It turns out that dating is such a happy thing.
Let people know what sweetness, warmth and happiness are.
Even after a night, Ni Ji's heart would still tighten slightly when he recalled last night's fireworks and kiss.
This was his first time, his first date.
When he thinks about it carefully, many of the firsts in his life were brought to him by Lin Yuan.
He just didn't know why, but this thick sweetness like honey always made him feel uneasy.
Ni Ji carefully recalled every word Lin Yuan said last night, every smile under the fireworks, and every emotion exchanged in the spiritual realm, but did not notice anything wrong.
Only then did I feel relieved.
Besides, she had promised that she would never leave him alone again.
While I comforted myself, I always had a feeling of unresolved issues in my heart.
I vaguely felt that Lin Yuan had not promised me anything.
She never even said she would spend her life with him.
Adjutant Ni, who had inexplicably become anxious and worried, got up early in the morning.
Unfortunately, there are so many things to do today that I am very busy in the White Pagoda.
While busy, thinking that Lin Yuan would enter the White Tower today, he fully opened up his powerful hearing.
From every corner of the White Tower, various tiny voices could be heard.
The nobles high up in the White Tower were whispering.
"How long has it been since Your Majesty summoned an outsider?"
"I don't know. It's been many days. I don't know what happened. No one is allowed to go up."
"It's really worrying. She is alone in such a big palace without any servants. How can this be possible?"
"Not to mention the attendants, even Luther, who is always close to His Majesty, is not allowed to see Him."
"Could something have happened? These days, it seems like everything is not peaceful. It makes me feel a little scared."
"Shh, don't talk nonsense, be careful not to be heard. What could happen? This is the Holy Tower, and the Holy Light will always protect us."
"I heard that the Queen wants to meet a child with royal blood today."
"That Guide Lin? She is really favored."
Amid the buzz of discussion, Ni Ji saw the scarred Officer Luther sitting on the jade steps below the palace.
He lowered his head, looking confused, as if he didn't know what to do.
Seeing Ni Ji, he stretched out his hand and beckoned him over.
When Ni Ji walked over, he opened his mouth with confused eyes and suddenly asked,
"Ji Xuan he..."
He stopped talking halfway through the sentence.
Ji Xuan was a traitor, a rebel who escaped from the White Tower. Since the explosion, no one dared to mention this name in the White Tower.
Luther called Ni Ji to his side, said only his name, and seemed to be unable to remember what to say next.
Luther was stunned for a while, and finally rubbed his eyes tiredly and waved his hand.
"Go ahead and take a look outside for me. I feel like something is going to happen these days, and I'm feeling uneasy."
Ni Ji nodded in agreement and took the elevator down from the top of the tall tower floor by floor.
He saw many people like Luther in the White Tower.
Those elites of the empire, former confidants of Her Majesty the Queen, all had dazed and bewildered expressions on their faces.
It was as if something in their minds was taken away, and something that had been controlling and manipulating them broke down, causing the entire huge machine of the White Tower to begin to slow down.
Ni Ji inspected the area surrounding the White Pagoda and took some time to quietly go to the underground contact point to meet with Ji Xuan who had returned to Kyoto.
After leaving the contact point, I felt a sweat all over my back.
The weather today is very hot and humid. The green clouds in the sky are very low, and even the pure white body of the White Pagoda has lost its original white luster.
Ni Ji turned his head and squinted at the giant tower not far away that looked a little dark in the dark clouds.
It seemed as if an invisible string in the air was stretched tightly.
The battle is about to begin.
At this moment, he saw a little girl running out from the alley across the street.
The girl, holding a picture album in her arms, hurried past his sight, weaving left and right among the shadows of passers-by, and soon slipped into another alley.
It was a guide, Ni Ji quickly realized.
The child was clearly in his sight, but he subconsciously ignored the scene. He almost pretended not to see it and was ready to leave.
If he wasn't used to being around Lin Yuan, if a large number of sentinels hadn't suddenly appeared nearby.
Those warriors with extremely strong eyesight and hearing were walking through the streets in groups, looking for the child.
So many people couldn't see the girl who slipped past their feet.
Lin Yuan also often did this kind of thing. As a result, Ni Ji, who often stayed with Lin Yuan, had become immune to this trick of the guide.
He knew that a powerful guide could influence the minds of many people at the same time, making everyone subconsciously invisible to him.
Ni Ji remembered the first time he met Lin Yuan.
When young Lin Yuan escaped from the White Pagoda, many people searched for her for a long time but could not find the girl walking alone in the snow. In the end, she was found by herself.
Has another guide escaped from the White Tower? But there are too many people sent out to search for him. It's like they are looking for some extremely evil fugitive.
All the nearby rooftops and commanding heights were filled with fully armed warriors.
Everyone had a solemn look on their faces, holding long-range control weapons in their hands with the bolts drawn.
Just to deal with such a young child
Ni Ji frowned slightly.
He had seen that child before. He was an orphan, secretly kept in a secret room on the upper floors of the White Tower.
In the dim and damp alley, Xiaojiu huddled at the edge of a garbage dump, holding a picture album in his arms.
I looked up quietly and saw that the sky in the alley was only a small piece, with gloomy green clouds floating in it.
On the roof just above her head stood a sentry dressed in black and holding a spear.
The sentry's cold gaze swept down over the corner where he was hiding again and again.
She was almost discovered several times, and it was because she carefully used her mental power to interfere with the sentry's thinking.
A line of sweat ran down the little girl's dirty cheek. She was very hungry and a little exhausted.
She was constantly on the run and eating very little food.
More and more people were coming out of the White Tower to look for her. She wasn't sure how long she could hide.
If I were caught, I might be taken to the altar like Xiaochun.
To be taken to the altar and then eaten by that horrible thing.
The girl lowered her eyelashes and tightened her fingers around the album. She saw that her dirty fingers had stained the beautiful album cover.
It was dirty, full of trash, and two rats ran past my toes.
This reminded the young girl of the days when she lived with her grandfather, when she was always hungry, her fingers were covered with coal dust, and she had no nice clothes to wear.
But she didn't know why, but when she lived in the White Tower, she always missed those days.
At least those years spent with loved ones were real, with flesh and blood, unlike the cold academy in the White Tower.
I can’t see the sun, I can’t see the real sky, and all the smiles of the teachers around me are fake.
There was a noisy sound of footsteps. A whole team of sentries appeared at the entrance of the alley. They were very fast, and several of them stood on the roof.
Cold gazes were cast down from all directions.
A black figure also appeared at the other end of the alley.
"Search every inch. No matter if there is any trace of living people."
"That's a very powerful guide, don't treat her like a child."
"If it is impossible to capture them alive, killing them is allowed."
Search inch by inch.
This is the worst case scenario.
She no longer has the energy to influence so many people at the same time.
Xiaojiu closed his eyes and slowly moved his small body into the deeper shadows.
There is a window a little higher behind me, about three or four meters high.
But given her height, there was no way she could crawl in without alerting these people; after all, she was still a child.
A large hand wearing a black glove suddenly reached out from the darkness and covered her mouth.
Xiaojiu saw the eyes of a sentry in the darkness.
Those pupils were purple and ghostly, appearing in the shadows behind him at some point in time.
He covered his mouth with one hand and raised a finger with the other hand as a gesture of silence.
The footsteps in the alley were dense and close at hand.
Xiaojiu's heart was beating very fast, and at that moment, her mental power captured a sense of kindness.
From all directions, targeting my emotions, all of them are bad thoughts, capturing, killing, and malice.
The sentinel who suddenly appeared behind him brought with him a bit of long-lost positive emotion.
That reminded her who the purple-eyed sentinel was.
This brother once helped me carry a heavy coal box, stopped those who beat me, and gave me the opportunity to see my grandfather for the last time.
The most important thing is that he had also sneaked into the dark academy in the White Tower.
That day, at the entrance of the ventilation duct, I saw him with purple eyes sneaking in.
That day, an explosion was heard in the White Tower for the first time ever.
Like himself, he had hatred for the white tower and wanted to explore the secrets in it.
Xiao Jiu nodded, and let the tall sentry who suddenly appeared carry him lightly and silently into the window behind him.
Sentinels with guns in hand ran through the alley.
The leader of the team raised his arm and asked everyone to stop.
His eyes swept over the edge of the trash can, searching inch by inch for any shadows that could hide someone.
There were two mice there, chattering and making a lot of noise. When they saw so many people coming, the two dirty beasts slid into the depths of the gutter.
He looked up and saw a broken window above the pile of garbage. The window was open and the curtains were still shaking.
The captain narrowed his eyes and walked towards there. He tapped the wall with his boots and easily jumped onto the windowsill, his fingers pressed on the window sill, and his eyes swept across the empty room.
I kind of wanted to start searching, but for some reason, a feeling of annoyance rose up in my heart.
A girl that small, and a guide at that, couldn't possibly climb in at that height.
Just a waste of time.
Such a reasonable thought flashed through my mind.
"no one."
He jumped off the windowsill, waved his hand, and led the team forward.
But he didn't know that in the window where he just stood, there was Ni Ji, standing with his back against the wall, holding the hilt of a knife, with purple fluorescence in his eyes.
If his head went in an inch further, Ni Ji's knife would swing out like a rainbow and cut his head in half without hesitation.
The little girl next to Ni Ji held the picture album in one hand, patted her chest with the other, and made a gesture of "done" to the sentry next to her.
He was just a child of seven or eight years old, not even half as tall as me.
The guides are really great guys.
Ni Ji responded to the little girl with a thumbs up.
In a dark and closed secret room in Kyoto.
A group of people gathered around a long round table. There were men and women among them, all of them had solemn faces, sharp eyes, and calm demeanor.
Although many of them wore masks to conceal their faces, it could be seen from their actions that each of them was a powerful warrior.
Outside the door, more people were being brought into the room after their identities were verified.
This is a conference room where a secret meeting is taking place.
Those who participated were all underground backbones of the revolutionary army lurking in Kyoto, and there were also representatives sent from outposts thousands of miles away.
For the first time, forces opposing the White Tower gathered together within the Empire.
The man standing in front of him reached out and pushed his glasses up on his nose.
Everyone present knew him, Ji Xuan, the leader of the underground organization.
He had personally fought on the most dangerous front lines, was once imprisoned, and endured all kinds of torture.
After that successful adventurous rescue, his position in everyone's mind became more solid.
Everyone had also heard of the tall, thin sentinel standing next to him, wearing a sentry uniform and a black mask on his face.
He was a powerful warrior who single-handedly went deep into the White Tower and rescued his companions from the clutches of the terrifying queen.
"Today, we gathered so many companions here because we found a child who escaped from the White Tower."
Ji Xuan made this announcement while supporting himself on the table with both hands.
He gestured towards Ni Ji.
Ni Ji brought the young Xiao Jiu out and gently pressed his thin shoulder. "Tell everyone everything you found in the White Tower."
All the participants looked at each other.
A child no more than seven or eight years old, thin and small, holding a picture book with a dirty cover in his arms.
I heard she was a guide who escaped from the White Tower.
Just a guide. What kind of news can such a young child bring
Although in the past two years, we have heard that some guides have begun to enter the outposts and participate in the battle together with the sentries.
But in the inherent impression of most people, guides are nothing more than vases provided by the empire, wearing beautiful clothes and growing flowers in the backyard of the White Tower.
At the round table surrounding the powerful warriors, the young girl took a step forward, tightened the atlas in her hand, and began to speak.
"There is more than one guide academy in the White Tower. At the top of the White Tower, below the Imperial Palace, there is also a breeding farm for guides. I escaped from there."
"A breeding farm? Why is it called a breeding farm?"
"Is there more than one school of guides in the White Tower? I have been in the White Tower for many years and have never heard of such a thing."
There were murmurings all around.
The girl's voice was childish but her articulation was clear. Every word she spoke seemed to strike a chord with the heart, shocking.
As she spoke, a dazzling white light flashed in the little girl's eyes.
Behind her, long, beautiful feathers like flames were vaguely spread out.
Is it a wizard? This is the ability of the legendary wizard.
Everyone attending the meeting, at that moment, felt the touch from the spiritual being.
It was like the little girl stretched out her hand and held everyone's hand.
They looked into the child's eyes and together saw the world as the guide saw it.
Everyone shared Xiaojiu's sight and saw the unknown closed academy hidden at the top of the White Tower.
There are no doors or windows, no one is allowed to enter or leave. It is a dormitory where children are locked up like a cage.
They saw children disappearing from school one by one inexplicably.
They were all guides, treasures of the empire, and young children.
Inexplicably, they disappeared one by one.
All the people and sentinels in the empire believed that the empire protected the guides and carefully nurtured the increasingly scarce guides in the White Tower.
No one knows that behind this glamorous rhetoric lies a bloody conspiracy.
Children born into nobility were brought up in public.
Those guides who came from poor backgrounds and had few relatives and backgrounds were transported to the White Tower from all over the world, and only a very small number were sent to the Guide Academy.
A larger part of them are actually raised quietly in secret rooms that never see the light of day.
They saw a boy reaching out from the window and handing them a picture book.
They heard the chaotic sound of boots and the boy being taken away in the middle of the night with his mouth covered.
In the dead of night, the young girl rolled out of bed, holding the picture book given to her by her friend.
She imitated the sentry she had seen before, opened the ventilation duct, crawled in, and crawled forward quietly in the darkness.
A long dark pipe and a silent world.
At that moment, everyone held their breath, as if exhaling one more breath would bring disaster to the child in the dark.
They saw a strange altar.
In the middle of the circular academy, the white marble floor was carved with strange patterns.
There was bright red blood flowing along those lines.
The little girl in sight covered her mouth with her hands.
All the soldiers present at the meeting pursed their lips.
They heard a strange chewing sound in the silent darkness.
It seemed as if something was being dissolved and swallowed up in the center of the altar.
No one was seen. Only red blood was flowing.
Xiaojiu hesitated for a moment, then carefully put his head into the vent of the pipe.
“Don’t look!”
"Run, don't look, silly child."
Several people in the conference room blurted out.
Each of them is a veteran warrior who was captivated by this strange environment. They knew the danger and subconsciously gave warnings.
Even though they all understood that this reminder was useless, it was something that had already happened.
Under the grille of the vent, a strange, bloody creature suddenly raised its head.
She has many, many eyes, all kinds of wings and arms, and is a monster that is pieced together and stitched together randomly.
The huge body that was pieced together looked loose and shaky, as if it would fall apart at any time.
At the top of the pile of patchwork, stood a half-mannequin-like torso, wearing the queen's unique crown and white veil.
Just when the monster's neck was about to be fully raised.
A boy's voice sounded in my mind.
"Go. Xiaojiu, leave now."
That is not human language, but the will transmitted from the contact of spiritual bodies.
"I'll drag her, you go faster, faster."
The girl quickly escaped from the pipe, and the last thing she saw was a boy's hand extending from the monster's back.
The little fingers were stained with various colors of paint and waved gently in her direction.
The guide's spirit body shrank.
The girl standing by the table, holding a picture album painted with various colors of paint in her arms, stopped talking.
In the dim conference room, you could hear a pin drop.
Having personally experienced that escape, everyone's heart was beating violently. There was fire in their chests, but they had no outlet to vent.
Ji Xuan clapped his hands.
"Today, I have more to tell you than just this." He nodded towards Ni Ji.
Ni Ji stepped forward and turned on the projection screen on his personal terminal.
Many of the images above were murals he recorded from the temple in the Pupilless Land and from the lair in the Golden Tree's contaminated area.
The sentry's calm voice sounded, without any impassioned words or vivid re-enactment of the scene. He just narrated everything he knew.
The White Tower is a breeding ground for humans. The top leaders of the empire have already knelt at the feet of the enemy.
Every year, sentinels and guides are sacrificed to the contaminated area in exchange for a small territory to survive. The contaminated area becomes stronger, more mature and stable day by day. Humans are nothing more than poultry, lambs for monsters to fill their stomachs.
Even the Emperor of the Empire, Her Majesty the Queen of Humanity, has turned into a cruel monster that devours her own kind.
It's time to fight, fellow citizens.
We shouldn't live in such a world.
Ni Ji's words fell.
The air in the conference room was as still as a frozen silence.
After a long time, someone's eyes turned red and he clenched his fists.
"I've always felt something was wrong. The deaths of my team of brothers were completely inexplicable."
"I've accepted death at the hands of a monster. I never thought that I would be sacrificed by my own people." The man who said this gnashed his teeth and slammed the table hard, "God damn it. My wife died like that."
"Sacrifice. The flesh and blood of the soldiers will be used to exchange for those fat pigs who will revel in the White Tower every night!"
Everyone at the scene became angry.
Many more people gritted their teeth and remained silent. They already knew more or less.
No one can keep such a secret forever.
But the White Tower was too powerful, looming like a giant cloud in the sky above everyone’s heads.
Just unable to resist.
"This time, we will win." Ji Xuan raised his eyes and looked at everyone around the round table.
“We will definitely win.”
Outside the secret room, someone knocked gently on the door using a secret signal.
Everyone's eyes looked in that direction.
"Something big has happened." The person outside the house said, "The Empire has just issued a notice that the Queen has chosen a successor, and the Empire will welcome a new Queen."
"Heir? What heir?" asked the people in the room.
"Why don't you guys come out and watch? The ceremony to designate the successor will be broadcast live soon."
"It's a guide, a woman, who is said to be a noble with the queen's bloodline."
"Her surname seems to be Lin, and her name is Lin Yuan."
(End of this chapter)