Chapter 418: Forced Landing (5k)
“Boom!”
“Ah hahahaha! Awesome!”
Even Fisher found it hard to imagine how this small boat fell from the sky, how it constantly transitioned between the crevice and reality. He only felt the violent shaking around him, sensed the unimaginable speed of the wooden boat, and heard the screams of Tang Zeming Asuka beside him and Hela’s laughter.
He squinted hard, gripping the edge of the wooden boat, and looked up ahead, only to find Gouwen had completely lost consciousness, slumped in the middle of the boat, while Mikhail, whose expression was also not looking good, held onto his clothes to prevent him from being thrown out. He turned to glance at Hela, who was still standing steadily at the stern, and couldn’t help but shout loudly,
“When will this end?”
Fisher raised an eyebrow, not understanding a word he said. He had completely forgotten that they were no longer in the Holy Realm, and naturally, he couldn’t understand the other person’s words. In their current team, everyone spoke a different language.
Hela tilted her ear and shouted back,
“What did you say? I don’t understand?!”
“.”
Mikhail remained silent. He just felt the temperature around him rising little by little. The enormous dragon deity ahead showed no intention of heading towards the Tree Continent but circled around outside the universe, flying towards his lair, the Dragon Continent. Hela also showed no intention of following him. At this moment, right in front of this small boat, the planet was getting closer, along with the remarkably bright World Tree in the night.
“Sssssss!”
At tens of thousands of meters in free fall, the surface of the wooden boat quickly began to heat up. Hela at the stern smiled slightly, and from her illusory blue and golden wings, a gentle morning light spread, enveloping the entire small boat. Then, as if she were flicking a whip at a spinning top, she pointed at the air beside her, causing the entire wooden boat to start spinning in mid-air.
“Ugh.”
Beside her, Tang Zeming Asuka could no longer hold on, her eyes rolling back as she fell beside the still struggling Fisher. Meanwhile, Gouwen in front directly foamed at the mouth, causing Mikhail to quietly step back, while Fisher could no longer contain himself, glanced at Hela at the stern, and shouted loudly,
“Hela!!”
“Don’t panic, don’t panic, our speed has already reached its maximum, we can’t go any faster.”
“You crazy woman.”
Fisher was at a loss for words, he could no longer resist standing up and making his way towards Hela. As they descended rapidly, the wooden boat finally passed through the middle layer and entered the atmospheric stratification. It was night, and the Tree Continent was cloudless, with the rapidly moving morning light boat and the distant enormous World Tree being so conspicuous.
With no clouds to block the view, the morning light around the boat gradually dimmed. Thus, the vast continent beneath the tree, which had completely disappeared in the future, finally appeared before Fisher’s eyes for the first time. Looking at the continent, not smaller than the Western Continent, it was hard to imagine what kind of great power had caused it to completely sink and disappear from people’s sight during the mythical war.
But at this moment, he clearly couldn’t think about such profound topics. He quickly reached Hela’s side and, seeing her having so much fun, Fisher felt furious. Gouwen and Tang Zeming Asuka had already lost consciousness, and Mikhail, although still awake, was barely holding on.
“Hela, slow down, if we keep going like this they will—”
Before he finished speaking, Fisher immediately noticed that Hela’s face had turned golden, and that was not Hela’s own brilliance, but something shining behind her.
He turned back in astonishment and found that a series of pure gold threads suddenly lit up on the giant tree. Following those threads, enormous energy transformed into glittering golden orbs, rapidly locking onto the wooden boat that was about to crash into the Tree Continent.
Each of these golden orbs contained immense destructive power, capable of easily reshaping mountains and rivers, making Fisher feel an overwhelming sense of danger.
“What are those?”
“Ah, those are the Universe Axis Lines of the elves. They are very sensitive to space and have set up a lot of these at the edge of the Tree Continent. The power is quite large; if I take a direct hit, I’d probably be gravely injured. I don’t know if Feima Baharon will also be hit when he comes. If we get hit, we’re all done for.”
Fisher raised an eyebrow, looking at Hela, unable to contain his curiosity.
“We. are here to celebrate a birthday, right?”
“Yup, that’s right.”
“Then why are they shooting us down?”
“Ah, that’s probably because I forgot to tell them we would arrive early. Usually, it’s the elves who come to pick us up. We hurried out this time and didn’t inform them to omit bringing slaves or anything. To be precise, we should be considered illegal immigrants? But don’t you think that makes it more exciting?”
Looking at the smiling Hela in front of him, Fisher felt increasingly headache-ridden. It seemed he was encountering someone who didn’t play by the rules for the first time, or rather, an angel. But in essence, if he had to explain her motives, it was clearly to seek fun.
As the Universe Axis Line drew nearer, the golden orbs carrying a tremendous wind power came hurtling towards them, causing Mikhail’s hair to stand on end. It felt as if he was locked onto by hundreds of Siberian wind’s beam satellites. The golden orbs, which were thirty or forty meters tall, drew closer, and Hela smiled, standing up. Before Fisher had time to react, she barefoot kicked him down to the ground.
“Dear passengers, please hold on tight! The Morning Star is encountering turbulence, and Captain Hela is about to guide you through the storm! Once again, please hold on tight!”
Two of the four passengers had already lost their connection, and the remaining two weren’t in a much better condition either.
Hela’s golden short curly hair was whipped relentlessly by the wind, but she didn’t care, raising the gigantic scythe in her hand, spinning it to generate a cutting force that could penetrate space.
If the Moonwalker was merely an ordinary holy relic created by Michael because of his nostalgia, this scythe was a real treasure, a ferrying scythe that could actively open up space.
“Buzz buzz buzz!”
As the space was disturbed, the Universe Axis Line’s way of locking onto enemies was simultaneously disrupted. The massive golden orbs instantly trembled, like headless flies that lost their direction. Hela’s loose white robe was blown wildly by the oncoming wind, unexpectedly revealing her soft body curve.
Well, it was flat.
After all, she seemed to not have confirmed her gender yet, her personality traits just leaning towards femininity.
She laughed easily, steering the wooden boat to just graze the edges of the two massive light orbs. The whole ship had her, standing at the rear swinging the scythe. One could only imagine how cool and chic she thought she looked.
“.”
Watching the two orbs zip past their boat, Fisher, for some reason, suddenly breathed a sigh of relief as if this crisis had finally passed. But before he could fully exhale, he immediately saw a scene that would be unforgettable for a lifetime.
Hela elegantly swung her scythe, and then with a sudden jerk of her wrist, the enormous scythe flew out of her hand and straight towards Tang Zeming Asuka, the effect of cutting space suddenly stopping, exposing the whole wooden boat’s location to the Universe Axis Line.
Fisher’s heart jumped to his throat, and Hela froze in place, then awkwardly scratched her head,
“Oops, slipped out.”
“You!”
“Boom!!”
Before Fisher could finish his sentence, the two golden orbs behind them erupted suddenly, ringing through the quiet night like massive fireworks, the violent shockwaves spreading far into the vast sky, even overshadowing the dim moon.
“Were you scared?”
The violent explosion did not take their lives because just a second before the explosion, a gentle white light suddenly filled Fisher’s vision, and then they appeared at the edge of the Tree Continent, in the lower troposphere, roughly under a thousand meters high.
The Tree Continent at night was eerily quiet. Occasionally, sounds of animals calling and leaves swirling in the wind could be heard. Everything felt peaceful, but the few passengers on the ship were badly shaken, the pounding of their hearts still echoing in their ears.
Fisher sat up in a daze, only to see their wooden boat slowly descending in mid-air. In this nighttime, whether it was an illusion or not, Fisher felt it was much dimmer than the era he lived in. The enormous World Tree almost seemed transparent at night; the golden light it emitted wasn’t its own, but the sunlight that lingered within it after passing through.
The air here was humid, a blend of the scent of plants and the ocean, bringing a freshness different from that after rain.
Hela, clad in a white robe, sat quietly at the stern, her legs extending out of the boat, slightly rocking at the side of the boat, as if the crazy woman from earlier was not her at all. However, when she turned to look at Fisher, asking if he was scared, the teasing smile on her face proved her extremely mischievous nature.
“Oh, I almost wanted to drink vodka just now. I vowed I must drink vodka before I die. (In Russian)”
“I can’t understand what you’re saying.”
Behind them, Mikhail also slumped, lying against the inner side of the boat, breathing heavily while mumbling something in Russian that Fisher couldn’t comprehend. Fisher replied to him in Nali, and talking made him suddenly sit up and look at Hela, seeming somewhat incredulous.
Did she just ask him in Nali?
“You can speak Nali?”
“Yep, just learned it from you.”
“So fast?”
“Just that fast.”
Fisher stopped responding. Hela then took out two small boxes from the storage space she possessed and tossed them to Fisher and Mikhail, repeating in both Nali and the otherworldly Russian,
“Don’t worry, I considered the language issue before coming. I asked Lord Michael for something that lets you communicate freely. There is a Subhuman race in the Dragon Continent called Brain Demon Race; as long as they are present, everyone can communicate without barriers. Lord Michael studied this principle in detail and created this thing.”
Fisher and Mikhail opened the boxes, only to see a strange gelatinous tentacle-like substance lying quietly inside, their faces immediately looking strange.
Based on previous experiences dealing with Michael’s angel toys, Fisher didn’t know whether the shape of this thing designed by Michael was intentional or accidental.
But he still followed Hela’s hint and sucked down the gelatinous jelly, and then his face gradually lit up with sparkling patterns. When he spoke again, their words could now be understood by others.
“As for them… well, let’s wait until they wake up to feed them. I didn’t expect them to be so weak. This little human girl could be forgiven, but this Whale Folk should be around Rank 13; how can she not hold up better than a little girl?”
“If you could have informed us in advance about the danger of this journey, maybe they would have fared better.”
“But if that were the case, wouldn’t it be boring? Many things become extremely dull once you know them in advance; the unknown is what makes it the most fun.”
“No, at least humans tend to fear the unknown.”
“Oh?”
Hela rested her chin on her hand as she reclined back in the boat, looking at Fisher and smiling as she said,
“But is that really the case? Life certainly feels fear towards the unknown, but that is merely part of it; the other part is the excitement and curiosity that are difficult to detect. Though it’s a bit challenging, I really enjoy this unexpected interest. It’s just a pity that reality often prevents me from fulfilling that wish. But if others could also experience this unexpected joy for me, I would be very happy.”
“.”
Fisher largely understood what she meant by “not being able to fulfill that wish.” Just like this time, although the previous situation looked very dangerous, it was clear that Hela was fully aware; otherwise, she wouldn’t have effortlessly saved the whole boatload of people at the last moment. For her, this was clearly not thrilling enough.
Fisher didn’t continue the topic but looked down at the dense forest below the wooden boat and asked,
“What’s our next plan?”
“Well, we still have about a month until the birthday celebration. From here, let me see, it seems to be the ‘Chuan’ kingdom. Walking from here to the World Tree will take exactly one month, just perfectly.”
The term Hela mentioned was a very short monosyllabic word. Fisher chewed on the name and asked with some confusion,
“Chuan? Is that the name of a kingdom in the Tree Continent?”
Mikhail next to him also perked up his ears, seemingly interested in this otherworldly topic.
“No, it’s the name of an elf. Including the Elf King, there are a total of 106 elves, and their names are all single syllables. The Tree Continent is vast, and the Elf King divides it into over ninety feudal states according to five ranks from high to low, allotting the land of the Tree Continent to these elves for governance.”
Feudal?
Fisher suddenly thought of the Northern Region but then recalled that the Phoenix itself was from the Eastern Continent, which had migrated from the Tree Continent to the Northern Region. They very likely brought the method of managing kingdoms by the elves along to the Northern Region, even if the Eastern Continent sunk afterward. This institution was remarkably carried over by the races oppressed by the elves to foreign lands, continuing into Fisher’s era.
Mikhail stroked his chin and said,
“So, we are now landing in a feudal state governed by an elf named ‘Chuan.’ What rank is this elf?”
“He has been granted the title of Duke Chuan by the Elf King. He is the ruler of a small kingdom at the edge of the Tree Continent, with a rank of about Rank 16. However, I’ve heard he is a very kind elf. Unlike other feudal states that strictly adhere to etiquette, Chuan treats other races with great tolerance and is a very benevolent lord, which is why I deliberately chose to land here.”
“I see.”
Fisher looked down at the increasingly close giant forest, a vibrant scene quickly colliding with his sight, captivating him for a moment.
But the nighttime scenery was too dark, and even with his vision, he couldn’t see what was happening below clearly. He could only return to the edge of the wooden boat, waiting for Hela to land them on the ground and begin their journey to the Tree Continent.
Gouwen, with traces of white foam at the corner of his mouth, was sprawled out asleep, while behind him, the massive tail of the whale thrashed irregularly against the boat, causing it to shake. He was mumbling some indistinct words. Mikhail’s ears twitched, quickly catching the words translated from the divine relic he had just swallowed.
“Wife, ha. Wife.”
Mikhail’s expression darkened instantly. Not knowing if he was reminded of something embarrassing, he sighed silently and sat farther away from Gouwen.
Meanwhile, Tang Zeming Asuka, curled up next to Fisher and also asleep, remained very quiet. Though her lips seemed to move slightly, the words were so small they could only assume she was muttering in her dreams from sheer fright.
“What does Subhuti mean?”
At the same time, far away from the Tree Continent, atop a massive and towering palace filled with sunlight, a wide yet seemingly bottomless pool began to ripple, reflecting the sunlight into scattered, dazzling dots.
In that pool, a blurry scene subtly revealed itself, showing only Fisher in an angel’s white robe, leaning against the black night amidst the moonlight, gazing down at the scene below.
Beside the pool, a cold, indifferent female voice suddenly whispered,
“Désolé, Tu dois mourir.”
(The French: Sorry, you must die.)
The ripples in the pool gradually dispersed, and Fisher’s image vanished without a trace. Following the sunlight outside, a haze of faint golden color emerged in the profound depths of the pool.
That was the radiance of the World Tree.
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(End of the chapter)
