Previous page password is bold portion: Xi3umes+nIT
Translator: SumTLMan
This is a tall and luxuriant banyan tree, with branches and leaves forming a canopy that extends over ten meters.
Surrounding this tree, several wooden ladders interconnect, forming a continuous loop that ultimately leads to a delicate and expansive treehouse built where the branches and vines intersect.
Beside the treehouse, a luminescent stone sign hangs from a diagonal branch, emitting a faint green glow. On the surface of the stone, a row of black, elegant lettering clearly spells out the name of this treehouse: Luminescent Inn.
This inn, constructed atop a banyan tree, is Angel’s first destination.
Upon landing, the spotted dog continues to bark loudly at the inn.
“Could Nausica be here?” Coral frowns, looking at the seemingly exquisite inn that, for some reason, gives off a somewhat eerie vibe.
“I don’t know. Let’s go in and find out.” Angel is unsure whether the spotted dog is guiding them to find Nausica, but he has no other options. Sleepless City, spanning hundreds of miles and filled with widely distributed buildings, makes hiding a person all too easy. So, for now, they have no choice but to trust the spotted dog.
Following the wooden ladder, Angel and the others reach the entrance of the Luminescent Inn.
Before they even enter, the wooden door opens on its own, and countless parasites emerge from within. In an instant, the sky is filled with specks of light resembling fireflies.
Seeing these parasites, both Coral and Hilary are frightened and squat down.
As the whooshing sounds near their ears fade, it takes a while before all the parasites inside the inn leave and successfully bypass their position.
More accurately, the parasites avoid Angel.
“Why are there so many parasites here?” Coral stands up, still feeling frightened.
“Perhaps, the nest is inside.” Angel murmurs and then strides forward, directly walking into the dark depths.
Coral and Hilary exchange glances, both seeing confusion in the other’s eyes. Angel said that if they followed him, they wouldn’t be parasitized, but he never explained why.
Before, there were fewer parasites, so they hadn’t noticed. But now, after this incident, they can’t help but be filled with doubt.
How does Angel make these parasites avoid him? And it seems that it’s not Angel driving away the parasites, but the parasites actively avoiding Angel.
“It’s so strange. He’s so mysterious but unwilling to say anything.” Coral grumbles quietly and, together with Hilary, hurries to catch up with Angel’s footsteps.
Upon stepping into the treehouse, Angel stopped in his tracks.
Coral stood behind him, unable to see anything due to the darkness. She could only faintly hear a buzzing sound, which seemed to be the noise of insects.
Swallowing nervously, Coral, after seeking Angel’s opinion, cast a spell of light, thoroughly illuminating the treehouse.
When the light spell was cast, Coral was completely stunned.
Right in front of Angel stood a massive nest, and the buzzing sound they heard was coming from the unknown insects within the nest.
Shivering, Coral asked with a quivering voice: “Angel, what kind of nest is this? Could it be those parasites?”
Angel casually nodded. There was a deeper connection between parasites and nests, but there was no need to explain.
He had seen this nest more than once, whether in Shadow Demon City or in Hippocrates, so Angel didn’t feel much fear.
Angel: “Coral, move the light source upward, just above the nest.”
He came here to find someone and wasn’t interested in the Colorful Dragonfly’s nest. After carefully examining the surroundings, Angel noticed some subtle movements in the darkness above the nest.
Coral nervously raised the light source.
At that moment, a large number of Colorful Dragonflies suddenly emerged from the nest, easily numbering in the hundreds. They immediately surrounded Angel and the others.
The energy fluctuations on these dragonflies were all at the peak level of an apprentice. Seeing hundreds of them appear at once, Coral’s face turned pale, and her hands and feet became stiff. She had been controlling the movement of the light source, but now she stopped.
“What do we do now?” asked Hilary, whose performance was slightly better than Coral’s, but her voice still trembled.
Just as Angel was about to answer, the Colorful Dragonflies suddenly emitted strange emotional fluctuations.
Coral and Hilary could only perceive that the emotions of the dragonflies were somewhat excited.
However, in Angel’s perception, he heard familiar praises, praising the Queen, praising Shava, praising the Moonlight’s purity… even though there was no Moonlight here.
The intelligence of the Colorful Dragonflies was not high, which could be seen from their chants of praise.
“No need to pay attention to them. As long as you don’t attack them, they won’t attack either,” Angel explained.
Indeed, after a while, the Colorful Dragonflies only released excited emotions outward but did not move at all. Instead, they kept circling around them.
“Coral, move the light source up,” Angel reminded again as time waits for no one.
Just then, a scream came from above.
Coral hurriedly raised the light source, and as the light shone, a woman with long green hair was seen suspended by golden threads piercing her body in the nest above. The golden threads connected her to the void behind her.
The scream came from the woman, who, after screaming, showed a desperate expression on her face, her veins fading, and her eyes turning pure white. A mysterious energy was transmitted from the void through the golden threads into the woman’s body.
Then… a wondrous interstitial space began to spread rapidly with the woman at its center.
As the interstitial space appeared, the woman completely lost her will. When the interstitial space covered the surrounding area for dozens of miles, it began to shrink slowly and finally fused into the woman’s body.
When all this was completed, the woman was dragged into the void by the golden threads and disappeared.
At the same time, Angel felt that the interstitial space at the center of Sleepless City was gradually merging with a new interstitial space and slowly expanding…
“Let’s go; Nausica is not here,” Angel said coldly.
He witnessed a puppet blank body being born right under his eyes and saw the process of the blank body losing its will to become a container. This increased his sense of urgency, fearing that Nausica would not hold on any longer.
They immediately turned around and prepared to go to the next location.
As Angel turned, the surrounding dragonflies immediately made way, as if respectfully sending him off.
Coral and Hilary both noticed this, but now was not the time to explore. They quickly followed Angel. They were well aware that being able to avoid parasitic creatures and dragonfly attacks was absolutely due to Angel’s help, so they dared not stay far from him.
After leaving the Luminescent Inn, Toby turned into a griffin and took them to the next location.
The spotted dog seemed to understand Angel’s intentions and began barking in the new direction.
In less than two minutes, Toby flew more than ten miles, and they finally stopped in a cemetery in the western part of Sleepless City. This was a suburban cemetery, still within the scope of the Dark Domain.
The cemetery was surrounded by black iron railings. At first glance, it looked a bit like the cemetery Angel saw in Black Castle. But a closer look would reveal that the interior of the cemetery was very clean and tidy, without any disorderly graves or exposed coffins. Each grave was placed reasonably, and even the inscriptions had a strong artisanal style.
“Here lies the Rose Cemetery of the wealthy district; those buried here are not poor, and at least have extraordinary people in their family,” Coral said.
As they landed in the cemetery, it was just as Coral had described. The iron fence at the edge of the cemetery was covered in thorny roses in full bloom. Instead of the smell of decay, there was a rich, dark fragrance in the air.
However, this dark fragrance made everyone’s faces look a bit off. This scent, derived from the beautiful flowers nourished by corpses beneath the ground, was known in the southern region as the scent of the dead.
Some wizards with unique tastes loved using this scent of the dead to create fragrances. Not only was the aroma more intense, but the effectiveness in stimulating a Salomon effect was stronger than that of similar flowers.
“Let’s go take a look,” Angel said, taking the lead and walking into the cemetery.
Coral followed, a puzzled expression on her face: “Angel, what was the deal with that woman bound by golden threads earlier? Will Nausica be treated like that too?”
“Yes, so we need to find her and save her before Nausica completely collapses,” Angel said, seeing that Coral still had questions: “We don’t have much time, so don’t waste any more.”
Soon, they locked onto their target within the cemetery.
At the center of the cemetery, there was still a nest of Colorful Dragonflies. People abducted by Yorkshire were suspended above the nest, just like those in the glowing inn.
However, it still wasn’t Nausica this time.
It was someone they all knew well – Gank.
Gank was bound and pierced by the golden threads in mid-air, suspended and screaming continuously. His face mask had been opened, revealing bloody tears streaming from his eyes.
“Due to some special reasons, Gank not only lacks desire but also has a very low emotional response. But now that he’s crying blood, it means he’s reached his limit!” Coral said with a terrified expression, speaking to Angel.
Gank seemed to sense his master’s voice and tried to turn his head to look at Coral, whispering her name.
“It hasn’t been parasitized!” Coral turned to Angel and said: “It still remembers me! How can we save it? It looks like it’s on the verge of collapsing now!”
Angel knew from the beginning that this group of abducted people wouldn’t be parasitized. Once parasitized, it would be very difficult to make the host’s psychological defenses collapse due to the parasite’s characteristics.
Human psychological defenses are much weaker than those of the parasites, so Yorkshire wouldn’t let them be parasitized.
Therefore, whether they could survive or not depended on how strong their psychological defenses were and how long they could hold on during the process of becoming a blank body.