My Roommate is a Non-Human | Chapter 67 | A Fragment of the God-King | Novela.app

I suppose that was roughly what I meant, though I wasn't entirely sure. I wasn't speaking Chinese; I was speaking Ancient Egyptian. To me, it was all meaningless gibberish, every bit of it taught to me by Lao Da, who had insisted I memorize every single syllable without error. As I chanted those convoluted, tongue-twisting ancient vowels, a small whirlwind began to whip up in the endless desert, about twenty meters ahead of us. The cyclone swept away the sprawling sands, gradually revealing a clear outline—a passage leading underground at a thirty-degree angle. Lao Da signaled for me to head down. The shifting sand was slick, forcing us to walk sideways to keep from tumbling. But as we descended, the sand thinned, exposing mottled walls and faded murals buried by time. When the tomb doors groaned open before us, they let out an exceptionally heavy, grating creak. I saw bright moonlight streaming through an opening at the top of the vault, striking a cobweb-covered mirror. The beam reflected off the dusty surface, hitting a second mirror, then a third, a fourth... until the entire tomb was woven with moonlight, as bright as day. A mummy—a skeleton weighed down by a heavy collar, crowned with gold, and wrapped in tattered bandages—was kneeling before me. I heard his knees crack as he went down. He spoke through a drafty, dislocated jaw, exhaling a cloud of turbid, viscous, foul-smelling air. Amidst those ancient and alien syllables, I could only vaguely distinguish two words: "Isis" and "Osiris." Lao Da, however, communicated with him without any trouble. Soon, the Pharaoh’s mummy pointed his scepter behind him toward the tomb wall. He then calmly scooped up a handful of sand from the floor, letting the grains trickle slowly onto a dust-covered scale. The scale immediately tipped to the right. Behind the ancient walls, the gears of some hidden mechanism began to grind with a *clack-clack* sound, and the wall slid smoothly to either side. Behind it lay another chamber filled with coffins scattered in disarray, seemingly tampered with. I saw two mummies lying face-down in the yellow sand, surrounded by a pile of broken, ancient pottery. "Is the royal physician beyond saving?" I whispered to Lao Da. "Look, his bandages are coming apart, and his body is snapped in two." Lao Da merely made a gesture to the Pharaoh—King Djoser—before pulling me forward. He bit my finger and dripped my blood directly onto a particularly messy mummy. In that instant, I heard the mummy let out a sharp gasp! I wanted to gasp, too! Heaven only knows how he managed to make such a startled sound. The mummy first used his hands to push himself up from the ground, only to abruptly realize he was missing his lower half. He let out another gasp, muttered something, and then looked up to see us. He looked incredibly agitated and began babbling at me. I heard him say "Isis" again... but I still couldn't understand the rest. Then, a greenish light emanated from Lao Da’s fingertips, permeating the mummy’s body like a physical substance before vanishing. Suddenly, I realized this physician, dead for nearly five thousand years, was speaking Chinese. "That Her Highness Isis should grace my post-mortem residence is an honor, yet it fills me with trepidation... Has Lord Osiris been choked by a fishbone again?" I told him regretfully, "It’s much worse than that. He’s dead. I... I’ve become a widow." "Oh," the old physician responded dryly in a withered voice. "Then he shall become the God of the Dead. That is well. Though I shall no longer see the two of you walking hand-in-hand, laughing and talking amidst the papyrus thickets of the Nile Delta, I am glad that from this day forward, all who lose their mortal coils may be with the two of you forever." I decided to be blunt: "He was struck by lightning and shattered into eight pieces." The physician’s hand shook as he was piecing together his thigh bone. "That sounds quite painful!" "Can you put him back together? You must have a way! You’re literally putting yourself together right now!" Holy shit, he was actually using his bandages to wipe his own ribs before slotting them into his spine. As we led Imhotep out of there, I sincerely hoped he wouldn't use such a crude and simple method to resurrect my Big Willow. When we returned to the Abyss, we weren't on the mountain where Senior Brother Lu was imprisoned. We were on a vast plain. In the distance, I saw a menacing city, pitch-black all over, with spires soaring into the clouds. Its bizarre appearance matched the one I had seen in my dreams. I had even touched those uniquely textured bricks with my own hands. Standing in its massive shadow, I realized the sound of wind was coming from every direction. The wind inhaled and exhaled, making one suspect some gargantuan monster lay sleeping beneath it. "The Serpent that Encircles the World," the physician said, two hollow eyes peering from behind his bandages. Large-bellied black spiders crawled within them as if they were his pupils. "You know of it too?" The physician looked at me. "The Black Land is the source from which all gods were born." Lao Da continued to explain, "He means the Ancient Egyptians were closest to the gods. All knowledge regarding the divine race spread out from Egypt." "Then do you know Osiris’s True Name?" I grabbed the physician’s arm, accidentally pulling it off. As he popped it back in, the physician looked terrified. "Lady Isis! A True Name is the power of the divine! How could Lord Osiris ever tell a mere mortal servant like me?" Later, as we marched toward that nameless city, I turned the thought over in my mind and felt something was off. I said to Lao Da, "I doubt your father would have told me his True Name either. After all, he thought I was troublesome and did everything he could to stop me from causing scenes. Why would he hand his power over to me?" "In Egyptian mythology, Isis stole Ra’s True Name. Ra and Osiris are Chief Gods of different eras. This means they could both be incarnations of Father, and you stole his True Name in one of your past lives. Even if you’ve forgotten, you must have known it once—besides, isn't the bank card password usually kept by the lady of the house? The mistress of the home must know; not only would she know, she might have set it herself. For example, the password could be her ID number, her birthday, the wedding anniversary, the hundred-day anniversary of their first date..." Lao Da looked at me with earnest expectation. The fervor in Lao Da’s eyes faded. "But regardless, you must remember. You have to understand that even if we find all the remains, even if our physician can mend those wounds, without his True Name and without your feelings, nothing will happen." "I know." As our group approached the city with heavy steps, the pylon gates had already swung wide. The city was colossal. From a distance, it looked like a strangely shaped, ill-tempered old man, but once you stood beneath it, you realized it surpassed human imagination. Its outer walls were so high the tops were invisible. Though the surface was uneven, craggy, and twisted, it was extremely smooth, like a mirror. There were no windows on the walls. Similarly, its length and width seemed to have no boundaries. It stood on the plain like the flip side of the world. Furthermore, it was cold here—bitterly, bone-chillingly cold. For a moment, I lacked the courage to approach until Lao Da used his little tricks to preserve my body heat. The gate-tower was open now. It was pitch black inside, looking like the gaping maw of an abyss that had been waiting for a long time. If I hadn't seen Ren Xing leaning against the entrance waiting for us, clutching Gungnir, I probably wouldn't have been willing to enter. Seeing us, he jogged out. "There are four pieces inside. You need to stay calm." He said "you," but his eyes were fixed directly on me. After meeting, knowing, and loving my roommate for two months—or perhaps much longer—I was finally going to see his true form, separated by the boundary of life and death. I couldn't help but take a deep breath before stepping inside. It was still very, very cold and dark within. That darkness was indescribable; it was something even time could not penetrate. Walking through it, we lost all sense of time, hunger, direction, or boundaries. It felt like another dimension entirely. "This place was once very prosperous," the physician said suddenly. "You’ve been here?" He pointed toward a certain spot in the void. "The two of you once sat there, side by side. Lord Osiris would play the flute for you." I let out a small laugh. "That sounds lovely." The physician nodded, his jaw clicking and rattling. "In the mortal realm, there was no marriage more perfect than yours." At that moment, Ren Xing told me, "We’re here." His hand began to glow. The light from the lantern that had been leading us earlier couldn't compare to the radiance in his palm. For a moment, I couldn't even open my eyes, as if I were facing the sun. By the time I adjusted to the light through my tears, I saw a mountain. "This is a mountain," I said to Ren Xing with absolute certainty. "This is your husband," Ren Xing replied with equal certainty. "One small piece of him." "But... this is a mountain." I stepped forward and patted the surface of the rock, which was covered in lichen. Soil crumbled away, emitting a dull thudding sound. Ren Xing lunged forward, grabbed my hand, and shoved it aside. "Don't just go patting it! Do you know how hard it was for us to find him and bring him back here? When he was at the sealing point, at least no divine beings dared to enter. Once we moved him out, those gods swarmed like dogs trying to devour him. We had to fight our way back, thank you very much! What if you break it?!" I felt a bit faint and let out a hollow laugh. "How could you break a mountain..." A voice in my heart whispered: *If this is the real Liu Wukong, what the hell am I supposed to do?* Just then, the physician spoke to us from a higher vantage point. "Surface soil and vegetation, yes... but underneath..." As he spoke, his skeletal hand suddenly curved into a claw, exerting a pulling force. I saw something red being sucked up into his palm. He toyed with it for a moment, then spread his hands, and I saw... An incredibly long, seemingly infinite strand of... DNA!