27 hours before the airship started descending, the tall, burly man walked back to Area R after being missing for a whole night. As he was getting on in years, and had some speckled gray hair. He wore a crumpled blue shirt and an unironed pair of jeans. As Lin Sanjiu stared at him unblinking, the man lowered his eyelids as he sat in a corner, looking listless.
After the situation with the nameless man, Lin Sanjiu already guessed that the tall, burly man would return. She exchanged quick glances with Walter and Green Dress. After she nodded slightly, Walter cleared his throat a little nervously and stood up.
—
Just moments ago, when everyone was resting in Area R, the three of them met in the corridor and quietly exchanged information.
"If that's the case, the results I got from my readings are not metaphors," Green Dress said. Her name was Jade Zhang, which was quite unbefitting of her personality. "So, she did give birth?"
Walter nodded with a rather grim expression, "That's right. At least judging from my ability, ever since yesterday, there are many more living things than before…"
"Then, what did she give birth to?" Jade Zhang said with widened eyes. "Where are they?"
Even though the information from both their abilities collaborated, unfortunately, none of them could answer those two questions.
As they were afraid that they would arouse suspicion, they only discussed for a short ten minutes before returning to Area R again. However, even though it was only a short time. Lin Sanjiu was certain that Jade Zhang was already in on helping them. It wasn't because she had a strong sense of responsibility but rather because of her irrepressible curiosity regarding the matter. Lin Sanjiu could almost imagine how Jade Zhang would relish describing this own incident to someone else with saliva spitting.
—
Walter stopped at the tall, burly man's side.
"Hey, I didn't see you around for some time," he sounded too casual, which instead made his words seem even more unnatural. "Where have you been for more than half a day?"
The tall, burly man closed his eyes and leaned against the wall without replying, it was as if he was totally unaware that Walter was talking to him.
"I didn't see you anywhere. Did you go to the cargo hold?"
He still didn't get an answer. Walter tried to call the man several times but seeing that he was still being ignored, he couldn't help getting a little angry. Just when he was about to shove the man, another person's hand suddenly reached over and blocked him before he could push the man.
AYU placed her arm across the tall, burly man like a guardrail. She smiled and said, "He is asleep."
Walter stared at her for a few seconds but did not say anything in the end. He returned to Lin Sanjiu's side silently.
Once the blonde teenager turned his head, AYU's pair of normal eyes with sclera stared in their direction. She seemed to be staring at him, and through him, at Lin Sanjiu who was further away.
"Did you notice? She had been sitting at the side of the skinny man. Now, she had changed her spot here." Jade Zhang whispered. As her curls shook, a strong scent of synthetic perfume rushed into Lin Sanjiu's nose.
Even when she was pointing out an obvious fact, she always sounded like she was being very secretive. Lin Sanjiu nodded and looked around Area R, pretending to be pre-occupied.
After being trapped in this airship for this long, dull journey, the passengers started napping more and more often, having established a level of trust. Other than AYU and themselves, the rest of the passengers were fast asleep, including the nameless man, even though he had already slept for more than ten consecutive hours.
"Read that nameless guy," Lin Sanjiu mouthed to Jade Zhang. Afraid that she wouldn't understand, Lin Sanjiu eyed the man who had curled into a ball and had his back on the wall. "And that tall bloke."
Jade Zhang closed her mouth and looked at both men. For a moment, there was no expression on her round and chubby face. After two seconds, she blinked her eyes as if she was unable to comprehend the meaning of the results she had gotten, "The nameless man is 1.7, the big bloke is 1."
They were related to AYU somehow. They did not need those numbers to prove this relationship. The results only made them more confused and did not help them in any way.
"I want to go to the toilet." Lin Sanjiu looked slightly despondent when she stood up. Walter opened his mouth. He seemed to remember that she had stood guard outside when he went to the toilet previously. However, after deliberating for a few seconds, he was too shy to offer to go to the toilet with a woman. Lin Sanjiu felt very satisfied with this reaction.
The few morsels of food that Lin Sanjiu had on the airship was not even sufficient for her to want to go the toilet. On top of that, due to their constitutions, posthumans could function fine without going to the toilet for seven to eight days. However, being on the airship was so boring that going to the toilet was one of the ways of the passengers to pass time.
However, this wasn't Lin Sanjiu's objective.
Though the toilet was a necessity and was frequently visited, it was constructed very unthoughtfully at the end of the corridor. Its door faced the corridor so anyone in the corridor could see who was coming out. This was exceptionally inconsiderate for the ladies, but Lin Sanjiu had a feeling that the crew of the airship didn't care.
The second Lin Sanjiu locked the toilet door with a click, Mrs. Manas voice rang out in her head. "What are you going to do if this conjecture is wrong?"
Lin Sanjiu sighed. "I don't know. If I still can't figure this out… I can only hope that AYU and whatever she gave birth to wouldn't look for us."
"I even hope that I have a real body, I'm living in a peaceful world and that I'll win the lottery one day," Mrs. Manas grumbled.
Lin Sanjiu ignored her. With some difficulty, she managed to turn her body sideways and look around her. Her wings were even more bothersome in this small, confined space. When they checked the toilet previously, Walter was mainly the person who checked the interior. However, anyone could see the whole poorly constructed toilet in a single glance. A toilet bowl was placed against a wall. There was some suspicious yellow-brown mark on its rusty body. It was disgusting to look at, let alone the stench it emitted. The contractor probably knew that posthumans that could survive and enter this world would definitely have endured worst sanitary conditions. Naturally, there wasn't a basin here. Oddly, there was a mirror on the wall.
Lin Sanjiu looked at herself in the mirror for a few seconds. The woman she saw in the mirror looked very unfamiliar to her—just like when she looked at her own body.
"How long are you going to stay here?" Mrs. Manas asked.
After she entered the toilet, nothing happened. Lin Sanjiu wasn't really sure, "Maybe, I'll wait for another three to five minutes."
When Mrs. Manas kept quiet, it was as if the entire toilet was filled with the bad stench of urine. With every passing minute, Lin Sanjiu started feeling that her idea was stupid.
"Even though the two men disappeared after entering the toilet, you had come here before," Mrs. Manas finally spoke, almost as if to advice Lin Sanjiu to just leave this toilet. "If you were effective as a lure, whatever should happen would have already happened."
"No, you're forgetting something. I have never been to the toilet on my own," Lin Sanjiu reminded Mrs. Manas. "I only came here with Walter and I didn't really enter the toilet anyway."
"What about Walter? Didn't he walk out fine?"
"That was because I was guarding the door that time," she said a little stubbornly after thinking it through. "Right now, there isn't anyone outside."
Since Jade Zhang basically didn't go to the toilet, Lin Sanjiu couldn't use her as an example to refute Mrs. Mana. The other passengers almost only exercised around the corridor. If they did enter the toilet, Lin Sanjiu and Mrs. Manas did not notice.
However, reality seemed to be the best proof of Mrs. Manas' opinion. After being hyper-vigilant and staying for some time in this smelly toilet, Lin Sanjiu had no choice but to give up. Just as she opened the door, she couldn't help feeling that this was a total waste of time.
When she opened the door fully, she looked down instinctively and saw a pair of eyes, with clearly defined whites staring back at her.
AYU's had the same mild smile which made her appear graceful and polite. However, her smile was late by half a second. Lin Sanjiu clearly noticed the traces of astonishment on the woman's face before it was replaced with a smile.
"Why are you shocked?" Lin Sanjiu thought silently to herself and eyed AYU with her amber eyes.
"Are you shocked because I came out so early so I didn't end up like the other two guys?"
"What a coincidence," before Lin Sanjiu could react, AYU spoke first. When Lin Sanjiu looked at her at such proximity, she realized that AYU was not as young as she first thought, as the woman had some faint wrinkles around her eyes. However, AYU had a sort of aura about her that made her seem very young when she talked. "These five days are so hard to endure, don't you agree?"
Lin Sanjiu looked at AYU's abdomen intuitively. AYU was slim and her abdomen was also flat. It had been that way since the start.
AYU didn't seem to notice Lin Sanjiu's gaze and that Lin Sanjiu was guarding against her. She continued smiling, "Oh, I think I still haven't asked you this. Big Sister, which world are you from?"
Lin Sanjiu found it very hard to explain what happened the very next instance. She felt as though she was hit by a lightning bolt. Shortly after, the hairs on her neck stood on end. The next second, her right wing stirred like a monster which had been hibernating under the sea for a long time. With a strong gust of wind, the white bones of her wing whistled as they pierced through the air and lunged at AYU. Before her wing reached its target, Lin Sanjiu had already jumped to the left, slipped past AYU and was heading back to Area R.
The wings, which had been a hindrance to Lin Sanjiu over these few days, swung wide open behind her with a threatening fury. AYU wanted to follow Lin Sanjiu but was forced to retreat. The wings usually looked very cumbersome now loomed menacingly. The wings seemed like ferocious beasts with a life of their own. As they swept through the air, they almost severed one of AYU's arms which she had not withdrawn in time.
By then, Lin Sanjiu had already entered Area R. The flash of thought which struck her had come true.
Since they all knew that AYU was very problematic, Walter and Jade would not react indifferently if AYU stepped into the corridor after Lin Sanjiu went to the toilet. Perhaps, Jade might have her concerns. However, Lin Sanjiu was sure that Walter would definitely follow AYU but there was no one behind AYU just now.
This all led to one conclusion. If AYU was free to do whatever she wanted, Walter and Jade Zhang were definitely in trouble. Most of the people in Area R were still lying on the ground and seemed asleep. Only two people were awake at the moment. However, this time around, the nameless man and the tall man were standing emotionlessly in Area R.
A person with a head of short dark blonde hair was lying by the tall man's side, his remaining body was hidden in the shadows. The nameless man was holding another limp body wrapped in a green dress. That body no longer looked plump.
The most shocking aspect of the two people were their eyes.
No matter what their original colors were, their eyes were black now. Even though their pupils didn't look like they were going to swallow up their whole eyes, four lifeless black eyeballs the size of ping-pong balls were staring at her.
Feeling that the person behind her was slowly approaching, Lin Sanjiu extended her wings fully.
"Relax," AYU's tone of voice was no different than before. "I'm actually not that good at fighting," as she said that she touched her almost severed arm. There was no blood. There was no minced flesh. It was just like a drawstring bag was dangling from her elbow, swaying slightly as she moved.
27 hours before the airship started descending, the tall, burly man walked back to Area R after being missing for a whole night. As he was getting on in years, and had some speckled gray hair. He wore a crumpled blue shirt and an unironed pair of jeans. As Lin Sanjiu stared at him unblinking, the man lowered his eyelids as he sat in a corner, looking listless.
After the situation with the nameless man, Lin Sanjiu already guessed that the tall, burly man would return. She exchanged quick glances with Walter and Green Dress. After she nodded slightly, Walter cleared his throat a little nervously and stood up.
—
Just moments ago, when everyone was resting in Area R, the three of them met in the corridor and quietly exchanged information.
"If that's the case, the results I got from my readings are not metaphors," Green Dress said. Her name was Jade Zhang, which was quite unbefitting of her personality. "So, she did give birth?"
Walter nodded with a rather grim expression, "That's right. At least judging from my ability, ever since yesterday, there are many more living things than before…"
"Then, what did she give birth to?" Jade Zhang said with widened eyes. "Where are they?"
Even though the information from both their abilities collaborated, unfortunately, none of them could answer those two questions.
As they were afraid that they would arouse suspicion, they only discussed for a short ten minutes before returning to Area R again. However, even though it was only a short time. Lin Sanjiu was certain that Jade Zhang was already in on helping them. It wasn't because she had a strong sense of responsibility but rather because of her irrepressible curiosity regarding the matter. Lin Sanjiu could almost imagine how Jade Zhang would relish describing this own incident to someone else with saliva spitting.
—
Walter stopped at the tall, burly man's side.
"Hey, I didn't see you around for some time," he sounded too casual, which instead made his words seem even more unnatural. "Where have you been for more than half a day?"
The tall, burly man closed his eyes and leaned against the wall without replying, it was as if he was totally unaware that Walter was talking to him.
"I didn't see you anywhere. Did you go to the cargo hold?"
He still didn't get an answer. Walter tried to call the man several times but seeing that he was still being ignored, he couldn't help getting a little angry. Just when he was about to shove the man, another person's hand suddenly reached over and blocked him before he could push the man.
AYU placed her arm across the tall, burly man like a guardrail. She smiled and said, "He is asleep."
Walter stared at her for a few seconds but did not say anything in the end. He returned to Lin Sanjiu's side silently.
Once the blonde teenager turned his head, AYU's pair of normal eyes with sclera stared in their direction. She seemed to be staring at him, and through him, at Lin Sanjiu who was further away.
"Did you notice? She had been sitting at the side of the skinny man. Now, she had changed her spot here." Jade Zhang whispered. As her curls shook, a strong scent of synthetic perfume rushed into Lin Sanjiu's nose.
Even when she was pointing out an obvious fact, she always sounded like she was being very secretive. Lin Sanjiu nodded and looked around Area R, pretending to be pre-occupied.
After being trapped in this airship for this long, dull journey, the passengers started napping more and more often, having established a level of trust. Other than AYU and themselves, the rest of the passengers were fast asleep, including the nameless man, even though he had already slept for more than ten consecutive hours.
"Read that nameless guy," Lin Sanjiu mouthed to Jade Zhang. Afraid that she wouldn't understand, Lin Sanjiu eyed the man who had curled into a ball and had his back on the wall. "And that tall bloke."
Jade Zhang closed her mouth and looked at both men. For a moment, there was no expression on her round and chubby face. After two seconds, she blinked her eyes as if she was unable to comprehend the meaning of the results she had gotten, "The nameless man is 1.7, the big bloke is 1."
They were related to AYU somehow. They did not need those numbers to prove this relationship. The results only made them more confused and did not help them in any way.
"I want to go to the toilet." Lin Sanjiu looked slightly despondent when she stood up. Walter opened his mouth. He seemed to remember that she had stood guard outside when he went to the toilet previously. However, after deliberating for a few seconds, he was too shy to offer to go to the toilet with a woman. Lin Sanjiu felt very satisfied with this reaction.
The few morsels of food that Lin Sanjiu had on the airship was not even sufficient for her to want to go the toilet. On top of that, due to their constitutions, posthumans could function fine without going to the toilet for seven to eight days. However, being on the airship was so boring that going to the toilet was one of the ways of the passengers to pass time.
However, this wasn't Lin Sanjiu's objective.
Though the toilet was a necessity and was frequently visited, it was constructed very unthoughtfully at the end of the corridor. Its door faced the corridor so anyone in the corridor could see who was coming out. This was exceptionally inconsiderate for the ladies, but Lin Sanjiu had a feeling that the crew of the airship didn't care.
The second Lin Sanjiu locked the toilet door with a click, Mrs. Manas voice rang out in her head. "What are you going to do if this conjecture is wrong?"
Lin Sanjiu sighed. "I don't know. If I still can't figure this out… I can only hope that AYU and whatever she gave birth to wouldn't look for us."
"I even hope that I have a real body, I'm living in a peaceful world and that I'll win the lottery one day," Mrs. Manas grumbled.
Lin Sanjiu ignored her. With some difficulty, she managed to turn her body sideways and look around her. Her wings were even more bothersome in this small, confined space. When they checked the toilet previously, Walter was mainly the person who checked the interior. However, anyone could see the whole poorly constructed toilet in a single glance. A toilet bowl was placed against a wall. There was some suspicious yellow-brown mark on its rusty body. It was disgusting to look at, let alone the stench it emitted. The contractor probably knew that posthumans that could survive and enter this world would definitely have endured worst sanitary conditions. Naturally, there wasn't a basin here. Oddly, there was a mirror on the wall.
Lin Sanjiu looked at herself in the mirror for a few seconds. The woman she saw in the mirror looked very unfamiliar to her—just like when she looked at her own body.
"How long are you going to stay here?" Mrs. Manas asked.
After she entered the toilet, nothing happened. Lin Sanjiu wasn't really sure, "Maybe, I'll wait for another three to five minutes."
When Mrs. Manas kept quiet, it was as if the entire toilet was filled with the bad stench of urine. With every passing minute, Lin Sanjiu started feeling that her idea was stupid.
"Even though the two men disappeared after entering the toilet, you had come here before," Mrs. Manas finally spoke, almost as if to advice Lin Sanjiu to just leave this toilet. "If you were effective as a lure, whatever should happen would have already happened."
"No, you're forgetting something. I have never been to the toilet on my own," Lin Sanjiu reminded Mrs. Manas. "I only came here with Walter and I didn't really enter the toilet anyway."
"What about Walter? Didn't he walk out fine?"
"That was because I was guarding the door that time," she said a little stubbornly after thinking it through. "Right now, there isn't anyone outside."
Since Jade Zhang basically didn't go to the toilet, Lin Sanjiu couldn't use her as an example to refute Mrs. Mana. The other passengers almost only exercised around the corridor. If they did enter the toilet, Lin Sanjiu and Mrs. Manas did not notice.
However, reality seemed to be the best proof of Mrs. Manas' opinion. After being hyper-vigilant and staying for some time in this smelly toilet, Lin Sanjiu had no choice but to give up. Just as she opened the door, she couldn't help feeling that this was a total waste of time.
When she opened the door fully, she looked down instinctively and saw a pair of eyes, with clearly defined whites staring back at her.
AYU's had the same mild smile which made her appear graceful and polite. However, her smile was late by half a second. Lin Sanjiu clearly noticed the traces of astonishment on the woman's face before it was replaced with a smile.
"Why are you shocked?" Lin Sanjiu thought silently to herself and eyed AYU with her amber eyes.
"Are you shocked because I came out so early so I didn't end up like the other two guys?"
"What a coincidence," before Lin Sanjiu could react, AYU spoke first. When Lin Sanjiu looked at her at such proximity, she realized that AYU was not as young as she first thought, as the woman had some faint wrinkles around her eyes. However, AYU had a sort of aura about her that made her seem very young when she talked. "These five days are so hard to endure, don't you agree?"
Lin Sanjiu looked at AYU's abdomen intuitively. AYU was slim and her abdomen was also flat. It had been that way since the start.
AYU didn't seem to notice Lin Sanjiu's gaze and that Lin Sanjiu was guarding against her. She continued smiling, "Oh, I think I still haven't asked you this. Big Sister, which world are you from?"
Lin Sanjiu found it very hard to explain what happened the very next instance. She felt as though she was hit by a lightning bolt. Shortly after, the hairs on her neck stood on end. The next second, her right wing stirred like a monster which had been hibernating under the sea for a long time. With a strong gust of wind, the white bones of her wing whistled as they pierced through the air and lunged at AYU. Before her wing reached its target, Lin Sanjiu had already jumped to the left, slipped past AYU and was heading back to Area R.
The wings, which had been a hindrance to Lin Sanjiu over these few days, swung wide open behind her with a threatening fury. AYU wanted to follow Lin Sanjiu but was forced to retreat. The wings usually looked very cumbersome now loomed menacingly. The wings seemed like ferocious beasts with a life of their own. As they swept through the air, they almost severed one of AYU's arms which she had not withdrawn in time.
By then, Lin Sanjiu had already entered Area R. The flash of thought which struck her had come true.
Since they all knew that AYU was very problematic, Walter and Jade would not react indifferently if AYU stepped into the corridor after Lin Sanjiu went to the toilet. Perhaps, Jade might have her concerns. However, Lin Sanjiu was sure that Walter would definitely follow AYU but there was no one behind AYU just now.
This all led to one conclusion. If AYU was free to do whatever she wanted, Walter and Jade Zhang were definitely in trouble. Most of the people in Area R were still lying on the ground and seemed asleep. Only two people were awake at the moment. However, this time around, the nameless man and the tall man were standing emotionlessly in Area R.
A person with a head of short dark blonde hair was lying by the tall man's side, his remaining body was hidden in the shadows. The nameless man was holding another limp body wrapped in a green dress. That body no longer looked plump.
The most shocking aspect of the two people were their eyes.
No matter what their original colors were, their eyes were black now. Even though their pupils didn't look like they were going to swallow up their whole eyes, four lifeless black eyeballs the size of ping-pong balls were staring at her.
Feeling that the person behind her was slowly approaching, Lin Sanjiu extended her wings fully.
"Relax," AYU's tone of voice was no different than before. "I'm actually not that good at fighting," as she said that she touched her almost severed arm. There was no blood. There was no minced flesh. It was just like a drawstring bag was dangling from her elbow, swaying slightly as she moved.
