Chapter 2651 Blazing Sun <TOC> Chapter 2653 Preconceived Notion
Translator: SumTLMan
“…Are you Lulu?”
As soon as Cecia stepped through the front door, she saw a gargoyle not far away, with twin wings on its back, a sharp beak, a pig snout, and a dull gray body. This gargoyle had not turned into a statue; instead, it was furtively peeking at the drapery on the right side of the main hall. Its head craned left and then right, seemingly trying to lift the curtain to look inside but also appearing too timid to dare do so.
Startled by Cecia’s sudden call, the gargoyle, looking very much like a sneaky thief caught in the act, gave a violent shudder, even cringing its skinny, bony wings.
With apparent alarm, the gargoyle, like a faulty mechanical puppet, froze, tilted its head stiffly, and then locked eyes with Cecia.
Cecia carefully sized up this sneaky-looking gargoyle, finding it more and more familiar. The way its small eyes darted about, its timid demeanor, and those seemingly malnourished wings looked exactly like the gargoyle guarding the second narrow entrance to the front gate of the Hanging Prison Stairs, utterly identical.
With this doubt in mind, Cecia called out again: “Lulu?”
After a few seconds of frozen eye contact, followed by another shout from Cecia, the somewhat dense gargoyle finally came to its senses, its red, ghostly eyes gradually brightening.
Its face, which was both hideous and fierce yet also strangely fearful, suddenly lit up as if illuminated by bright sunlight, radiating an unusual glow.
“Gigi-gugu, didi-yaya…” The gargoyle rushed toward Cecia as though greeting family, babbling in some unknown language.
Seeing the gargoyle’s reaction, Cecia again confirmed, this was indeed Lulu!
But wasn’t all of this too bizarre? Why was Lulu here in this dream as well? If Lulu was here, what about the other gargoyle, Keke?
While Cecia was lost in thought, Lulu hurtled over. With practiced ease, Cecia dodged its pounce, then pivoted and delivered a swift kick to its back, sending Lulu sprawling facedown on the floor.
Her dodge, followed by the turning leg sweep, was as smooth as running water, so slick and practiced it was almost burned into her muscle memory.
And Lulu, now flattened on the ground by the kick, didn’t look the least bit upset about being toppled; on the contrary, it seemed on the verge of crying with excitement… That long-lost feeling of being kicked by Her Holiness had clearly awakened a strange sense of nostalgia for it, who knew how long it had been since it last felt that.
Tears streamed from Lulu’s eyes as it whimpered. Its voice, a curious mix of grievance and coquetry, kept chattering on and on.
But Cecia paid no attention to what Lulu was saying. Shaking the leg she had just used to kick Lulu, her eyes were filled with puzzlement: Though everything here seemed so real, the power in these legs differed from what she remembered. Was that a flaw in this dream? Yet if this truly were a dream, creating all things would be effortless, so there wouldn’t be any need to expose such an obvious flaw.
Cecia couldn’t figure out why this body of hers felt so altered, why it was hers, yet not hers.
Even so, despite any physical shortcomings, the overall completeness of the dreamscape was terrifying. At least in the past ten thousand years, Cecia had only seen illusions that could appear so lifelike; she had never encountered a dream this convincingly real. After all, illusions, when all is said and done, remain under the control of a wizard who can modify and refine them at will. It’s not impossible for an illusionist to create an illusory world indistinguishable from reality, such as a world-scale illusion that spans wide territories.
Yet a dream, by contrast, is just a bubble in the Dream Realm. A dream wizard can only borrow from those bubbles rather than create them outright. In essence, that is fundamentally different from an illusion wizard.
While Cecia was mired in contemplation, a pair of sharp, claw-like hands, covered in grayish stone shells, wrapped around her leg.
When Cecia glanced down, she found Lulu clinging to her leg and weeping in fits and starts, speaking pitifully in its otherworldly babble.
“You…” Cecia had been about to demand Lulu let go, but upon seeing the sobbing creature still half-crouched on the ground, she suddenly remembered something.
With that amount of force, she shouldn’t have been able to knock Lulu over so easily. Though Lulu was the lowest level of gargoyle, it was still a monstrous creature from the Abyss. Ordinary human strength shouldn’t have been enough to send it sprawling. How could all the other Abyssal creatures stand for that?
And even if Lulu were a fabricated lifeform Angel had conjured in the dream, it should at least follow basic rules, right?
“Gigi-gugu… gigi-gugu…”
Cecia’s wandering mind was pulled back by Lulu’s chattering once again.
Although Cecia firmly believed this “Lulu” wasn’t real, it was so convincingly identical to the real one… identical enough to make her reluctant to expose it.
All right, she would talk to it, then. Eventually, it would inevitably reveal itself.
After all, no matter how convincingly it was imitating Lulu, it wasn’t really Lulu.
She had asked the Wise One about Lulu and the other guardians before. The Wise One had told her some news that was not too terrible but definitely not good either: Lulu and the other gargoyle, Keke, had chosen to turn themselves to stone. They hadn’t been seized by intruders, but because they had willingly remained in a deep slumber for all these years, no one had awakened them, and they were now basically in a “sleep of death.”
Years of slumber had led them to “sleep to death.” Even though they still had a faint spark of life, there was no way to bring them back. That was simply the nature of common gargoyles: physically frail, able to sleep until fully petrified, their bodies eventually crumbling without them feeling anything. As the body degraded, they would truly die. Higher-level gargoyles, however, whose bodies are far more robust, can be revived from a “sleep of death” through external stimuli. For instance, an Abyss-realm Obsidian Gargoyle could be reawakened by continual burning with transcendent flame.
It was precisely because Cecia knew they had already slipped into deathly slumber that she was certain this wasn’t the real Lulu.
But even so, seeing this “Lulu” sobbing away, Cecia knelt down halfway, the way she had countless times in the past, and patted Lulu’s slightly tough, smooth scalp, offering calm words of comfort in her familiar tone: “All right, all right, that’s enough crying. I don’t know about anything else, but I’m real… Speak up. I’m listening.”
Just as in the old days, Lulu’s attitude changed in response to Cecia’s soothing voice, and after a few sniffles, it began talking.
It still spoke in that “didi-gugu, gigi-wawa” murmur.
“It’s uncanny how it can even mimic Lulu’s tone and those weird mannerisms…” Cecia frowned: “Could it be that Angel is rifling through my memories?”
After a moment’s thought, she decided that wasn’t possible. While a dream wizard can do many miraculous things in the Dream Realm, they are not its absolute masters. Secretly peeping into someone’s memories without a trace would require a law-level power, and Cecia couldn’t think of another way.
Besides, Cecia didn’t really have a body or a soul, she was purely a collection of memories, or perhaps a different kind of conscious being. She would sense it if her memories were being scanned.
So how did Angel manage to craft such an authentic “Lulu” without accessing her memories, matching even Lulu’s manner of speech and tone of grievance?
Indeed, everything, even Lulu’s manner of crying when it felt wronged, was exactly the same as before…
At first, Cecia was busy pondering how Angel had conjured such a lifelike “Lulu,” but then, as the gargoyle whined in the very voice she remembered, sniffling and looking for “comfort,” Cecia felt as though her heart, the heart of this body, had been touched, and her eyes slowly grew moist.
Truly, for her, it had been so very long since she felt this way. Everything was just like ten thousand years ago. The grand building still stood, sunlight was bright, her body was whole, and by her side was a familiar little tagalong.
Cecia discovered she was getting intoxicated by this sense of nostalgia. It was so precious… so precious…
…
Yet the once-Saint Cia had always been ruled by reason. Even as her emotions churned, her rational mind never fully gave in.
She knew that no matter how wonderful this was, it was only a dream.
A long-awaited good dream.
And being a dream, it would have an awakening.
Cecia did not wish to be led around blindly within the illusion Angel had created. She forcibly suppressed her sentimental side.
Freed from emotional distraction, Cecia turned her full attention to everything around her.
If Angel had conjured “Lulu,” he must have done so for a reason.
Cecia began seriously listening to Lulu’s endless stream of babble, hoping to glean the gargoyle’s main point from among the endless words.
After a while, she looked at Lulu, bewildered: “You’re asking me what place this is? I was hoping you’d tell me.”
She had intended to learn from Lulu the “clues” Angel had woven into it, but ironically, Lulu was even more confused than she was, asking that very question first.
What was Angel playing at here?
Had he really gone to all this trouble conjuring Lulu just to rekindle her old attachments? And how did Angel know so much about Lulu?
Cecia was increasingly perplexed by this dream.
“You’ve only just woken up, and as soon as you did, you ended up here? You don’t know how long you’ve slept? You’ve no idea?!”
Cecia let out a helpless sigh and glanced around: “You woke up here alone? Keke isn’t around?”
Keke, like Lulu, was also a gargoyle.
Ten thousand years ago, Cecia often visited the Hanging Prison Stairs to see her close friend Margaret, so she was quite familiar with the guardians there.
Among the ones she knew best were these two gargoyles, Keke and Lulu, who were assigned to guard the second narrow entrance. They had been brought to Nightfall City as stone embryos and raised there, so though they looked fierce, they were actually mischievous. Since common gargoyles don’t have high intelligence, their level of understanding was roughly that of eleven- or twelve-year-old children, still containing innocence and purity.
Because of their childlike purity, Cecia saw them as kids. As a result, she indulged them. And by indulging them, whenever she went to the Hanging Prison Stairs, she inevitably picked up a little follower.
Sometimes Lulu would follow her; other times it was Keke… but never both at once. After all, someone had to guard that second narrow entrance. Letting one of them wander off was no big deal, but not both.
“Gili-gulu, Bali-bala.”
Cecia nodded as she listened: “Keke is behind the drapery and there’s a terrifying old man there. Keke is still in statue form, and you’re too afraid to go in?”
“You really have turned into a coward,” Cecia said wryly, thinking back to Lulu’s skulking around.
But Lulu claimed it was an old man?
So that wasn’t Angel, then. Could it be Popoca?
Was Lulu’s sole purpose here to stir her memories, then point her to Popoca’s location?
Cecia felt lost. She couldn’t make sense of anything, and her thoughts were in a haze. She gave up trying to figure it out and simply headed over toward the drapery.
In the end, she was going to have to see someone.
Whether it was Angel or the “fake Laudsourcian” conjured by Angel, she had to meet them eventually, then decide what to do next.
When Cecia reached the drapes, she heard rustling sounds from inside, along with a man muttering under his breath:
“Interesting. I never expected a gargoyle to have this kind of structure. It’s not what I imagined.”
“I’ll just take a bit of your fingernail. You don’t mind, right? Don’t worry, I’ll use nail clippers. It won’t hurt.”
“I’ll need a little bit of hair too. Don’t be scared; it’s only an external, trivial excision. I have scissors, so it won’t harm you.”
“Oh, and I’ll take some blood as well. Believe me, it won’t hurt, and I only need a teeny bit.”
Cecia frowned just listening to this. She had heard this sort of attitude often back in Nightfall City, when the city was conducting numerous live experiments. The experimenters would often put on this facade of false benevolence when handling test subjects.
Though Cecia had once been stationed in Nightfall City, and was tangentially involved in some of those experiments, she had never actually liked them.
Why conduct live experiments? Why do it on your own people? Why use sapient creatures?
These were questions she had never received answers to at the time, yet she had tacitly allowed it all.
Now, hearing those words again set her on edge.
It was bad enough Angel had tricked her into this dream, but to recreate the scenes of those days so vividly? Cecia’s anger was instantly ignited.
She tore aside the drapery and burst in.
She was ready to fight, but the moment she saw the scene before her, she froze in place.
“Keke… what are you doing?” Cecia stared dumbfounded at a familiar gargoyle.
Keke, one hand held by a skinny, gaunt old man, while the other hand clutched a creamy sphere of ice treat that it was happily licking away. It looked up, its eyes lighting up at once: “Ah! Gulu-gulu, gigi-gulu!”
“All you have to do is give him some of your body’s leftover matter, and you get food in return? Are you really that greedy for snacks?!”
After blurting this out, Cecia frowned, glaring at the gaunt old man: “So you’re Popoca? Why are you studying Keke? What do you plan to learn from Keke?”
“Keke? That’s its name? Pretty nice,” the old man answered, completely unfazed by her accusations, his tone mildly amused: “I’m not Popoca. You can call me Jon. As for Popoca, the person you’re looking for, he’s in the dining hall.”
“But speaking of which, this is the first time I’ve seen you. Are you new here? You’re acquainted with Popoca, so are you a witch as well?”
Faced with this string of questions from Jon, Cecia suddenly had no idea how to respond.
Keke didn’t seem frightened in the slightest, which was the total opposite of what Cecia had pictured. And this old man looked kindly rather than aggressive. That left her feeling like she was the one in the wrong.
The most confusing part was that he wasn’t Popoca. Jon? Who in the world was that? How many fabricated lifeforms had Angel created in this dream?
Annoyed, Cecia ruffled her hair and glanced behind her at Lulu: “Didn’t you say Keke was in statue form? And this is the ‘terrifying old man’ you mentioned?”
Lulu: “Dili-gulu…”
Cecia: “You just heard his voice and thought he was scary? When did you become so timid? Have you slept yourself half to death?”
Lulu’s mouth drooped in a show of wounded pride.
“And you, Keke! How many times have I told you not to trust humans so easily? Not all of them are like me or Margaret. One day, you’re going to suffer for your gullibility!”
Even if everything here was fake, it had been ages since Cecia had the chance to scold her two little sidekicks. She took the opportunity to get it all out of her system, lecturing them on how to keep their guard up, cautioning them not to be so easily swayed by trivial bribes…
She carried on for quite some time.
Meanwhile, Jon watched the scene before him with curiosity. He rarely returned to Pat Manor to rest, and he certainly hadn’t expected to see two live gargoyles, nor had he expected to meet such an interesting young lady.
She seemed very familiar with these two gargoyles. Could she be their owner?
Jon merely looked on, Cecia kept lecturing, and the two gargoyles hung their heads without a word, until a voice from nearby broke the silence.
“Huh, Cecia, you know these two gargoyles?”
Chapter 2651 Blazing Sun <TOC> Chapter 2653 Preconceived Notion