Guardian of the Sea Chapter Fourteen: Entering Mount Agula

In truth, Murphy and Chu Xuan had not had a pleasant journey. By Chu Xuan’s reckoning, after flying for a while they should have caught sight of Chu Tian and Apache; then they could shamelessly tag along, and surely Chu Tian would have neither the means nor the mood to drive them back to the Golden Castle.

But in fact, not long after they took off, Murphy dragged her down to the ground... He was not a flying magical beast like Apache. The result was that all along the way they could only press forward on foot, with Murphy taking to the air in brief intervals. Fortunately, once his divine power began to circulate, he could still fly quite fast. Yet Chu Xuan always had the strange illusion that the one carrying her skyward at times was the great Murphy, not her little brother, little Murphy.

The direct consequence of traveling like this was that by the time they reached Mount Agula, what they saw was Chu Tian already riding Apache away from the mountain, leaving Chu Xuan speechless.

After thinking it over, she was unwilling to have made the trip to Mount Agula for nothing. She had suffered no small amount of terror at high altitude along the way, so after gritting her teeth, she asked Murphy beside her, “Is there any way to slip inside?”

Murphy shook his head. “It’s very hard to get into the dragons’ territory. Should we ask Aristode to come pick us up? Gah-gah?”

Dizzying... Chu Xuan shivered inwardly, but she knew little Murphy was innocent, not stupid. Otherwise she would never have brought this little bodyguard with her.

With a helpless sigh, she had just opened her mouth to reason things out for him when, unexpectedly, little Murphy’s eyes rolled, and he turned to her with that pure, guileless little face lifted in a smile.

“Sister Xuan, we’re here to steal something. How could that fellow possibly bring people into his own lair to steal? He’d surely be too stingy even to let us through the door. That man who snatched my lollipop is no fun at all.”

I’m going faint... I never said I wanted him to come pick us up—it was your idea, all right? Chu Xuan was rendered speechless again. She had just parted her lips to say something to salvage a little dignity when little Murphy interrupted her once more...

“Or else we can kill our way in. Gah-gah, that sounds fun!”

Since when had this child inherited the murderous temperament of the great Murphy? Pressing a hand to her aching head, Chu Xuan clenched her teeth, swept one arm through the air, narrowed her eyes like some charlatan mystic, pushed both palms outward in a turning circle, then raised one hand to hold aloft a talisman she had summoned from her spatial bracelet. In a soft voice she intoned, “Ten thousand mirrored phantoms, conceal...”

In an instant, a faint warmth spread through the air around them. Little Murphy was curiously sensing this unusual power, but... he was interrupted.

Another head suddenly sprouted from the right side of little Murphy’s neck, staring at Chu Xuan with wild, bloodthirsty laughter in its expression and frightening her into stumbling a step backward. Then yet another head abruptly emerged from his left side. The eyes of this one were utterly calm and detached, fixed coldly upon Chu Xuan.

This was the first time Chu Xuan had seen this mad Murphy. It was also the first time she had seen the great Murphy and little Murphy appear before her at the same time. Before, whenever the great Murphy appeared, he would merely reclaim temporary control of his own body and send little Murphy into a soul-state. But this time, even mad Murphy had appeared alongside them.

“Idiot.”

The great Murphy swept a placid glance over her, then turned his eyes away and ignored her completely. Chu Xuan, scolded for no reason she could discern, had not yet opened her mouth to defend herself when mad Murphy gave an evil grin and burst into laughter, loud enough for all of Mount Agula to hear.

Alarmed, Chu Xuan immediately reached for Murphy’s hand, only to hear the great Murphy bark coldly, “Silence.”

Then he seized her hand in return and rushed toward the entrance of Mount Agula. The two dragon guards at the gate looked straight through them as though they did not exist, instead searching in the direction from which mad Murphy’s laughter had just sounded. At once two more dragons came to fill the entrance again, but Chu Xuan and Murphy had already slipped into the dark interior of Mount Agula.

The moment they entered, Murphy dragged Chu Xuan along in circles. His other two heads said nothing, apparently because both had been warned by the great Murphy and did not dare make a sound. But the vastness of Mount Agula nearly turned Chu Xuan and Murphy stupid with confusion—level after level, room after room, piled upon one another like a honeycomb, ring linked to ring; no, cave linked to cave.

It had to be said that Chu Xuan had hated insects since childhood. No matter how boyish her temperament was, she was still like every girl her age in being afraid of bugs, so the structure of Mount Agula made her stomach churn.

After circling once more right under the dragons’ noses, Chu Xuan suddenly froze. Tugging at Murphy’s sleeve, she jerked her chin toward a very well-hidden cave entrance. Murphy immediately pulled her up and flew to that opening, five stories high.

The moment they landed, Chu Xuan said to him in an extremely faint voice, “My invisibility spell is about to fail. Damn it, stealing something from that fellow who snatched little brother’s lollipop is way too hard. We’ve wandered around with you for half the day and still haven’t found anyone who looks like the Dragon Emperor. Don’t tell me those well-dressed fellows we saw earlier, with eyes like beggars, were the Dragon Emperor...”

“You know the thing you want belongs to the Dragon Emperor. His aura is at the top of Mount Agula, but we already went up there just now and found no sign of him,” the great Murphy interrupted flatly. His icy gaze drifted toward the summit of Mount Agula, and a thread of puzzlement flickered through it.

Mad Murphy curled his lip, but did not dare speak loudly. He only muttered, “No fun. Gah-gah, this is no fun at all.”

“It really isn’t any fun... But, Sister Xuan, what was that invisibility spell of yours? I...” little Murphy added as well, voicing his own question, but before he could finish, the great Murphy cut him off with a cold rebuke and fixed his chilly eyes on Chu Xuan.

Chu Xuan looked at the three-headed Murphy, and her heart sank. She knew this was not the time to talk about invisibility spells. Plainly, the great Murphy thought the same. Because, setting all the other chaotic matters aside, at the very least, after hearing his words, she now knew where Aristode was. And in her heart she could not help cursing:

Damn it!