Volume 3 Hello, Eri Chapter 305: Night Food (Part 3)
"Where should we go now?" Eiry handed the small notebook to Lu Mingfei. After Lu Mingfei used Emperor on her again, she could no longer speak to Lu Mingfei. The language she spoke would be high-purity dragon script, and the words would be driven unconsciously. She could only re-activate the small notebook that had been unfamiliar for a while. Fortunately, she still carried it with her.
Lu Mingfei looked at Eiry's calm face, and she suddenly realized that from the moment Eiry touched the sea water and entered Nibelungen until now, she had never expressed any opinions or questions about anything around her. All the strange phenomena around her seemed to be no big deal to Eiry at all. This absurd and distorted world would make most people who were accustomed to the normal world feel more or less fearful or uncomfortable .
"Aren't you scared, Eri?" Lu Mingfei asked tentatively, "This place is completely different from the world we are familiar with."
"Why should I be scared?" Eri looked puzzled. "I've been here before."
Lu Mingfei was dumbfounded. She thought Eri was used to being calm and composed. Even if she saw something she had never seen before, she would be fearless because she was ignorant. But now Eri said something extraordinary in a casual way... How could someone like her have been to Nibelungen?
"Are you sure?" Lu Mingfei didn't quite believe it. A harmless girl should be a blank slate and shouldn't be involved in such things.
"Only once, but I remember it clearly. My family also told me about this place." Eri wrote in her notebook, "When I was a child, I lived in my family's shrine. When I first came here, there were two cats in the shrine, one orange and one white. I grew up with them. My family rarely talked to me or chatted with me, so they were my only playmates when I was a child. We would often run from one room to another and sleep in the same quilt at night."
"There is a very old well in the family courtyard, covered with a vermilion torii. People living in the shrine are warned not to get close to it. There are several circles of iron railings around the well, and a heavy lock is hung on the only passage. One day when I was playing with the cats in the garden, the little orange cat jumped to the well. I remembered what the adults said and called it over anxiously, but I couldn't speak, so I could only keep making gestures to it. The little orange cat didn't understand what I meant, jumped along the well, and fell into the well when it lost its footing. The sound of meowing disappeared all of a sudden."
Eri continued to write. Because she had been communicating with others in this way for many years, her writing speed was no less than oral, so fast that she could write the next sentence as soon as Lu Mingfei finished reading it.
"Cats are afraid of water. I was afraid something might happen to Little Orange Cat, so I panicked and used my spiritual power to remove all the fences and locks and ran to the well to take a look. The well was very deep and I couldn't see the bottom. I could only feel the damp air, so there must be a lot of water underneath. I thought Little Orange must have fallen into the water and couldn't make a sound. So I had a bold idea to jump in and rescue Little Orange, because I was very young at the time and the well mouth was very spacious for me. But I didn't think about what would happen if I jumped in, nor did I think about how I would get out of the well without a rope. I just wanted to save Little Orange."
Lu Mingfei nodded. Many people think that boys are naughty when they are young, so they call them naughty children. In fact, girls are the same when they are young, but most girls are not interested in digging earthworms or making clay figures. When they encounter certain things, they only think about achieving their own goals and make some shocking actions, which leads to various tragedies.
For example, when Lu Mingfei was a child, she almost suffocated herself to death by jumping into a stream just to brag to the boy in the yard next door. When she got home, she was beaten by the mixed doubles of the table tennis racket until she had to sleep on her stomach at night. But that night was not without gain. The boy who played with her during the day felt guilty and climbed over the wall in the middle of the night to knock on Lu Mingfei's window and give her oranges to eat. It was so sweet, but he was caught on the spot. So when he went back, he also encountered the mixed doubles of his family, who said, "How old are you, you have learned to lie on the window of a girl! Are you going to be a flower thief in the future!"
"I held my breath and jumped into the well, but what was waiting for me was not cold water. I opened my eyes and saw the shrine floating upside down in the sky. Everything around was upside down, and I was stepping on the Milky Way and the sea water. Every step was as soft as cotton. I was so happy that I completely forgot about Xiaoju. I thought this well was actually connected to the outside world. It turned out that the sky and the earth outside were reversed."
Lu Mingfei felt a little sad for a moment, because she had never seen anything, so Eiry even had a wrong understanding of the outside world. She was not afraid at all when encountering dangerous things, and even thought it was a fairy tale dream.
"At this time, I heard the cry of an orange cat, very close to me. Then I remembered that I was looking for the little orange cat. There were floating rubble buildings all around, leaning here and there. Many branches and flowers grew out of the buildings, forming a wild garden. It was very difficult for me to climb among them, but the cat's cry was getting closer and closer. I thought I was looking in the right direction. Until finally I jumped onto a flat ground."
"I found the orange cat, but now it can no longer be called a little orange cat. I don't know why it grew to the height of several stories in such a short time, and its eyes turned golden. I tried to make a beckoning gesture to it like before, stretching out my hand to ask it to come over. It stared at me with a vigilant look in its eyes, and suddenly opened its mouth and rushed towards me. At that moment, I saw its teeth, which had all turned bronze and were stained with black blood. I realized that it wanted to eat me, but I didn't know why, and I didn't even think of using my own words."
"An old man suddenly rushed out and picked me up, helping me escape from the giant cat's mouth, but the price was that he was bitten by the cat and lost half of his arm. At this time, the cat no longer looked the same as before. Its long hair was replaced by scales, and its tail was split in two at the end. It could actually stand up and walk on two legs like a human. Its cry was not soft at all, but fierce and shrill. The old man picked me up and turned to run. The cat followed us closely, but the old man ran faster than it. The old man took me to find an ancient well, which was exactly the same as the one in the shrine. We jumped in, and when we opened our eyes again, we were back in the courtyard. The priests of the shrine were all gathered here in a circle. They looked at me as if I were a sinner. I didn't dare to look up at them until another old man took me to the small hall behind the shrine."
Eri wrote, "I had never seen that old man before. He asked me a lot of questions, such as what was on the other side of the well, whether I had encountered anything, and whether I was injured. I told him everything I saw, and he nodded as he listened. I asked if I was going to be punished, just like the other children in the shrine. He smiled and shook his head and said it was okay, that Eri was special, so there was no need to worry, and that if it were other children, they might not even come back. I asked him what was on the other side of the well, and he thought for a moment and told me that the place was called Night Food Field, and that it was used to punish sinners. He also said that the well would be sealed soon, and that I should never get close to it before then."
Yomi-no-Gora, like Takama-ga-hara, is a place name from Japanese mythology. Amaterasu Omikami guards Takama-ga-hara, and Susanoo is on the sea. What Tsukuyomi got is Yomi-no-Gora, a country of darkness without sunlight.
If we follow the way the Japanese mixed-races inherit their heritage, Minamoto no Chisei is known as Amaterasu, a demon slayer, and his younger brother is Susanoo, a person who has gone astray. Then the last Tsukuyomi corresponds to Eri. Tachibana Masamune said that Eri is special, which probably means that only Eri can easily travel back and forth between the Night Food Plain, because that was originally Tsukuyomi's territory, and in the end it would become the incubator of the White King.
"For a period of time afterwards, I would often think of the orange cat when I went to sleep at night and wake up from my sleep. Every time I woke up, I would quietly open the door a crack and look at the ancient well in the courtyard. Many times, I saw the priests in the family dragging black bags, opening the new fence and throwing the bags into the well without making any sound. Judging from their expressions, this must have happened many times."
"What's in the bag? Sand for filling the well?" Lu Mingfei asked.
"It's a person." Eri answered, "Because I can smell a strong smell of blood, every time, the thing in the bag must have been injured. Sometimes I would sneak to the well to take a look when the priest was gone, and the blood on the ground was black, just like the blood on the cat's tongue that I saw at the well, so thick and scary, and sometimes even foamy."
Lu Mingfei's heart skipped a beat. That description looked like Deadpool, but Eiry's answer was a human. Deadpool was completely different from humans. With Eiry's bloodline and five senses, she would definitely be able to detect Deadpool's cold breath of death and would not mistakenly think that there was a human in the bag.
Then the answer is very simple. The black bags are filled with hybrids with runaway bloodlines. They are currently in a state between humans and Deadpool. The Snake Eight Families did not consider trying to rescue them, but chose to deal with all of them at the same time. There won't even be corpses in the ancient well connected to the Nibelungen. That is exactly the world of death that Deadpool has always dreamed of, the world of dragons.
The secret of mixed-bloods on Japanese territory has existed for many years since they were born. The secret party did not gradually grasp this secret until they broke into Japan's national borders in modern times. So what means did the Eight Snakes rely on to prevent the unstable bloodline from spilling out from ancient times to the present? I'm afraid that all the children who were killed by them or whose bloodline was unstable since birth were thrown into the ancient well in this way!
"What happened to the well later?" Lu Mingfei continued to ask. In Eri's story, Fuma Kotaro knew that the ancient well could connect two worlds and had an exit as well as an entrance, so they were able to return from the Nibelungen. Finding the location of the well could help them leave this haunted place safely.
"It's been sealed." Eri's first words made Lu Mingfei feel disappointed. "A year after that incident, the ancient well was buried by an excavator. I saw with my own eyes that the mud would not pile up like a person would if he fell into it. The person in charge of burying it took a long time to completely bury the ancient well. He also told the family that the well was unexpectedly deep, probably hundreds of meters deep, and it was the deepest abandoned well he had ever buried. Later, when I grew up and occasionally lived in Genji Heavy Industries, I learned that the person who questioned me in the shrine that day was Tachibana Masamune, and the person who saved me was Fuma Kotaro. Because of that incident, Mr. Fuma lost half of his left arm, so he always wore a large black haori to cover it."
It turned out to be that old man. Lu Mingfei couldn't help but recall the two brief meetings with Fuma Kotaro. Speaking of which, the old man had a gloomy face and looked like the mastermind in some gangster movie. Unexpectedly, he was quite brave. He didn't say a word even when his hand was bitten off by Deadpool in order to save Eri. However, the guy was not young. Considering the internal relationship of the Eight Snake Families, he certainly knew the importance of Eri to the family and was willing to sacrifice an arm in exchange for her life.
"Now I have good news and bad news. Which one do you want to hear first?" Lu Mingfei said with a bitter face.
"Good news?" Eri didn't even think about it.
"The good news is that I know where I am now. After losing his Takamaga-hara, the White King usurped the Night Food Plain and turned it into his own Nibelungen, using it as a hatchery for the future. I'm afraid that the White King is awakening somewhere in the Nibelungen right now. Tachibana Masamune and Herzog should be there, witnessing the birth of the White King with their own eyes, and preparing some way to steal its legacy. This means that the White King, the big boss, and those two bad old guys are enemies. If we can find them in time, maybe we can intervene when they are fighting, and take advantage of the situation and get rid of both sides at the same time."
"And the bad news?"
"The bad news is that we can't get out. The well you mentioned is the passage connecting Nibelungen and the outside world, and now it's sealed. According to my previous experience, if the entrance to Nibelungen is sealed, the only way to get out is to destroy this world and kill its owner. But the problem is that you just mentioned that the Eight Snake Families threw many people into this well... With their bloodlines, they won't die easily. In Nibelungen, they will completely become the deadpools controlled by the White King, hunting and killing each other, and by the way, biting those who dare to enter this world to pieces. Who do you think these people are?"
"Ah...that's us." Eri opened her eyes wide after realizing it belatedly. She now understood why the little orange cat wanted to eat her at that time.
