Trafford's Trading Club

Chapter 1431: Chapter 158: The Deceitful Room

When Boss Luo arrived at Luo Ya’s attic room, Luo Ya was standing on top of the body pillow Mian Mian.

The Star Creation pillow currently had an extremely nervous expression, trying hard to stay focused, while Luo Ya was even more cautious as she pinched a castle model piece between her fingers, about to place this piece on the very top of the table model.

Luo Qiu found it hard to imagine what exactly Luo Ya was building on the table, but just seeing her this focused already made him quite happy.

It had been some time since he last felt this way… This was a completely different sense of companionship from what You Ye could give him, perhaps more like the family-like feeling Ren Ziling brought him—something that felt as if it had been there since birth.

Just as Boss Luo was momentarily lost in thought, Luo Ya suddenly rose on her tiptoes. But after all, what she was standing on was, in essence, just a body pillow; even as a Star Creation Creature, it could not possibly turn hard… Luo Ya, who had lost her balance, was about to fall.

Mian Mian reacted very quickly, swelling up in an instant and fully capable of catching the falling Luo Ya, but before it could, a pair of hands had already caught the little Luo Ya.

Poof———!

“Brother!” she said in a voice that was practically brimming with surprise and delight.

Luo Qiu quickly set Luo Ya down, then picked up the castle model piece that had fallen to the floor when she slipped.

“What is this?”

Luo Qiu looked curiously at the [Building Blocks] on the table that resembled some kind of bizarre craftwork.

“For you,” Luo Ya said simply.

“For me?” Boss Luo froze for a moment, then glanced at [Mian Mian].

This Star Creation Creature seemed, at some point, to have gained a shrewdness comparable to a certain Black soul envoy who’d sunk too deep into playing the [Main God]. It shivered with a sharp, eager energy as it said, “Master, this is a gift Miss Luoya specially made for you! Miss Luoya has been working hard on this all day! She said she wants to make you happy!”

Boss Luo glanced at Luo Ya and found her lowering her head with a hint of shyness, her hands nervously gripping the hem of her dress.

“Thank you, I like it very much.”

Boss Luo smiled at that, gently rubbling Luo Ya’s little head. Then he turned to look at the very unique [craftwork] on the table, and again at the final piece in his hand, as if thinking about something.

Luo Ya sensed something and raised her head in puzzlement, a faint unease appearing on her face.

Boss Luo suddenly placed this last piece where it was meant to go—that was where Luo Ya had planned to put it.

“Let’s just keep it like this,” Luo Qiu said with a soft chuckle. “It looks pretty interesting this way.”

Luo Ya seemed to sense something, and subconsciously reached out to poke the work in front of her. She found that the model had now become stable; it had clearly been fixed into shape.

“Do you want to have afternoon tea?” Luo Qiu said softly. “You Ye should’ve made lots of tasty things for you.”

Luo Ya thought about it, then obediently nodded.

“Then let’s go down.” Luo Qiu directly took little Luo Ya’s hand and headed for the door.

As they went out, Boss Luo cast one last look at Luo Ya’s work and suddenly asked, “What is this you’ve built?”

Luo Ya thought for a moment and said, “A pyramid.”

“It really is quite a special pyramid,” Boss Luo chuckled, saying nothing more as he gently closed the door.

In Luo Qiu’s view, this probably wasn’t a pyramid at all, but some kind of special [thing]. It looked more like a special building—a rough, simple prototype of some unusual structure that didn’t exist here.

Luo Qiu realized he’d actually seen a similar style somewhere before—inside the Penglai Treasury, in the Courtyard of that former citizen of the Eternal Kingdom, Cecil.

…

…

Pompeii Ruins, inner city—the castle in the inner city.

Perhaps, at this point, this building could no longer be called a castle. It looked more like some peculiar structure, unlike any architectural style in the mainland.

But the scouting team currently inside it clearly couldn’t see what it looked like from the outside.

Rumble rumble rumble——!

This was the sound made as the Godly Land’s true dragon, already on the verge of rampaging, pounded away at the castle’s inner walls… Next to her, the little butterfly monster, seeing stars, was sprawled flat on the floor.

The little butterfly monster used to be quite fond of human amusement rides like carousels, but right now she felt that even if the boss invited her to play one, she would absolutely refuse!

Rumble——!

At last, after smashing one more punch, Long Xiruo suddenly stopped. She slowly exhaled, calming her slightly irritable heart… This place had a strange side effect that sped up the loss of Power. If she kept using her Power without rest, and without the Divine Land to replenish her, she would eventually be drained dry.

“No wonder the Allied Forces from the Unhuman Domain suffered such heavy casualties back then. They were probably already exhausted just from groping their way inside. Even I almost got caught by it…”

The Divine Dragon of China frowned. She couldn’t shake the feeling that this sort of insidious method of killing people without a trace was a perfect match for a certain scheming maid’s personality.

Luo Pianqian slowly climbed to her feet at this point and walked over to Long Xiruo’s side. “Sister Long, there seems to be something in here.”

“Mm, I know.” The Divine Land’s true dragon nodded. It was precisely because she’d sensed that there was something inside this room behind the shattered wall that she’d stopped.

“Hide behind me, let’s go in and take a look.”

With that, Long Xiruo took a deep breath, moving with great care—she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d been this cautious… perhaps back when she still bore the surname Xuanyuan.

The moment she stepped into this room, the Divine Land’s true dragon felt that this was unlike any of the strange rooms they’d encountered before, a feeling utterly unprecedented yet somehow familiar.

“Sister Long, this place feels so weird!” Luo Pianqian suddenly said.

Long Xiruo frowned and glanced at her, only to see the little butterfly monster looking around in confusion, muttering, “It feels… like the first time I met the boss… No, more like the first time I walked into the boss’s Shop… That kind of feeling, I guess.”

Come to think of it, Long Xiruo had never personally stepped into the Shop even once… Although she and Boss Luo had traded more than once, it had indeed never happened inside the Shop itself.

“There doesn’t seem to be anyone here either.” The little butterfly monster looked around. The room before them was like a hall, with a black staircase directly ahead… She counted and found that there were thirteen steps in total.

At the top of the staircase was a huge seat—a Throne.

Aside from that, there was nothing else here.

“Weird.” The true dragon of the Divine Land frowned at this moment. “I’ve heard Dazzle mention the situation of the final battle back then, but why…”

“Sister Long?”

Long Xiruo explained, “Look at this room, it’s bigger than any of the ones before. And this Throne here—no way this belonged to some small fry. But from what I learned off Dazzle, the location of the final battle back then wasn’t here.”

“Mm… maybe it was where the big bad guys usually took their breaks?” The lady with butterfly wings thought for a bit.

Long Xiruo casually knocked the butterfly on the head. “Those big bad guys you’re talking about were really that free, huh. Maybe they even held balls in here?!”

As she spoke, Long Xiruo shook her head, stepped down hard, walked straight up to the end of the stairs, and came before that enormous Throne, carefully examining it.

But she only examined it for a moment before failing to see anything… The true dragon of the Divine Land frowned, simply cast dozens of inner borders on herself at once, then directly sat down!

The lady with butterfly wings also flew up at this time and asked curiously, “Sister Long, are you tired?”

“This is called immersion!” Long Xiruo said irritably. “I’m trying to feel what the guy who used to sit here thought.”

The lady with butterfly wings thought and said, “Sister Long, is the chair comfy?”

“Comf… I’m trying to get close to the thoughts of the guy who sat here!!!” The Godly Land’s true dragon raised her hand.

This time the lady with butterfly wings had learned her lesson… or rather, she’d already been on guard. She hugged her head and hopped back a small step.

The true dragon of the Divine Land rolled her eyes… But this enormous Throne really did give one a kind of don’t-want-to-get-up feeling once you sat down—Long Xiruo even felt a drowsiness.

As a true dragon, she should have been able to stay awake endlessly… She didn’t even notice where this drowsiness came from; the very instant it appeared, the true dragon of the Divine Land didn’t feel anything off.

Without realizing it, Long Xiruo yawned, her eyelids grew heavy, and slowly closed… It seemed she could hear the lady with butterfly wings calling to her by her ear.

But she could no longer hear clearly… The sound of the little butterfly calling her name grew farther and farther away—until all fell silent; in the end she still closed her eyes.

…

She felt she couldn’t remember anything… who she actually was, where this place was, she didn’t even know what she was supposed to do next.

Her body seemed to exist, yet also seemed not to… Countless things passed through this quasi-real, quasi-false body of hers, one shattered mainland after another—everything’s passage ended in ruin.

She didn’t even know how long this state lasted—it felt endless, with no end in sight.

Once again she Lost herself in this Miracle… She even forgot why she needed to think about who she was, forgot why she needed to think about where this was, and even more forgot why she needed to think about what she was about to do.

When all these questions ceased to exist, her only feeling was that she, like those things passing through her body, would in the end also be destroyed.

Yet when this termination was about to arrive, she appeared so Ping Jing… so Ping Jing it felt like a return—returning to something like a mother’s body—as if everything had been born from [its] body.

She opened her arms wide, completely relaxing her body. She no longer just let everything pass through her, but seemed to have also become part of all this, following the rhythm of everything, flowing toward the final termination of all things.

It was coming… the termination.

Suddenly some sound startled her, snapping her out of that near slumber… that near Eternal serenity—she snapped her eyes open.

She saw that where she was, was a patch of chaos… At the center of the chaos was an incomparably huge pitch-[black] object—yet it clearly possessed its own light.

Like the Sun during a total eclipse—the ring of white light at the edge, like a flame, burned around it—[it] was the thing that destroyed everything and returned everything.

And the sound she heard actually came from a figure… a back that stood in front of her, standing before [it].

She tried hard to hear what the owner of that back was saying, but no matter what, she couldn’t hear clearly—the back slowly began to turn around.

But just as she was about to see this back clearly, everything blurred—the back seemed to turn into scrambled pixels.

She stretched her hand toward this scrambled figure, wanting to rush up regardless of everything—but at this moment, the entire chaos time began shaking violently.

This tremor completely flung her away—just as her palm was about to touch that figure, everything suddenly vanished.

…

“Sister Long! Sister Long! Sister Long—!”

A voice coming from far to near.

“Oh… how long did I sleep?” Long Xiruo slowly opened her eyes and subconsciously rubbed her forehead. She knew she had dozed off for no reason—but she couldn’t remember anything she’d dreamt after falling asleep.

She only knew she had dreamt of something… but everything related to it seemed to have been locked away; she couldn’t glimpse even the slightest bit of it.

“Three minutes!” Luo Pianqian said anxiously at this time. “I couldn’t wake you no matter how I called, scared me to death!”

“Maybe I was a bit tired and dozed off.” Long Xiruo waved her hand, signaling the lady with butterfly wings not to worry… but she quietly checked her body, and found nothing wrong.

Long Xiruo suddenly stood up, suspiciously looking over this huge Throne… Clearly, that strange and now-unrecallable dream was related to sitting on this giant Throne.

“What’s this?” Long Xiruo was now looking at a small box placed on the armrest of the Throne—it looked like a music box.

“No idea.” Luo Pianqian couldn’t help being stunned. “Huh… when did a box show up here? There clearly wasn’t one before?”

Long Xiruo’s brows knitted as she picked up this irregularities music box in her hands—but she found that no matter how much force she used, she couldn’t open this mysteriously appearing music box.

You had to know she was already using the greatest Power she could unleash… Forget a music box, she could blow up a mountain!

Just then, this huge, empty hall suddenly trembled—everything here began to collapse!

First was this gigantic Throne, then the stairs bearing it, then the floor beneath the stairs… and the pillars supporting this place!

“Again?” The true dragon of the Divine Land cursed at this moment, “Don’t let me find out who’s fooling me! I won’t ever be done with you!!”

As she spoke, the true dragon of the Divine Land couldn’t be bothered with the irregularities here anymore. She grabbed Luo Pianqian with one hand and the inexplicable music box with the other, and charged toward the opening she had blasted out.

But what surprised Long Xiruo even more was that, after she rushed out of this breach… there was no tremor at all around them; everything was so calm.

Long Xiruo subconsciously turned her head back and saw that the hole she’d blown in the wall was still there, but peeking inside from here, what she saw was just a narrow stone chamber where you could see everything at a glance and there was nothing in it.

Obviously… the place she and Luo Pianqian had gone into had already disappeared.