by N. Heller
The temperature took a nosedive as the sky darkened. Shivering, Lin Sanjiu sneezed.
"Don't make any sound!" Jujube hissed urgently in a low voice. The fishy breath that followed after he opened his mouth beat a shrub around, releasing a rustle into the air.
Lin Sanjiu stole a glance at the shrub, and it was at this moment that she realized something was wrong. Her eyes widened as she jerked up from Jujube's shoulder.
"Hey, big guy. Look down there," Lin Sanjiu motioned her head toward the root of the shrub as she called out to Jujube in a low voice. The ring formation in the desert suddenly moved in a spiral motion. It got faster and faster, as if it were about to engulf anyone who dared to stand on it. Looking ahead, every sand dune was rotating, looking like gyros made of sand.
Stunned, Jujube realized his feet had sunk into the sand. Just when he was about to get up, several quicksands nearby suddenly caved in, and a hole—a deep black void that held nothing but darkness—appeared in the center.
Jujube and Lin Sanjiu moved a few steps back. Then, the quicksand slowed down.
"What—what the hell are those?" Lin Sanjiu asked, stunned by what she was seeing.
Jujube replied coldly, "It's one of that false god's abilities." Then, he vanished again.
Slowly, one after another, figures came popping out of the holes. Glancing around like mischievous mice, they clumsily crawled out of the pit, bathing their dry, bloodless skin and weary faces under the white moonlight.
'They are Inhuman!'
As the thought surfaced unbridled in Lin Sanjiu's mind, she saw Jujube huffing as a puff of hot air wafted across her face; his eyes lit up. He seemed to be extremely excited as he stuck his tongue out. It flailed madly in the air, but he did not take any action.
Unlike the Inhuman of Deva, this group of Inhuman had an unhealthy arctic-white complexion, resulting from being sheltered away from the sunlight for so long. Their bodies were bent, and they were skeletal. They had very few hairs, with only a few strands left dangling atop their white scalps. Although they did not wear any clothes, Lin Sanjiu could hardly tell their s.e.xes.
"Gizo hides his territory underneath the desert?" Lin Sanjiu whispered her concern into Jujube's ear. "But why does nobody mind these Inhuman? Where are the duoluozhong ?"
It occurred to Lin Sanjiu that they sent the Inhuman out to serve as their vanguard and scouts. They would only show themselves once they were confident that they were clear of danger. Like a swarm of locusts, lots of duoluozhong crawled out of the hole, sending goosebumps all over Lin Sanjiu's skin.
Just as Lin Sanjiu averted her eyes and turned her head—she found the scene to be too disturbing—she met gaze with two large, dull eyes.
"What are you doing?" Accompanied by Jujube's loud voice was his smelly breath. "Go and scout the area. I want to know what is going on there."
It appeared to Lin Sanjiu that Jujube feared that this was a trap set by Gizo.
After all, in Salvation of God, Inhuman and duoluozhong were both invaluable assets to gods. The Inhuman were the only source of idols a god could get, and the duoluozhong were an indispensable force to preserve their territory. The duoluozhong could be sent to collect materials essential for carving idols, guard the land, hunt posthumans, and even turn the posthumans into more of their own kind. It was indeed too unusual for a god to allow his precious assets to roam around freely.
However, when Lin Sanjiu landed on the desert ground and tiptoed towards the hole, an elongated snout similar to that of an anteater appeared from within the sand dune in front of her. Then the head split apart as the duoluozhong yelled, "The majestic one and only True God! I can sense your presence. I know you're there! Please, listen to us!"
Stunned, Lin Sanjiu looked over her shoulder. Jujube had not revealed himself yet. His ability was akin to the camouflage of a chameleon. Under the night, there was nothing there, only a piece of sandy land and shrubs. Nobody would know that there was a god there if Jujube refused to show himself.
"The false god we once served has been slain by another false god. The false god that did such an atrocity did not stay. He left us here… It's our honor to have finally met the one and only True God..."
As Lin Sanjiu slid down into the underground space, the sharp voice of that duoluozhong got further away, reverberating loudly throughout the night sky.
Chapter 557 - Another Corpse
Sliding down the slope, the first thing that welcomed Lin Sanjiu was the rush of a pungent smell. It smelled so ripe that Lin Sanjiu almost gagged, feeling as if a person was poking her throat with a thorn.
The hole was so terribly dark that Lin Sanjiu could hardly see her fingers. The occasional faint yelling of the duoluozhong wafted into her ears and only amplified the silence in the hole. She shielded her nose with her palm and went into the hypersensory state. She scanned the area for any living organisms with her hypersensory. Once she was confident that she was all alone, she took out the [Ability Polishing Agent].
With the silvery light, Lin Sanjiu finally saw the source of the bad smell.
All the holes seemed to be connected; countless of narrowed passages meandered out, forming some sort of network beneath the desert and partitioning the supposedly very spacious underground space into many narrow spaces. Here should have been the home of those Inhuman, the place where they worked, slept, ate, and did... their business (pee and poo). The foul smell that came from their excretion, remaining bugs, sweat, and idols was left here, in this space.
Holding her breath, Lin Sanjiu pinched a palm-sized idol with two fingers. The idol was made of sand, held together by some unknown gum. The idol was poorly crafted, looking nothing like an old man with an enlarged nose, but instead, more of a young maiden.
Lin Sanjiu's brows creased into deep furrows as she threw the sand idol away. The idol crashed against the wall and shattered into multiple pieces. She shifted the Ability Polishing Agent and realized that there were more idols crafted in different materials underneath the remnants of the idol she laid to waste just now.
But none of them looked like the old man Jujube had described.
She kicked a few idols on top of the stack, sending them rolling down the heap and clattering against the ground. She then turned around, moving the silvery light in a circular motion over the pile of idols. Every one of the idols was carved into a red-dressed woman with an hourglass body. Lin Sanjiu found her rather pleasing to the eyes; however, that was if and only if she ignored the bean-sized head that was disproportionate with her body.
She picked up an arm-sized idol, which was braided using tree vines, from the ground and stored it in her card. Then, despite the noisome smell that sickened her, she continued to move deeper into the passage. After traveling in the underground space for some time, she found that there seemed to be no end to the passage and that she had seemingly been going round and round in the same place over and over again. Not only would she be unable to finish surveying the area in time, but she might also lose her way out.
The good thing was that no matter how deep she went, she knew she would never walk out of the desert. Thus, she was calm. She continued to advance deeper into the passage to see whether she could find anything useful to them. However, she found nothing but more idols and traces the Inhuman left behind along the way, much to her disappointment. Not wanting to spend another minute in this lair that stunk to high heaven, Lin Sanjiu activated the hypersensory to feel the airflow so that she could follow the flow to look for a way out. Then, using her hypersensory as a guide, she went towards the nearest exit where the wind had slipped in.
Just when she was about to reach the slope that would lead her outside, Lin Sanjiu stopped. She raised the [Ability Polishing Agent] over her head and squinted her eyes.
With the help of the light, she somehow managed to register a faint human figure lying amid the scattered broken idols. His legs were buried under the idols. He had a short, stocky body, and there was a gruesome, gaping hole, which L
in Sanjiu believed was the primary cause of his death, in the center of his c.h.e.s.t. The hole was so large that even when he was lying face down, she could see the idol under him through the hole.
Lin Sanjiu walked up to the corpse and flipped it over. When the silver light passed over the body's face, she was visibly stunned. A long, large nose laid limply on the face, and like any other parts on the body, it was wrinkled and full of greyish-white fine hair.
"Wait a sec," she gasped and stood up. Unable to believe what she had seen, she looked again but closer this time.
The longer she stared at the corpse, the more she felt that he was Gizo, the geezer god Jujube had described.
"Could it be that the duoluozhong were telling the truth?"
According to Jujube, this desert was Gizo's territory. After his death, his group of duoluozhong and Inhuman had all went out of control and escaped, and all his idols had changed into the appearance of the god that had slain him. Things could not have been more apparent now, and there was only one mystery left to be solved.
Whoever had slain Gizo, why had he or she not brought the idols, Inhuman, and duoluozhong along, but just abandoned them here instead?
As she moved up the slope, she kept thinking about this question. The fresh air and star-speckled sky welcomed her with open arms, prompting her to hasten her movements. And it was at this moment that she suddenly felt a tug. Then, before she knew it, the thing behind her slipped down her back.
It was not long before she realized what it was and turned around to grab the elder brother's half torso. But due to the ill-lit surroundings, her hand missed its target, and she grabbed nothing but air.
She had strapped the elder brother to her body for so long that her body had adapted to the extra weight. Lin Sanjiu had almost forgotten about him. Perhaps the long and bumpy journey had loosened the knot, for the elder brother rolled down the slope and fell with a loud thud on the ground.
For a second, the thought of leaving him to rot in this cave flitter through Lin Sanjiu's mind.
The elder brother could not die, and he seemed to hold a lot of secrets himself, but Lin Sanjiu had no idea what to do with a half body that couldn't walk or talk.
However, her hesitance was brief. Lin Sanjiu sighed as she crawled down the slope and brought out the [Ability Polishing Agent] again.
"Well, it seems like you have to stick with me for a long while," she picked up the rope and offered a smile to the elder brother, "I wonder, do you wish to stay here or—"
Lin Sanjiu swallowed the next words back into her stomach and stared fixedly at the elder brother's face.
In the bright white light, she could see that the elder brother wasn't paying attention to her. Since he couldn't move his neck, he just shifted one of his eyeballs to the corner of his eye. Lin Sanjiu followed his gaze and looked at Gizo's corpse.
With a heart full of misgivings, Lin Sanjiu stood up and once again went to Gizo's corpse.
The dead body still looked the same as before. Nobody would be able to tell that he was a god when he was still alive. After she weighed the situation, she squatted down and placed her palm on the body.
The moment that [Planar World] activated, Gizo's corpse disappeared. At the same time, she felt something scr.a.p.e against her palm.
She did not have time to see the card, as Jujube's roar came rolling in from the outside. "Posthuman! Posthuman! Where are you? Come out now!"
Following which, the ground above began to shake, as if Jujube had undone his camouflage and was pacing around. With the sand on the ceiling raining down on her head, Lin Sanjiu felt that she had to get out faster. She wiped her face with her hand and put the [Ability Polishing Agent] and the card containing Gizo away. Picking up the elder brother's body, she moved to the slope.
Usually, quicksand would not form an underground space like this. This underground world was probably the work of Gizo using his ability. Now that the creator was dead, Lin Sanjiu had no idea how long the cave would stand under Jujube's stomping. Fearing that she might get buried alive under the sand, she held the elder brother under her armpit and climbed up the slope.
With a few quick motions, Lin Sanjiu was able to get out of the cave before it crumbled. The yellow sand fell into the cave, and choking dust rose into the air. Just like dominoes, once a cave crumbled, all the other caves began to fall. For a moment, one could feel that a dust storm was coming from afar, and Lin Sanjiu could hardly see through anything.
Choked by the dust, she coughed violently before opening her eyes.
"What took you so long?" roared Jujube.
Lin Sanjiu didn't dare to blame Jujube for destroying the cave. If she were to complain about every single thing he had done, Jujube might begin to question her abilities. As she gasped for air, she tied the elder brother to her back. "You have no idea how big it was down there. By the way, how about you? Why did you come out? Where are those duoluozhong ?"
"Dead," Jujube answered calmly. When the dust finally settled down, only then did Lin Sanjiu see the sand stuck in between his toes. Like a person who had stepped in water and then walked on sand, beneath his feet was a swath of gooey red substance. "I thought they were bait set up by another false god. One of them sensed my location by sniffing around, so I trampled them all to death."
Lin Sanjiu swallowed hard. Had she not taken so long, then perhaps she could have saved those Inhuman...
"You killed them too soon," she said coldly. "The duoluozhong was telling the truth. The god here was indeed slain by another god."
Jujube was stunned, his face turning grim. "Who did it? Then how about the idols—"
"Here, take a look at this," Lin Sanjiu said as she took out the idol stored in her card.
Almost at the same time that the idol dropped to the ground, Jujube shot up. His loud, angry voice came rolling from the sky above. "It's Sanduria! That bitch! Why does she get into my way every single time?"
Jujube seemed greatly enraged. He paced back and forth, trampling many shrubs and dead bodies. After a while, he lowered his body and hissed, "Why didn't you come out earlier and tell me this? It's all your fault! Now you have to find Sanduria for me. I don't care what you think or how you are going to do it. I want her posthuman dead!"
Shocked, Lin Sanjiu hid her hand behind her back and avoided Jujube's stare, stammering, "Okay—"
Inside her palm was the card of Gizo. It was just that there wasn't one card, but two.
Chapter 558 - Lin Sanjiu The Doomsayer
The days after leaving Gizo's territory were tough. For months, Jujube and Lin Sanjiu traveled across different deserts.
These deserts were scattered in various terrains, but none of them seemed to be the desert where she lost her grand prize. To make matters worse, her memories were becoming vague and out of sequence. She could hardly remember the topography of the desert. Besides, every desert looked almost the same. The more she saw, the more she was uncertain.
She was confident that, like her, her grand prize was roaming around the Salvation of God. The longer the time, the slimmer the chance of finding her grand prize. She knew that she could only do her best and leave the rest to fate.
This was because the land of Salvation of God was too large. Every effort she poured was nothing but akin to dredging for a needle in the sea.
It was also because of this reason that, although the effect of the sacred sound Jujube put on her was getting weaker with every passing day, Lin Sanjiu did not escape. After all, given her walking speed, she certainly wouldn't be able to travel through the entire Salvation of God from end to end before the day she transferred to another world. So, why not make use of the giant to help her walk?
Perhaps Jujube had begun to trust Lin Sanjiu after spending some time with her. Every time they reached a new place, he would allow her to roam around freely to look for her grand prize and leave behind some marks.
Lin Sanjiu let out a sigh and threw away the sharp stone she used to make the mark. She rai
sed her head and looked into the sky.
On top of the dense foliage, there was a huge body that dwarfed even the tallest tree in the forest. He stood at a height almost akin to that of a mountain peak, looking as if he was propping up the sky. However, Jujube wasn't the tallest in Salvation of God; in fact, he was just mediocre. Nevertheless, he still emitted a menacing aura when somebody looked at him from a worm's eye view. Right now, his face was gloomy and grim. He turned around to survey their surroundings.
Lin Sanjiu was very clear as to why he looked so displeased.
Over the months they had roamed across the land, they did not come across as many gods of Jujube's caliber as they had expected, let alone meet Jujube's archenemy—Sanduria. They did, however, bump into a few gods. But those gods were too big, so big that Jujube and Lin Sanjiu could do nothing but hide or run away whenever they saw them from afar. And so, a few months passed like this. Not only did they not gain any idols, but there were also times when they almost became the nourishment for those Titan.
Jujube once gloomily said to Lin Sanjiu, "The population of Lesser Gods is thinning. A new Titan is going to be born again."
But Lin Sanjiu knew that this was not the only reason that Jujube was unhappy.
Although Jujube refused to tell her, she somehow had an inkling after spending some time observing him.
Jujube was looking for something.
Although Jujube tried to cover up his intentions by strolling around casually, Lin Sanjiu knew full well that he was looking for another ability.
During her time with Deun, she noticed that although his Divine Power had leveled up, his attacks were straightforward and simple. He did not have a power like Deva, who could reap people of their mobility with a snap of her finger, nor could he alter his own size at will like Puella. His Divine Power was so weak that it could not even be compared to Jujube's broken sacred sound.
Initially, Lin Sanjiu thought it was because Deun was too weak. However, on second thought, if it were credited to Deun not having an "ability," everything would be much easier to explain.