Sin City

CH – 4 Reality

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The moment his small hands touched the seventh image, it suddenly turned into a shadow. To elaborate, it drilled it’s way into the body of Li Cha. The very next moment, Li Cha felt that his hair is in contact with fire, it was just like boiling. It was a suffering aimed directly at his soul,driving him crazy. Moreover he couldn’t even pass out.  Strands of ice flowing in his whole body were colliding with the formless heat which was binding his body, it gave off a feeling like every bone and muscle in his body was cracking.

Li Cha was patiently enduring, the effort he put into training from childhood to become strong and tough was clearly visible at this moment. Unexpectedly, he was able to preserve for the entire time as shadow entered his body. After absorbing the entire shadow, his consciousness finally relaxed and his vision started to grew fuzzy along with the slowly dissipating shrine of goddess.

In his fuzzy vision, mother’s beautiful and deeply concerned face appeared, before he eventually passed out.

“I was able to obtain two skills in the end, mother would be so proud.” He was thinking this as he plunged into darkness.

On the attic, a clear crack appeared on moon goddess’s altar. This special altar was unexpectedly damaged during the ceremony. Yi Lian’s complexion was also pale, a drop of blood was flowing from the her side of lip. However she was completely unaware of it as she was only frantically examining each and every part of Li Cha’s body. She was able to relax only after conforming that Li Cha’s body is totally intact with no sign of injury. However, when she saw that there is a small shadow circling around the middle of his forehead, her complexion changed greatly again. The attic was being illuminated by the light from both moon and magic lamp, moreover Li Cha was also lying on his back, but still it didn’t matter whichever light it was, it was unable to remove the shadow from his forehead. That small shadow was moving like a fog or smoke, but it was  not scattering, instead it was actually concentrating. This shadow is not something that can be pointed out by an ordinary person, however it was easily seen by Yi Lian, since she had some remaining power acquired from the fith moon . She shivered as she reached out to touch and as she touched, she felt a painful and ice-cold sensation on her fingertips  . This was the result of clash between dark energies and Illusia’s spirit power.

“Shadow creature ?” Yi Lian involuntary cried out. she once again tried to probe inside the shadow region while reading a long forgotten prayer inside her mind. It is exactly the moon goddess’s “intuition” which she failed to learn that year. At this moment her heart was in a mess. In her knowledge, this was the only way to discover the origins of this shadow. Even though chances of succeeding is not high, she still must try.

After losing her identity as great priestess, she also lost all of her spiritual techniques. Yi Lian didn’t expected that her reckless action would actually succeed.

A scroll appeared in front of Yi Lian’s eyes. Inside the scroll was just void and endless darkness. No stars, no moons, just the basic energies. But within those basic energies there was a huge shadow. It was slowly lingering in a completely messed up and random orbit, but the orbit was converging at a clear destination and that destination was precisely Li Cha.

Scroll withered and died. This momentary intution drained all of her strength. For the moment, she couldn’t even lift a finger. However, right now she isn’t concerned about it, just looking at everything gave her despair.

Shadow is entirely different from darkness. They don’t have essence, they are just a kind of energy, naturally possessing space attributes. Shadow creatures are of countless types. Majority of them roam between planes randomly. Confused energies between planes are natural food for them. They are very cunning, strong and very dangerous. Therefore, it is a species which is both loved and feared by cultivators. Shadow summoning is a very advanced technique, it can allow to advance from sixth level to directly up to ninth level.

Even though probability of failure in shadow summoning technique is quite low, but shadow creatures going out of control is pretty common and magicians are one of their favorite foods. Therefore every year stories of cultivators being swallowed up by summoned shadow creatures is pretty common.

Shadow on Xiao Li Cha’s face has a sign of a creature, but it really isn’t a living form. Dark energies it contains, actually isn’t much. Just an ordinary purification can remove it. It’s functioning is same as that of a light tower, between boundless planes in universe, it marks a position calling huge groups of shadow creatures to enter this plane, same scene seen by Yi Lian in that scroll. Removing this shadow is already too late now because those frightening shadow creatures are already on the move after getting the signal.

Xiao Li Cha is exactly the anchor point of their destination at this plane.

When those shadow creatures will attack this plane, there could be only two possible outcomes for Xiao Li Cha. Either he will be destroyed by collision of severe energies or the most formidable shadow creature will enter his body. After that, he will lose his control over his body, becoming a vessel for shadow creature species.

Everyone knows the rules between planes, to cross over planes shadow creature might even require several hundred years and just for reaching the end of destination might require several months.

“Why is this happening……” Yi Lian while hugging Li Cha, said to herself. Unable to hold back, tears slowly fell down.

Suddenly she raised her head. Through the hatchway, she looked up to the fifth moon suspended high in the sky still as before . By coincidence, the numerous scars on the surface of the moon all together looks like dried up blood. It might be possible that a variation occurred in moon’s energy leading to variation in ceremony.  But then again, even if that’s the case, she herself is the high priestess of Illusia, so any variation in enlightenment is very unlikely.

Is this Illusia’s punishment?

Yi Lian bitterly thought, she already has no strength to complain about fate or to redeem herself. She carried down Li Cha from attic and then  gently put him on the bed. Li Cha’s eyebrows wrinkled as he was smiling  in sleep, obviously dreaming about something good. He is a very beautiful child. His childish face was slowly maturing, already becoming a little handsome and sharp. Yi Lian quietly looked at her own child, this was the center of her life for ten years. Although ten years seemed very short considering her endlessly long life span, but these ten years seemed like a lifetime to her at present. Xiao Li Cha is growing very quick, but his features still looks like a small and immature child if compared with other children of same age. However, this is only because half of his blood vessels origins from Silver Moon elf lineage. This implies, he naturally posses five hundred years of life span. His appearance is a mix of rough and crude together with exquisitely beautiful traits of the Silver Moon elf lineage. Yi Lian is the only person who knows about this reason.

Shadow was still moving and playing on Li Cha’s small face.

Yi Lian softly sighed. After gently kissing his forehead, she left the room. She sat down alone in the living room. As she looked up at the night sky, all the past events flowed as if water deep within her mind. Those few nights were the moments which she hates and loves the most in her entire life. At present, she couldn’t help but remember them.

Outside the window, blood dyed fifth moon was shifting and sixth moon was rising while emitting golden rays of light. Rising of seventh moon would mark as the beginning of the day.

Seventh moon’s light rays finally entered through the window, shinning upon Yi Lian’s face. Mirror on the wall was reflecting out a matchless beauty. This is her true appearance. In these ten years she nearly forgot about this appearance. This is silver moon elf’s ability to possess incomparable charm.

She suddenly stood up and carefully took out a completely stitched stark traced magic paper. She spread it out on the table and then took out a sealed up magic pen. She carefully examined it. Fortunately the pen was made from feathers on tails of lions and vultures, so the magic power of ink is still intact. Ink is made from the blood of unicorn. Although just a single drop is remaining, it is still enough for the letter she is going to write.

Which seemed like an ordinary light feathery pen, in her hands seemed ten million jin heavy. She raised the pen in air for a long time, but unexpectedly  didn’t wrote down a single letter. As sunlight shined upon her face, she smiled as she muttered to herself “Can wreck people of elf king’s court, must deal with the shadow creature. Moreover ten years have passed……”

Finally convincing herself, she started to draw a complicated magic spell on top of the star traced magic paper. Then, she wrote down a very long name.

歌顿.以塞亚.塞坦尼斯托利亚.阿克蒙德……(long name i guess)

The moment this name was completely written, magic pen suddenly started shaking and the name below it’s point started to emit a dull red radiance like an igniting flame. As the flame extinguished, that long name turned into a shallow trace. Although trace was shallow, it was still deeply imprinted on top of the magic paper. Only way to remove this trace was to destroy the paper itself. As a former great priestess, she has a deep knowledge regarding the secret of blood lineages. Igniting flames representing the use of magic power to write this name have already started the chain of events of a certain rule. Moreover, serves as consciousness of the owner of name. Everything she writes after that would step over the space-time layer by layer and would be conveyed directly to the location of the owner of name.

Magic pen stopped once again in the sky. Hands holding the magic pen were trembling. What just happened now indicated a clear fact, the name written on the paper is true name of Ge Dun. She never doubted this fact in these past few years but it was still the first time she conformed it. Relying solely on true name, just by using a tiny amount of magical power, she can inflict one of the most malicious curse upon him. Even though Ge Dun at present is a legendary figure, he would still be helpless against the curse. True name is the most important secret of several bloodlines.

This guy is actually randomly blurting out his true name to other people…

She can’t help but thinking this. She felt a little bit moved, but it was replaced in an instant by a memory of burning of a large forest. Her hand also became cold and stopped shivering. She explained the details in a few words. Now the only thing remaining is to sign her name. She hesitated a little. In the end, using a beautiful and ancient writing, she wrote down her name.

Yi Lan Ni Yue Ge

Star traced paper quickly burned and turned into ashes. Information in paper had been already transmitted by an ancient and mysterious rule to a distant location.

As she let go of the magic pen, she also got let go of her depressing mood.

Peaceful and beautiful.