My avatar is becoming the final boss

Chapter 231 Dragon Shadow, The Third Myth, Paradise (Seeking monthly votes)

Inside the spiritual library, the red dragon's outstretched wings blocked half of the window, preventing the last rays of sunlight from shining in.

It looked up at the boy in the hospital gown, its ruby-like dragon eyes gleaming in the darkness.

Ji Minghuan took a step back, staring at it with curiosity and wariness, before asking:

"You just said 'Qingping brat'?"

"That's right..."

The crouching red dragon pondered for a moment, then nodded slightly.

"Does that mean you know Li Qingping? Or perhaps you actually know him from my memories?" Ji Minghuan rambled on, "No one has ever told me before that fragments of strange tales can have self-awareness. Seeing this today has truly broadened my horizons."

“I am ‘Red Dragon Wales’… to be precise, I am just a remnant of consciousness, dormant for many centuries, until Li Qingping found me in the ruins.”

The dragon raised its claws and scratched the pages with the tips, carefully trying not to tear the book.

After turning the page, it continued, "And as you said... I've known Qingping for several years now. Not all fragments of strange tales have consciousness; it just so happens that a part of my consciousness remains in this generation-level fragment."

"And then, over the years, he never told me that there was a dragon living in his head?"

"Because you didn't ask him."

Honglong raised his reading glasses and looked at him through them.

“Okay, I think I understand now.” Ji Minghuan breathed a sigh of relief. “I thought Li Qingping had reincarnated as a dragon and was hiding in the library, secretly going through my memories. Wouldn’t that mean he had seen all my embarrassing moments? That gave me a fright.”

At this point, he pursed his lips, a slight disappointment on his face.

"Qingping is dead."

"Oh, you don't need to remind me."

After a long silence, Ji Minghuan shifted her gaze from the red dragon and asked casually, "Since you know him so well, do you know if he regrets it?"

"What do you regret?"

"He regrets risking his life for the Third Prince. How stupid of him."

The dragon was silent for a moment, then lowered its eyes to the pages of the book, "He doesn't regret it..."

"Really?" Ji Minghuan said, "I don't believe it."

"To be precise, Qingping only regretted not telling you those things sooner in the last moment before he died." The dragon paused. "However, judging from these memories, you actually already knew all along, but you unilaterally kept it from him."

Ji Minghuan was slightly taken aback, then sat down on the ground with his legs crossed.

After a moment, he picked up a book from the bookshelf and looked at it casually without looking up: "Otherwise what... do you want me to tell him, 'Qingping, Qingping, actually your only good friend is a dummy that I created with my superpower'?"

The dragon pondered for a moment, then said, "I don't really understand you humans. You always say one thing and mean another, and you can't express yourself clearly."

"Alright, I'm going to sleep now." Ji Minghuan shrugged. "You're welcome to stay at my house. You can rummage through my privacy as you please, but remember not to wake up those three guys on top of me."

As he spoke, he pointed to the three corpses hanging from the ceiling.

“You can let them chat with me occasionally,” the dragon said, “just to pass the time.”

"Grandpa Long, please let me go. I have enough things to deal with in real life, and this is the only place where I can have some peace and quiet. If you keep messing with me like this, won't I go insane?"

Ji Minghuan spoke expressionlessly, then sat down leaning against the bookshelf and turned his head to look at the library's floor-to-ceiling windows.

Above the distant mountains, a faint afterglow still lingered in the sky.

The scenery outside the library was passing by eerily, like looking out from inside a moving train, leaving only a gradually fading outline.

He was so sleepy he couldn't be more sleepy, so he turned to the dragon behind him and said, "If you have time, tell me about Li Qingping. I don't actually know much about him."

The dragon looked up at him from behind its oversized reading glasses, remained silent for a moment, and then exhaled a puff of hot steam from its nostrils, as if in agreement.

Ji Minghuan leaned her head against the bookshelf and tugged on the rope hanging from the top of her head.

The sun suddenly set, its last rays casting a glow on his face. He slowly closed his eyes, the only sound the rustling of the dragon scratching the pages of a book, and soon his consciousness drifted into a deep sleep.

"Restricted-level ability user, number 1002—Ji Minghuan, your mentor is here to visit. Prepare immediately." A cold, metallic voice came from the broadcasting equipment.

Ji Minghuan groggily opened his eyelids, blinked, and once again met that silvery-white ceiling.

For some reason, he felt as if he had been away from this prison cell for a long time, and he hadn't opened his eyes much during this period.

Whenever he doesn't want to eat, the Salvation Society staff will anesthetize him and then inject him with nutrients, so he doesn't have to worry about starving to death here.

Actually, it's quite convenient. The past few days of the Battle of Whale Court have felt like an eternity.

After being busy all the time, I finally have some free time.

He got out of bed, picked up the plate, went into the bathroom to wash up, then stretched and sat down at the table, looking up at the open metal door.

The tutor strolled in, pulled up a chair at the table, sat down, and put down his thermos.

He got straight to the point: "Ji Minghuan, just yesterday, something happened in the outside world that really surprised me. Would you like to hear about it?"

"What's wrong?" Ji Minghuan yawned. "Did the traffic light come back to life?"

"The miniature garden within the whale has been destroyed."

"What is it?" Ji Minghuan raised an eyebrow. "You seem to have mentioned it to me before, but I don't remember it."

"At the headquarters of the Strange Tales Envoy, a legendary shark, which was said to be extinct, suddenly appeared and swallowed the legendary whale whole."

"Oh, now I understand. Isn't it just the little world inside that whale's belly?"

“We don’t know exactly what happened yet, but what we do know is that the White Raven Brigade was also involved in this incident.”

"The White Raven Brigade, those are the people we met in London last time. They truly deserve to die," Ji Minghuan said casually.

“Yes, we are investigating them,” the mentor said calmly. “But this organization, whether it’s the leaders or the members, is mostly elusive, unlike the Exorcist Association or the Heretic Association which have a base of operations, making it difficult to track their movements.”

"If you hadn't taken me, a Muggle, with you that day, and instead had let Big Sister chase after them alone on her somersault cloud, you could have easily caught them all, right?"

“You are a team,” the mentor said. “Don’t say things like that.”

“Yes, every team needs someone who drags them down,” Ji Minghuan shook his head and sighed.

For example, the "diaper demon," he added in his mind.

The mentor sighed: "This incident is no small matter. The destruction of an extraordinary nation will definitely have a huge impact on the balance that our Salvation Society pursues. What's more, the residents of the Little Garden have been transferred to the human world. Their existence is tantamount to publicly revealing the fact that they are the 'Wonderful Messengers' race. I'm afraid that no matter how the authorities try to cover it up, they will not be able to stop things from developing."

"What should I do?"

"We are still looking for a solution."

"Wait, you're not planning to..."

Ji Minghuan looked up at him as she said this, "Let's kill all those people living inside the whale's belly?"

He couldn't imagine how Caesar would react if the Salvation Society actually did that.

“No, doing so is just burying our heads in the sand,” the mentor said. “But we must carefully consider whether the emergence of the strange tales into the public eye will have a huge impact on society, and whether that impact is within our acceptable range.”

"What exactly is the balance you are trying to maintain?"

"World Peace."

"Is it truly peace, or nuclear peace?"

The mentor smiled and said, "Besides that, we recently discovered a species called 'light-eating bees'."

"Light-devouring bees?"

Ji Minghuan's heart stirred slightly. Wasn't this the magical animal race that Caesar was looking for, the one that had escaped from the Little Garden?
“That’s right, the Light-Eating Bees,” the mentor said. “They are an extremely dangerous species. They have humanoid bodies, live by absorbing sunlight, and their physical strength far exceeds that of humans. But once they are no longer satisfied with merely absorbing sunlight, they will discover the terrifying potential of their own species.”

"why?"

Ji Minghuan asked tentatively.

The mentor took a deep breath: "They can awaken special abilities and enhance their physical strength by devouring extraordinary humans. You can imagine what the consequences would be if a Light-Eating Bee ate a Calamity-level superhuman."

Ji Minghuan was stunned. "Isn't this just 'slaughtering me'?" he thought. "Oh no, I'm just gnawing on fragments; eating people won't do any good."

"So, do you want the eldest sister to take action?" he asked. "Let Sun Changkong smash them to death with one blow."

“No, it’s not at the level where the Salvation Team needs to intervene yet.” The mentor shook his head. “We will release some clues through various channels to make the United Nations aware of the seriousness of this matter.”

The mentor paused for a moment: "Then have them deploy the Rainbow Wings to completely wipe out the Light-Eating Bees on the island."

"Rainbow Wing?"

Ji Minghuan murmured softly, raising her eyebrows.

He thought: So, if Blue Arc joins Rainbow Wing this month, he might be sent on this high-risk mission.

But by the same token... if Blue Arc and Ghost Bell were to take revenge on that Rainbow Wing member during the process of eliminating the Light-Eating Bees, their chances of winning would be very high, since the Rainbow Wing members would be focused on the mission.

Moreover, I still have Agubaru and Caesar as my fighting forces. If I bring the great shark and its prince into the fray, we might be able to launch a surprise attack and wipe out all the Rainbow Wing members of the Salvation Society.

The plan is in place. The current problem is how to get my brother to join Rainbow Wing smoothly, and how to expose all the spies of the Salvation Society from among them.

Thinking of this, Ji Minghuan raised her eyes and met her mentor's gaze.

“That’s right, Rainbow Wings,” the mentor said. “The world’s strongest organization of superhumans.”

"So you don't need to send me out to slack off?"

“No need.” The mentor coughed twice. “For example, unless someone on Earth possesses a mythical-level wonder and that person has ill intentions, we might not be able to send you out. After all, even Rainbow Wing might not be able to deal with him.”

"So, the holder of a mythical-level wonder is even stronger than an entire Rainbow Wing?"

"It's not that exaggerated, but we can be sure that a mythical-level feat could be accomplished by fighting twelve opponents alone and annihilating half of the Rainbow Wings."

"That's insane!" Ji Minghuan exclaimed. "I knew the boss was powerful, but was she really that powerful?"

The mentor took a sip of tea from his thermos and smiled, "Are you disappointed? You can't go out on a mission."

"What's there to be disappointed about? Last time I went to London, I almost had a heart attack." Ji Minghuan sighed, drawing circles on the table with his finger. "I'd rather just stay at the base and sleep."

The mentor nodded: "That's good. It just goes to show that you don't need to make a move against an opponent like the 'Light-Eating Bee'."

He paused for a moment, then suddenly asked, "By the way, are you still curious about the extraordinary story of another mythical child in our Salvation Society?"

"Are you going to keep me in suspense again?" Ji Minghuan squinted. "I think I guessed 'Zeus' last time. Was I right?"

The tutor clasped his hands together on the table, stared at him mysteriously for a while, and then suddenly smiled.

He said, "You guessed right, but Zeus is just one of them."

"No way... I guessed it right?" Ji Minghuan's words suddenly stopped.

He was stunned for a while, then slowly raised his head and stared into his mentor's smiling eyes.

“Wait, you said, ‘one of them’?” he murmured.

“That’s right,” the mentor said. “This child’s mythological fragment is Zeus from Greek mythology, the king of Olympus.”

"Don't change the subject!" Ji Minghuan exclaimed in surprise. "What I mean is: besides 'Sun Wukong' and 'Zeus,' is there a third mythical child in the Salvation Society?"

The tutor stared into his eyes and slowly nodded.

"Yes."

"But didn't you always say there were two?" Ji Minghuan asked suspiciously.

"That's because at the time we weren't sure what the strange fragments in that child's body were, or even what level they were."

"Is it that exaggerated?"

“Her case was very, very special, which made it take us a very long time to complete the observation.”

The mentor paused for a moment: "And now we understand... the fragment inside this child is the 'World Tree' from Norse mythology."

"world Tree……"

Ji Minghuan's lips moved slightly as she murmured in a daze.

How could he not have heard of this name?

Even though he knew very little about Norse mythology, as a player who had played many games, he naturally recognized the "World Tree," which frequently appeared in various fantasy adventure games.

The mentor said, "She, like another child you haven't met yet, is in a rather unstable condition and is deeply disturbed by the consciousness of the strange fragments."

Ji Minghuan was taken aback, then feigned surprise and said, "Strange Fragments have self-awareness?"

“Yes.” The mentor nodded. “Especially mythical fragments. Mythical fragments are particularly prone to retaining a part of the consciousness of mythical figures. In comparison, the probability of this happening with generational fragments is much smaller.”

Is it like Li Qingping's red dragon? Ji Minghuan thought to herself.

"You mean they can hear mythological figures speaking to them?"

“That’s right, Sun Changkong has the same problem, but she seems to get along well with the Monkey King, so she doesn’t feel any mental burden.”

“That sounds really difficult…” Ji Minghuan said softly, “No wonder they are mentally unstable.”

"Enough of this small talk. I want you to talk to the 'World Tree.' It will help stabilize her mental state. Ji Minghuan, you're a kind child, you should be able to help me with this, right?"

Am I a babysitter for problem children?

"As a reward for your help, our people have built a children's playground for you at the base." The mentor clasped his hands together, a kind smile on his face.

"An amusement park?" Ji Minghuan narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

“That’s right.” The instructor nodded. “The amusement park is just one floor upstairs. Would you like to go check it out now?”

"Yes, I'd like to, provided you're not lying to me."

"Then let's go." The mentor slowly stood up.

As the words fell, the metal door of the detention cell slowly opened, and with a rumbling sound, Ji Minghuan followed behind his mentor, taking his first step into the corridor outside the detention cell. The light that hit him was so dazzling that he couldn't help but raise his arm to shield his eyes.

Ji Minghuan walked barefoot, blankly and slowly, down the corridor bathed in cold white light, the floor of which had a metallic, icy feel.

This was his first time stepping out of the cell. As the other children said, the light in the corridor was so bright that he couldn't open his eyes at all. It was like walking in a fog where you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. But if he walked it a few more times, it shouldn't be difficult to remember the route.

"Didn't you say I had a younger brother? Have you found him?" Ji Minghuan suddenly asked.

"Not yet," the mentor said as he walked.

A short while later, the tutor reached out and put his arm around his shoulder, signaling him to stop.

In the intense white light, a sound suddenly came from directly in front of us—the sound of the elevator doors opening outwards.

The mentor gently pushed Ji Minghuan and led him onto the elevator. The lights inside the elevator car were still bright, but not so bright that it would blind anyone.

Ji Minghuan slowly raised her eyelids, squinted at the elevator's control panel, and saw only two blank buttons on the panel, with the upper button currently lit up in orange.

With a slight jolt, the elevator quickly reached the next floor.

The elevator doors opened outwards, revealing a space with a cool color scheme, but the children's playground had all the facilities one could need—slides, balance beams, swings, trampolines, a maze, and even a carousel.

A water dispenser was placed next to them, with plastic cups on it for the children to use when they were thirsty.

Ji Minghuan raised her head and silently surveyed this "paradise".

The next second, his gaze suddenly fixed on a corner of the amusement park.

At that moment, a black-haired girl wearing a hospital gown was sitting on the swing. She had bangs on her forehead and a beauty mark at the corner of her eye.

The mentor, with his hands behind his back, spoke slowly:

"Let me introduce you. She is Shang Xiaochi, the holder of the 'World Tree' fragment."

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(End of this chapter)