Chapter 822: Here comes Mommy
“What…what just happened?,” Zhen Liu asked aloud with utter bewilderment plain in his voice.
One second, he was a disembodied soul that was literally stuck halfway into entering his own body.
The next, he had somehow gotten knocked into his body…that was for some reason shivering like a newborn deer in winter.
‘Wait a minute…ah. Right.’
For the entirety of Zhen Liu’s out-of-body experience, Frosttusk had been maintaining near constant contact on him to prevent the natural aether flames from ravaging his body and going wild. Evidently, he maintained this physical connection even after Zhen Liu returned to his body.
[Minn jarl! You’re back!]
“Hi, Frosttusk. Would you mind getting your…what the fuck is that?”
[Oh, this? I’m not sure. You sort of spat it out when your soul returned to your body.]
“Huh…”
Just as Zhen Liu was about to ask Frosttusk to remove his massive mammoth hands so that he could regain some semblance of warmth in his toes, he noticed that in Frosttusk’s other hand was, as weird as it sounded, a squishy ball of green and purple fire.
“Uh oh…”
A part of Zhen Liu had a feeling he knew what this ball of fire was, but another part of him was hoping on a mildly desperate level that he was wrong.
‘Welp…no time like the present,’ Zhen Liu thought to himself as he closed his eyes in concentration, after gesturing for Frosttusk to remove his hand, of course.
Zhen Liu quickly swept his senses through the inner workings of his soul, with the expectation that the [Ghost Flame],that he had painstakingly swallowed during an attack by the Fallen Clan, had been somehow removed from his formula.
That said, Zhen Liu would be lying if he wasn’t at least, mildly okay with that development.
‘I mean, I guess it would be pretty broken if I could somehow absorb naturally occuring aether treasures without any form of drawback. I can already spawn warriors much stronger than myself so…what the fuck?’
However, when Zhen Liu finally examined his own soul, he found that the case was somewhat…different than he anticipated.
‘Is…isn’t that the chain that kept me tethered to my own body? What the fuck?’
In a manner differrent from how he was connected to the kaijin, Zhen Liu found that his soul had now developed a weird looking chain that connected himself to that same purple and green ball of flame in Frosttusk’s hands.
When Zhen Liu ran his senses down the chain, to review the ball of flames, a strange expression formed on his face.
‘So…it appears that the [Ghost Flame] and [Violet Berserker Spring Flame] had somehow merged into a new type of hybrid flame…that is partially alive…again…what the fuck?’
One would think that Zhen Liu would’ve gotten over the fact that most of the stuff he interacts with at this point develops some form of sentience, but that wasn’t the case.
That being said, as much as Zhen Liu wanted to explore the capabilities and characteristics of his newly attached soul flame ball, he had other things to worry about.
Namely, the variety of uninvited guests running around the library, the recently freed Parasinner causing a multitude of problems and the fact that his own mother had somehow managaed to force the Library of Nowhere to surface from it’s hiding spot in the Jade Lake.
…
Hold up…
…
<=Welcome back to the realm of consciousness, milord.=>
“Hi, yes, I’m back. But more importantly, Logos, Pathos?”
<=Yes?=>
“How the fuck is my mother forcing the [Library of Nowhere] to surface like this? I’ve (technically) known her for years, and I’m fairly certain she never mentioned any connection with this place before…right?”
=That is correct, you’re the first mortal lord we’ve had in a long time.=
“Cool, so again, how?”
“Again?”
=Don’t worry, the last incident was three generations and a millenia ago.=
“Ah.”
“Emergency knock?”
=It’s nothing to extravagant, just something that forces the library to come out of hiding so that the kaijin can go in and sweep up the issues with extreme prejudice.=
“Okay, that tracks, but that still doesn’t explain my mother.”
“I…sincerely doubt that.”
=So do we, since you’re one hundred percent mortal with no special physiques…yet.=
“Yet?”
“That…makes a little too much sense…huh.”
=…=
“…”
<...if you had nickel everytime->
=Now’s not the time.=
“Okay, gameplan. I need all the kaijin back at my side, ASAP, and then we can do what I do best: lie through my teeth and put on a show.”
<=Of course, milord.=>
________________________________________
“Holy shit…”
“This is what the Library of Nowhere looks like from the outside? It’s huge!”
“Why are you guys…oh right. Y’all ever usually enter via Xiao Liu’s key. Let me say this now, that method is significantly more convenient than this.”
“Grunt.”
“Kuu.”
The girls watched on with a mix of awe and shock as the Library of Nowhere across from the Jade Lake like an ancient monster, with water flowing off of its architecture in powerful streams. Granted, most of their shock was still being directed towards the woman who caused this sight to happen in the first place.
Daria Nerissa-Zhen continued to stare at the rising library with a plain look on her face, with only the slightest hint of fascination in her eyes.
When the Library of Nowhere finally stopped rumbling and settle into place.
“Huh…so this is where my darling baby boy runs off to every now and then with those kaijin of his? I must say…I thought it’d be creepier…based on what I was told by that old rhino.”
“What the fuck?”
The moment they heard Daria’s commentary, the girls couldn’t help but wonder even more about her past. Especially since she just so casually name dropped the term “kaijin”.
“Well then, what are you girls standing around for? Come on, I have a child to discipline for being reckless.”
“Huh? Oh, yes ma’am!”
“Grunt.”
“Kuu.”
Tiny and Mini opted to not follow the humans as they went into the library, since they were bit too big to get through the front door.
Rianna and Jinju Ren, on the other hand, moved with a surprising amount of celerity, as they had never seen Zhen Liu’s mother actually discipline him before and were honestly curious exactly how their relationship functioned.
As for Jin Fang, she was noticeably lagging behind the group with a very complicated look on her face.
After all, it couldn’t be coincidental that the woman, who picked her up off the streets when she was an orphan, also had a complicated history with the entities known as the kaijin…right?
‘In Roaring Tide, a pair of old kaijin proclaimed me as the heir to their lady’s will. At home, I am the adoptive daughter of a woman who claims to know what the kaijin are and lover to a man who commands them…what the fuck?’
In this exact moment, Jin Fang now understood why Zhen Liu was a bit of a neurotic mess nowadays. Her head would be a mess too if she had to think about how much weirder and stranger her life seems to be on the day-to-day basis.
‘The more information I have, the more questions I have…ay caramba.’
But for now, those questions would have to be addressed another time. Right now, she had to be there for her boyfriend.
‘Xiao Liu is probably going to get exposed by Lady Daria…meaning I’m going to have help concoct a lie to make it seem like he hasn’t been hiding this place from everyone for no reason. Wait, did Zhen Liu ever give his “master” a name? Shit…’
Evidently, her lying would be for naught…not that knew at the time, of course.
________________________________________
When the *KNOCK* rocked through the Library of Nowhere, it did a bit more than force the place to rise to the surface.
The *KNOCK* had also forced the internal layout of the library to suddenly reset to its original setting, forcing all of the visitors to now be gathered in a singular circular lobby and leading to this interaction.
“Oh…”
“My…my little soldier…”
“No regrets…”
“Who the hell are the…why are you guys covering your crotches?”
“Empathetic pains”×5
“Gross.”
