Chapter 150: The Shape of a Human
Jingliu is not a catgirl, meow.
March 7th blinked, then blinked again. She stared down at the pure, cyan-green flame flickering harmlessly in her palm, then looked up at the grotesque creature of memory writhing before her. The thing, a chaotic amalgam of spiritual refuse, gave no reaction. She yelped and jumped back.
"The other me... did you do this?"
"To be precise, it's a collection of human emotions that this little thing absorbed," Rekka's voice echoed from within her. "My, my. It's so ugly."
"It really is ugly," March 7th agreed with a grimace.
"What you're holding is the clean part. You should find a glass bottle to put it in, otherwise it'll get dirty and we'll have to wash it all over again."
"Oh, right!"
March 7th looked around and spotted Guinaifen, asking her for a small vial. She carefully tipped her hand, letting the purified Heliobus drop inside.
"It's actually quite pretty," Guinaifen mused, holding the small bottle up to the dim light. The Heliobus, now stripped of all its emotional impurities, emitted a soft, verdant glow. The light played across Guinaifen's face, making it seem as though she were holding a piece of liquid jade.
Meanwhile, the monster—the discarded husk of memory molded by Rekka's power—swayed and writhed like a pile of sentient sludge. It emitted a low hissing, like a punctured ball slowly deflating. Its body, cobbled together from the dregs of countless emotions, looked like a rough draft scribbled by a third-rate artist after a long night of heavy drinking.
"Don't you worry, March! I, Guinaifen, will definitely keep your secret!" the street performer declared, flashing a confident thumbs-up.
"Huh? Um... thanks," March 7th replied, nodding uncertainly.
"Something feels really wrong up ahead... Hiss."
Cirrus, the little Heliobus, suddenly stopped its cheerful floating, its flame-like body flickering with puzzlement.
"My two ancestors, there seems to be something strange just ahead."
As if on cue, a hideous monster lunged from the shadows. With a single, horrifying gulp, it swallowed another unsuspecting Heliobus whole with its terrifyingly large mouth.
'What is that?'
A gallery of faces constantly surfaced and sank across its slimy, shifting form—faces contorted in weeping, manic laughter, incandescent rage, and stark terror. Each visage screamed silently for a moment before melting back into the muck, only to be replaced by a new one.
"So ugly," Stelle voiced the thought on everyone's mind.
"Indeed," Rekka nodded in agreement.
Having consumed its latest meal, the monster seemed to sense the presence of living beings. Its chaotic body slowly swiveled, and the countless faces on its surface all turned to aim at Rekka and Stelle. A muffled roar tore from its form, a discordant sound that seemed squeezed from dozens of throats at once. The faces began to twist violently, mouths stretching from ear to ear, eye sockets sinking into black holes as its entire body began to swell.
And then, it just... stopped.
"Who told you to roar at him! What are you roaring for!"
March 7th stomped into view from behind the creature, fuming. She delivered a solid kick to its quivering rear.
The monster cowered.
"What is this thing?" Stelle asked, poking it with her bat.
"Rekka! Stelle! You guys came to play here too?" March 7th chirped, her anger vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. "This place is pretty fun, even if the ghosts know how to make ghost walls! We just exorcised one a little while ago."
"Exorcised?" Rekka looked from March 7th to the twitching monstrosity behind her, its body a patchwork of twisted faces, and fell into a brief, contemplative silence. "When you say 'exorcise,' you don't mean you just left this ugly thing here to scare people, do you?"
"Of course not!" March 7th declared, planting her hands on her hips. "I already extracted all the clean parts from it. I was just going to throw away the dirty stuff that was left, but it ran off on its own."
"And then?"
"Then it started swallowing other ghosts all over the place," she said, her tone full of self-righteous indignation. "That's not my fault. It just couldn't keep its mouth shut." She then peered at the little green flame being held captive in Stelle's hand. "By the way, was that little guy with you?"
"You mean this?" Stelle lifted Cirrus up and gave the Heliobus a little shake. "Picked it up on the way. It talks a lot. Good for stress relief when you squeeze it."
"That's right, that's right! It is my utmost honor to be squeezed!" Cirrus piped up obsequiously.
"Your stress-relief toy is quite sensible," March 7th noted, leaning in for a closer look. "It's way smarter than the squeeze toys I have. And it can even keep you company!"
At that moment, the monster made of emotional impurities seemed to sense something. The densely packed faces on its body swiveled in unison, all locking onto Cirrus. A thick, black mist began to seep from their hollow eye sockets as dozens of mouths hissed, "Hungry... hungry..." The creature began to drag its bloated body toward them.
Then, with a wet, heaving sound, the monster spat out a cluster of pure, clean lights—the primordial starfire essence of the Heliobi it had devoured, spirits that had not yet been polluted by the chaos of human emotion.
"You. Go in and control it," Rekka said after a moment's thought, nodding for Stelle to release Cirrus.
"Huh? Me? Me?"
Happiness had come so suddenly that Cirrus could hardly believe it was real. For a Heliobus that had already tasted the highs and lows of human feeling, a raw feast of emotions like this was akin to fine wine for an alcoholic. To dive into that morass of feeling... Cirrus felt it would become drunk on the sheer power of it all. And with enough emotion, a Heliobus could grow immeasurably stronger.
"You don't want to go?"
"Go! Go, go, go! Of course I'm going!"
Almost screaming with glee, Cirrus shot out from Stelle's palm like a green meteor, slamming straight into the bloated body of the monster.
In that instant, the entire creature convulsed violently.
When the original Heliobus had devoured these emotions, it had simply swallowed them whole, without savoring them. But now, Cirrus was feasting upon years, perhaps centuries, of accumulated feeling all by itself.
Beings with finite lifespans carried with them the most intense emotions—love, desire, the terror of death, the joy of life. These sensations crashed against the barren core of a star spirit, which was precisely why humans were the most coveted hosts.
To put it simply, it was like being so thoroughly ruined by the taste of human emotion that nothing else could ever compare. It had already taken the shape of a human.
"Power... POWER! I am filled with POWER!" Cirrus's voice boomed, reshaping the monster's grotesque body into its own signature image: a single, massive, burning green eyeball. The emerald flames soared high into the air, illuminating the gloomy surroundings.
But just as Cirrus was about to strike a majestic pose, it noticed Rekka's golden eyes regarding it with utter indifference. That gaze was like a person watching a grasshopper, fat and full from a meal, bouncing obliviously on a tabletop.
"Oh, ancestor, look at you... please don't stare at me like that."
Cirrus instantly deflated. Its towering green flames obediently shrank back to their normal size, not daring to let even a single spark fly astray.
"This little one will definitely cherish this gift in the future and will never fail to live up to the ancestor's cultivation!"
To have become so strong and still be looked down upon... How terrifying was this person?
Tail, floating beside a nervous Huohuo, watched Cirrus's sycophantic display and couldn't help but snort in disdain.
"Pathetic."
"You have any room to talk about dignity?" Cirrus immediately retorted. "You just hang off a crybaby's backside all day like an accessory. What dignity do you have?"
"Alright, alright," Stelle cut in impatiently, tapping her baseball bat on the ground twice. "What are you two arguing about? If you want to fight, go do it outside. Don't waste our time."
Huohuo timidly poked her head out from behind Stelle.
"Um, should we... should we continue looking for the furnace fragments now?"
"Sounds good."
"Lead the way."
"Got it!" Cirrus chirped happily. Its green light pulsed brightly as it drifted forward, illuminating the path ahead.
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