Monster - Chapter 56
Chapter 56: Daughters
The next morning, just as Lin Sandie, Lou, and Miu the crow finished breakfast, there was a knock at the door.
"It's Sister Lirou," Lou said, getting up to open it.
Lin Sandie had always imagined "Sister Lirou" to be a gentle woman. She was surprised to see a tall, slender middle-aged man with medium-length hair tied back in a ponytail. He wore a well-tailored black suit, and his ordinary face was impeccably clean. Though fine lines creased the corners of his eyes, they only added to his charm.
"You're driving me crazy," the man exclaimed the moment he walked in. His voice was low and gruff, yet the ends of his sentences rose in pitch, catching Lin Sandie off guard.
"Ah, you really do look identical." Seeing Lin Sandie, Wang Lirou looked at Lou's face in astonishment, realizing the two women were perfect duplicates, just as Lou had told him over the phone.
"Hello," Lin Sandie greeted him.
"Hello, hello." Wang Lirou hurried over to shake Lin Sandie's hand. "I never thought two people in the world could look so much alike. Are you sure you're not twins?"
"Sister Lirou, hurry up and do my makeup. Make me look like Lin Sandie's personal bodyguard."
"You're so annoying!" Wang Lirou turned to Lou with a different expression, though he still opened his suitcase good-naturedly.
An hour later, Lin Sandie, dressed in a black dress, and Lou, in a black suit, sat in Lin Sandie's car. Wang Lirou, also in a black suit, was driving. The three of them, plus one crow, set off on the road back to the southern part of Leviathan.
"I've already contacted the funeral home in your area. Someone will be there to guide us," Wang Lirou said gently, deeply sympathetic to Lin Sandie's situation.
"Thank you." Lin Sandie was always polite to everyone except Lou, but this expression of gratitude was truly sincere.
In her limited life, Lin Sandie had attended many funerals—her mother Zhao Zhi's when she was a child, and later those of Bai Xuan and the others killed by Yan Ting. But orchestrating a funeral herself was an incredibly difficult task. Wang Lirou's arrival solved many trivial problems for her, including customs she didn't understand, funeral procedures, and other taboos.
For a stranger she had just met, Wang Lirou's warm-heartedness moved Lin Sandie.
"Lin Sandie, look, this person is so dumb…" Lou, who was scrolling through short videos, leaned against Lin Sandie, giggling foolishly. She found the suit jacket too stuffy and had taken it off, laying it on her lap. She wore only a white button-down shirt, but because she always carried a gun, Wang Lirou had fitted her with a very cool-looking shoulder holster.
"Lou Lou! We're going to a funeral. Stop watching entertainment!" Wang Lirou warned.
"What does it matter? Lin Sandie doesn't mind."
"Who said I don't mind?" Lin Sandie immediately retorted.
Lou gasped. "Are you two ganging up on me?"
"Tell me about Sentinels and Guides," Lin Sandie said, pushing at Lou, who was resting her face on her shoulder.
"What do you want to know?" Lou, as if boneless, let her head slide down to rest on Lin Sandie's lap and asked with a smile.
"…" Lin Sandie's gaze followed Lou's body. Lou's long legs, clad in black trousers, were propped askew on the back of the seat, causing her waist and hips to twist outward. The once-smooth white shirt was now creased, clinging tightly to her flat stomach. The curve of her hips was starkly outlined in this awkward posture. She looked both sultry and punchable.
And she was completely unaware of it.
Lin Sandie subtly covered Lou's waist with her suit jacket and shifted toward the window to give her more space.
"Put your feet down!" Lin Sandie slapped the back of Lou's thigh. Lou had no sense of decorum. She had the same face as her but was always doing these childish, messy things.
"Lin Sandie, do you want to become a Guide?" Lou put her feet down, though her black-socked feet remained on the seat.
"Are there any benefits?"
"Quite a few. Guides have very strong mental power, and Sentinels have very strong combat abilities. But Guides are rare, so there are no single Guides, understand? Every Guide must be bound to a Sentinel."
"Why?"
"Because a Guide is a sheath. If a sheath doesn't have a blade, it loses its meaning."
"Is your sheath this crow?" Lou turned her gaze to Miu, who was sitting in the front passenger seat, her eyes screaming, "What's the deal with your sheath? How did your blade end up like this?"
"Squawk! (Like hell I want a blade like that!)"
"The little crow isn't my sheath."
"Then who is?"
Lou made a face at Lin Sandie and didn't answer. Lin Sandie wasn't a being from the Main World; telling her too much about herself was pointless.
"What does 'bound to a Sentinel' mean?" Lin Sandie didn't dwell on it and returned to her previous question.
"Intercourse," Lou said with a perfectly normal expression, playing with a strand of Lin Sandie's hair that fell across her chest.
"…Don't use my face to say words like that so casually."
"This is my face, okay?"
Lin Sandie pressed her lips together and turned to look out the window.
"Alright, alright~ I won't say it. Anyway, that's how it is. In a team of a Sentinel and a Guide, if the Sentinel dies, the Guide is immediately assigned a new Sentinel as a replacement. If the Guide dies, the Sentinel will also die soon after." To soothe Lin Sandie, Lou continued explaining things about Sentinels and Guides.
"…Why?" Though not necessarily soothed, a curious Lin Sandie turned her face back.
"Because Sentinels are prone to being 'Bedeviled' after losing their Guide. To put it simply, Sentinels are more dependent on Guides than the other way around. Without a Guide, most of them will go mad or commit suicide due to mental breakdown."
"Can't they just be assigned a new Guide?"
"No. The number of Guides is much smaller than the number of Sentinels. First, there are no spare Guides, unless the Sentinel who lost their Guide is very special. Second, most Sentinels only recognize their first Guide as their lifelong partner. Even if they are assigned a new one, some can't fully accept them. It might delay being 'Bedeviled,' but they still won't live for long."
"So a Guide's mental superiority allows them to maintain their sense of self after losing a Sentinel?" Lin Sandie deduced.
"More or less."
The two continued to discuss the lore of Sentinels and Guides. By the time they reached the small southern village where Lin Sandie's home was, it was almost noon. It had to be said, Lou's foresight in asking Wang Lirou to help was brilliant. The funeral company he hired handled the services for Lin Sandie's father and stepmother with dignity, and his mature and steady way of dealing with the villagers saved Lin Sandie a great deal of effort. So, even though he looked more than ten years older than Lin Sandie, the villagers took it upon themselves to tell her she had found a good man.
Lin Sandie, of course, didn't care what these people thought of her. After two busy days, she had finally given her parents a respectable funeral, but she had become incredibly weak, as if her very essence had been drained away, leaving her fragile enough to shatter at any moment.
Her father, Lin Zhenshuo, and stepmother, Wang Xia, were buried next to her mother, Zhao Zhi. Lin Sandie didn't know if anyone would be unhappy with this arrangement, but after much thought, she buried the three elders together.
After the burial, the funeral procession and the crowd of villagers dispersed. Wang Lirou went to handle the remaining trivial matters, leaving Lou and Lin Sandie behind.
Before he left, Wang Lirou pulled Lou aside and instructed her sternly, "Lin Sandie's parents have passed away. She's very sad right now. Don't make her angry."
"I'm not a child."
"Don't say a single word unless she speaks to you first," Wang Lirou said more bluntly, feeling Lou hadn't understood him.
Lou's eyes widened at Wang Lirou, utterly speechless. Was he implying that Lin Sandie would get angry the moment she opened her mouth?
"Understand?" Wang Lirou asked, grabbing Lou's arm earnestly. "No matter how distant they were, they were still bound by blood. Lin Sandie hasn't slept these past two days. Don't you dare provoke her. She's already very weak…"
"I understand, I get it, I know!" Lou said, suppressing her temper.
"Then I'll go take care of other things. You be good."
After Wang Lirou left, Lou turned to look at Lin Sandie in the distance. She was standing before her parents' tombstones, her gaze heavy, lost in thought.
They had been busy all day, and now the sun was setting. In the slanted glow of the evening light, Lin Sandie's silhouette looked somewhat lonely.
Lou watched Lin Sandie for a long time before finally speaking. "Mom, are you there?"
At that moment, Lou was completely different from her usual self. Her lively eyes seemed to be veiled by a layer of world-weariness, turning them dim and lusterless. The smile was gone from her face, replaced by the numbness that comes only after weathering the vicissitudes of life.
In Lou's life, Pie had been most present before she turned fifteen. At fifteen, with the disappearance of Little Rabbit, Pie also began to appear less and less. It wasn't until Lou went to the Main World that she learned Pie, as an ancient god, had long been fated to reach the end of her existence.
The life form of a god was different from that of a human. To Pie, time and space were like a towering skyscraper, and she was its administrator, moving through its halls. Each person's timeline was like a file stored in one of the building's rooms. Pie could see a person's entire life story at a glance. But as the administrator grew old, the building began to crumble, and the rooms within started to decay. She appeared in people's lives for shorter and shorter periods, until finally, she would no longer appear at all, and thus, she would vanish.
Lou had learned all this after leaving the Tower World of Aztec, through her stubborn search for Pie. And even so, in the nearly five hundred years since Little Rabbit had left, the number of times Pie had appeared in Lou's timeline could be counted on two hands.
Little Rabbit had been gone for centuries, and now Pie would also leave her forever. Lou didn't want to be left all alone in this world.
And even if she wanted to stay, her own condition probably wouldn't allow it anymore.
"What is it, my dear daughter?" A gentle female voice suddenly echoed in Lou's mind. Before her eyes, a dilapidated temple, long since vanished, materialized. The toppled stone statue of a goddess lay before her.
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