novelraw Chapter 341: Belatu’s Notes, the Forbidden Lake
Chapter 341: Belatu’s Notes, the Forbidden Lake
Lin Xun bade farewell to Oathbreaker Flanda and returned to the estate castle.
After obtaining the Wax Seal of Belatu Estate, whether guards or servants, all of them obeyed him completely.
Originally, there were barely any castle guards left after he’d slaughtered them, but as long as he refreshed and reset once, the number of guards could recover again.
After Lin Xun became the new Nightmare Yuri, he could openly explore the entire castle.
Sure enough, after a round of searching, he found something.
[…]
[You search the living quarters on the third floor of the castle, and in the drawer of a desk you discover a blueprint.]
[You have obtained Bush Cricket City Reconstruction Blueprint (item)!]
[You continue searching the living quarters. Regrettably, you can no longer find anything of value…]
Lin Xun opened his inventory to check.[Bush Cricket City Reconstruction Blueprint (item): A blueprint marked with the surface buildings of Bush Cricket City. Based on this blueprint, after the White-Fleece Snow Season subsides, you can command the relevant Ascended ones to construct buildings such as the War Hatchery, the griffin hatchery pool, and more.]
He tried clicking the item, and a long list of text immediately appeared, all about city buildings.
“Is this SimCity?”
Lin Xun was greatly interested. After studying it for quite a while, he discovered the item couldn’t be used right now. Only after the White-Fleece Snow Season ended could he produce these armory-type buildings.
[Just as you are about to leave the living quarters, you suddenly stop in your tracks!]
[You turn your head to look at the wardrobe in the corner. It seems as though something there is calling to you.]
[You turn around and walk to the wardrobe, opening the cabinet door…]
[Several ordinary pieces of clothing hang in the wardrobe. You can’t see anything unusual.]
[The inexplicable guidance keeps circling in your mind and refuses to leave. In the dim unknown, a voice constantly tells you: close your eyes, climb into the wardrobe…]
[Do you want to do as it says?]
Lin Xun’s first reaction was that it was a trap.
He’d been screwed over by this hellish game too many times, to the point he even had symptoms of ‘post-traumatic stress disorder.’
“Snow Woman, your turn!”
He decisively summoned the shikigami Snow Woman, having her climb into the wardrobe to scout.
Snow Woman was already used to orders like this, and without realizing it, she transformed into the appearance of a three-headed lion.
What was strange was that after Snow Woman followed the prompt, climbed into the wardrobe, and closed her eyes, nothing unusual happened.
Lin Xun stuffed several summons into the wardrobe one after another, and he still didn’t see any trap appear.
“Looks like it has to be the person themselves going in…”
He gritted his teeth and clicked to enter.
[Following the guidance in the dim unknown, you climb into the wardrobe and close the cabinet door, then close your eyes and wait silently…]
[…]
[The voice echoing in your mind gradually weakens, then disappears.]
[You open your eyes in confusion. The wardrobe is still narrow and cramped, pitch-black. Nothing has happened.]
[You angrily shove open the cabinet door, having been toyed with by a prank, but what enters your view is no longer the familiar living quarters, but a secret room far smaller than the living quarters.]
[There are no doors or windows in the secret room, only solid walls all around, with a simple arrangement of tables and chairs.]
[A gigantic page that flickers with a faint glow floats in the center of the secret room…]
[You have discovered a remaining chapter of the Book of Salvation – Resting Page!]
[Do you want to step forward and touch Resting Page?]
Lin Xun was delighted.
The Resting Page not only represented a respawn point, it also represented that there was no danger in the secret room. It was a safe zone.
[…]
[After touching Resting Page, you continue observing the secret room…]
[On the desk ahead lies an opened notebook, recording handwriting left behind by an unknown figure…]
[You stride forward…]
[You have obtained Unknown Notes (Document)!]
Lin Xun didn’t understand what was going on, and immediately opened his inventory to check the Document item.
[Unknown Notes (Document)]
[…]
[I loathe my current body beyond measure, this body that has been remodeled to look like a demon!]
[But how would I dare defy Mother?]
[Even my younger sister Flanda, once the most favored child, could not escape after defying Mother’s will, let alone me.]
[My sister was the first child to bear the experiment, which was undoubtedly a harsh punishment…]
[The experiment failed, without any surprise.]
[As a traitor, Flanda not only had to endure the torment of long darkness and solitude, but also endless pain.]
[That pipeline connecting to her enormous and grotesque lower body draws upon my sister’s strength without pause, to nourish the Divine Kingdom’s land.]
[What is forcibly extracted is not merely bodily strength, but also the soul’s. This cruel pain reaches straight into the depths of the soul, far beyond what simple bodily torment can compare to.]
[The agony of tearing the soul apart can effortlessly crush one’s will, no matter how firm that powerful will may be!]
[If it were me, I fear I would have gone mad long ago under that torment… let alone the fact that darkness and solitude would amplify that pain by thousands upon thousands.]
[With Flanda’s example before us, not a single child dared defy Mother.]
[We naively believed that as long as we did not defy Mother, we would not become test subjects.]
[But we overestimated our weight in Mother’s heart, and underestimated Mother’s thirst for power. No, it should be called a thirst for transcendence.]
[Mother’s once kind and benevolent gaze quietly changed, and the look in her eyes when she watched her children became like staring at cattle and sheep.]
[I should have realized sooner… we are all test subjects. Every child is a test subject. Every one of the children of the gods who believes in Her is a test subject!]
[All the children, whether willingly or by force, underwent the Wet Nurse’s experiments. Yet not a single child could perfectly fuse with the demon’s life factor.]
[The way the children look now is the result of experimental failure.]
[Because the demon’s life factor is simply too powerful!]
[Even if Mother burned her divine body and, as she wished, deciphered the nature of the demon factor, she still could not forcibly fuse this brand-new life factor in a short time.]
[After all children had fallen into being failures, Mother did not stop. She did not hesitate to spend divine power and use the civilization technology of the former world to replicate Flanda again and again, making new test subjects.]
[So Mother had long understood that every child who participated in the experiment would fail without exception. That pipeline connected to Flanda’s lower body not only extracts strength, it can also provide an endless supply of living materials for the copied clones…]
[All the children believe Mother has gone mad!]
[Perhaps She went mad the moment She learned of Flanda’s betrayal. Perhaps She went mad when She burned her divine body to decipher the demon factor. Or perhaps She went mad when, after one experiment after another failed, She fell into endless despair…]
[In any case, She is no longer the once loving Mother…]
[Perhaps the god branded with the name of demon sensed my resentment and despair.]
[In the dim unknown, I received an intangible summons, and could not help but go to the Forbidden Lake, hidden deep underground and never before discovered.]
[…]
[In the end, I still took that step, following in my sister Flanda’s footsteps toward a bottomless abyss…]
[…]
[Later one, when you see this notebook, I should already be dead.]
[When the Desire Wet Nurse ordered me to rush to the front line, She demanded that I offer up part of my flesh and glandular organ.]
[Presumably, She already knows I have become an Oathbreaker like Flanda.]
[I know my final end will be dying on the battlefield of the divine war, but I do not feel even the slightest regret. When I took that step, I already foresaw it would end this way.]
[Not long after I fall in battle, Belatu will appear before the world in an entirely new form. That is my earliest form, the form I miss the most, and also the form I had when I was born a human.]
[This is probably the only thing worth being happy about, and yet also a despairing thing.]
[If you can enter this secret room and see this notebook, it proves that you, like me, hate the Desire Wet Nurse.]
[Later one, please go to the Forbidden Lake…]
[There, you can follow in my footsteps and Flanda’s, and continue onward.]
[I do not know whether you can fulfill the wish we could not complete, but if no one hacks through thorns and brambles, the road ahead will remain forever blocked.]
[I also do not understand whether the end of the road is an abyss or open ground, but there must always be later ones like you and me, so that the endpoint can be seen clearly…]
[…]
[You have learned the specific location of the Forbidden Lake!]
After reading the long stretch of notes, Lin Xun let out a long sigh.
The owner of the notebook was Belatu, the castle’s former master.
From the contents of the notes, every child under the Wet Nurse’s command had been unable to escape the fate of becoming a test subject.
He still remembered the form of the Wet Nurse’s divine idol: a mother nursing a child. The child was a bloated, twisted maggot, while the mother was still a mature, voluptuous woman.
So the hellish game had long used the idol’s form to tell him the true plot hidden beneath the text.
Belatu left the location of the Forbidden Lake in the notes, and stated clearly that by going there, one could step onto the road of resisting the Wet Nurse.
Aside from Belatu’s notes, there were no other valuable items in the secret room.
He climbed into the wardrobe again. With his eyes closed and opened, he returned to the living quarters on the third floor of the castle.
After thinking for a moment, Lin Xun didn’t go straight to the Forbidden Lake.
He needed to do some preparation first.
As for the extra Shadow Dancer Tuning Fluid in his inventory, he had already thought of a better use for it.
He decisively recalled Maid Kim to the castle and began to discipline her.
[…]
[Special skill Perfect Molting activates!]
[You cut off all ganglia connected inside the container’s body, gradually separating from the container…]
[…]
[Molting successful. You have perfectly separated from the container Ascended Shadow Dancer Nightmare Yuri!]
[Due to the special effect of Perfect Molting, this container can maintain brief vitality for three minutes.]
[While vitality remains, you may parasitize this container again without any loss!]
[Kim watches you crawl out of the container and turn back into a maggot-person form, completely baffled.]
[Suddenly it widens its eyes, staring fixedly at the container shell of Nightmare Yuri, and shouts in disbelief. How can this container still maintain vitality?]
[You jerk your chin toward the container, signaling Kim to stop talking nonsense and hurry up and complete parasitism while vitality still remains.]
[Though Kim is somewhat doubtful, it immediately begins parasitism…]
[…]
[Very soon, Maid Kim completes parasitism, becoming Shadow Dancer Kim.]
[However, after it parasitized the container, the container’s pale carapace gradually turned dark, ultimately becoming pitch-black carapace like an Aberrant one.]
[You pat Kim on the shoulder, praising it for doing a good job. From now on, while you are out, Kim will manage the castle in your stead.]
[Kim helplessly spreads its hands, then curses as it pulls out Milk-Sap Matsutake, squeezes out white slime, and smears it across its whole body…]
[You bid Kim farewell and are about to leave the castle, but it calls out to stop you. Kim nods at you, and there is gratitude in its gaze.]
[You wave a hand, leaving it with a dashing back view as you turn and leave…]
[…]
Plot characters were different from Apostles.
An Apostle’s oath faith would not change the shell’s appearance.
For example, Lin Xun himself had the oath faith of the Golden Blazing Sun, but the Corrupted Earth Giant still looked like a Corrupted one with crimson eyes.
But plot characters could not do that. Whatever oath faith they had would be reflected on their physical shell.
Thus, Kim was always pitch-black, and had to rely on items and makeup to disguise itself as an Ascended one.
By giving the Nightmare Yuri container to Kim, Lin Xun could act as a hands-off boss and continue exploring the map.
He had Shadow Dancer Tuning Fluid. As long as he gave that item to the Parasite shell, he could transform into a Shadow Dancer anytime, anywhere, return to the castle, and continue executing the tasks young girl Flanda had assigned.
Judging the time, the fate-changing artifact was about to finish recharging again.
Lin Xun opened his inventory and casually clicked Sakura Falls Yasaka Curved Jewel.
Ever since obtaining the Shriveled Replica Umbilical Cord, he had used the fate-changing artifact several times. The best result was only rolling twenty-something Luck Value.
He wasn’t anxious. Anyway, the Shriveled Replica Umbilical Cord had no time limit. Sooner or later he would roll triple six for an instant kill.
[You take out an ancient hook-shaped magatama that gathers great luck, and pray devoutly…]
[…]
[You consume 87 Luck Value from Sakura Falls Yasaka Curved Jewel, massively increasing your own Luck attribute!]
[Suddenly, golden light descends from the heavens and envelops you. A hundred flowers bloom around you, seven-colored radiance bursts forth, as if countless immortal cranes and luan birds sing in harmony…]
[Please note: the duration of this boost is extremely short.]
[Current remaining Luck Value: 13/100. Do you want to use this item again?]
Lin Xun was overjoyed.
With lightning speed, he clicked Shriveled Replica Umbilical Cord.
[…By directly using this item, you have a certain probability of obtaining the location of the Wet Nurse’s Umbilical Cord.]
[Note: This probability is not 100%. Please confirm whether you want to use it directly.]
[You take out a shriveled tubular flesh-and-blood organ. The Shriveled Replica Umbilical Cord in your hand gradually weathers into sandy powder…]
[In the dim unknown, you sense that one Wet Nurse’s Umbilical Cord is hidden in a very distant corner.]
[You focus your attention and carefully perceive…]
[You have learned the specific location of Factor Cloning Laboratory – Resource Repository No. 16.]
Lin Xun frowned.
“No. 16… There are many more cloning laboratories?”
Now he had gained another location to explore.
After thinking a little, he still decided to go to the Forbidden Lake first.
Whether it was the Wet Nurse’s Umbilical Cord or the Factor Cloning Laboratory, both were related to the Wet Nurse, so the difficulty was surely extremely high.
And the Forbidden Lake was Belatu’s Oathbreaking place. Presumably, it shouldn’t be too dangerous.