Chapter 1017: Chapter 1017: Lilina’s Troubles
The fourth day after the Green Star incident was resolved, I got up early—the reason being the rcury Lamp was acting crazy early in the morning, flapping around the room. I figured her wings might be molting, at least that’s what I thought.
Breakfast was simple: fried dough sticks, soy milk, tea eggs. Qianqian also wanted jam, chili, fernted tofu, and chilled red wine. I have no idea how she planned to eat all that. Today’s cook was Sayaka, who had beco quite familiar with making various Chinese breakfasts. The breakfasts these past two days were made alternately by her and Anwina—of course, Sandora’s food still had to be prepared by Anwina personally; this task was beyond most people.
After breakfast, Sayaka packed up and went to Shadow City: school.
She’s now an ordinary female high school student at the Imperial Military Academy, majoring in battlefield command, Scorpion Fighting Skills, and ho economics, and she’s also enrolled in the Misaka Nuclear Harmony Longevity Interest Group. Her daily life is fulfilling and joyful: preparing food in the morning for her brother and other family mbers, attending officer or Heroic Spirit lectures at school in the morning, sneaking into the military area for lunch at noon, researching with Sister Misaka in the afternoon on how to make fusion bombs from common dormitory items, occasionally going on internships in so Macro World with school-organized activities, which are usually unreliable Misaka Misaka plans. The actual classes at the Military Academy end early, and most of the ti students can undergo advanced training with their respective professional instructors. Her instructor is Anwina: she goes ho in the afternoon to learn housekeeping skills from the Maid Chief. She seems busy but happy every day. In this ho, Sayaka might be the most ordinary one—yes, even after considering those previous courses, she’s still the most ordinary, after all, she’s in an environnt filled with extraordinary beings, but she seems the most content in my eyes, just like Anwina, living a life of no presence, having everything she wants in this big house. Even when there are whimsical ideas occasionally, there’ll be a poor brother trying to satisfy them.
I envy her quite a lot, especially when I’m working…
Most of the equipnt on Green Star has already been dismantled, leaving behind countless empty chambers waiting for renovation and a group of shut-down core reactors, and there’s still a lot of work to do. Twenty-six billion Tree Elves need a new ho, and over ten million Tree Elf souls are waiting for rebirth. The place I’m currently in is dealing with the second issue: Heavenly Garden.
Vines cultivated by Lilina have grown robustly; this huge building, constructed with alloys and mystic minerals, has beco an airborne multi-layered garden where the original fra is almost completely obscured. Gigantic vines occupy every inch of view, so standing beneath it, you see nothing but an endless tall wall, and from the sky looking down, it appears as a rectangular green cube—mosaic-like and moldy, as per Lilina’s own description. Due to my enthusiastic help… ddling, the growth of Heavenly Garden exceeded expectations in the past couple of days, and a significant number of soldiers have been trimming the branches day and night to prevent the garden from becoming impenetrable. Lilina is helpless in this regard; after all, it’s the Goddess’s divine power at work, and there’s nothing to be done but wait for it to subside: possibly in about half a month.
I’m quite puzzled as well, though, no one doubts Dingdang’s power; she did cause flowers and grass to grow out of tal plates of the three hundred-kiloter-long Imperial Admiral before. However, this ti I just used a bit of Dingdang soup, even diluted by millions of tis, so how did such a big commotion arise?
I even had plans to secretly water down so of Dingdang’s fine soup as a brain supplent…
Heavenly Garden has a total of a hundred floors, with transmission beams connecting every two floors, nad arrogantly “Path of Promotion” by Lilina (as of 3:30 PM yesterday). It’s a simple “nest” for nurturing embryos, with straightforward terrain that won’t get you trapped as long as you have a compass, surrounded by walls woven from neatly intertwined vines, estimated to be several ters high—ample for a multitude of growing bodies. Between the vines, flower buds encapsulated in soft green light are often visible; these are bodies not yet fully grown, each with a green dot of light fluttering up and down by its side. Curious, I approached one, and the small light imdiately snuggled up to my face, then lovingly settled on my shoulder.
It was a palm-sized little fairy, with a semi-transparent quality as if made of green light, with a pair of indistinct wings behind it—the reason for their nebulous appearance being that they were entirely composed of two narrow strears of light, shifting with the fairy’s movent, seemingly not fully developed yet.
“Uh… Dingdang? A mass-produced Dingdang?”
Already accustod to various forms of mass production in Shadow City, I couldn’t help but form this association.
The little fairy made no sound, rely glancing around with sheer curiosity before flapping those two streams of lighted wings, flying into the vines, and then, the large flower bud before began to tremble slightly, its growth accelerating.
“I don’t know what they are; they just grew naturally from the plants and trees of Avalon,” Lilina’s voice erged from the rustling of leaves nearby as she wriggled through the vine wall, showing up in front dressed in Elf attire, “Maybe it’s the projection of the Lady Goddess’s power in Avalon that brought about these peculiar little creatures. Ah, they’re just little creatures—they’re not much more intelligent than birds, and when they’re first born, they’re nothing but a bundle of erratic light, without even facial features.”
“Avalon certainly has a lot of peculiar things.” I pulled a corner of my mouth.
“But with their presence, the growth of the Life Vine becos easier to control, and they can also catalyze embryos,” Lilina smiled proudly, “These little fairies are quite obedient. As long as you’re a follower of the Life Goddess, they’ll follow you, so I brought many over from Avalon to help take care of the embryos, one for each. They don’t eat, drink or rest; the thing they like most every day is to circle around the plants or greet strangers. Besides, these Little Ones can watch over the embryos and act as alarms, which is also nice—manpower in Heavenly Garden is insufficient, with only ten High Priests and about a hundred Church Knights guarding each floor, making it unmanageable to care for each flower bud. Having these little fairies watching over them makes it much easier.”
As she said this, Lilina’s face radiated with a blinding motherly glow, and I nodded in satisfaction: “Hmm, now you’re a mom to over ten million children…”
Lilina: “…”
Lolis are fierce; fortunately, she’s only 1.09 ters tall, so I easily handled the raging Lilina, then looked at this slightly eerie green world in front of : “Speaking of which, why hasn’t Lu E clung to you?”
Lilina’s face was spirited: “Her? Didn’t I just trick her into cooperating with the experint? Now she’s on the top floor of Heavenly Garden, unable to leave until the first batch of embryos completes a growth cycle, so I can at least have a few days of leisure. Boss, isn’t this project massive! My proud creation! Now those Tree Elves’ souls have been injected into the embryos, though they haven’t awakened yet. In these passing days, they’ll slowly familiarize themselves with their new bodies inside these buds, and as the body matures, the soul will fully assimilate, far exceeding the effects of any hibernation chamber!”
I nodded absentmindedly, although to be honest, I felt sothing was amiss but couldn’t pinpoint what it was for a while. After looking around at the vines, I suddenly rembered: “By the way, you’re using Lu E as the original body for all the embryos… doesn’t that an all the embryos here have the sa face?”
“Of course not,” Lilina rolled her eyes at instantly, “Appearance can be adjusted; just a slight adjustnt in the developntal environnt during the embryonic stage will alter the appearance.”
“Oh,” I nodded, then uncertainly asked, “What about… gender?”
The sinister Archbishop froze for a mont, then both of us fell silent for a few seconds before Lilina suddenly looked tearfully at , “Boss… did I probably cause trouble, right?”
“…What the hell, you turned over ten million people into girls?!”
Lilina counted on her fingers as she argued with : “It’s not that serious. Based on the gender ratio, it’s about six million… Hey, boss, boss, impulse is the devil! What if among those six million, there are so particularly unique individuals…”
I grabbed her head and gave it a good knock, and Lilina imdiately started pretending to wail and cry. Her antics were so loud that they even drew the attention of a few Church Knights, Church Monks, Missionaries, Church Craftsn, and Priests patrolling nearby. But these people were used to the sight of their Archbishop being punished after causing trouble, so they just bowed from afar and went about their business. Later, Lilina, with tears in her eyes, wrote a letter of guarantee, promising to create normal new bodies for the unfortunate tree elves once they woke up — at least with normal genders.
Looking at the embryos all around that were a few days from maturing, I knew that each bud curled up a thirteen or fourteen-year-old girl. When I thought of the unknown older soul that had been injected inside, I shivered all over again. Lilina’s destructive power was too great. It seed my decision to visit the garden today was the right one. Otherwise, if these souls were fully integrated, changing them would be troubleso. It would be unbearable to walk down the streets of Shadow City and have a charming elf girl greet you with a smile and say, “Hi, I’m Da Zhuang Tiegen.” And it would be even more unbearable if another elf girl ca along, and Tiegen pointed and introduced, “Hi, this is my dad. He woke up as a girl…”
…hmm, kind of cute, but dammit!
After leaving the Heavenly Garden, I looked back at the sprawling green structure that blocked out the sky: “So, from now on, this will replace the Mother Tree of the tree elves?”
Functionally, the current role of the Heavenly Garden is to act as an embryo incubator for the tree elves. Although it currently has only one donor sample, the lack of room for variation in the embryos doesn’t et the requirents for biological evolution, but it can be improved, so I asked.
Lilina first nodded, then wrinkled her nose: “That’s the plan, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. I’ve already extracted items from the small planet at the core of Green Star and stored them in the World Tree Temple. Do you want to take a look?”
The World Tree Temple, nicknad Heaven, also known as the Divine Country, is theoretically where Dingdang resides, but this Three-inch Ding almost never stays in the temple. She prefers to nap in her master’s pocket or fly around the house catching mice, so eventually, the care of this temple fell entirely on Lilina’s shoulders. Thus, Lilina simply tossed the nearly dying “Mother Tree” into the temple, at least in there, the decay process would be suppressed. I hadn’t visited the temple for a long ti, but I still rembered how to access it: pull out the groggy Dingdang and wave her in the air above the World Tree trunk, and the gate would open.
This is the legendary face-swipe card thod.
Watching deftly swipe with Dingdang, Lilina’s expression was very subtle: “Boss, I feel like you’ve started to use Lady Goddess as sothing very strange.”
“She was never quite normal,” I shrugged, casually tucking Dingdang into my pocket. She poked her head out and groggily said, “Ah Jun, call Dingdang for als.”
“I feel like she’s been sleeping too much lately,” I couldn’t help but grumble, “It’s been over a month; she’s either eating or sleeping, almost like Alaya’s habits. This isn’t right, Dingdang is usually so lively.”
“Who knows, maybe she’s growing,” Lilina casually speculated, showing no sign of the respect she supposedly has for the Goddess. She set the teleportation path, and a huge teleportation gate lit up in the erald-green hall before us, “I placed those nearly withered tree vines in the Other Space of the temple’s upper level; you can only enter through the teleportation gate.”
The entire World Tree Temple exists in a space difficult to describe, even though it feels like it’s located inside the trunk of the World Tree. But once inside, you definitely wouldn’t think that way: from the temple’s skylight, you can see another unrealistically clear blue sky and white clouds. So places even have small rivers, lakes, and forest views, making it seem like an internally vastly extended space. I even suspect it could fit the entire Solar System. The temple’s upper level Lilina ntioned is a gigantic Star Gold Stone platform, the most open area in the Life Temple. Above is the uncovered blue sky and white clouds, so low it feels within reach. Around the vast Star Gold Stone plaza are rows of neatly arranged green stone pillars carved with reliefs, most ordered by Lilina after discovering this temple, including images of races that believed in Dingdang, mythical events concocted, unclear magic runes, and phrases like “XX was here” and “Reply to see more.” The main reason for these carvings is that Lilina feels a temple would be too plain without so mystical elents, especially after visiting the Divine Realm’s Bingdisi’s Obsidian Palace and the Father God Temple. Although I think that’s nonsense; look at Lin’s temple—a simple stone castle. Besides the outer wall, there are barely any carvings, though that might be because Lin is too strong to bother with such trivial things at ho.
The separated Mother Tree hangs suspended around the platform. After being separated from the Oasis planet, Lilina untangled these chaotic vines, spread them in the sky to align with the upper platform. From this angle, those gray-green vines look like a mass of gently trembling tentacles encircling the platform…
“Boss, don’t compare if you can’t,” Lilina earnestly advised.
“Ahem, is there really no saving this thing?”
I awkwardly scratched my head and looked at my hand: a thin branch on the vine was dangling nearby, wobbling back and forth by my hand. When I reached to touch it lightly, it seed to sense it and imdiately withdrew.
“If it was just age, I could revive it myself,” Lilina shook her head in disappointnt, “But the current issue is, the Mother Tree has divinity, likely a branch from another World Tree that grew in the Mortal World’s soil. Consider it another World Tree extension, so it can’t accept Dingdang Goddess’s power: system conflict.”
I understood Lilina’s aning in my own way: If we see Dingdang’s divinity as an Android system, then this Mother Tree is a Symbian. Storing Symbian programs compressed in folders managed by the Android system is OK, but getting a Symbian program to run under Android is tricky. Go order a KFC Family Bucket at McDonald’s or recharge 150XXXXXXXX at the Unicom Hall, and you’ll get what I an—make sure to inform the hospital first.
“So after several attempts, I decided to give up reviving the Mother Tree,” Lilina said dejectedly, “since we can’t trace which Life Goddess planted it tens of thousands of years ago, and even if we do find the tree elves’ creator from the Divine Race’s records, we surely won’t find the World Tree from that era. Tree elves were discovered as an independent race by the Old Empire, aning after creating them, the Life Goddess let tree elves develop freely, and World Tree relics were probably left in that world, turning to ashes with the Old Empire.”
“But without the Mother Tree, I can’t find the tree elves’ life spectrum,” Lilina paused, continuing, “In other words, without the Mother Tree, the tree elves I create in the Heavenly Garden are forever just cloned bodies. Even if we insert a soul into them, they won’t be tree elves; they are two different races!” (To be continued. If you like this work, you are welco to vote for recomndations and monthly votes at Qidian. Your support is my greatest motivation.)
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