The Teacher and the Student (12)

Although Yin Mei thought that she wouldn't do such a mean thing like steal away Qin Shuang's treasures, after a moments thought, she decided that no one could say anything about stealing away the treasures that the world governments would later find.

After Qin Shuang and group were rescued by the school, this region became a highly protected research region under the governance of the various world governments. Although Qin Shuang had found what could have been considered the most important treasure (the sacred beast egg), there were still enough good treasures to go around for those government bodies.

Yin Mei suddenly seemed to brighten up. Anyways, it'll be good to be able to power Song Hua up without stealing from little kids. She thought that this idea was genius!

She happily went about exploring. The only pity was that she wasn't properly equipped to handle the volcano region, so she would have to give up on the treasure that reside there.

Instead, she made a beeline toward the city ruins, arguably the most interesting place - aside from the mountains, where the sacred beast had once resided in.

There weren't any monsters or other things around, everything so eerily quiet save for the rumbling of the volcano off in the distance.

The air was hot and heavy, but Yin Mei could barely feel it, first due to the evolved physique of the new humans, and secondly due to the temperature adjusting properties of her bodysuit.

Although Yin Mei had called the cities ruins, when Yin Mei arrived, she clearly saw that such a word was not fit to describe it. They were practically pristine and untouched throughout the ages, the pure white stone engraved in unknown symbols that were hard to describe - they were elegant and beautiful, but nothing of this world. Oh, I guess they were of this world, since this was the language of the Leiden indigenous peoples.

Yin Mei fished out the tablet from her shadow, taking pictures. And a few more pictures. And also a selfie. Once she was satisfied, she put the picture through a language and image analysis program, but as expected, it came up with nothing. After all, this language wasn't anything of Earth. It'd probably take much more than just a simple program installed on her tablet to decipher it.

She continued on through the abandoned city. There were no signs of life whatsoever, and although most of the city looked perfect, there were some crumbling portions that had clearly been the result of the passage of time.

She continued taking pictures happily, thinking that this place really looked good. Real tourist worthy, though there was no way that the world governments would let in tourists until they had thoroughly cleaned out the entire place of anything valuable with a fine-toothed comb.

Yin Mei entered a house, the thick wooden door opening without any problems. She looked around. It was empty. Like every other building seemed to be. For some reason, there was no traces of life. No hints that anyone had lived here at all, save for the city buildings themselves.

She took another picture.

A while later, Yin Mei entered the palace - at least, that was what she called the looming building at the center of the city, that, by all intents and purposes, seemed to be a palace.

It had pure white spires and pale blue crystal windows. Alien flora the color of fresh blood - red leaves, red vines, and red petals - climbed up the walls, entwined with what appeared to be its golden sister - gold leaves, gold vines, gold petals.

Yin Mei studied the moat. The water was an icy blue-white, harshly dividing the palace from the rest of the city. There was no sign of any moat bridge, just a white wall that bordered the building.

It was smooth and wet, appearing very much unclimbable. There wasn't even a gate. Just a moat and a wall.

Yin Mei slowly walked around the entirety of the palace, her heels clicking on the white cobblestone road. Everything was so white that it annoyed her, slightly. Save for those blue crystal windows and the red and gold flowers. It was all white, white, white.

She stopped back at her original place, where she had first arrived at the castle. She kicked a loose stone forward, and it dropped into the waters... is not what happened. In fact, it bounced forward, a cling sound echoing as it hit what appeared to be empty air. Bounced once, twice, and then did it drop into the water, swallowed up by its frothy white depths.

Interesting.

Yin Mei stepped forward. Her heels made a sharp sound against the "air", and her other foot left the white stone ground to stand next to her first foot. She was standing in air. Perfectly floating.

Or rather, she appeared to be standing on some sort of material that was so clear it was invisible.

Or perhaps the material itself was invisible, rather than being a clear material.

But it was clear that the material didn't continue across the entire moat. Yin Mei continued, each step testing for the feel of something solid beneath her, as light footed as a ballerina.

One step and another, then the next. It was when she neared the halfway point when her foot only met air and nothing else. She cautiously explored, finding the edge, and continuing on until she discovered where the invisible bridge continued. At the end, she reached the white wall, looking up at it.

She had reached the end, but there still wasn't a gate or door to let her in. She put her hand up on the smooth material - it felt like how it looked. Smooth and wet. It was cool to the touch, and where her hand moved away, though the material had felt wet, her hand came back dry. It was an odd experience.

She continued feeling up the wall, but didn't seem to find anything. She took out her tablet, the camera scanning the wall. It didn't find anything either.

She was about to give up in frustration when a loud rumbling almost knocked her off balance. She looked in the direction of the volcano, which constantly glowed like a bright beacon of light.

Her eyes then changed direction to the mountains, where the misty peaks seemed as peaceful as ever, laying completely undisturbed.

Her eyes then fell to the forest that she had landed in. The same as before.

She tilted her head.

The rumbling continued, the wall that she had leaned against to regain her balance vibrating under her hand.

Yin Mei stamped her foot slightly, then kicked the wall as if it could stop that obnoxious rumbling. It did. And like some sort of miracle, the wall beneath her hand disappeared, and she tumbled into the now empty space. The wall closed itself a moment later, as if nothing had happened.

Inside the palace walls now, Yin Mei rebalanced herself, her feet stepping on a deep green grass. She looked around, seemingly in a location that resembled some sort of garden - a garden with glowing blue flowers, weeping crystal willows that glimmered under the light and tinkled like a wind chime as their branches clashed against each other, and furry leaves sprouting out of deep blue soil like bouncing rabbit ears.

Yin Mei took some more pictures before continuing on her way. Entering the palace, the inside appeared made out of a sort of white marble like material, polished to a mirror like shine. The chandeliers that hung from the ceilings, for no better word for them, seemed made of silver, pale tears, and glowing blue flowers.

Yin Mei wandered here and there, seemingly with no purpose, until she arrived in front of large double doors, only distinguished from the wall due to the extravagant engravings. The language of Leiden's indigenous people seemed wondrously entwined with images of Leiden's alien beasts and flora.

Yin Mei studied it. Took pictures. Analyzed it.

The door remained silent throughout, and no matter how Yin Mei seemed to push it, it did not open.

The next couple of days passed with Yin Mei attempting in vain to open the door. She didn't appear at all to get bored, in fact, as each day passed, she only seemed more intrigued.

But soon the kids would arrive, and she didn't have much more time left. There was no way that she would leave this place without at least one treasure. She had already gone from the mindset of not stealing any treasures to absolutely needing to steal a treasure.

As for this door, the information didn't reveal to her anything. For all she knew, the world governments had never been able to open this door. After all, what the information revealed was fairly vague - a few treasures that they had obtained had been revealed, but the methods of obtainment were hidden.

This is because they weren't important to the plot.

She narrowed her eyes from her seat in front of the double doors, her legs crossed over each other as she hummed and hawed in thought.

She flicked the air in front of her, looking slightly bored now as she leaned her cheek against one palm. "Why can't the door just open by itself? Like open sesame~ and bam, it'd open, and we'd all be happy."

The door opened.

Yin Mei blankly stared at in, unable to comprehend. Huh? Did it really just open? Just like she had told it to??

WTF! If she knew it was this easy then what where those three hard days of work for!

She managed to recovered her wounded heart and soul, standing up to enter.

The room was vast, the ceiling floating high up above her in a dome like shape, lights hanging from the walls, the glass "lanterns" filled with water and glowing flowers.

Inside, there was only one thing. Yin Mei had hoped it was a treasury, but thinking of how empty the rest of the city and palace were, even if it was, she was afraid that it wouldn't have held anything inside of it for her to pilfer.

This room didn't appear very much like a treasury, and more so similar to a mausoleum.

Standing in the center was what I would say appeared to be a rectangular coffin made of white stone.

On it was engraved something that Yin Mei couldn't decipher. There were images of Leiden's fauna, along with some humanoid like people. The humanoid people had horns. Yin Mei could tell that these people should be members of Leiden's indigenous peoples.

The coffin was uncovered, and filled with white flowers resembling spider lilies, and some sort of smooth gray pod.

How curious.

Yin Mei tapped the pod-like thing, and it seemed metal-like. So perhaps something man-made? Though in this case it would be alien-made.

She placed her hand on it. It was slightly warm to the touch, but not hot, and almost seemed to hum beneath her hand. Whatever it was, it seemed like it hadn't run out of power after all the years it must have been stuck in here.

She scooped it up. It was small enough to hold, but big enough that she could probably fit a human baby into it.

She paused. She didn't jinx that right? She thought that there was no way there would be a baby inside the pod.

It didn't do anything, so she lazily placed it into her shadow. She didn't have any more time to loiter. Although the only reward for her hard work was this mysterious item that didn't seem to have any purpose, she thought that she should at least be able to grab some other things while observing the kids.

She opened up the system's surveillance system. The kids were due for tonight, and nightfall should happen in the next few hours. They appeared to be having fun, Yin Mei thought as she watched Qin Shuang, Alice, and Song Hua all run from a large beast with a scaled belly and furry back.

She took a look at what Alexei and Hai Lan were doing - both seemed to be enjoying themselves. The former was relaxing in the hotel like he said he would, drinking out of a tea cup and reading something on his tablet while bathing in the pale light of the Leiden sun. The latter was surfboarding with coworkers.

She waved away the screen.

Sigh! Look at all this fun that she had given up in order to watch over these little brats! Honestly, even if she wasn't here they could still take care of themselves... But this was all for the demon king, so that he wouldn't continue having a disadvantage when pitted up against Qin Shuang...

She felt that wouldn't Qin Shuang be happy, if he knew that the zombie emperor he had once tried several times in vain to defeat was now weaker than him?

She continued to sincerely wonder why it was that he seemed incapable of associating Song Hua to the zombie emperor. Did he not recall the man's appearance, or did he simply not recall the zombie emperor in general?

She thought that maybe one day the mystery would be solved. But alas, today would not be such a day.