as well. It's all thanks to you, otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to collect so many level 11 Divine Powers. So my upper limit is level 11 now, it seems."
"Collect?"
"I have absorbed all your attacks, and I can use them whenever I want, so I have to thank you all." Lin Sanjiu walked closer to them, forcing the group of duoluozhong to back down as the bright beam pressed forward. She looked at them and smiled. "Mind telling me why you guys are inside this god's body? Anyone? No one? Alright then, let's move to the next question: why are you guys able to use God's divine power? Has this god shared his power with you all?"
The group of duoluozhong remained silent, but Lin Sanjiu wasn't affected by the group of uncooperative silkworm-like creatures. Donning the [Defense Forcefield], she charged into the group and rammed a few duoluozhong out of her way. By the time they finally returned to their senses, Lin Sanjiu had already reached the front of the throat.
The process of going from the tip of the tongue to the throat felt like the manufacturing history of an elaborate product that had fallen victim to a rough, slipshod method to cope with the large output volume. Her surroundings did not even look like a part of a body right now. It gave her the impression of a tunnel painted in pink.
The moment she stopped in the throat, a voice rang out behind her. "Stop her!" Lin Sanjiu was prompted to look behind. As if triggered by something, the group of duoluozhong had all gone mad. They were screaming, yelling, and galloping at full throttle towards her. She quickly turned her head forward again. Using the [Ability Polishing Agent], she looked down; then she understood everything.