L.O.R.D - Volume 1, Section 2: Gu Die Lijier
L.O.R.D (New Version)
Movie t.i.tle: L.O.R.D (Legend of Ravaging Dynasties)
爵迹
Author: Guo Jingming
Published: 2016
Translation: [email protected]
Volume 1: Divine Beginning
Section 2: Gu Die Lijier
However, in the next moment, she pa.s.ses Qi Ling without acknowledging him; even her eyeb.a.l.l.s did not move, as if Qi Ling does not exist. She walks until she is standing in front of Liuna before lifting her head to look at the red lion. In her eyes is the innocent confusion of a little girl. With a naive and crisp voice, she says “Why is it here? Doesn’t it know that Bing Mo is coming soon?”
Her small figure stands in front of the monstrous fiery red lion. She looks at it naively with wide eyes, “Do you, perhaps, seek death?” Her voice is weak and calm, as if asking if someone has eating his or her breakfast.
Hong Ri, under her intense gaze, seems as if it saw a monster, flinching and retreating more and more, his powerful arrogance from before disappears without a trace instantly. It shivers like a dog that has been frightened. Liuna stands and waves her hand. Hong Ri dissipates into a cloud of red smog, disappearing in the air.
The little girl tilts her head before moving slowly to a chair in the corner, and then she turns to sit in the chair, folding her legs up, hugging her knees, her small figure sinks into the s.p.a.ce between the arms of the air. She cups her round little face, using her intelligent large eyes to scan every face in the room as if looking at a roomful of dead people.
Liuna represses the dread in her heart before she stands and addresses the girl, “If you are here to compete for Bing Mo with us, then I admit defeat, I withdraw.”
The little girl frowns serious. She shakes her head, using a ghostly and faint voice that sounds like it’s coming from a s.p.a.ce far away, she says seriously: “No, I’m not here to compete with all of you for Bing Mo.” After saying that, she turns her gaze outside the window, at this point the outside is already pitch black, the remnants of the blood-like large sun has completely sank beneath the horizon. The chilling colour of the night has painted each inch of the ground in the town densely. Only the flickering lights from windows of houses remain in the entire town of Fauser..
She sits with her chin in her hands, dazed for a while before saying softly, “I’m here to compete with them for Bing Mo.”
Tuoka snorts from the side as he asks, “Who are they?”
The little girl pulls her gaze back from outside the window. Looking at Tuoka, a tinge of annoyance appears on her face. Her empty gaze settles on Tuoka, saying, “They, they are them.” And then she pauses and says: “They are not you.” After saying that, she turns her head back to stare at the end of the path outside, unmoving. "I don"t like you asking me questions. I just said I disliked noisy places."
Tuoka sits at the table without movement, as if unsure of how to answer the girl"s question.
Qi Ling who is standing closer to Tuoka, has already bent down to vomit, unable to hold it in.
At the ground beneath Tuoka’s feet, unknowing of when it happened, a few sharp crystals grew, like vines growing insanely at the speed of light, they pierce through his feet, following the inside of Tuoka’s body, piercing through the insides of his shins and thighs, finally poking out from densely from his chest area, blooming in the air, as if a gigantic white sea urchin just exploded in his chest. Numerous crystals as sharp as ice blades, decorating his corpse like a statue. His innards and intestines are hanging on these silvery-white icicles, b.l.o.o.d.y and burning, releasing white smoke.
Death looms in the overhead, the bitter cold wind of the night filled with shards of ice blows in from the window. The constantly rising chilliness spreads in the lobby of the inn. Liuna stands, staring at the little girl, her face is full of fear, “……Who exactly are you?”
The little girl does not look towards Liuna, instead she hugs her knees, raising her head to stare at an unknown point on the ceiling, her gaze scattered as if there is no focal point, as if she can look through the ceiling to see the rapidly darkening sky outside.
“You don’t even know me……” The little girl lowers her gaze, looking a tad regretful.
“She is…… ‘Gu Die’ (lit. Skeletons of b.u.t.terfly) Lijier……” From the quivering throat of Kins, this sentence squeezes out hoa.r.s.ely.
“Eh? ……You know of me?” Lijier turns to look at Kins faintly, and then she smiles lightly all of a sudden, her appearance like a blossom hidden in the smog, “Or is it that…… you can see it?”
The little girl is curled up in the chair in that dark corner, but her body seems to be shrouded in a ghastly green glow emitting from an unknown place. At this moment, in the corner of the lobby behind her, in that large s.p.a.ce, faintly, a being appears……a being that’s indescribable, a being that resembles a colossal b.u.t.terfly, but is no b.u.t.terfly at all. Due to its colossal size, it can only squeeze into the corner behind Lijier in distortion, it seems as if it is going to break the roof with its size. Its body is packed with dense and smooth scales, every single one of them flickering with a ghastly green light, the support that forms its wings, are all stick after stick of chilling white bones, the wings holding these skeletal bones together is a form of membrane with a softness that makes one ill. This monster’s wings are covered with slimy tentacles like that of a squid, at this moment they are creeping around messily. The entirety of the skeletal b.u.t.terfly resembles a sticky spotted bat more, unmoving in its distorted position behind Lijier.
“It’s very pretty isn’t it……” A slimy worm-like tentacle falls from the ceiling, Lijier reaches out, caressing that slimy tentacle of Gu Die, if you look at it closely, you will discover that, at the tip of the tentacle, there is a half-closed naked eye.
Kins and Liuna stands abruptly, their chairs falling in the process. They rush out of the inn.
n.o.body wants to compete for anything with such a monster.
Qi Ling is curled up at the corner of the inn, he wants to run, but from his scalp to his toes, they are all numb, he watches the little girl in front of him whose gaze is still empty, and then looking at Kins and Liuna who had rushed out of the inn hastily, he’s completely petrified, the lump of creature at the corner of the inn need not even be mentioned.
If he yearns for the world of soul powers before, the Qi Ling now just wants to escape this nightmare as quickly as possible.
At this moment Lijier turns and looks at Qi Ling, “I’m hungry.” Behind her, Gu Die suddenly morphs into a puddle of green goo, gurgling from the ceiling, moving across the surface of the ground. As if a live being, the slime creeps up the back of the chair and successfully flows into Lijier’s body from her back. “Go and look for some things for me to eat.”
Qi Ling nods as his teeth chatter in fear. He nods, stumbling as he prepares to run towards the backyard.
“Hey,” just before Qi Ling breeches the exit at the back, Lijier stops him, “You better hurry up, and if you try to escape, you should know that you won’t be able to outrun it. It knows how to fly. Heh heh.” He Lijier forces out a chilling laugh.
After Qi Ling left the lobby, Lijier turns her head around, vision concentrated intensely on what’s outside the door of the inn, “Ai yah, they’re finally here. Why did Kins and Liuna run, as if I’m some sort of terrifying creature, unless it’s that they don’t know that, running out, is when they truly meet a group of monsters……” A faint layer of sorrow looms over her youthful features, as if she really feels regretful for the two.
The wind blows a gap through the storm clouds overhead. The moonlight beams down from the sky, falling onto the path outside the inn. At the crossroads two hundred meters away from the inn is where Kins and Liuna’s corpses currently lie. The pale moonlight covers their corpses with a thin layer of frost.
Fifteen minutes before this, only Lijier was left in the lobby of the inn, and now, the place is suddenly bustling again. Taking into account Lijier and Qi Ling, there is now a total of ten people.
The eight new comers are all clad in similar-styled light silver robes, looking sharp and n.o.ble. The men are all wearing headpieces of which you can tell their status with one look, at their waists are ancient silver swords. All the women are wearing flowing dresses, akin to snow and fog, the fabric flowing around their figures like smoke when they move even without the presence of wind, lightly and wildly, like gradually changing smog.
The eight of them are seated at three separate tables in the lobby, and in the corner is Lijier who is still folded in her seat, the lazy expression remains on her face as her murky eyes remain open as if she lost her soul.
Two blatantly different auras fill the lobby.
“Why are people from the family of Shen like you joining in the chaos?” Lijier addresses the eight people in white coldly, “Don’t all of you have enough soul beasts? How greedy.”
The eight people look back at Lijier, although they do not have terror on their faces, but they look slightly cautious. The most apparent are the two younger looking youths with tense expressions.
A man of thirty sitting among the eight looks as if he is the chief, sips the tea Qi Ling poured for them as he says with a low voice, “There aren’t many who have the ability to subdue Bing Mo, that’s why, people from G.o.dly families like us will be here naturally, also Bing Mo is a high-leveled soul beast of water attributes, rarely appearing, of course us families wish to have a few more of these advanced soul beasts.” He sets down his teacup and looks at Lijier, “However, you and that slimy monster, don’t you think you’ve been unbridled enough in the imperial capital of Gelanerte? Yet you came to join in the ruckus at a small town like Fauser.”
“Ai yah, ai yah……” Lijier puts down her legs and stretches, “Just what what you just said, I was already so unbridled back in the imperial capital of Gelanerte, in a small town like this, of course I will cause an even larger ruckus.”
She pulls herself up slowly, moving her body from side to side, the bangles on her arms and legs tinkering, “It’s just that so many of you came at the same time, if I want to compete with you guys with just one person, perhaps it’s going to be slightly tough……” With an extremely peculiar movement, she stretches her body that had turned stiff from sitting too long, a weird crackling sound can be heard coming from her small body. It sounds like many bones in her body have snapped. “Look at all of you, the almighty family of Shen, how shameless can you be, so many people came to compete with a young girl……”
“Young girl? You should be an old lady……” Among the people in white, a young man muttered with a cold snicker.
Lijier’s expression freezes. She lifts a hand and extends a finger to point at the young man, “Do you like your tongue?”
The young man fails to understand. “What do you mean?”
Two flexible icicles suddenly fall from the ceiling, sharp and hard, but as agile and soft as snakes, these two icicles hang down slowly, aiming themselves precisely at the young man’s mouth, as if they are cobras ready to attack at any moment.
Lijier: “If you want to keep your tongue, then you shall shut your mouth. If not, one more word from you and I will rip your tongue from your mouth and eat it in front of you.”
The young boy blenches his teeth to hold it in, daring not to utter anymore words. His face is pale and it is clear that he’s embarra.s.sed greatly, yet he doesn’t dare to put his life on the line, thus he swallows his saliva and clenches his teeth tightly.
Lijier’s expression softens again, looking like the spring wind crossed her. The two icicles dissipate into the air like steam.
The middle-aged man turns to reprimand the boy softly: “Don’t cause trouble.”
Lijier returns to her seat, her gaze turning empty once again.
Originally, Qi Ling had prepared to escape after delivering the food to Lijier and after pouring tea for the new guests. To tell the truth, no matter how intrigued he is by the mysterious soul masters from the imperial capital, after seeing the death of so many, he doesn’t wish to stay not even for another second.
Just when he is about to escape from the backdoor with the tea set in his hands, something catches his feet. He loses balance and he falls forward.
He had already closed his eyes in preparation to crash to the ground, but, suddenly a touch of something soft reaches him, as if he fell onto a spongy bed.
Qi Ling opens his eyes, before him is a face so pretty people may think they’re staring at that of a G.o.ddess. he looks down to see that he fell onto a silver-white web, those white threads like that of a spider’s web intersects in the air, catching the teapot, cups and himself on it.
Qi Ling struggles to stand up, and then he hears the girl who had been staring at him before talking to him: “Are you alright?” After saying that, she raises her hand, in an instant those silver-white spider web withdraws into her palms like smoke.
“I’m……alright.” Qi Ling’s face burns, looking at the girl of similar age to him before him, her flowing light golden robes revealing her pale and delicate shoulders. Her hair looks like flowing and shimmering black ink. At her temples are two hair accessories holding her hair back. Her eyes are round and dark, her long lashes looking like fog, decorating her features perfectly. Her face is small and delicate, her skin as fair and smooth as soft snow. She seems to be glowing.
She is so pretty. Qi Ling thinks.