Chapter 196: Are You Stupid?
Translator: Pluto Editor: Vermillion
"I thought duoluozhongs that had turned into spirits only knew how to deceive and kill people..." the girl commented sweetly while she smoothed out her gloves. She was standing on one of the train seats and was stepping on the neck of a man with a gray face. Her Mary Jane seemed to be some sort of special item so the man was unable to move. He struggled on the same spot while the girl ignored him. The girl stretched out her arms and encircled the brain. Lin Sanjiu didn't even have any time to escape.
"You're must be a pretty smart duoluozhong," the girl chuckled. She looked a little gleeful and a little absent-minded. Her gloves glowed as she placed them on Lin Sanjiu. Mrs. Manas, who had spotted the girl seconds ago, was mad with worry. "What should we do?" she said repetitively, giving Lin Sanjiu a headache. As the gloves were about to reach her, Lin Sanjiu hollered, "Shut up!" Following which, Lin Sanjiu immobilized all her higher consciousness and created a flow aiming forward.
A second before the gloves could touch the surface of the brain, the girl let out a gasp, "Huh?" She quickly stopped and withdrew her attack. The grayish-white brain in front of her had changed its shape and now looked like a dagger. It hung in front of her, preparing to attack. Even though it didn't look that sharp, the girl couldn't help hesitating as this was the first time encountering such a situation.
After thinking for a second, the girl turned and shouted, "Bro, I found the brain. It can even morph... Huh? Ahhh!"
The teenage boy heard a loud thud and quickly leaped up. His sister's voice seemed a little off, so he quickly hurried to the carriage she was in and asked, "What happened?"
The moment he stepped into the carriage, he paused. Then, he covered his mouth and his shoulders started trembling. He did not move from the carriage door and started bending over.
"What are you laughing at!"
The girl who had fallen on the ground in a mess was furious when she saw her brother laughing at her. However, her voice was a little wobbly after being punched right in the middle of her face. She even had a nosebleed. "Quick, look for that brain! That shitty thing punched me and ran away!"
The teenage boy seemed to enjoy the sight of his sister in a rather sorry state. After some time, he slowly agreed. He headed to the back of the carriage and looked around... with a rather casual attitude.
"Where are you looking? Could it be outside the window? Go to the fourth carriage, go there!" the girl shouted unhappily.
Lin Sanjiu held her dagger form for a while just as a distraction, whereas, she used all her 'lifeforce'—though she did not have her body, she managed to condense her entire form to create a significant amount of force—to knock that girl off balance. The girl's eyes filled with tears while she continued feeling dizzy. Some time had passed, but her nose was still bleeding like a dripping faucet.
Her brother had disappeared from her view for quite some time and had not returned. A weird dough-like being, appearing almost as if someone stretched a human body, slowly crept towards her. Once it exhaled a breath of cold air, directing it at the girl's neck, she reacted with a punch without even looking. The creature was immediately punched far away from her, while she held her nose with another hand.
"Bastard! How dare you hit me! I must destroy you! Just a duoluozhong..." the girl wiped the tears from her face. Her face felt scathing hot. "Brother, where the hell did you go anyway? Why aren't you back?" She had barely spouted those words when she heard her brother's voice coming from a few carriages away. As the noise from the traveling train was too loud, the girl almost didn't hear what he said: "Rena, let me ask you something!"
"What?" the girl named Rena snapped, there were less tears clouding her eyes."If you are not looking for that brain, what do you have to say to me?"
"Do you think... the brain is a spirit duoluozhong?" Her brother sounded unruffled—anyway, he wasn't the one who was hurt. "But it is weird... We're wearing anti-corrosion outfits which work perfectly against black matter. We haven't been assimilated at all, so how can it touch you?"
"Oh?" The girl froze for a second.
In Kisaragi Station World, everything was being corroded by black matter at different speeds. Humans and things related to humans had the fastest corrosion rates. Other than a handful of people, most of the original human population in this world had died as a result of this. When they died, a large number of them turned into duoluozhongs—taking the form of supernatural spirits.
When a person from a foreign world first arrived at Kisaragi Station, the person's body had not been assimilated by black matter. Thus, they would be unable to touch or see any of the spirits. Although the spirits could see that person, they couldn't touch the person until that person had been corroded by black matter to a certain extent.
That is to say, if the brain could touch her...
While the girl sat on the floor in a daze, her brother's footsteps quickly approached her. There was a gray brain floating rather sluggishly above him. When Lin Sanjiu relaxed, without controlling her form, she naturally transformed back to the shape of a brain.
"Ah! That's the one!" the girl jumped up and the multiple accessories all over her body jangled along. Before she could pounce on it, her brother immediately turned sideways and defended the brain, "Just wait! She is not a duoluozhong!"
The girl stared at her brother with her half-opened mouth, displaying an expression that showed that she knew what he said was possible but was reluctant to accept it.
"It's pretty much your fault for demanding that you wanted to kill stuff on the train." Her brother grinned as he planted his hands into his pockets as if he didn't participate in massacring the other spirit duoluozhongs just moments before. "She attacked you out of self-defense. It was unavoidable, I guess. But, I had a good chat with her."
"Chat?" the girl frowned, "It's just a brain. How do you talk to it?"
Lin Sanjiu immediately demonstrated how they communicated.
Even though she had only used her higher consciousness in this manner for a few times, her control had improved significantly. The brain slowly became longer and thinner. Then, it was partitioned into a few small subsections. Each subsection slowly transformed into alphabets which spelled: Are you stupid?
There was even a question mark.