39. The Old Granny

"Ekk….It's too hot." She took two steps back from the place she was at and looked at the chaos in front of her with a pursed lips.

The heat from the fire was enough to singe the hair on the body even at that distance. Many people were fleeing from the fire, their flaming bodies appeared like torches moving in a night procession.

The smell of scorched flesh and meat filled the air while the painful cry of the people got drowned out by the laughter of the bandits who were already on their way to leave after getting what they want.

Le Fangling watched in silence as her predecessor jumped in to the fire calling out her grandmother's name.

"Nagina, can you wait for me here?" Le Fangling placed down her on the ground safely and made sure it was not able to catch fire in her absence.

"I can but why?" She questioned her back.

"Wait, don't tell me you are jumping in to? Are you serious?" She looked at the smiling face of Le Fangling and quickly understood what she was trying to do.

"Yes, I am 100 and 10% sure about this." She took out her outer robe and placed it around her as a protective shield.

Now she was only in the silk gown that covered her body from chest to the ankles. Picking up a long stick from the ground, she inserted it into her hair to make a tight bun.

"These flames can only hurt me but they can not kill me, right?" She asked staring straight at her round eyes after she was done with her hair,

"Well, yes..since all this is merely a memory of what happened then, you will still feel the pain. No injuries nothing at all, but pain remains." Nagina decided to explain what this really was.

"I believe it was the wish of the original owner of this body to let us see all this thing." Nagina placed forward her hypothesis which had 90% chances of being correct according to her analytical database.

"And to create a different dimension, storing memories and even all these real life contents..she must have sacrificed a great deal of her spiritual energy."

"So, what I am trying to say is, even though you won't die, you will probably suffer from severe injury to our soul and spiritual energy." Nagina went silent after saying this letting Le Fangling do her own thinking.

"If I stay here and wait for all of this to clear out, I won't get any idea what's happening on the other side of this big wall of flame." She pointed at the boundary where they were separated from the fire.

"A little injury is nothing if I can get enough information." She smiled and gave a big thumbs up sign.

"But since you are in a snake beast form, I must say you need to stay here." She tapped lightly on her round and smooth head and gave a light chuckle when she saw Nagina responding to her petting like how any other snake would.

The only difference was, Nagina was way too cuter than them.

"..."

Just what are you? Nagina felt overwhelmed by the emotional processing she had to do despite knowing she was just a data code.

Even she felt that she was a broken AI at times when she started to feel a little bit of emotions but she called it as her internal malfunctioning.

"Hey, can't you change back your from to the intangible one like before?" Le Fangling thought about the possibility of this.

"No, I can't..Not right now. I have exhausted all of my spiritual energy by taking this from. There is no going back." Nagina coiled around and made herself comfortable in the shade.

"Plus, I do not want to go back to being just a voice and spent my days in your sea of consciousness where there is nothing more than darkness."

"Hmm, that's..we can have a talk about this after I return." Le Fangling had something to say buts he decided to keep it for now. She had other important thing to take care of.

"Then host, please return safe with lots of data. Since I am connected to your nervous system, whatever you see and hear, I can directly save them in my database." Nagina raised her tail and swayed it as if saying bye to Le Fangling.

"Hmm..I will be back." After taking one last look at Nagina, Le Fangling also jumped straight in to the burning village.

"Foolish people will continue being foolish." Nagina exclaimed with a snort looking at Le Fangling's back.

.

"Hot...Too hot.." Le Fangling felt as if she had just reached hell.

"But, it doesn't hurt like that.."She looked at her perfectly fine skin and body and hair and let out a soft chuckle.

"As long as I can go back sooner, this will be a piece of cake." She fist bumped in to air and decided to start with looking for…

"But this is really sad.." She just decided to not look at whatever was happening here and just followed the real Le Fangling.

"And those two men..Where are they when the condition is like this here?" She did a complete round as she walked to see if she can point them out but she did not even see them.

"Ahahaha, don't tell me they are chilling somewhere and waiting for this fire to subside?" Le Fangling made a sarcastic remark as she tried to locate the one she was searching for.

From the corner of her eyes, she could make out the outline of Le Fang ling's body as she turned around a corner

"Excuse me….coming through.." She passed by a couple who were grabbing their belongings and trying to find a way out of the fire.

She would have loved to help but she could not do it and that was that. She turned a blind eye to their struggles.

"Opps sorry…" She bowed down and apologized to a man who was trying to extinguish the fire that his long beard had caught.

Finally, she reached to where Le Fangling was.

The place seemed to have been protected by some kind of charm so when she entered, the fires completely vanished.

As for Le Fangling, she was crouching on the ground, her body full of bruises and fire burnt marks but the atmosphere surrounding her felt more dangerous than it was.

"Phew…Finally found you.." Le Fangling wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and let out a sigh of relief.

She also saw the two men from the Le Family standing there as they looked at Le Fangling with an unreadable expression on their face.

She turned her attention from them to Le Fangling who was slouching on the ground.

'Hey..what's wrong?' She saw her unmoving as she held on to a big brown sack. The silent back of Le Fangling made her anxious and nervous to the point her gut almost did a somersault.

Gulping down her nervousness, Le Fangling walked towards them and peeked over to see what Le Fangling was holding.

When she saw what she was catching, she could not help but let out a horrified gasp.

It was not some brown sack but it was her grandmother who had half of her face burnt and was breathing heavily as she tried to grasp on to the last thread of her life.

"The old granny?" She covered her mouth with her hands in shock, feeling a sense of loss eroding her heart.