Chapter 51

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Chapter 51: Purgatory Reunion (III)

{cw: misgendering}

When he saw the oasis in the boundless yellow sand, Qi Leren shouted excitedly: “Look, there’s the oasis!”

The local guide smiled and said, “Yes, that’s it. Go on, and you can reach a small nearby tribe in an hour. It’s not far from the Underground Ant City.”

These words inspired the tired Qi Leren. He rode his camel to this oasis, scooped up spring water, and washed his face. Only then did he feel that the heat covering his body had dissipated.

The Illusionist also jumped down from a camel, filled his water bag with the water, and then drank it.

Qi Leren glanced at his camel and found that it had picked up a piece of white paper from the water and chewed it up like a fresh vegetable. Qi Leren curiously grabbed this piece of paper from the camel’s mouth, which was about to be dissolved away. The words and patterns on it had already been soaked and could not be identified.

It was just a blur, as if something had been drawn on it.

The soaked paper melted in his hand and broke into several soggy pieces. The camel picked up the paper from the ground and continued to chew it. Qi Leren sighed helplessly, took the camel’s rope, and pulled it toward the Illusionist who had been calling for him to keep up.

The three walked on, and the local who was familiar with the desert talked more about the end of the journey, and chatted with the two travelers who had paid a lot of money to ask him to lead the way. From the local’s mouth, Qi Leren had a new understanding of the present situation in the Underground Ant City.

“The Dragon Ant Queen recently returned to health? Didn’t she say that she had been seriously ill before?” Qi Leren recalled the contents of the data and asked curiously.

“She’s beginning to return to the light,” the local said. “Every queen is like this, and this state can last for about a month, during which a new queen will be born. During this time, the situation in the Underground Ant City will be very chaotic. Demons flock from all over the world. The demon tide will be particularly turbulent this month. You must be careful.”

Qi Leren knew about the demon tide, and that there would be such a catastrophe every month in the Underground Ant City. There was no rationality in this group, and it wasn’t known where it came from. Terrible creatures gushed out from the rift, attacking the residents of the Underground Ant City crazily, but the Underground Ant City’s field couldn’t isolate this group of creatures, so they could only fight with this group of creatures month after month.

The three walked the whole way, and the yellow sand finally turned into a desert. At dusk, the vast field of vision was only a wasteland, which made Qi Leren who had never been in a desert before feel deep emotion.

He was walking towards him along Ning Zhou’s path, and every step was closer to him. He would find him, and that day wasn’t far off.

“Ahead is the Valentine tribe, where you can rest your feet. They’re very polite to outsiders,” the guide said.

Qi Leren thought his words were a little strange, so he couldn’t help but ask, “What about you? Aren’t you going?”

“Me? Forget it. I’m afraid they won’t welcome me, and neither will our tribe. They’re foreign and different from us locals. We’ve never intermarried for generations and have no relation to them.” The guide pursed his lips disdainfully. “You can buy some food there. If you don’t need it, let’s just go.”

The Valentine tribe, Qi Leren remembered this name. Ning Zhou had mentioned being here in his letter. He had lost his camel in a storm and came to the Valentine tribe alone…

He hadn’t said more, but even if it was just a name, it made him want to stay.

“Forget it, we’re short on time. Let’s go directly to the Underground Ant City,” Qi Leren said.

So the three walked on, crossed the neighbouring wind-eroded hill, and when they stood on the hill, Qi Leren looked down on the Valentine tribe in the distance. On the desert in the sunset, the Valentine tribe was quiet, as if it were deserted.

The Illusionist suddenly stopped.

“What’s the matter?” Qi Leren asked.

“It’s dinner time, but there’s no smoke.” The Illusionist squinted slightly and looked toward the distant tribe. “No one’s active either. I’m afraid something happened to that tribe.”

Qi Leren’s experience wasn’t as rich as that of the Illusionist. Just now, he hadn’t thought of this question at all: “What happened?”

“Come on, let’s go and have a look,” the Illusionist said.

The three people walked down the hill and came toward the Valentine tribe. The closer they got, the more obvious the strange situation became. When they came to the village entrance, the scene before them made all three people fall into silence.

This tragedy was not human, but a hell on earth. There were gnawed bodies everywhere, and dried blood all over the ground. Carrion birds were startled by their approach and flew away reluctantly from the incomplete rotting bodies, landing on the wooden fence outside the tents, and watching them with malicious eyes.

The frightened guide covered his mouth with both hands and prayed repeatedly. The Illusionist and Qi Leren searched around the village, but they didn’t see a single living person. The elders, children, men, and women had all become unrecognizable bodies. The sheep inside the fence were all dead, and only a little bloody wool was left.

It turned out that the quiet little tribe in the sunset was already a graveyard with only corpses left.

The horror here made Qi Leren almost afraid to stare at the corpses too carefully, and his heart was very heavy. He knew that such a tragedy occurred almost every day in the Nightmare World, but he couldn’t let go of the horror after witnessing the slaughter of a tribe that existed only days ago.

“Such a large-scale death is unlike the demons. The demons usually won’t massacre an entire village unless they’re a low-level irrational devil, but such demons won’t be so destructive. It was probably the demon tide. When the monthly demon tide in the underground ant city ends, there will be many demons running to the surface to plunder nearby tribes. They’re like a group of beasts. They devour like locusts everywhere, more ferocious than regular demons,” the Illusionist said.

“What should we do with the bodies?” Qi Leren asked with difficulty, nauseated by the sight of the bloodied mouths.

“There’s nothing to do. If this happens outside the Sea of Tranquility, the nearby Holy See parish may send people to investigate the situation and clean up the bodies, but here… This is the territory of the Dragon Ant Queen.” Standing in the wind, the Illusionist looked back at the desert village that had turned blood red beneath the setting sun and said softly, “Let the sand bury them here.”

“Could there be survivors?” Qi Leren asked.

“I don’t know, maybe there is. But an ordinary person, even if they escape to the Underground Ant City, may not be able to live a good life… Let’s go, we should set off.” The Illusionist had already mounted a camel and urged Qi Leren.

Qi Leren looked at the dried blood that had already seeped into the sand beneath his feet, and his deep sadness and melancholy welled up in his heart, so that he could no longer speak.

The camel looked at him meekly and pressed its nose against his cheek. Qi Leren’s eyes were slightly wet, and he leaned over and hugged the camel’s thick neck.

“Let’s go.” Qi Leren also mounted the camel and walked towards the distant Underground Ant City.

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The entrance of the Underground Ant City was shaped like a crater, but there was no magma under the crater, but a huge hole, which was 500 meters deep. It was impossible to climb into the hole, so it was necessary to parachute. In a deep darkness, the bottom of the cave illuminated by fluorescent plants on the rock walls was an underground lake. It was said that the water in it has existed for millions of years and that the water quality was pure, and there were also phosphorescent fish inside.

This cave was called the Dragon’s Breath Cave, and the source of its name could no longer be tested, but what was certain was that there was no legendary creature like a dragon in it, but rather it was full of bats.

The guide split up with them at the mouth of the cave, and the Illusionist and Qi Leren jumped into the underground lake. After climbing up, they handed the parachute equipment to the masked men who were responsible for returning them to the surface, and took a boat to the shore.

The underground world was very different from the world on the surface. Qi Leren, who was here for the first time, looked at the surrounding environment curiously. There weren’t many light sources here, little more than the fluorescent plants on the walls. If his eyesight hadn’t improved a lot after he’d broken his shell, he would be very pitiful in this dark environment.

“What if it’s too dark for someone to see clearly?” Qi Leren asked, “Can you use an oil lamp or a torch?”

The Illusionist said with an amused smile, “Of course, but if you have to hold a torch and tell others, ‘I am a weak chicken,’ don’t blame others for coming up to provoke you. There’s no Court here to maintain order.”

Along the underground passage, Qi Leren judged his own position while comparing the map. He had a good sense of direction, but he didn’t know the difference between the southeast and the northwest after circling in the dark. In the end, the Illusionist who was familiar with this place took shortcuts. He grabbed the map while holding his hair, and quarreled with Qi Leren about their route.

The Illusionist insisted that as an old hand who had been to the Underground Ant City many times, he could not get lost, while Qi Leren retorted that they had just walked through the same place three times.

At last, the Illusionist became angry and offered the famous “You can do whatever you want”. Qi Leren was not polite to him. He pulled him along for ten minutes and walked back to the main road smoothly.

This headbutting incident caused the Illusionist to say nothing for the rest of their journey. After arriving in the Underground Ant City’s downtown area, the illusionist spoke in a weak and weary voice as though he was ill, saying that he would take Qi Leren to find a place where they could stay.

Qi Leren was in a hurry to find Ning Zhou, and didn’t refute. Under the Illusionist’s introduction, he met Celia, the Court’s contact person stationed in the city. The Trial Court’s contact person, who was stationed in the Underground Ant City all year round, gave him a lot of help, and he got the required information. He rushed in the direction of Purgatory day and night…

On the 28th day after the task of the Holy Nun, Qi Leren arrived in Purgatory, which triggered the second step of the mission.

At this time, Purgatory was under emergency martial law. The whole area was blocked and no passage was allowed.

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The author has something to say:

PS: Many settings for the Underground Ant City refer to some remote tribes and natural landscapes on Earth. The ancient lake is from the first episode of the BBC documentary Africa; The inspiration for the entrance cave to the Underground Ant City is the Cave of Swallows in Mexico; The inspiration for the Dragon Ant Queen is honeypot ants from BBC’s Power of Life documentary and Natural World: Empire of the Desert Ants. I’ll write down the other parts I remember, but I have a poor memory and forget some documentaries after watching them.

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