The Creatures That We Are

Chapter 563: Land of Eternity

Qilin stepped forward. The trees around him were still burning, but much of the fire had been doused by the hail downpour. Standing before the blazing flames was the backlit figure of an abomination.

Grrrr. The abomination growled, the resulting gust swept through and messed up Qilin’s hair and coat, accompanied by flames, hails, and an insidious pressure.

Holding his cane with one hand, Qilin lowered his head slightly and took off his glasses.

Azure Dragon and Vermilion Bird flinched, quickly taking two steps back and closing their eyes at the same time—if they didn’t, they could still suffer psychic damage even without direct eye contact with Qilin.

The man wasn’t actually short-sighted. The glasses stayed on simply because his eye technique was too powerful, and without something to limit it with, it would be difficult to control his power.

He hung his glasses on the breast pocket of his coat.

Looking up, Qilin uttered before the abomination could move, “Land of Eternity.”

Instantly, Qilin’s eyes became black spots without any texture or detail. Then the black spots started spinning before symmetrical sparkles of deep green, deep blue, deep purple, and deep red emerged, like an enigmatic and enthralling kaleidoscope.

Now turned into a monstrosity, No.10 was just about to move when his vision went pitch black, and his body became light. He realized that he was himself again.

Before he could find joy in that, though, his body started plunging.

“Ahhhh—”

No.10 cried out. The freefall left him dizzy and nauseous, the urge to vomit overwhelming.

He found himself falling into a bottomless pit, and it kept going.

He didn’t know how much time had passed until a white spot appeared below him. It was the exit.

Soon, he fell out, but he didn’t touch land; he continued to fall toward a blue ocean, where a white cruise ship was sailing.

He fell toward the ship without any control, and he would soon land.

Good. He was tired of falling. It was fine even if he got smashed into paste. He wouldn’t die anyway.

Just when he was going to fall on the deck of the ship, he saw a girl in a sun hat sitting there, working on an oil painting with a palette and a brush, which was of a frozen world of snow and ice.

Whoosh. No.10 fell into the oil painting and entered the frozen land. He was still up in the sky, and he continued to fall.

“No, stop...ahhhh...”

No.10 suffered greatly. The feeling of continuous freefall threatened to break him. He wanted nothing but for the torment to stop.

Soon, he was going to land again. Below him was a tundra, where a polar bear was standing on two feet. It looked up at the falling No.10, its eyes reflecting a starry sky.

Whoosh. No.10 fell into the polar bear’s eyes and found himself in space.

It didn’t make sense in terms of physics, but he was still falling even in space.

How long had he been falling? He spotted something, a pirate ship sailing toward him.

He was about to fall onto the ship, and the sail of the flying ship was printed with the picture of a planet.

Whoosh. No.10 fell into the picture and found himself above Jupiter.

His endless fall continued. Below him was a great terrifying storm of red vortex...

“No! Stop! Stop already...stop...”

No.10 wailed. He had never been this scared and helpless.

It was the first time he wished for death. Would the torment stop once he died?

Yet he couldn’t even meet his end.

What awaited him was an endless freefall that didn’t make rational sense, like he had been sucked into a blackhole’s event horizon.

...

Qilin took a white silk handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the fogged-up lenses of his black-rimmed glasses. When he put them back on, his eyes turned back to a dark green, looking cold and deep.

“Done,” said Qilin.

Vermilion Bird and Azure Dragon opened their eyes. The abomination before them had stopped moving, and the black flames were put out, revealing the reddish brown flesh underneath.

The two conjoined heads embedded in the abomination’s chest looked blank, their thoughts having come to a halt. Madam Wu’s eye sockets had been empty to start with, and Cockroach’s eyes had turned into inky spots. Viscous brown fluid streamed down from his parted lips.

He would never wake up again, until his body deteriorated and his energy ran out, his heartbeat stopping—even then, his mind would never meet release. In the Land of Eternity, a moment lasted forever.

“Su Xi’s not here,” said Qilin. “We have to question the body.”

“I can’t question a body like this,” Vermilion Bird said darkly.

“There’s someone else.” Azure Dragon remembered. “His name’s Xing Kong, and he should be a core member of Tails.”

“What a coincidence, I just killed him.” War Tiger came up to the trio.

Qilin, Vermilion Bird, and Azure Dragon whirled around to look at him.

War Tiger paused, coming to a realization. “Wait. You haven’t gotten any clues out of them?”

Vermilion Bird rolled her eyes. “Do you think it’s possible to question something like that?”

“Shit!” War Tiger slapped his own head. “I left him behind. Is the fire there put out? Or the body’s gonna get burned to nothing.”

“What are you waiting for?” Vermilion Bird called out in disapproval. “Go save the body!”

“Right, right!” War Tiger ran.

...

Meanwhile, at the Green Lotus Lake, white energy flickered at the bottom of the dried lake. It was a large life monster altar, and Su Xi stood in the pavilion at the heart of the altar. Faint white strands of energy emerged from under her feet like the tentacles of a jellyfish. Above her, more than a hundred wanderers marked with Firework hovered strangely.

“Mother, mother...”

Radiant blue light shone out of one wanderer’s eyes, flickering. Whoosh! It plunged toward her like an elemental missile.

Whoosh, whoosh. Then one after another, the wanderers shot toward Su Xi in the same way. Explosions rang out in quick successions. Every wanderer blew up at the heart of the lake and unleashed colorful elemental energy.

The elemental energy splattered, assimilating everything by force, be it water weeds, fish, or even stones. Pastel colors spread. All things were destroyed and made the same by the chaotic explosion of elemental energy, becoming one mere part of the whole.

Standing by the lake, Qing Ling was almost blinded by the explosions. She had to raise her hands to cover her eyes.

It felt to her like the whole lake was a giant wok filled with oil, and God was throwing pop rocks of different colors into the wok, watching them pop and crackle.

“Explode!”

“Hahahah, this is true art!”

Smoker flailed his arms around like the conductor of an orchestra immersed in the performance. Colorful lights flickered before him with overwhelming visual stimuli, and his backlit figure seemed mad amid the chaos—Qing Ling realized then that Smoker had worn his sunglasses so that he could appreciate what he called his art.

The explosions continued for a minute.

When Qing Ling finally opened her eyes, the Green Lotus Lake was made anew into an elemental lake of radiant colors, filled with elemental crystals like a mine pit lake.

The pavilion was nowhere to be seen, and an artificial mountain of elemental crystals appeared where Su Xi had been, having buried her. Her figure could be faintly made out.