Xyrin Empire
Chapter 493: Inhumane Spectacle

I had been wrestling with a bizarre nightmare of being crushed under Mount Tai for nearly two hours...

"You didn’t stay up all night, did you?"

I rubbed Sandora’s head while her waterfall-like golden hair spread out, enveloping me recklessly like a tide of gold. There was not a hint of tiredness in her eyes, as the body of a Xyrin person doesn’t fatigue easily from lack of sleep like humans do. However, my instinct told me this silly girl probably didn’t sleep a wink all night, restlessly observing my sleeping face from every angle, which was so typical of Sandora’s behavior.

"Because I didn’t want to sleep."

Sandora gently shook her head as she spoke in a childish tone, then suddenly, thump! She bumped her forehead against mine. "Having completely devoured me, does Ah Jun have any thoughts?"

I pretended to muse seriously, then nodded gravely, "I do, you’re too heavy."

Ah! Stop biting! Didn’t you have enough of that last night?

After some playful roughhousing, Sandora finally rolled off my chest, casually fixing her hair in the golden sunlight. The young girl’s energetic body looked breathtakingly beautiful in the morning glow, making one marvel in distraction. Yet soon after, my attention was drawn to something else.

On Sandora’s right shoulder was an extremely conspicuous black diamond-shaped mark, integrating with her surrounding delicate skin like a birthmark yet oddly out of place. The shape of the mark resembled the Empire’s emblem, but its color was starkly different. Inside the mark, the black seemed not to be static but as if something was churning, yet upon closer examination, the churning seemed more like an illusion.

Why didn’t I notice that thing last night?

Noticing my gaze fixed on her, Sandora’s cheeks first turned slightly red, but then she grew unnaturally embarrassed when she realized I was focused on the black mark.

"This is Abyss Energy."

Sandora covered her shoulder with her left hand, blocking my view. After a faint blue light flickered, she moved her palm away, and the black mark had disappeared, leaving her skin as flawless as before.

"Although it has been assimilated into my own strength, I still don’t quite like it, so I usually seal it inside this Empire’s emblem. Ah Jun, you don’t mind, do you?"

Seeing Sandora so obviously devoid of the calm and pride befitting an Imperial Empress, very nervously looking at me, worriedly over a pattern on her shoulder, I couldn’t help but laugh out.

"Silly girl, do I need to tell you the story of Xu Xian and the dragon again?"

Then Sandora laughed along.

Perhaps because my spiritual power was too strong, or maybe the haphazard genetic enhancement from before played a role. Despite not having much rest last night and all the commotion, I didn’t feel tired at all. But the others couldn’t possibly compare to monsters like Xyrin and me, Sandora. Because we stayed up late discussing enemy confrontation strategies, everyone fell into a ghostly state. By the time the two of us finally made our way to the hallway, we encountered the ghostly version of Tohsaka, drifting about in her pajamas, followed by the ghostly version of Sakura, then the ghostly Emiya Shirou, and the ghostly Rider... Well, this last one was purely making trouble behind Sakura.

Staying up late is harmful to your health...

"Ah, Alien Uncle, Sister Sandora, good morning..." Rin said, yawning after seeing us leave the room, with a plastic cup in hand, "I’m so sleepy, I really don’t want to go to school."

Who would have thought that the super honor student Miss Tohsaka would also have such a scene of wandering hazily in pajamas, brushing her teeth while planning to skip school?

"Rider? Is there a problem?"

I noticed that the Heroic Spirit with purple long hair was always looking at me. Since she had removed her blindfold, being stared at by those cloudy square pupils was quite eerie, so I couldn’t help but ask.

"Umm, it’s not a big deal." The Heroic Spirit, whose true name was Medusa, scratched her cheek somewhat embarrassedly, her face turning slightly red. This sudden shy expression from the usually calm Rider caught Emiya and Sakura, who were passing by, totally off guard; they were stunned and gaped at us, while Sandora beside me had already started sharpening her third tooth from the left.

As if she’d finally made up her mind, Rider still took out a pink rectangular object from behind and handed it to me with her head down: "Boss, how exactly do you use this triple jump in level seven? I studied it all night!"

Then, all the onlookers just burst out laughing.

Oh Dingdang, what on earth did Bubbles teach Medusa back in Avalon?

"Ah Jun~~~" Just as I was teaching Medusa how to adjust the infinite jump cheat, a piercing thin voice suddenly came from behind me. Turning around, Dingdang clung to my nose accurately, climbing to the top of my head with practiced ease, while also protesting aggrievedly, "Why did you kick Dingdang out yesterday? Dingdang likes to sleep in the lamp on Ah Jun’s bedside!"

If Sandora hadn’t thought to kick this little thing out last night, I would have been in big trouble!

In any case, as usual, the happy and interesting daily life once again unfolded around us, a bunch of unruly fellows.

Maybe because of the discussion last night, I could clearly see that Sakura and Tohsaka were no longer strangers who wanted to be close to each other but acted distant, as before. The sisters greeted each other like the most ordinary families, preparing breakfast and school supplies for each other as if they had never been apart. Following the advice Lilina gave before, Sakura was working hard to repair the family, and Tohsaka was doing the same; neither wanted to miss this hard-earned reunification opportunity.

Having initially worried about the strained relationship between the Sakura and Tohsaka of this world, now it seemed fate was truly unpredictable. Who could have thought these sisters, plagued by cruel fate, would ultimately reunite in such a way?

"The school is no longer a concern," Emiya said to Saber, who was seeing him off at the door before leaving the house, "Shen Er definitely doesn’t have the courage to make a comeback, and with Sakura there, the Makoto Family probably won’t act rashly for the time being."

"I actually hope they would act rashly," Sakura muttered quietly, quickly sticking out her tongue after noticing my gaze.

"What we still need to worry about is Cu Chulainn, the Gunman, who hasn’t shown up since that day, and that inexplicable nouveau riche," Tohsaka stood outside the door, giving us a pleading look, "Although they aren’t as big of a threat as the five thousand Heroic Spirit Soldiers of the Makoto Family, I’m quite curious if they have clashed with those Heroic Spirit Soldiers or if they’ve been eliminated altogether. If possible, I hope you can help investigate."

"No problem," I nodded and then grabbed a certain silver-haired "Loli" who was striding out, "Ilya! Where are you going?"

"Go out and gather intelligence?" the little girl said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, "Isn’t that Big Brother’s job today? I should be able to help!"

Help!? The biggest help you could provide right now would be to just stay put beside us! I really don’t know if Ilya is naturally clueless or purposely trying to annoy us. She’s in such a dangerous situation, and yet she doesn’t seem to have any sense of alarm.

After the few who had to go to school had left, the Tohsaka household once again became a den for restless elements. Little Baobao seemed to really like the newcomer Ilya; despite a language barrier, it couldn’t stop the rapid warming of relations between the two "little girls." Meanwhile, the unusually tall Uncle B, after some recovery time, was back in good shape. Now, under Ilya’s command, he squatted in the living room on standby. Clearly, due to the close proximity of the Pandora Sisters, even Berserker, though he had lost his mind, was trying his best to keep low—perhaps this could be considered an innate sensitivity to danger?

In the morning, Tsuruya had released a batch of agile probes, and now they had arrived in the vicinity of Yododani Temple and Yanfeng Church, uploading the scanned data to us. However, the intelligence concerning the former was doomed to yield nothing. Lin Xue’s predictions in these situations had virtually a zero chance of being wrong; she said the anomaly would occur tonight, and not a minute before. What really interested Sandora and me were the energy fluctuations near Yanfeng Church. Data showed that there seemed to be an energy source completely different from the usual Heroic Spirit magic power. I wonder if it’s that fake priest Yanfeng’s doing, or maybe it’s the energy reaction of Golden Shining, er, Lady Shining. However, since this wasn’t our primary concern at the moment, we only took a cursory notice of it before turning the conversation back to what we should eat for lunch. There’s no helping it—aside from that topic, Sandora is interested in nothing else.

Well, so-called Gluttons always mean there’s someone at home who gets incredibly joyful at mealtimes. I should feel sorry for Tohsaka Rin; her overly optimistic estimate of Sandora led to the demise of her last piece of high-end English porcelain at lunch today—even though it still had ’made in China’ printed on it.

Since she could sell a family heirloom ivory carving and replace it with a plastic one, I have no doubt she would use a cup from Tangshan’s second ceramics factory, three for five yuan each, to discuss with me a plan to solve this year’s heating costs. You just can’t fathom the mind of a Miss with No Morals.

Anyway, having a lot of lice doesn’t itch, and having a lot of debt doesn’t worry—one look at the three walls that the Pandora Sisters smashed through in their fight yesterday, still shedding bits of cement, and the enormous compensation looming in the near future makes everything seem petty. Therefore, I watched Sandora unconsciously gnawing at her teacup with an utterly indifferent gaze, and in fact, when Tohsaka Rin returned in the evening and saw her house still standing, she was already over the moon...

Time gradually moved into the evening.

Yododani Temple, this was our second visit to this place, and it still looked as ordinary as ever, with ancient steps and a tall gate standing quietly under the moonlight, almost deathly still. Tohsaka naturally had her doubts about this sudden plan of ours. In her opinion, even "photography enthusiasts from Centaurus" with advanced technology would be outsiders when it comes to human mysticism. She didn’t quite believe the claim of "a space-time fold occurring in this area in one hour as discovered through precise measurements," but she was more concerned that a bunch of highly lethal aliens might accidentally flatten the entire Yododani Temple without anyone watching, so she followed us over.

"Sasaki, I know you’re there, won’t you come out and see an old friend?"

Standing at the top of the stairs, I called out loudly toward the seemingly empty temple gate. As my voice faded, the swordsman Heroic Spirit holding a long blade indeed gradually materialized out of thin air. However, his complexion didn’t look too good.

Or to be more precise, he was on the verge of crying.

"You guys are ruthless, okay?" The tall male Heroic Spirit, faced with an even larger group of "invaders" than last time, looked like he was about to cry without tears. Being spectated by a dozen or so figures is not something most people can handle, particularly when several of those figures included mischievous kids darting around and a teenage girl holding a digital camera munching popcorn with a crunching sound. The ill-fated Sasaki wearing the Heroic Spirit title seemed to find himself in the position of an animal locked in a cage for public viewing.

But he couldn’t voice his dissatisfaction, not to mention that just having Uncle B, three meters tall, upright and standing before him, was enough to give the majority of Heroic Spirits a psychological pressure.

"If you want to fight, then fight; if you want to kill, then kill. But what’s with coming to spectate me time after time?"

Sasaki didn’t say this out loud, but I could guess just by looking at his face.

With less than five minutes left until the anomaly predicted by Lin Xue occurred, I didn’t care to waste words with him. With a wave of my hand, Vega, who had already morphed into his Armored Scorpion form, walked up to Sasaki and then raised his dual blades high.

Completely unprepared for the unabashedly reckless spectator gang to turn hostile so abruptly, Sasaki’s reaction was clearly a beat too slow. Not that it would have made any difference had he been able to react in time—Vega made no pretense of holding back. His high-intensity Ship-Slicing Blades, sparking with energy, made no pause upon contact with the hastily raised drying pole, cutting through it like touching a shadow on water. The Phase Shift Force Field disintegrated it into three pieces, and amidst a sudden burst of fierce electric sparks, Sasaki’s eyes widened as he fell backwards, crashing to the ground.

Of course, Vega didn’t kill him, he just temporarily disabled his combat abilities. Moments later, with blue smoke wafting from his body, his hair standing on end, and his face completely blackened, the unlucky Heroic Spirit was brought before Sakura by Scorpion Sister.

"Try again and see what the difference is from those infantry spirits," Scorpion Sister said to Sakura.

"What are you going to do?"

Even as a brave swordsman, Sasaki couldn’t help but let out a cry of terror, for he was completely unable to deduce these strangely acting people’s intentions. Unable to move his body due to the severe electric shock, he lay helplessly on the ground, watching as a circle of onlookers’ heads appeared in his field of vision, sweat pouring profusely.

Summoned countless times throughout his many battles, Sasaki could no longer remember them clearly, but what he was certain of was that he had never encountered such a strange situation in his life!

"Don’t come any closer! Let’s talk this out, don’t come any closer..."

This poor child was sure to be left with psychological trauma.

His feeble protests were of course ineffective. By now, Sakura was standing beside Sasaki with a beaming smile, bending down to look at the Heroic Spirit at her feet. Tohsaka watched curiously, not knowing what his little sister intended to do, then his eyes suddenly widened in shock.

Amidst the blue and white glow, Sakura’s hair instantly grew longer, turning into numerous crystalline, vine-like structures that enveloped the protesting swordsman, who didn’t even have time to cry out before becoming a giant rice dumpling.

Wearing a bright smile, Sakura began to count down: "Three, two, one—done!"

The mutated hair gradually retracted, leaving behind a crystal-clear statue in place of where Sasaki had been lying.

Seconds later, accompanied by the "crackling" sound of fissures, the thin shell on the surface of the crystal statue gradually fell off, revealing a completely refreshed swordsman, his eyes wide open with a bewildered look.

"The transformation went smoothly," Sakura said, flicking her hair—which was gradually returning to its original purple color—"The registration and logging are also complete. I told you, we’ve practiced this for quite some time."

Another brazen act of poaching in broad daylight.

This was one of Sakura’s special powers, Avalon Assimilation, or perhaps more aptly, Crystal Assimilation. Using materials from the World Tree and specially modified Ghost Energy Crystals, Taville reshaped parts of Sakura’s body, then Lilina transformed her, ultimately turning this girl into an extremely special being that could be described as a concept living thing.

The Key of Avalon.

Sakura possessed a normal human body, which was our promised gift to her, and at the same time, she could alter her body, transforming it. Strictly speaking, the Crystal Saint Mother was not an independent entity but rather a component of the Leaving World Garden System, akin to an antenna or a multifunctional probe. "She" was one with the Avalon Nest and the World Tree, possessing Law Control Power completely equivalent to the World Root. Through this connection, she could log a Heroic Spirit into the World Tree Temple. Dingdang’s power compared to the will of an entire planet was decidedly a foregone conclusion. Therefore, what was called transformation...

Was actually poaching from the Suppression Force...

"As for the little gift we’re giving your sister," I patted Tohsaka on the shoulder, snapping him back to reality, "you can consider it to be Alien magic if you will. I’ve told you that your Holy Grail war is meaningless to us, and this is why—those Energy theories were locked in our filing cabinet long ago." (To be continued, if you want to find out what happens next, please visit www.qidian.com. More Chapters are available; support the author, support genuine reading!)