Chapter 338 Akeso <TOC> Chapter 340 Blank Slate
Translator: SumTLMan
Having spent several days exposed to the elements, Angel decided to stay at the hunter’s cabin for the night. Moreover, he planned to awaken the person in the coffin that night, find out his identity, and see if there were any places to go nearby.
As night fell, Angel lit the oil lamp. The flickering, dim yellow light illuminated the narrow wooden cabin.
Angel took the coffin out of the bracelet.
As he opened the coffin lid, the man submerged in blood suddenly opened his eyes. Angel saw the man’s frenzied gaze and immediately ordered, “Calm down, don’t move.”
Initially struggling, the man stopped gradually upon hearing Angel’s words.
Observing the man in the coffin, Angel’s eyes were filled with intense curiosity.
Based on Angel’s understanding of parasites, as long as they were within the boundaries of the Nightmare Plane, they would continuously absorb energy from the outside world. At this time, the parasites were actually quite beneficial to their hosts. However, once the host left the Nightmare Plane’s influence, the parasite would start to absorb the host’s energy until it drained the host completely and moved on to the next one.
The man in the coffin had left Hippocrates long ago, so without the Nightmare Plane’s influence, the parasite naturally began to devour the host. At this time, Akeso saved the man by using its essence blood to keep him alive. To be more precise, Akeso’s essence blood maintained the man’s internal energy from withering, while the parasite fed on this energy to survive.
The final outcome was that Akeso was using its essence blood to sustain the parasite’s life, while the man’s ability to remain alive for a thousand years had another reason.
“Why has he not died for a thousand years? And…” Angel looked at the man’s bloodstained face, and a hint of surprise flashed in his eyes, “And he hasn’t aged, his face still looks very young.”
Numerous questions flashed through Angel’s mind, but he didn’t delve deeper, choosing to save the man first.
However, before exorcising the parasite, Angel had one more thing to do—
Looking at the faintly glowing fresh blood in the coffin, Angel’s eyes held a hint of greed, “What a luxury, wizard-level magical beast essence blood is an extremely valuable material!”
Most importantly, this essence blood could not only be used in alchemy but could also be made into blood ink!
In the past, Angel had once set his sights on a bottle of “Dark Gold Gargoyle Blood Ink” at Twilight Auction House. Although Dark Gold Gargoyle Blood Ink was of extremely high quality among Gargoyle Blood Inks, it was only a horizontal comparison. If compared vertically, the Dark Gold Gargoyle was far inferior to a wizard-level magical beast.
Although some of the energy in the essence blood inside the coffin had already dissipated, it was still exceptionally precious, even more so than the snake sheddings and snake fangs gifted by Akeso.
Angel had no intention of wasting this essence blood. To avoid being questioned by the man when he woke up, he didn’t want the man to see this essence blood either. Therefore, before doing anything else, he had to empty the essence blood from the coffin.
Because the parasite would consume its own energy after leaving the man’s essence to prevent him from being drained, Angel cast his Nightmare Domain in advance. His Nightmare Domain had already reached a minor level of success, and it was no problem to sustain a single parasite with the Nightmare Plane’s aura within.
He untied the vines on the man and removed him from the coffin. His clothes had long since turned to dust, so he was completely naked when he emerged, bathed in blood.
Having not moved for a thousand years, his muscles should have atrophied, and his limbs should have been immobile. However, to Angel’s surprise, the man appeared generally weak but with functioning organs. He even pinched the man’s arm and found it to be firm.
“Did the parasite help maintain his condition, or was it for some other reason?”
Angel threw the man into the Nightmare Plane to amuse himself and closed the coffin lid, collecting the essence blood inside it into the bracelet along with it. There was a lot of essence blood in the coffin, and he didn’t have a container for collecting blood at the moment, so he had to temporarily use the coffin as a storage container. After all, ebony was a relatively precious low-grade material, and the essence of Akeso stored inside would not lose its potency too quickly.
After storing the coffin, Angel glanced at the man beside him. Blood slowly dripped down, revealing the man’s rather handsome face. As Angel had previously guessed, the man appeared young, probably around seventeen or eighteen years old, with a tall, lean figure.
Nothing about his appearance seemed extraordinary.
Suddenly, Angel raised an eyebrow as he noticed something in the man’s left hand, but it was unclear due to the blood.
He cast a cleansing spell, cleaning the man from head to toe.
After ensuring there was no blood residue or unpleasant smell, Angel carefully examined the object in the man’s left hand.
— It was a bowl.
It appeared to be a metal-made bowl, silver-white in color, with a “Black Serpent Coiled Around a Cone” symbol engraved on the inner wall. Aside from that, there was nothing else in the bowl.
The silver bowl looked ordinary, and Angel carefully inspected it, finding nothing special about it.
But this seemingly ordinary silver bowl gave Angel a peculiar feeling.
This indescribable sensation was something he inadvertently sensed. However, when he tried to investigate further, he could no longer detect any odd feelings. Upon looking back, it was still just an ordinary bowl.
Angel carefully recalled the peculiar feeling he had experienced, which did not possess any darkness or negativity, but instead conveyed a sense of indescribable solemnity.
Could a bowl evoke a sense of solemnity? Angel wondered if he had misperceived something.
Perhaps this bowl did indeed have something strange about it, but even so, Angel had no intention of claiming it as his own. He took Akeso’s essence blood because he was confident that even without the essence blood, the man in the coffin could survive. Thus, the essence boood was essentially useless to the man. The man had been holding onto the bowl the entire time, never letting go even when parasitized, indicating that the bowl must have had some significance, perhaps a family heirloom or some sort of emotional support.
Angel observed the bowl for a moment before shifting his attention elsewhere.
Previously, the man’s body was covered in blood, making it difficult to discern his features. Only now did Angel notice that near the man’s tailbone, there was a slight protrusion, about the length of a pinky finger.
Upon pressing it, it seemed that there were curved bones inside the protrusion, and not just one segment. Angel felt three small segments, which had a similar texture to fingers.
“Could it be atavism?” Angel looked at the protrusion and immediately thought of the coccyx.
However, whether the earliest humans had tails is still a debated topic, so atavism might not be the correct answer.
“Or perhaps… a humanoid race?” Angel had not studied how to break the illusion barrier, so he could not determine if this was a human or a humanoid. However, he could at least confirm one thing: if it was not a mutation or atavism, the man in the coffin and those of Hippocrates had a fundamental difference. Angel had researched those skeletons, and they were pure humans without extra segments in their tailbones.
Nevertheless, whether the other party was a human or a humanoid was not the key point. The most pressing matter was to wake him up as soon as possible, so any questions could be asked directly.
The parasite had been in the Nightmare Domain for a while, and Angel had control over everything in his Nightmare Domain, including energy. The energy absorbed by the parasite during that time was all under Angel’s control.
With just a thought, the parasite crawled out of the man’s body.
The moment the parasite left the man, Angel saw a brief moment of clarity in the man’s eyes. He muttered the word “Totoro” before fainting on the ground…
…
A night passed, and at sunrise, a roar of wild animals suddenly came from outside the house.
During his time wandering in the forest, Angel had gradually grown accustomed to being awakened by the roars of beasts. As he got out of bed, he noticed the man lying on the floor on the other side was still unconscious.
Angel didn’t wake him up; he went straight past him and opened the door.
Warm sunlight streamed in, illuminating the wooden house that had been cleaned by the Purification Field, making it look bright and clean in the golden sunlight.
Angel looked outside the door, where Toby was wearing a colorful little skirt and dancing in the air. Below its feet was a cloud leopard with four pairs of ears.
Toby would occasionally tease the cloud leopard, flying high up when the leopard reacted. The leopard and the bird fought for quite a while, but in the end, the chase ended with the cloud leopard’s death.
Toby flew to Angel’s side, proudly pointing at the distant cloud leopard corpse, displaying a triumphant expression as if to say, “I prepared breakfast for you.”
“You seem quite cheerful, even making a game out of hunting,” Angel teased Toby, “Having roast meat for breakfast, isn’t that too greasy?”
Despite saying that, Angel walked over and began to process the cloud leopard. However, Angel’s skills were quite crude, and the once beautiful cloud leopard pelt was chopped into pieces, the cut meat was shredded as well.
As Angel was preparing breakfast, the door of the hunter’s cabin was pushed open, and the man who had slept all night emerged.
Angel glanced at him, “Good morning.”
The man walked slowly, step by step, approaching Angel, “Good morning.”
“You’re awake? I’m preparing breakfast, but I assume your stomach isn’t ready for meat yet. Should I ask Toby to pick some fruits for you?” Angel said and pointed at a few stone stools not far away, presumably natural benches prepared by hunters who used to live here, “You can rest there for a while, I have something to ask you later.”
Angel spoke for quite some time, but the man did not respond and stood beside him blankly.
Angel looked up with curiosity. Against the light, the man’s skin appeared with circles of light, his hair reaching his knees disheveled, and his golden eyes contained rings of “tiny coils.”
After a long time, the man tentatively said, “You’re awake… I’m preparing… breakfast, but I assume you… meat, uh… fruit? You can rest for a while, I have something to ask you later.”
The man was hesitant at first, but his speech became more fluent as he went on.
When he finished speaking, his expression revealed a hint of pride, and his eyes glowed as he looked at Angel, seemingly waiting for Angel’s praise.
Angel, however, remained silent for a long time, staring at the man in a daze.
After a while, a loud scream echoed through the forest:
“Could it be that you’ve lost your memory?! This kind of plot from eight hundred years ago, even stage plays won’t do performances like this anymore!!!”