Chapter 273: Dialogue with Authority
After a brief contemplation, Luxianbei recentered her thoughts and refocused on the gradually clarifying scene before her.
Whether to take the risk of condensing Lilith’s spiritual seal would have to wait until Lilith’s past was fully revealed before making a decision. Until then, she thought it best to eliminate distractions and concentrate on Lilith’s past.
If she accidentally overlooked any key content, even attempting to condense the spiritual seal might lead to serious mistakes…
It was just like not having glimpsed the entirety of the Celestial Maiden Ya’s past, only seeing the part after she was exiled when her authority became distorted and corrupted through rumors and speculation, turning her into the monster known as “Drought Demon,” and then using that partial past to condense the spiritual seal.
Heaven knows what kind of thing would come out of the condensing!
Reining in her thoughts.
As the sound of a ballad echoed in her ears, vibrant colors reminiscent of a fairy tale appeared before her eyes, with smooth lines delineating a figure adorned with a flower crown.
She had golden hair like the morning sunlight, skin as white as snow, and a pair of eyes deep and bright like the stars in a clear night sky. Her alluring figure, like a piece of art crafted by a master, evoked no sense of lewd desire.
She lived carefree in a forest blooming with flowers, as if she were the purest and most sacred spirit born from the heavens and earth.
Until one day, a wild wind, unknown where it came from, howled through the forest, carrying away Lilith’s most cherished flower crown. She chased after the crown, running through an endless forest. She didn’t know how long had passed until she regained her senses and found herself at the edge of the forest.
There stood a handsome young man outside the forest, holding a beautiful flower crown and looking around as if he were waiting for Lilith’s arrival.
The young man smiled and returned the crown to Lilith, then extended his hand towards her.
Like a fawn encountering a human for the first time, Lilith shyly accepted the crown but, hesitating to take the young man’s hand, turned and ran back into the boundless forest.
After that day, the young man set up camp at the edge of the forest, as if he were waiting for Lilith to reappear, wandering outside the forest all day, talking to himself about the outside world.
Lilith hid in the forest, out of sight of the young man, secretly observing everything he did, gradually feeling a longing for him. However, she couldn’t follow him away; her mother had told her that the outside world was extremely dangerous.
Days passed, and one morning, the young man suddenly vanished. Lilith thought he had left until a few days later when the barely breathing young man reappeared at the forest’s edge.
The young man was severely injured, like a rabbit bitten by a wolf that Lilith had seen in the forest. Afraid he might d*e, she stepped out of the forest for the first time and brought fresh spring water and honey fruits to the young man.
At that moment, the young man suddenly opened his eyes, embraced her, and kissed her lips…
In the next instant, Luxianbei’s view suddenly turned gray, as if a fairy tale book had been left too long and had grown damp, its pages faded and moldy, rendering the imagery blurry.
Luxianbei, “…”
At a critical moment, her pants had been removed, how did it suddenly vanish?
Well, it was understandable after all; everyone has it tough, and generating easily lost scenes is a precarious endeavor that could lead to the story abruptly ending.
As Luxianbei thought this, the briefly silent ballad once again began to play around her ears.
“Lilith once lived outside the paradise filled with flowers.
She walked in beautiful brilliance, like the starry sky, like hope.
The young man she admired returned.
His smile bloomed like a rose in the deepest part of her heart.
Just like the way he appeared in her dreams.
She reluctantly let the young man leave, to a place she could not go.
Wishing to provide the young man with fertile lands and herds of cattle.
But the young man became another’s groom.
What made him change his heart?
What caused him to change?
Life is so painful, waiting is so long.
The young man returned to Lilith’s side.
He said he craved a magnificent crown and powerful strength…
…
Lilith once lived outside the paradise filled with flowers.
…
This time, the young man wanted her beautiful eyes and heart…”
————
On the other side, on the decayed and collapsed rooftop.
As the ballad sounded, the Proxy Player Sister caught a glimpse of Lilith’s past through Luxianbei’s perspective, and a series of question marks immediately filled her mind.
“What the… what is this?”
She felt astonished, not because Luxianbei had just condensed the North Spirit Seal, triggering the opportunity for the Witch species’ advancement, but because what Luxianbei saw from the past seemed slightly off.
Could there really be someone or an urban legend that understood Lilith’s past better than her?
There surely was none!
That was the foundation of her transformation into “Calamity.”
Yes, the Proxy Player Sister had also glimpsed Lilith’s past before, but the difference between what she saw and what Luxianbei was seeing at that moment was enormous.
The bright, vivid colors, the fairy-tale-like beginning, and the development that seemed to head towards a pleasing conclusion… The scene Luxianbei witnessed compared to what she saw felt as if enhanced by a ten-level beauty filter.
In her glimpse of Lilith’s past, there wasn’t just a handsome young man outside that forbidden forest. Instead, there was a group of heretical fanatics, the outcasts of the mainstream sect at the time, and the numerous handsome young men responsible for approaching Lilith were merely one of them.
They had long known that a powerful urban legend resided in that forest, unable to leave due to certain constraints of power. They had come fully prepared, seeking a treasure that could help them rekindle their fortunes.
They tempted Lilith to appear from the forest with the beautiful things of the outside world, bringing her care, respect, and privileges she had never experienced before, treating her as a divine being. When the timing was right, they made their wishes to Lilith.
Lilith generously granted her followers’ or rather her friends’ wishes, bestowing upon them land and wealth.
This was easy for her to do, as she inherited the powers from her mother, Lilith, the Mother Goddess of the ancient Hebrew myth regarded as the Earth and Agriculture.
After receiving what they wanted, the fanatics quickly left satisfied, leaving Lilith to wander alone within the forest as she once did.
About two hundred years later, the descendants of those heretical fanatics, due to a series of misdeeds, were persecuted by the mainstream sect, and in desperation, returned once more to the edge of the forest.
For a powerful urban legend like Lilith, a century or two was not considered a lengthy time, not much different than a week or a month. Therefore, she did not resent her “friends” for their sudden departure.
When those guys, following in their ancestors’ footsteps, offered worship and treatment, flowers, food, and various sacrifices, they quickly received Lilith’s forgiveness and the gifts they sought.
Learning from their ancestors’ mistakes, this time their prayers were not for wealth but for power.
For Lilith, this was not a considerable difficulty, as she still wielded part of the authority stemming from her mother, which encompassed storms, bl**d, and night.
Once those guys gained what they wanted, akin to their ancestors, they left the forest.
The forest was a place said to hide forbidden things; even though they and their ancestors gained wealth and power through Lilith, they would forever feel fearful of the place and could never truly like it.
After that, Lilith’s face no longer bore the innocent smile it once did.
She wandered alone in the endless forest, like a ghost lost within it.
However, how could wealth and a little bit of power satisfy those guys?
Perhaps they could ask the kind and generous Lilith for more?
Until much later, after about four to five hundred years, when the descendants of that heretical fanatic group appeared outside the forest for the third time, Lilith felt anger, an emotion she had never experienced before.
They sought her eyes and heart, wanting to gain strength to rival the gods…
Knowing that Lilith could not leave the forest, those guys fled in panic outside when she unleashed her wrath, quickly retreating. Yet even so, they could not find peace, afraid that Lilith would take revenge and reclaim everything they had.
Thus, they began to intentionally obscure Lilith’s existence, depicting her as a terrifying presence that would seduce men into corruption, ruin women’s beauty out of jealousy, and harm the lives of children, becoming an untouchable taboo entity.
Even the girls of the Spiritual Ability Users, who were once regarded as saints able to communicate slightly with Lilith and displayed extraordinary powers, were labeled as witches and brutally killed.
Hangings, beheadings, burnings… Some took advantage of the opportunity to slaughter witches and delighted in tormenting various girls or collecting their bl**d for unspeakable purposes.
As those heretical fanatics initially received power from Lilith, they recklessly abused it to create destruction, later twisting Lilith’s image out of fear and degrading her continuously, prohibiting others from touching her existence. Eventually, Lilith’s image far within that forest began to change.
Her golden hair turned white like deep winter’s snow, her holy visage gradually became seductive, and certain features that were supposed to belong to demon types began to manifest on her. The only aspect that remained unchanged was the vivid red lips that had kissed the wild roses in the woods.
However, at the same time, she finally obtained the opportunity to leave that forest.
Perhaps it was because her former “friends” had distorted her powers that the force within the forest could no longer restrain her…
Or perhaps she, becoming tainted, was exiled due to having fallen…
In any case, Lilith stepped out of the forest, gathering the persecuted witches and bringing terrifying calamities to those traitors.
But sadly, Lilith ultimately died, or rather transformed into the state of a witch’s egg, going through several twists and turns, returning into her mother’s embrace and sinking into the Red Sea.
The descendants of those heretical fanatics were no longer like their ancestors, who had scurried to hide like sewer rats to barely survive; they now possessed the power to struggle and resist.
Even if they could not defeat Lilith and those spiritually capable girls dubbed “witches,” they sought help from the mainstream sect, exaggerating their horror and evil while ignoring the deep-seated hatred that existed between the mainstream sect and their ancestors.
After all, they had already gained lands, wealth, power, and strength. With slight embellishment, they need no longer skulk like rats, needing only to exert a little effort and offer some wealth to whitewash their dark origins.
This was the entire past of Lilith as glimpsed by the Proxy Player Sister, just as she had experienced…
————
“What the hell is this? This is way too OOC!”
Having caught once more the scene Luxianbei presented, the Proxy Player Sister couldn’t help but beat her thigh with her hands, stained with crimson dirt, venting her frustration.
To portray a group of ungrateful, despicable people with a handsome young man as a symbol left her feeling quite out of sync, given that she had glimpsed Lilith’s true past.
She was very worried!
Worried that the child would be misled by such a heavily modified narrative…
As she spoke, something flashed through her mind.
The Proxy Player Sister suddenly recalled the Shaman Queen’s stopping of the corruption and her words to Luxianbei just before falling into a long sleep, gradually knitting her brows.
“Wait, I think I understand what’s going on… Perhaps those words and the Shaman Queen’s corruption triggered the memories of Lilith contained within the witch’s egg? If that’s the case…”
She looked up at the projection in the sky, tilted her head, and murmured, “This might be a presentation of her past from Lilith’s perspective?”
The witch’s egg, in strict terms, is also the core of an urban legend. But unlike other urban legend cores, a witch-type urban legend, when nearing the end of its life, can condense all its spirit energy and authority into a witch’s egg, akin to giving birth to offspring.
This is a unique ability of witch-type urban legends when compared to other urban legends.
Just like demon-type urban legends becoming exceptionally hard to k*ll after hiding their true names, or distortion-type urban legends possessing an exuberant vitality far surpassing their peers, or parasitic-type urban legends, which cannot exist independently and can only cling to other powers… etc., these are unique abilities of different urban legend types.
This unique ability endows the witch’s egg with a higher activity than other urban legend cores, allowing, under the right conditions, a single witch’s egg to instantly give birth to a new urban legend possessing all powers corresponding to the witch-type urban legend.
However, this activity comes with a grave issue, meaning that the memories retained within the witch’s egg carry an extra degree of subjectivity compared to the knowledge and memories within other urban legend cores.
In simple terms, the knowledge contained in the witch’s egg will be influenced by its previous owner.
In such a scenario, relying on Lilith’s powers to gain Cataclysm Grade strength would only lead to becoming Lilith 2.0.
If she attempted to condense the spiritual seal using this incomplete past, it would likely spell trouble.
As she thought of this, the Proxy Player Sister remarked, “Impressive, should I say? So, Lilith’s powers can even confuse the new host? Doesn’t she worry about killing herself? Anyway, I need to remind Luxianbei quickly…”
As she spoke, she looked up at the projection in the heavens, only to freeze in place.
She saw Luxianbei, having already glimpsed all of Lilith’s past, step towards a silhouette resembling her by eight or nine points, touch that shadow, and began rambling.
“I say, don’t be sad. Who hasn’t been in love-brain mode at some point? Oh wait, in your case, it seems more apt to say you’ve been CPU’d, can’t really blame you… But now, aren’t we seeing reality clearly?”
“Well then, there’s no need to be sad! Cheer up, make a comeback, grow strong, shine bright once more! If you can’t do it alone, I don’t mind helping you!”
“After all, we’re one now, so no need to be formal!”
The Proxy Player Sister, “…” Was she actually chatting with the manifestation of the power inside her? What kind of operation is this? Does she think that’s a tailed beast?
(Originally planned for more than 5K words, but due to sudden eye inflammation, only over 4K was completed. I sincerely apologize… I won’t post any images here to avoid scaring everyone…)
