Chapter 518: Overpopulated
For the next five seconds, Lin Sanjiu rooted her feet firmly on the ice. And no matter how hard Ji Shanqing pulled her, she wouldn"t budge.
It was not that she couldn"t move; it"s just that she did not want to run away anymore.
She felt bone-deep exhaustion flooding every one of her cells like a tumultuous tidal wave. For a moment, she was so tired that she didn"t even want to breathe. Vitality, Special Items, Higher Consciousness: Lin Sanjiu was at the end of each and single one of them. Right now, she just wanted to take a seat and let out a long sigh of breath.
So, she did.
"Sis, what"s wrong with you?" The grand prize stomped his feet, nervously, "Let"s run!"
"No. Instead of running, I want to know what"s going on," Lin Sanjiu rubbed her face and turned over to the pair of large feet. She asked in a harsh tone, "... Tell me. What are you?"
Upon hearing the question, the toes wriggled then the entire feet moved back. Although each toe was more ma.s.sive than Lin Sanjiu when she was standing, it was clear that the feet belonged to a child when the owner of the feet pulled back. It was a kind of strange feeling that not even Lin Sanjiu herself could explain.
When the feet had reached a certain distance, a face then descended slowly from the white fog above.
Lin Sanjiu and her grand prize were familiar with that face since they had been looking at it throughout the entire journey. The little girl"s flat nose, and her apricot-shaped eyes-- everything was the same as before, only that the face now had been magnified countless times. When it appeared on top of the glacial plain, Lin Sanjiu couldn"t help but shudder at the sight of it.
A puff of cold air blew past the s.p.a.ce between the giant face and the two people, carrying a white cloud of mist from the surface of the ice to join its family above their heads.
The eyes on the giant face blinked as a beaming smile slowly appeared on her lips, squeezing the pores on her face that were as huge as human fists into thin lines.
"What do you want to know?" She asked coquettishly. The vibration of her voice sent a shock wave across the glacial layer, "If I answer your question, will you play with me?"
Lin Sanjiu no longer could contain her feeling. Her face turned grim, and she exuded a freezing aura as cold as the ice that had been frozen for a millennium.
"Answer my question: what are you?" The voice that came through her windpipe was deep and h.o.a.ry.
"I"m not a human," the little girl chuckled, "I"m Puella! The only True G.o.d!"
Ji Shanqing covered his face out of despair.
"A G.o.d…" Under the gaze of the nightmarishly large eyes, Lin Sanjiu muttered a question, "Deva is your mother, so that makes you a G.o.d as well?"
Upon hearing Lin Sanjiu"s claim, the giant face suddenly sulked, and its brows drew.
Ptui!
Then, the next thing they felt was as if somebody had poured an entire swimming pool on top of them. A ma.s.sive drop of sticky liquid fell on them from above, drenching them. The miasmic smell of the saliva instantly filled the air.
As a mysophobe, the grand prize crouched down like a cooked shrimp after getting soaked by the little girl"s saliva. He forced himself to keep from emitting any sound.
"I"m not her child!" The little girl growled, "How dare you relate me, a True G.o.d, to a filthy s.h.e.m.a.l.e like her?"
Lin Sanju held her head up in a daze staring at the little girl. Standing under the shadow of the little girl"s lips, she was soaked.
"Then… What were you doing there in the nursery cave?"
Just like Lin Sanjiu had no idea what had she done that enraged the little girl, she was oblivious as well how a single question could please the little girl.
The giant face flushed with excitement as she yelled in a sharp voice, "Good question!"
The face was huge. It was already tough for them to see the entire face, let alone distinguished her expression. Lin Sanjiu could only deduce from her tone that this "G.o.d" was now delighted as if she was finally able to share her valiant record with her.
"Because I want to subjugate Deva!" The little girl roared, a.s.saulting their eardrums with her sharp laughter, "That old hag is as slippery as an eel. She had escaped from my clutches multiple times, so I change my strategy. I turned to my human form and snuck into her territory. And when those Inhumans presented me to her… Oh gosh, can you feel the thrill?!"
When the little girl reached that point, her feeling of exhilaration mounted. She burst into a peal of great laughter as she hammered her fist on the ice sheet, sending Lin Sanjiu and Ji Shanqing flying into the sky with the shock wave she generated. The ice layer shattered. A few deep cracks appeared on its surface. Lin Sanjiu immediately caught both Ji Shanqing and the [Weather Forecaster] in midair, and with a twist of her body, she propelled herself through the air, landing safely on a piece of ice that had escaped the fate of falling apart.
Puella looked at them and pulled a long face. Her lips pouted like a terrace, "But I"m not sure whether I have burst my disguise, as she refused to show herself in her territory after so long."
"No wonder, so that"s the reason," Lin Sanjiu finally saw the light.
Hiliu had said before that once the warden was dead, Deva would appear. The reason she refused to come out from the shadows was that she knew there was another G.o.d in her territory!
Lin Sanjiu"s heart sank.
"If even Deva balked at the existence of Puella, then..."
"Anyway, it wasn"t a gainless attempt whatsoever. Although I couldn"t subdue that freak, I have you two in my hands now." The expressions on the giant face changed with every second. Right now, there was a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips, "I have been observing you guys from the moment you two entered the cave. Do you like me? I didn"t lie to you two, though, and my mom is, indeed, dead."
"You… What are you going to do with us?" Lin Sanjiu stared fixedly at the giant face, or her chin, to be more precise, "Are you going to turn us into duoluozhong too?"
Puella smirked, as if she was laughing at Lin Sanjiu"s stupidity.
"I have more than enough of duoluozhong to serve me, so the answer is no. I"m going to have some fun with you two. If I"m happy, you live. After I"ve had enough of you two, then I"ll turn you into duoluozhong."
Without waiting for Lin Sanjiu and Ji Shanqing"s reply, she thrust her giant face forwards, pressing her lips closed to them as she spoke, "... By the way, I used to have around four to five posthumans in my custody, but they are not that good at games, and they always wanted to run away…"
Her ear-numbing voice wasn"t the only thing that came out from her lips. What followed after was the acrid smell of her breath strong enough to knock a person out cold. Pushed back by the salty breeze, Lin Sanjiu needed to make her utmost effort to refrain from attacking the giant face. She knew that she wouldn"t be able to do anything except making Puella angry.
"What-- what game do you want to play?" The grand prize asked. Their s.h.i.+rts were frozen stiff in merely a few minutes. He s.h.i.+vered so much that he couldn"t even finish his sentence properly, "Are we returning to your territory to play games? Where"s your territory?"
It was apparent to Lin Sanjiu that Ji Shanqing was sounding out information from Puella. Just when she prepared herself to stop her grand prize for going too deep, Puella scoffed, "It"s none of your business. Besides, I don"t have a territory."
"She"s a G.o.d without a territory?"
Two of them exchanged glances.
The highland when they first arrived at Salvation of G.o.d belonged to the giant finger while the City of Ants was the domain of Deva, but Puella said she did not have a territory? There were so many lands on this planet aside from those two places. How was it possible Puella did not have a land of her own?
However, before they could go any deeper with that thought, they were disrupted by Puella. Her face rose back into the sky above, and a hand descended, stopping in front of them like hundreds of large s.h.i.+ps.
"Hop on."
Lin Sanjiu remained standing still.
Staring at the gargantuan deep-red, flesh-colored palm laden with many palm prints, many ideas flashed across her mind yet she couldn"t decide on either one of them.
Caught in between the devil and the deep blue sea, she did not want to follow Puella, but she did not have the confidence that she could outrun Puella. What should she do now?
"Hurry up," Puella had grown impatient. Each word she said reverberated clearly in the air, "What are you guys waiting for?"
"Sis"," Ji Shanqing whispered into Lin Sanjiu"s ear, "We don"t have much choice. Let"s follow her for now… Since she wants to play games with us, I guess she won"t do anything to us yet."
Lin Sanjiu tightened her jaw. Her forehead dripped with perspiration. Just when she decided to throw everything to the wind and took out her [Howtorender], preparing for a final resistance, the ice layer shook. Both of them were caught off guard, slipping on the ground.
"What happened?" As the question came out from the grand prize"s lips, the palm flipped over, and Puella stood up. Even though she did not move after she stood up, the vibration grew stronger and stronger with each pa.s.sing second. Many cracks appeared on top of the ice, stream after stream of white mists released into the sky. It was as if the planet had decided to pull itself apart—
Without Puella blocking their vision, the two people who were fighting against the trembling lifted their heads. When their gaze saw the things on the horizon, their face turned pale.
For a second, Lin Sanjiu felt she must have been gone crazy, until Puella scoffed, sending her deep voice rolling across the white fog only then she regained her senses.
"Quick! Move your feet and run now!" Lin Sanjiu howled at Ji Shanqing as the ice continued to roar, "We won"t make it if we don"t go now!"
Yes, they would not be able to pull this off if they did not run now.
It was as if Puella had lost interest in them, she turned around and charged toward the horizon. From the white fog in the skyline, countless figures of different sizes and appearances had emerged—
G.o.d.