Volume 3 Hello, Eri Chapter 184 Death of the Black Swan (Part 4)
"Your lines are already at the level of Lord Piccolo! Will you be happy only if you destroy the world?" Bondarev has actually watched Dragon Ball.
"You just said her body was half-alive and half-dead, right?" The boy ignored Bondarev's nonsense and complained about something else that he cared about more.
"Yes, it starts from the place on the spine where the bayonet of the Mosin-Nagant rifle hit me." Bondarev turned around and gestured around his spine with his hands. "There are still muscles and skin from the Mosin-Nagant to the head, and the scales are still there, but from that position to the coccyx, there are only bones. By the way, you said you broke the dragon bone cross of the Queen of Ocean and Water, but I didn't see any broken bones on her body."
"Of course she will grow new bones to repair herself. Dragons have such tenacious vitality. But the new dragon bone cross only has half of the original power. Her half is with me." The boy showed a playful and cold smile. "It seems that the Alexander family is not stupid. They let Black Swan Port conduct genetic experiments. I am afraid that my family has also tried many times."
"What's the meaning?"
"The bayonet of the Mosin-Nagant rifle is definitely not an ordinary one. It is an alchemical weapon with some kind of seal."
"Seal? This word sounds like something from a game. The big devil can't be killed, so he can only be sealed up. Therefore, the devil will always be reborn after lying dormant for many years, and the NNNNNth generation descendants of the hero will have to shoulder the fate and embark on the adventure of killing the devil again..."
Bondarev seemed to suddenly think of something when he said this, and his eyes widened in surprise: "Damn, isn't this the script of your dragon clan? If you can't kill them, they will wake up again as long as there is a cocoon!"
"You are too young to know what happened in the past." The boy's eyes were filled with a chaotic mist, which seemed to reveal the truth . "The last time I woke up, I was still in Western Xia, China. This regime was established with my help. But soon, the Western Xia royal family realized that I was different from them, and their fear of the unknown led to their betrayal. They accepted the help of the Song Dynasty's Dragon Slayer family, ambushed me, and then used the so-called Taoist Yin-Yang magic to seal me. To put it simply, they are actually some silver magic tools with alchemical properties. After entering my body, they will stop my heart from beating and stop the blood from flowing. I look like I'm dead, but in fact I'm still alive, just losing the ability to carry out biological activities."
"If I could live in Xixia, I would be over a thousand years old now. How can a human live for more than a thousand years? Don't lecture me on your dragon way of thinking!" Bondarev rolled his eyes. "This story sounds a bit nonsense. If they can make you unable to move, why don't they just kill you directly?"
"The humans of that era didn't have the abilities you have now. Even with the help of some spirit words, the most commonly used weapons were cold weapons blessed by the Philosopher's Stone and alchemy. It's hard to kill me with this kind of thing because I can use Nirvana, plus the dragon race's own regeneration ability. No matter how many times they kill me, I will stand up again. They can only use this method." The boy said softly, "The Xixia people put me in a coffin, locked me, and sank me into the royal tomb they built, hoping that I would never see the light of day. But they probably didn't expect that tomb robbers a thousand years later would be so smart. It would be easy to locate and dig the royal tomb. You know what happened later."
"I should be thankful that my ancestors went to China with the army back then, otherwise everything would be very different now." Bondarev nodded and smiled.
"But until today I am still affected by that thing. Not even Nirvana can repair the continuous damage of thousands of years. That's why I can only be this human. I can't grow up anymore and can only rely on devouring my own kind to improve myself. Even restoring my dragon body is difficult." The boy lowered his head and stroked his chest, where his heart was. Many years ago, he watched with his own eyes as people he trusted embedded silver nails into his body. People had ferocious expressions and their faces were covered in blood. Dragons and pythons were coiled on their embroidered robes, dancing wildly like a chaotic nightmare.
"But you are still the strongest among the eight monarchs, aren't you? If you can grow up, you will definitely be a handsome man of my level, but your personality will be different. You are colder, the type of masked handsome guy. Believe me, there are many women in Europe who like you!" Bondarev smiled and reached out to pull the boy's face.
He was probably the only person in history who dared to do this to the boy. Although he knew very well how dangerous the boy was, he had never been afraid. In his eyes, the boy was more like a friend with whom he could sit down and chat casually. You could feel free to touch him and he would only raise his cold eyes to signal you to stop, but he would never refuse directly or get angry, just like an oversized doll.
"The half-living and half-dead skeleton means that my old friend is not really dead. She is just stuck in the same way. The human army must have spent a lot of money to successfully insert this deadly alchemical weapon into her bones. How could a dragon king be defeated by guns and cannons?" The boy stood up and simply adjusted his collar and combed his hair in front of the mirror. The simple dress immediately made him look much more refined.
"Are you planning to meet her?" Bondarev immediately became alert. He was a pretty boy, so he knew very well that men usually didn't dress themselves up. If his unkempt old friend suddenly stood in front of the mirror and looked at his suit, he was definitely going to meet a woman. "Don't wake her up or think about eating her. We can't let Herzog find out that there is something wrong with the dragon bone! He hasn't got anything really valuable in his hand yet!"
"You said I'm suitable to be a behind-the-scenes mastermind. A conspirator won't reveal his true colors until he succeeds, right? I'm just going to meet the person as a winner. Humiliating the person I step on is probably my only pleasure."
As soon as the boy finished speaking, he disappeared from the room. Chilly wind swirled in the small space. The heating pipes could not withstand the bone-corrosive air. Bondarev was so cold that he hugged his arms and shivered. You know, he could swim seven or eight times in the snow in winter.
"What do you mean by humiliating others with the attitude of a winner? It sounds nice to say that, but to put it bluntly, you are still attached to her, right? It's clearly training! She has a face of a little boy, but she does all kinds of sinister things!" Bondarev muttered in a low voice, poking people's spines.
There is a Chinese saying that goes like a shadow, and goes like the wind. The boy is the best interpretation of this saying. The dark light and the flowing shadow allow him to move at super high speed anywhere like a ghost. Although the room is tightly closed, the door of the guest room is not as tight as that of the laboratory. The boy can leave through the gap, or the ventilation duct, anywhere he wants. Even if there is the most advanced high-speed camera in the world, it is useless. Under the lens, there will only be a flash of dark air.
Renata hummed a nursery rhyme as she walked through the corridor. The old chalky plaster on the walls was peeling off. There was a white light lamp every few dozen meters. These old bulbs hissed and flickered like ghost lights. Each lamp could only illuminate a small section of the corridor. You couldn't see your hand in front of you between the two lights. The black and white alternated into the distance, like a road leading to a place where ghosts were rampant.
This kind of scenery is rarely seen in the outside world. It is usually seen in very poor and dilapidated rural areas or abandoned old tube-shaped buildings. But most places in Black Swan Harbor, except for the research laboratories, are still like this. Its age remains at the moment when it was built decades ago. The walls are still covered with tattered newspapers to fill the gaps where the paint has fallen off. You can vaguely see a large headline in Russian that says Germany has surrendered.
Most little girls would be terrified if they were left in a place like this, but Renata was not afraid because she grew up here.
She was wearing a white cotton nightgown, holding her beloved koala bear, which was probably one of the most luxurious gifts in Black Swan Port, because it could only be bought from Moscow, and the icebreaker only came once a year. Renata named the bear "Zorro". She knew from the book that Zorro was a masked knight, and all the bad guys would tremble with fear when they heard his name. So Renata always took Zorro with her at night, so that no matter what monsters were in the darkness, everything would be calm with Zorro's appearance.
The right side of the corridor is a thick wall, and the left side is full of small rooms, a bit like those in a prison, with high and small windows, and only a small opening for sliding. The doors are painted with numbers in white paint, from 1 to 38. There is a child living in each room, a total of 38, and Renata is number 38, which means she is the youngest one here.
In front is the nurses' duty room. The terrain here is very cleverly designed. The duty room is located in the most critical position. No matter whether you want to go to the upper or lower floors, or get up to go to the toilet at night, anyone will appear in the sight of the duty room.
But the designers at the time probably didn't expect that the room would be inhabited by children in the future. The only drawback of the duty room is that the windowsill is a bit high, and the person sitting inside will only see an empty staircase when turning his head.
When she was near the duty room, Renata crouched down and tiptoed past the door. It was already past midnight and the nurses would no longer come out to check on the wards. They were all staying in the duty room drinking and playing cards until their minds were not clear. At this time, no one would think of going out and taking a look at the windows of each room.
Renata quickly figured out the routine of the nurses' night shifts. She would slip out of her room after midnight, bypass the nurses' rooms and go downstairs. The entire Black Swan Harbor would belong to her. She could go wherever she wanted, and all the entertainment facilities that were rarely open on weekdays were open to her.
She patrolled the Black Swan Harbor like a little queen patrolling her territory, going to the tool room and then the equipment room, and when she passed the kitchen, she would sneak in to steal some beef, deliberately leaving the last bit, and then use her fingernails to scratch it to make it look like a rat had eaten it, so that the chef would think it was a rat that stole the food and throw it away. Renata didn't like to waste, so she always looked for small pieces, and finally left a little bit before breaking up the disguise.
A cold wind suddenly blew from behind, and Renata shivered all over. Her intuition told her that it seemed to be someone. She turned back suddenly , ready to escape and be caught by accident and then punished, but she didn't see anything. Behind her was still the deep corridor. Other children were not as bold as her. If they were caught by the nurses, they would be severely punished. Only Renata would take such a risk to go out and explore the unknown world. During the day, each child would be arranged to study and test appropriately, and had no chance to see other places in Black Swan Harbor. Many children didn't even know where the toilets on other floors were.
Renata felt relieved and quickly climbed over the window sill of the duty room. Once she passed here, she would be safe. She could even jog in the corridor without worrying about being discovered, because the walls and doors here were surprisingly soundproof, probably because they were afraid that the children would make uncontrollable noises.
She suddenly stopped. This time she did not go downstairs, but went to the other end of the corridor. After passing door number one, the end of the corridor was in front of her. However, this was not a wall as she had imagined. There was a lonely iron door with a huge "Zero" written on it in white paint.
Room Zero.
This was the first time Renata knew that there were actually 39 small rooms on this floor, but they were only arranged up to Renata's room No. 38.
For most people, the room at the end of the corridor is rarely favored, no matter it is a laboratory, hotel, or apartment, it is relatively quiet, which also means it is too secretive. In many detective novels or supernatural stories, the end of the corridor is often the focus of events, all kinds of dirty things will go there, and some people even feel that they will be corroded by cold wind just by getting close.
But Renata didn't know all this, that children are often more daring than adults, because their knowledge is not enough to let them know the stories and legends passed down by word of mouth. Ignorance always makes people fearless. Even if there was a foreign word "death" written on the door, Renata would not be afraid instinctively, because it was not within her range of fear.
In her opinion, the scariest thing in the world is to be caught by the nurse on duty. That means no food, and being beaten with a heavy iron rod through the iron door, and other children will be called to watch. Even if you cover your ears, it is useless. That damn sound can be echoed in the small room and amplified several times, penetrating people's eardrums, reaching people's minds, and making their souls tremble. Every hit is like hitting the tip of the heart.
If the mistake was bigger, it might not be as simple as just looking through the door. Those whips and awls hanging in the duty room were never just scary to look at.
