Chapter 175: Returning from the Netherworld
Translator: Pluto Editor: Vermillion
Lin Sanjiu was hazily aware that she had slept for a long time. Occasionally, someone would wake her and ask her a few questions. She didn't know who posed those question and she didn't know how she answered. It was as though her mind was wrapped in water, everything she heard was muddled and indistinct.
She had never been this exhausted; it was as if her brain had stopped functioning. Even if someone were to stab her in her sleep, Lin Sanjiu probably couldn't wake up.
Lin Sanjiu didn't know how long she slept but her rumbling stomach finally woke her up. She smelled the pleasant fragrance of wheat. It smelled so good that her stomach reacted and that was when Lin Sanjiu finally opened her eyes.
She was immediately greeted with a packet of bread with a small open slit.
"Look, I told you she wasn't dead!" B.Rabbit's smug voice rang out at once. Following which, the packet of bag rustled, as if someone was taking it away. "You can just wake her up with food!"
Lin Sanjiu felt as though she hadn't eaten for a year, so how would she let the food in front of her 'escape'? She leaped right up, with a motion too agile for someone who had been in a long slumber and pressed the bread down to the ground.
If Xueqin didn't draw her hand back in time, that force from Lin Sanjiu would have broken two fingers of hers.
"Huh? What happened? Where am I... Where am I?" Lin Sanjiu tore off a large chunk of bread using her teeth. Her mouth was stuffed with bread, "Fei, Fei kuyyan.."
"I know, I know," Xueqin understood what Lin Sanjiu was saying but she couldn't help feeling embarrassed on Lin Sanjiu's behalf. "Eat slowly. You can talk after you finish your food. We still have lots of time to spare."
After Lin Sanjiu bit her own tongue twice, tears welled in her eyes due to the pain but she quickly swallowed the entire bread. After that, she took some time to look around her.
When she woke up, it was dark so she couldn't see much. When Lin Sanjiu was eating, Xueqin held her [Ability Polishing Agent] and illuminated the area nearby, allowing Lin Sanjiu to make sense of her surroundings.
[This seems like the interior of a ball.] Lin Sanjiu thought to herself. The shoddy handicraft and uneven finish made it difficult for Lin Sanjiu to even classify it as a Special Item. She stepped forward and realized that they were surrounded by a large plastic material. She didn't know how many layers of that material surrounded them, but it had completed blocked out any light from the outside.
LIn Sanjiu could hear the familiar swishing sound of the sap around them. She turned her head sharply and looked at her long-lost companions with shock. Her mouth was wide open.
"Did we go back into the rhizomes?"
"Ah, yes." B.Rabbit's fur may be mangled, but that couldn't hide the faint pride on its face that he tried to suppress. "We didn't do much. We just built this 'boat' when you were asleep. We are traveling to the surface against the flow of the tree sap.
Lin Sanjiu looked vacantly at her companions. She had many questions on her mind but she blurted the most important question that bothered her, "Where is Hui Chuyan?"
"Don't worry. She is not in the apple tree," Xueqin answered. Xueqin pushed B.Rabbit backward, afraid that it would ramble on and deviate from the topic, "It was time for her to go to the next world. She was sent away when we were in the rhizomes."
Lin Sanjiu was stunned for a moment before she remembered Hui Chuyan telling her that it was nearly her time to go to another world. However, Lin Sanjiu didn't expect that it would be this soon, so she found it rather abrupt.
"Although she was unconscious when she was sent away, it is far better than being absorbed by those apple trees." Despite her usual poker-faced expression, Xuqin couldn't help shuddering when she talked about those trees, "Those things are too freaky…"
"After you fell asleep, we weren't quite sure of the situation. We rested in the same spot for a few days. We also saw those snake-faced people eating those apples…" One of the twins added softly. Somehow, her voice seemed to be ridden with guilt.
"We were worried that the snake-faced people would find us soon or later if we remained there," she sounded as if she was trying to justify something.
"Aii…" the other twin, the older sister, suddenly let out a long sigh without any reason.
They weren't the only ones looking rather dejected. The complicated expression on Snow's redden face was clear for all to see despite his beard. Xueqin shot a glance at them and pursed her lips with a cold expression. She was obviously aware why the others were acting this way, but she seemed adamant not to talk about it.
In the end, it was Rabbit who spoke.
"The snake-faced people seemed extremely furious. They carried away the corpse of their companion, probably the one you defeated, and checked all the trees carefully. We had a hard time hiding from them… After they left, we woke you up a few times and asked you some questions. We finally found out what you knew and got an understanding of the whole series of events."
At this point, even B.Rabbit found it difficult to speak about what had happened. "That son of a b*tch. He is such a letdown. I'm not going to cover this up for him!" Then, B.Rabbit ranted angrily, "After we knew the effects of eating those flesh apples, Error 517 secretly—"
"Ate two flesh apples when we were chopping off tree barks to create the boat." A young teen's monotonous voice, coming from outside the plastic material, accompanied by the sloshing sound of fluid, suddenly finished B.Rabbit's sentence.
Lin Sanjiu was shocked. She only realized then that Error 517 wasn't in this 'ball'. She only got to know the five members group through B.Rabbit, so she didn't know them that well personally. As the light was dim inside the ball, she failed to notice that there was a missing person.
"Why... Why is he outside?" Lin Sanjiu was very shocked. "What exactly... is going on?"
This time, even Rabbit stopped talking as his expression grew sour.
The awkward silence continued for a few seconds until the teenager outside the spherical boat ended up being the person answering her. He seemed to deliberately maintain a sort of flat, monotonous tone, "Sister Lin, I'll answer you. They are ashamed of me now so they don't want to bring this up."
"Sister Lin, have you ever seen my ability in our past few days of interaction? This is normal because my ability isn't anything special… Oh, don't ask me what my ability is, it is all in the past anyway. I've been constantly relying on others, holding others back. I had enough of it too. Since I had a chance to change that, why shouldn't I seize it? Those people could be considered dead anyway… I can't always suffer in pain for nothing, without gaining anything, right?"
Lin Sanjiu listened in a daze. This was totally beyond anything she expected. She would never have thought that one of the companions she rescued personally would choose to eat one of those flesh apples...
"There's no need to eat the entire thing, digging out and eating the part of the bulging veins, the portions which had a living reaction, is sufficient." From his voice, Error 517 still sounded like he was forcing himself to be calm. "It didn't fail to meet my expectations. Both of the apples I ate gave me a huge payback... The price, in my opinion, was well worth it."
Before Lin Sanjiu said anything, Snow chastised hoarsely, "What about us? Are we less important than those two abilities?"
For a while, there was only silence outside.
After some time, Error 517 spoke up again, and even laughed softly, "Brother Snow, if I didn't have those two abilities, could we still swim up against the flow of the fluid in these roots? I can't control how you guys view me… but we are friends, after all, and Sister Lin is my benefactor, so I will pull this boat to the surface no matter what."
Lin Sanjiu only understood then that the reason this boat could advance against the stream was actually because Error 517 was pulling it from the outside!
With that, she was in no position to say anything about it. All of them clearly condemned his actions, yet they had to depend on him. Under such circumstances, it wasn't surprising that B.Rabbit looked so aggrieved.
Even after some time, no one in the boat said a word. Lin Sanjiu vaguely heard Error 517 sighing outside. Then, there was only silence.
The sloshing noises of the flowing fluid became the only sound which accompanied them along their path.
The route back was far longer than the one they took to arrive. Error 517 seemed to be pushing himself to his limits. Every day, he would enter the 'boat' to have a bite of food, and without even sleeping he would go back outside to continue pulling. Lin Sanjiu wanted to persuade him to rest, but she couldn't bring herself to say anything when Error 517 gave her a distant expression.
[Forget it, everyone live by their own principles…] Lin Sanjiu muttered inwardly.
Before she woke up, she had slept for slightly more than a week. Then, the group were in the rhizomes for almost a month before they heard from Error 517 that it was getting brighter outside, so it seemed that they were nearing the surface.
Following the direction Lin Sanjiu provided, they were heading toward the area she had dug up. When they were near the path she dug, they broke out from the roots' tough epidermis and finally returned to the surface.
When the long-awaited sunlight shone on their bodies again, almost all of them felt as if they had returned from a surreal experience from a lifetime ago.
Error 517 secretly left on the night that they returned and did not even bid farewell to any of them.
"Actually, I didn't rebuke him that harshly..."
"He probably couldn't accept it himself." Lin Sanjiu sighed dully and patted B.Rabbit's despondent head.
[Right now, there is another urgent matter—] Just as she thought about it, she heard a sudden cry from afar, "Sister Lin! You finally came back! We are starving to death!"