Lin Sanjiu knew she was wrong.
She had always thought that the world was destroyed by a few giants, until she was pinched between Deva's fingers.
She had a long, pointy face. The muscles on her cheekbones bulged so much that Deva's eyes were squeezed into thin arcs. Every breath she took was filled with a pungent stench, stirring up a hot and humid gust in the air.
For a split second, Lin Sanjiu thought that she would be crushed into a grape by the force of the gigantic Deva. However, the thousand-meter-tall Deva seemed to be filled with love for them. She picked them up from the air with extreme gentleness.
Then, she bent down and scraped the two of them off the ground with the nail of her index finger as if she was scraping her nose. They fell straight into the City of Ants. During this process, Lin Sanjiu's body was as stiff as a piece of dead wood. Only her eyeballs could move. Both she and her grand prize were paralyzed. They had been deprived of their ability to move.
"Is this the so-called" Divine Power "?"
The slate on the ground was getting closer and closer to her. Lin Sanjiu's vision darkened, and her bones wobbled as if they were going to shatter at any moment.
Before she could even let out a moan, the sound of footsteps came from all directions. The smoke and dust gradually settled, revealing heavy, sluggish, numb, and tired faces. The faces approached one after another, as if there was no end to them. Very soon, they filled his field of vision, like pieces of meat mushrooms, squeezing each other, expressionless.
At first glance, they all looked the same. It was hard to tell their age from their facial features.
After years of being exposed to the wind and sand, the skin on their faces had turned a yellowish brown. Their skin hung loosely from their bones as if they were dying of old age. When four to five muscular men separated the crowd and carried Lin Sanjiu and her grand prize, Lin Sanjiu realized that the oldest among them was probably in his thirties or forties.
As Lin Sanjiu raised her field of vision, she looked around and realized that the place where Deva was just a moment ago was now empty. It had disappeared without a trace, just like how it came here. All that was left was the rocky mountain that pierced through the clouds. It stood abruptly on the ground, its peak almost touching the thick white fog.
Lin Sanjiu couldn't help thinking of the finger that had retracted into the white fog.
"Hey," a hoarse voice suddenly came from above a pair of hands. "So this is a woman?"
The other man who was carrying the man also responded with the same dry and hoarse voice, "Really, really! Go back and inform the warden! "
Someone in the crowd immediately cleared his throat and ran away. Everyone's voice was so hoarse that it was unbearable. It was as if they screamed at the top of their lungs every day.
"So what if I'm a woman?"
Lin Sanjiu's heart sank. She rolled her eyes until they hurt, but all she could see was the white mist in the sky and the chin and nostrils of the person who was lifting her up. Her vision wavered along with her footsteps for a long time before she finally came to a stop.
Deva must have done something to them. Even after thirty minutes, both of them were still. Lin Sanjiu could tell that they were still. could not move. Judging from their bodies, they were that they were moving downwards. Just like that, they were carried to an unknown place and placed back on the ground.
"Help them up," a voice that Lin Sanjiu had never heard before came from above them. The voice wasn't hoarse, but it sounded as if two bones were rubbing against each other. "Which one of them is a woman?"
As he spoke, someone helped Lin Sanjiu and Ji Shanqing up and placed them against something. Now, they could finally see clearly. However, before Lin Sanjiu could look around, a man beside her pushed the grand prize forward and said, "This one is a woman."
"Hmm," the voice from before asked, "What about this one?"
Lin Sanjiu looked up as she heard the question.
Standing a dozen steps in front of her was a duoluozhong that had turned green and had no hair at all. The duoluozhong was draped in a robe, and its body seemed to have been hollowed out. Its two eyeballs sat in its withered eye sockets. Where its lips used to be, they were so dry that they were wrinkled, revealing a deep hole.
Behind this duoluozhong, who was known as a "warden", stood a larger group of people. Even though there were a few duoluozhong, most of them were living humans. Their skin was yellowish brown, and they looked haggard. None of them were dressed as fully as the duoluozhong's robe. Rings after rings rose up behind them. They looked like the auditorium of the Colosseum in Rome, but every ring was filled with holes. It seemed like they were living quarters. From the looks of it, they should be at the bottom of the City of Ants.
"I think this one is also a woman," the duoluozhong walked a few steps closer. Its eyeballs rolled down and the skin on its forehead twitched. For some reason, its words stirred up a cacophony of noises.
It looked at Lin Sanjiu and suddenly stretched out its two long, withered arms, "We haven't met any female heretics for a long time. I think we should postpone their baptism."
"Warden," one of the men who had carried them all the way here asked softly, "Isn't it too dangerous to keep the heretics alive and not let them be baptized? After all, the divine glow on their bodies will soon … "
"Divine glow? Is it referring to the effect of immobilizing people?"
A meaningful smile appeared on the duoluozhong's face. The skin on its face parted, revealing a long, dry crack.
"This must be a test from Deva," the pair of eyeballs rolled around, "I will make a decision before the divine glow disappears."
As soon as the duoluozhong said that, all the duoluozhong and emaciated people lowered their heads at the same time. They mumbled something indistinctly.
"At least, the baptism won't happen for the time being..."
Just as Lin Sanjiu's heart settled a little, the duoluozhong moved a few steps to the side. Her heart skipped a beat.
As soon as the duoluozhong moved away, Lin Sanjiu could clearly see the crowd behind her. There were women, and there were quite a few of them. Under their dry and unkempt hair, their eyes were like ink blobs thrown out by fountain pens. They were lifeless.
The most striking thing was that almost every one of the women, no matter how old they looked, no matter whether they had children by their side or not, their bellies were so swollen and stretched forward that they looked as if they were about to be pulled out of shape, and the huge globes seemed as if they would at any moment drop them to the ground when compared with their slender figures.
Lin Sanjiu took a glance and saw a wrinkled, emaciated pregnant woman with white hair. Her stomach constricted, and she lowered her eyes.
She wanted to turn around and look at Ji Shanqing, but she couldn't move an inch. Her fists hung stiffly by her legs. Her fists were still empty. She had to think carefully about what item to call out so that she could escape with her grand prize while she couldn't move at all.
The duoluozhong nodded. Its eyeballs looked as if they were going to fall out at any moment. It turned around and waved its hand, "Send them to the temple."
Two pairs of hands reached out from behind Lin Sanjiu and lifted her up. As soon as the duoluozhong finished speaking, the crowd parted like a herd of sheep, revealing a staircase that led deep into the ground behind them.
There was a statue of Deva standing at the foot of the staircase. Each statue was as tall as a human, and it looked like a miniature version of Deva. The eyes of the statue were facing downwards. When Lin Sanjiu was carried down the staircase, she felt as if Deva's smiling gaze was glued to her body, giving her goosebumps.
When Lin Sanjiu and her grand prize were thrown onto the ground of the temple, she suddenly heard a muffled voice coming from the dark space in front of them. Enduring the pain in her nose, Lin Sanjiu tried her best to raise her eyes. She could vaguely make out another humanoid figure lying on the ground in the distance.
The smell of blood permeated her nostrils as if it was a substance. Following the rustling of fabric, the feet of the duoluozhong walked past the two of them.
"You guys will see him getting baptized soon," a duoluozhong's voice rang out from behind them, "He is a posthuman that we caught ourselves."
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