TGS - Chapter 131
Chapter 131: The Quartz Letters
That night, the two, reunited after a long separation, talked late into the night. The conversation only came to a close when the hourglass in the corner was nearly half empty and the sound of the midnight bell echoed from the distant royal palace.
“Right now, the royal city garrison is preparing for the march overnight. Tomorrow morning, I will lead the army to the northwestern border.” Alyuin paused. “Are you going?”
Lotus thought for a moment.
She had rushed to the royal city to confirm the princess’s safety. Now that the Dream Succubus who had infiltrated Akhet was under control, the purpose of her trip was achieved. She should go to where the other gods were.
After all, for deities, even during this special period where they could interfere in the mortal world, the main battlefield was still beyond human sight, and the main opponents were still the gods of a foreign land.
But…
The Kasnie pantheon had too many miscellaneous, strange, and bizarre gods. There were quite a few like the Dream Succubus, whose divine power was low enough to slip through the barrier and who could affect humans in various ways.
Alyuin was the core of Solancia, so she would naturally be a key target for the enemy. If a few more of those types came, there would always be a hidden danger.
At times like these, Lotus really appreciated the Solancian pantheon’s incarnation system. There was never a problem of being unable to be in two places at once.
Alyuin was still waiting for her answer.
Lotus had originally planned to say she would accompany the princess, as usual, and then, when she was alone, split off an incarnation to go to the gods’ location.
However, thinking of the decision she had just made, Lotus changed her mind and closed her eyes in front of Alyuin.
A frosty-blue water shadow extended from the ends of Lotus’s hair, dispersing into a mist before coalescing into a form beside her.
Her silver hair, white tail, and even her pearly white skin all had the unique, lustrous sheen of an aquatic species. The long, finned tail was translucent like gauze, as if it belonged to a giant fish living in the Yilu River.
Her body was enveloped in flowing water, supporting the divine incarnation in a semi-floating state, so that the mythological creature with a fish tail didn’t seem out of place or abrupt even on land.
Alyuin knew Solancian mythology by heart and recognized this incarnation at first glance. “The Silver Mermaid?”
The mermaid smiled faintly, her eyes also the color of blue chalcedony.
Lotus had only two mythological incarnations.
One was the Snow Goddess she often used before. The other was the Silver Mermaid before her now. In the legends, the Silver Mermaid existed alongside the Yilu River and would appear in the depths of all rivers and lakes on earth, leading the migrations of the giant fish.
As if finding it novel, Alyuin raised her hand and touched the mermaid’s ear fin. The sensation of touching the fin through the thin layer of water must have been strange, because she was silent for a full three seconds.
But immediately after, the princess’s expression became thoughtful. Her golden eyes looked at the River Goddess’s main body, then at the incarnation, which had the same appearance but no legs, instead possessing a long fish tail and some non-human features.
“Are they both you?”
The main body and the incarnation nodded in unison, as if in duplicate.
As if casually, Alyuin poked the raised dorsal fin on the mermaid’s back, then changed from poking to pinching, asking in a purely exploratory tone, “If I touch this side, will your main body feel it?”
“Strictly speaking, no.” Lotus thought for a moment and explained, “To a god’s consciousness, the main body and the incarnation are roughly the difference between the torso and an arm. Just as when you touch your left hand, the torso doesn’t transmit the same sensation, but the consciousness controlling the body will sense it.”
Alyuin said, “Oh—”
Lotus asked, “?”
Alyuin immediately switched her expression to the solemnity of discussing official business, nodding to show she understood. And Lotus’s analogy did indeed help her understand the control mechanism of a divine incarnation.
“So, you are going to?”
“I will go to the border first. The other major gods of Solancia should be there,” the Silver Mermaid on the left said, glancing at the Dream Succubus sealed against the wall. “I’ll take her with me.”
The main body on the right continued without a pause. “I will travel with you, in case those two pantheons send more deities to attack you.”
Alyuin said, “I understand.”
Lotus controlled the Silver Mermaid to turn, pick up the solidified divine power sealing the Dream Succubus, and set off first.
This incarnation would travel by water, following the Yilu River to the Solancian border. For the River Goddess, this was the fastest and most effortless way to travel.
The two who remained were to return to the bedchamber.
Lotus turned into a spiritual form.
She certainly couldn’t walk brazenly beside Alyuin.
Both Lotus and the Dream Succubus had been in a form unobservable by humans when they entered the royal court, so the guards at the gate had noticed nothing.
If the princess came in alone but left with someone else… who knows how terrified the guards would be.
Similarly, the process of turning into a spiritual form was not hidden from Alyuin.
In just a few short minutes, the princess witnessed sights she had never seen in the past dozen or so years.
Except for a slight change in expression the moment Lotus disappeared from her sight, she showed little surprise for the rest of the time, maintaining a faint smile, utterly calm.
Lotus’s thoughts were complicated.
Right now, she had clearly made the decision to show her true self to Alyuin, yet she felt a faint sense of confusion and hesitation.
If Alyuin had indeed been moved by the Goddess of the Yilu River’s performance, and if she came to understand her own heart as the truth was revealed step by step, how should Lotus conduct herself?
The scene was already taking shape in her mind.
Alyuin standing before her, saying, “You are very different from what I used to know. I’m sorry, I only admired a true deity, different from mortals, who resides high above the clouds.”
If she really had to face such a scene… that would also be cutting her losses in time.
Lotus turned her eyes to the side, looking at the princess walking beside her.
Alyuin’s bone structure was on the cool and sharp side, while her features were bright and beautiful. The lines of her profile were stern, clear, and dashing.
When she wasn’t smiling, this coldness was even more pronounced, enough to make those unfamiliar with her look on with reverence and respect.
The more likely it was that she would face that day, the more she had to reveal her true self, taking off the shell she had put on, piece by piece.
Despite her divine status and position, despite being tinged with divinity, despite not having deliberately disguised her temperament in front of Alyuin—
She still had to let Alyuin see that she was the River Goddess, but even more so, she was Lotus.
Lotus lowered her gaze, a quiet determination held in her frosty-blue eyes.
As they neared the bedchamber, Alyuin said, “Your things from the mansion, I’ve placed them in the bedchamber just as they were. Except for large items like cabinets, nothing has been touched by others’ hands.”
At this point, the princess suddenly paused, her expression strange, and she didn’t continue.
And when Lotus saw the room, she knew why the princess hadn’t said more.
The furnishings in the room were arranged exactly as they had been before Lotus left, without the slightest error, but—
There were extra things here.
There was an extra set of toiletries, an outer robe with a gold-hemmed black base hanging on a jade hook on the wall by the door, and a half-rolled, half-unfurled deerskin map on the low cabinet by the bed. None of these had belonged to the Lotus who used to live here.
The wall on the right had been knocked through, creating an archway blocked by a curtain of crystal beads.
Not only were there traces of another person, but the surfaces of the various objects in the room hadn’t even a speck of dust, suggesting not so much regular cleaning as that someone had been living here all along.
It was almost like… almost like.
To use a more modern term, it was like cohabitation.
Alyuin maintained a timely silence.
Lotus was speechless.
This is very normal, she thought. Just like some classmates used to say, when their parents weren’t home, children would run to the master bedroom with their pillows and blankets to sleep. It’s a normal expression of insecurity.
Yet even with this mental justification, it couldn’t change the fact that the first thought that popped into her head was “cohabitation.”
But actually, given her current state of mind, thinking of cohabitation is the right thing to do, isn’t it?
Lotus told herself this and began to feel at ease. She took a step forward, and her gaze suddenly fixed on the window.
It was the only window in the room.
It was fitted with sliding glass panes, and the linen curtains were tied back to either side. The bright moonlight and the lamp in Alyuin’s hand together illuminated several strings of things hanging there.
They looked like some kind of ornament, or perhaps diamond-shaped jade tablets, or slightly flattened wind chimes, strung together with several crisscrossing golden threads and hung before the window in a staggered, elegant arrangement.
The wind blew through the half-open window, causing them to touch lightly, making a tinkling sound. They were hung in just the right place, so that someone sitting at the desk under the window would see them just by looking up.
Lotus walked forward, took the lamp from Alyuin, and held up one of the pieces to examine it closely.
Two pieces of transparent quartz, thin as cicada wings, were layered crosswise, sealing a fragile, dried Snowtu flower petal within.
Even the fine veins of the petal were perfectly distinct and clearly visible, not to mention the vertical lines of writing arranged on it. The color of the ink was so vivid it seemed to have been frozen at the very moment it was written.
Each quartz plate was a short poem.
Lotus looked at them quietly for a moment, then asked softly, “If I hadn’t come back, what would you have done?”
Alyuin answered without hesitation, “Then I would have waited forever.”
Waited until she could wait no longer, and perhaps she would have become a tyrant in the historical records, burning temples, dismissing priests, and bringing all the divine statues back to the royal palace in a desperate, mutual destruction.
This absurd thought, induced by a foreign god in a dream, would probably have become a foreseeable reality after decades of waiting alone.
Lotus couldn’t read minds, so she couldn’t know this seemingly crazy and slightly terrifying prediction.
She just listened silently, hearing the sapling in her heart sprout and grow. Unlike before, when she had unconsciously suppressed it with a layer of stone, Lotus now observed it with an almost calm attitude.
The speed was too fast.
So fast that Lotus had to worry, if it really came to the point where she needed to cut her losses, would she still be able to let go?
“You should rest. You have to start traveling tomorrow morning, don’t you?”
Alyuin asked, “I’m resting here?”
Lotus closed her eyes and said as gently and calmly as possible, “As you wish.”
“Then don’t you need to sleep?”
“I don’t need sleep, unless it’s a long slumber,” Lotus said slowly. “Sleeping every night before was more out of habit. Other gods are not like this.”
—The real kind of god, imprinted with the mark of ancient Solancia from head to toe, the kind she had shown the princess at their first reunion, would never be like this.
Noticing Lotus’s several instances of unusual frankness, Alyuin’s eyes deepened.
“Habit,” “different from other gods,” two consecutive points of emphasis. What was Lotus trying to express?
Lacking context, even Alyuin was inevitably confused.
However—
“Then please maintain your good habit of resting every day.”
The princess said, unhesitatingly pulling the god onto the bed.
Having never seen Lotus lying on a bed with her silver hair and blue eyes, she admired the sight for a while longer before quickly washing up herself.
Lotus was speechless.
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