Chapter 91: Telling A Story

    Archibald sat very close to Yany Yang and had been paying attention to Yang Yang’s situation, so he could hear Little Whitebelly’s words clearly.

    Archibald’s face immediately turned cold, he stopped talking and turned his head to look over.

    Little Whitebelly trembled a little under his gaze, but he didn’t feel that he said anything wrong, so he felt at loss.

    Seeing this, the old village chief hit Little Whitebelly’s ass with his crutches, and said angrily, “What nonsense are you talking about? The Duchess is different from us.”

    Little Whitebelly was not convinced, “But the Duke is just like us.”

    “Not shutting up yet!”

    The old village chief scolded Little Whitebelly, then turned to Archibald and Yang Yang, “There had been a pregnant woman who died of dystocia in the village and the child did not survive, it was a dimorph Lester. The children heard it from somewhere and came up with this concept.”

    After he said that, he continued to use his cane to hit Little Whitebelly’s buttocks: “The Duchess is pregnant with a child, don’t say such unlucky things!”

    Little Whitebelly just realised, and after a moment of “pei pei pei pei”*, he said to Yang Yang listlessly: “Duchess, don’t be angry, just pretend I didn’t say anything, okay?

*spitting sounds, like to ward off the bad luck?

    How could Yang Yang blame a child, he smiled and said it was all right.

    But Archibald was not so easy to fool, he paused, and then shifted the topic from his “heroic achievements” to the village.

    Archibald: “When we came this way, I found that although there are many people in the village, most of them are young and strong. There are very few children and elderly, and all of them have beasts characteristics. ——What has happened here?”

    As if expecting him to ask this question, the old village head was not surprised, he only sighed and explained the reason: “Actually, all people in this village are survivors of the dragon-level soul beast’s attack and descendants of survivors.”

    Archibald frowned: “I recall that in the aftermath there were recruited many resettlement measures for survivors and rescued immigrants. After the global migration, search and rescue teams spent a year searching for survivors. Didn’t anyone find you?”

    The old village chief didn’t answer right away, he glanced at Scarface standing outside the crowd, Scarface immediately understood and shouted to the children: “Boys, come out and help prepare dinner.”

    The few boys headed by Little Whitebelly suddenly made displeased sounds.

    “We still want to hear the story.”

    “I still have questions I haven’t asked the Duke.”

    But Scarface did not budge, he gave a glare and the children froze immediately, then obediently listened to Scarface and left with him the melon eating crowd.

    After Scarface took the children away, the old village chief took a long breath, then lowered his depressed eyelids, his eyes fell on the void, recalling the long-ago events.

    “I have enjoyed the post-disaster resettlement. My household registration was assigned to Xindi Star and I was given a house. —— Such a big house, I was so happy at that time.”

    The old village head had a nostalgic smile on his face, but the smile quickly disappeared again.

    “But not everyone had the good fortune and treatment that I have. Those ordinary people who used to be struggling to make ends meet at Old Emperor Star, although the resettlement they received was much better than in the past, but as time went by, this catastrophe was gradually forgotten by people and fewer people paid attention to them.”

    “During that disaster, almost seventy percent of inhabitants were infected with soul beasts’ soul power, some seriously, some slightly less, but the manic inhibitors were in short supply and the consumption was great, not to mention those high-level inhibitors, even ordinary ones, even if they had money, they might not be able to buy them.”

    Speaking of this, the old village chief sighed again.

    “Life was better than before, but it still couldn’t withstand the consumption of a large amount of inhibitors. A family of several members cannot be dragged down by one person.

    Some families are conscientious and send seriously ill people to centralized resettlement centers. Although they may be imprisoned for a lifetime, at least their illness can be controlled with drugs from time to time.

    But there appeared also heartless ones, and the ill were thrown into the wild and abandoned.”

    Yang Yang frowned, pulled Kami into his arms, and gave her a headset to play games with.

    The old village head continued: “I have also been infected with the soul power of the soul beast and my soul palace had been severely damaged. Fortunately, I was not married at that time, so I left the house to my parents and then I set up a shelter organization to help those abandoned victims.

    On the way, other people gradually joined in, many of them were volunteers, and there were also material assistance.”

    “Everything seems to be getting better.”

    The expression of the old village head became bitter, and he sighed again and again: “We had the supplies and manpower, so we brought some patients we took in and planned to migrate back to the Old Emperor Star. ——At that time, although the Old Emperor Star was taken over by the military department, it was not well defended. I hadbeen stationed in the Old Emperor Star since I joined the army so I was very familiar with it.

    “But what I didn’t expect was that on the way here, our starship encountered star pirates and was attacked. In the end, the starship crashed on the Old Emperor Star and only a dozen or so of us escaped. “

     “The area where the starship crashed was a no man’s land. We were afraid of star robbers chasing us, so we ran away as far as possible. When we recovered, we were already in the wilderness completely alone.”

     Yang Yang was puzzled: “Have you never tried to contact someone from the military department?”

     Old village head: “I tried, however the Starnet of the Old Emperor Star had not been rebuilt yet at that time, so it is impossible to contact.”

     Archibald: “What about after that? Now there are already many reconstruction and reformation areas outside and the nearest one is not far from here. The Starnet now covers the entire planet. ——Since you can know about me, it means that you have channels to obtain information from the outside world, why don’t you contact us?

     The “us” that Archibald referred to naturally meant the military department.

     The old village chief was silent for a long time before slowly opening his mouth and saying: “We have contacted. I went out to make contact myself. “

    “I am familiar with the old Emperor Star, so after the survivors of the crashed starship were settled, I set out to find someone to help. What I found was the first batch of reorganization areas built, and the person in charge was a small nobleman.”

    Nobleman.

    Hearing this word again, both Archibald and Yang Yang’s heart skipped a beat.

    The old village head continued his story with his eyelids still drooping and his face expressionless.

    “That small nobleman was very nice and helped us a lot. But at that time, the Old Emperor Star had no immigration plan, and the reorganization area was only built for the convenience of the army.

    He offered to send us back, but I declined, so he helped us to settled in a place to live.”

    “We have a new home here and the small nobleman also introduced us to a doctor, that would not reveal our existence to others.” “

    The doctor’s medical skills were good. Although the new inhibitors for people in that disaster had some side effects—such as aggravating the damage of the soul palace, causing our animalization to be uncontrollable and making us show beast characteristics.

    However, the soul mania caused by the infection of soul power had been indeed relieved”

    “After that, when I learned that there were residents from the Old Emperor Star nearby, I also went to look for it. But I didn’t expect that because of our abnormal appearance, it led to conflicts with some ordinary people.

    After that, the people in the village were even less willing to contact the outside world.” “

    So for the next few decades, we hid in no man’s land and thrived. We lived very well during that time.”

    “It’s a pity, good times will always come to an end.”

    “Beginning fifty years ago, women and females in the village have found it difficult to conceive children. And even if they conceived children…”

    The old village chief hesitated to speak, his face showing great sadness, all the young people around him were also full of grief, they could not bear to disturb.

    Yang Yang recalled Little Whitebelly’s “child’s honest words*” before, and felt a bad premonition in his heart.

*coming from an idom

    “Have they suffered from dystocia?”

    The old village chief closed his eyes and shook his head: “No. It’s the women who found it difficult to deliver children, but the female bodies had all died.”

    What?

    Yang Yang widened his eyes. Archibald also felt shocked in his heart, and his tail stretched out involuntarily, wrapping around Yang Yang’s waist.

    It seemed that only in this way could he confirm that Yang Yang was “alive and well”.

    Yang Yang put his hand on the tip of Archibald’s tail and caressed it lightly, as a comfort.

    Yang Yang thought for a while and guessed the reason: “Was it because the soul palace had been damaged?”

    The old village head: “Mm, it’s not because the female’s soul palace had been damaged, but the child’s soul palace was damaged. —— just like I mentioned, the doctor’s new inhibitors had side effects and this side effect had changed our blood or genes over the years? I don’t quite understand this.

    And this change was also reflected in our children.”

    “It’s unknown why, but from time to time, after the conjunctival period of the child being conceived by the female body, the child’s egg will not start to fully develop, but will instead disperse and become a viviparous state like in a woman’s pregnancy.

    If it was an ordinary child, it would only make delivery more painful, but would not be life threatening.

    But not knowing why, the females were always pregnant with a double form Lester.”

    Yang Yang had already understood, “Could it be that when the child was in the female’s belly, it became the half-beast state?”

    The old village head nodded: “Not only that, young Duke and Duchess must also know that the scales of the double-form Lester would remain soft until one year old, and they would shed and change every year until adulthood, when the scale armor would become its mature state, extremely hard and tough.”

    Yang Yang: “…”

    He actually didn’t know this.

    The old village head: “But the children conceived by female body in our village, before they were born, the scales were already mature.”

    After that, the old village chief didn’t continue, but Yang Yang already understood how the “one corpse and two lives” came about.

    Following his imagination, Yang Yang felt his stomach throbbing nervously. It felt as if he was one of those female constitutions that were pierced through the soul palace by the scales of their children in their bellies and died of pain.

    Yang Yang’s face was slightly pale, he clenched his fists and did not speak.

    “It’s okay.”

    Archibald leaned over, hugged Yang Yang’s shoulders, lowered his head and kissed Yang Yang’s warm forehead, “Don’t think about it.”

    Yang Yang looked up at Archibald, as if absorbing strength from this, his clenched fist slowly relaxed.

    After the old village head recovered from those painful memories, he continued: “After that, the population in the village was becoming smaller and smaller. Until 30 years ago, when the doctor tried a new way to do test-tube babies and finally managed to let a healthy child come to this world. —— It wasn’t a double-form Lester, nor a half-beast like us, it was a normal child.”

    “From that year on, everything was changing for the better.”

    However, Yang Yang didn’t feel relieved hearing that——if thirty years ago there had been conceived normal children, why weren’t there any non-beasts in the village now?

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Bamboo has something to say:

Everyone in the comments under jjwxc raws has already guessed the entire plot by now. Me: speechless.jpg

I wasn’t sure until the very end!