The two clones Lilith and Xiao Lin defeated turned into halos on the ground before disappearing in thin air. Not even the slightest trace of blood was left and it looked as though nothing had happened.
“It’s simpler than I thought,” Lilith exhaled slightly and picked up the weapons that had fallen all over the ground. Switching through various weapons allowed her to disrupt the clone’s rhythm and she seemed to have mastered the techniques more skillfully after the earlier battle.
“Now that it’s all over, it’s time for you to explain everything.” Xiao Lin calmed his fluctuating mood but Lilith’s words still left him feeling somewhat worried.
“Explain what?”
“Hey now, don’t you show that innocent look to me! You just said earlier that Judge Academy has information about Normans trying to enter our world!” Lilith’s confusion made Xiao Lin even more anxious.
“Oh, I lied to you.”
“Why I oughta smack you right now!”
“Oh? Are you finally willing to fight with me?”
Xiao Lin did not know how to respond.
“Okay, okay. I won’t joke around with you anymore.” Lilith pursed her lips before adding, “It’s not entirely a joke though, but for the most part it’s all in jest, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to get the information in the first place.”
Lilith gave a cursory explanation of how her status in Judge Academy made it somewhat easier to get access to a few of the inner secrets, though it was still impossible for her to know the more concrete ones. Like she said, Judge Academy’s intelligence department had initially heard that rumor from the slums.
The slums were basically the bottommost layer of society in Planet Norma, where credibility was not very high in the first place. The situation could be analogous to someone on Earth who proclaimed their intention to destroy the world on the Internet. That person would, at best, be regarded as a mentally ill individual.
“Do you understand now? Judge Academy did investigate this matter a little seriously at first, but they eventually came to the conclusion that it was just a hoax. Don’t worry.”
“I sure hope so.” Xiao Lin was unsure if Lilith was lying to him, but even if it was just a joke, her words had left him with a sense of alertness. If the lowest rung of Planet Norma’s society could have such thoughts, then what about those who really did have the ability to carry it out? Would they try executing such a plan?
On careful thought, such a hypothesis was rather scary, especially when Xiao Lin was reminded of Ibeiya’s conversation with them about Planet Norma’s rumors some days ago. When the high priest Asabanor was still at his peak, he used his knowledge of astrology to explore the humans’ space channels.
Did Asabanor really discover it? If so, could he use it? Or perhaps even go directly to Earth through that passage?
There was no way to know the answer and Xiao Lin felt a headache coming on. In fact, such a possibility was highly likely. Xiao Lin had previously treated Asabanor as Judge Academy’s concern, but at that moment, he felt that it was better for that revenge-driven dead soul to be completely eradicated once and for all.
“Lilith.”
“Yes?”
“We must end Asabanor for good this time! I think Dawn Academy should help too!”
“Huh?”
“That is why we must get out from here!”
The speechless Lilith had yet to react to Xiao Lin’s sudden change of demeanor when something happened in the cave. A door that shone in a milky white light appeared out of nowhere in a corner.
The two of them exchanged glances and Lilith pondered. “What does this mean?”
“It’s probably telling us that we’ve cleared the level.”
Lilith was lost for words.
“You obviously haven’t played games before. Once you cleared the level, there will be a pathway to a new level. What an old system. We’ve already used it on Earth. The Normans are so uncreative,” Xiao Linban mocked teasingly.
“You’re saying there’s a stronger enemy in the next level? Let’s go then!” The things that Lilith looked forward to completely different from Xiao Lin.
Xiao Lin was stunned for a moment and shook his head, unsure whether to laugh or cry. Next up, he walked right through the white gate of light.
A burst of light appeared in front of their eyes as the environment around them changed. In the next quarter of an hour, they were no longer inside a cave full of rocks, but found themselves inside a room covered completely in silver metal. The room had no entrance or exit, no ventilation, and no light source, although there was a strange glow illuminating it.
“What is this place? Are there going to be new clones of us again?”
“That’s unlikely. It’s useless to use the same trick twice. Hey, this sentence sounds kinda familiar.”
When Xiao Lin was poking fun at himself, a square table suddenly appeared in the center of the room. The table was made up of dark halos, but a substance-like quality could be felt upon the slightest of contact. There was a drawing on the table as well. It was a grid similar to a chessboard, while beside the chessboard were various little chess-like pieces that were made out of wood pieces.
“I don’t know how to play chess!” Lilith was the most disappointed one there, since she did not get the battle she had been looking forward to.
“I somehow think that this is for us to put together a puzzle?” Xiao Lin took a closer look. Strange figures were drawn in some of the chessboard’s grids, while other grids appeared empty. It was obviously trying to tell any visitors that they were supposed to fill the grids using the wood pieces.
“Does that mean the first level is a battle level, and the second level is a intelligence test?” Xiao Lin was a little curious. He picked up each wood piece and observed it one by one, but Lilith lacked all interest in it. Fighting was everything for that woman and everything else was boring to her.
After a long time, Xiao Lin’s slowly had an odd expression.
“Have you found the pattern?” Lilith asked.
“Um, this is a bit uncanny. Take a look.” Xiao Lin hesitantly handed over one of the wood pieces, but Lilith simply glanced at it and returned it back to him, shrugging her shoulders. “Just tell me what you found out.”
“Well, I think the graphics on the wood chips are some kind of text.”
“Normese? No, that can’t be. It doesn’t look like Normese. Could it be Ancient Normese?” Lilith asked casually as she felt it was .
“It’s not that either.” Xiao Lin’s expression became more and more weird. He gulped and spoke softly in a very unusual tone, “I think it’s oracle bone script.”
“What?” Lilith was stunned for about a dozen seconds.
“Yeah, you heard it right, and I read it right too. I almost forgot to tell you that I studied liberal arts in the past, so I was fortunate enough to read a few books about oracle bone script.”
“But… But it’s impossible!”
“Exactly. I don’t understand how it could be possible.” Xiao Lin put down the wood pieces and sighed. “I might be able to understand it if it were Chinese or English, but oracle bone script… This has to be a joke. Isn’t this a script from thousands of years ago?”