Chapter 294 - Infiltrating into the Royal Palace

Chapter 294 Infiltrating into the Royal Palace
People are standing in orderly ranks. The yard is lit by the fire. The shadow of a date palm is reflected on the mud wall. To Lin Luoran and Yang Lisha’s surprise, they are not slaves of the Agebels. The bearded Babylonian man they saw in the afternoon is hiding in the crowd and pointing disdainfully to them. Those people clearly are soldiers because they are holding spear-like weapons and shields.
Are they soldiers of the Neo-Babylonian Empire? Maybe they are patrolling the city wearing short leather armors that look like skirts. If they weren’t coming to catch them, Lin Luoran would be very interested in these soldiers who live more than two thousand years ago.
“You know how to get out, right?” Although Lin Luoran loses her Reiki, she can still do Tai Chi. It’s not difficult to run away from a team of poorly armed Babylonian soldiers.
Yang Lisha nods, “Don’t kill them. I can feel that there are powerful cultivators in this city!”
The windows in the mud wall are high, but not small. They jump out easily. They are on the same boat now. Lin Luoran believes Yang Lisha’s judgment that there are other cultivators in Babylon. It doesn’t surprise her that the Neo-Babylonian Empire existed two thousand years ago has cultivators in it since the interstellar transmission circle turns out to be the Tower of Babel.
Lin Luoran winks her eyes to Yang Lisha and crosses her arms into a ladder. Yang Lisha understands and steps lightly on her arms and jumps out.
“You two go first. Be a good boy, Goldie!” The soldiers see Lin Luoran and Yang Lisha escaping and shout in words they don’t understand. The soldiers also try to stab them with spears while Lin Luoran turns left and avoids them. She pats Goldie and asks the cyan little fox to run first. Subject to some rules of the tower, Goldie can’t transform into other forms, but holding the little fox in his mouth is still not a problem.
There is no much difference between eagles and hawks. There are Babylonians who have eagles at home too, but they are all from higher classes. It is because the soldiers see Lin Luoran and Yang Lisha have a “golden eagle” that they don’t kill them at once, which gives Yang Lisha chances to escape. Of course, Lin Luoran doesn’t know the real reason. However, the soldiers put their misgivings aside when they see that Lin Luoran and Yang Lisha are afraid of being found out and try to flee away.
Goldie flies out of the window. Lin Luoran kicks a spear into the air. Even if she can not use her Reiki, she can easily make various difficult moves with her body which is tempered by Reiki molecules. She can also make moves like the 180-degree horizontal kick in the movies smoother and better than all the action stars.
Seeing the soldiers all fall on the ground, Lin Luoran steps on the stone table and jumps out of the window that is just large enough for one person to pass through. Shen lands lightly on the ground.
Several female slaves are beaten unconscious in the yard. It seems that Yang Lisha did it. A lot of the pointed long leaves of the date palm are broken. Soldiers running after Lin Luoran are quite clamorous. She feels her temple is jumping abruptly, but she doesn’t see Goldie and the cyan little fox after jumping out of the window. That’s when she realizes more people are running towards her from several mud walls away.
Lin Luoran has no time to find out where Yang Lisha and Goldie have gone. She picks a direction without footsteps and torches and jumps out of the wall of the low mud house.
Except for the soldiers chasing after her, Babylon is completely not as prosperous as the modern world. The mud walls all look the same while the mud houses make people lose their directions.
Lin Luoran has to look into the distance. There is a place with many exquisite buildings, which seems to be the inner city. The closest landmark to Lin Luoran is a gate made of glazed bricks. The most dangerous place is the safest place. Besides, she still needs to find out things about the Tower of Babel, so she must sneak into the inner city.
She approaches the city gate carefully and finds it unusually beautiful when she gets close. It consists of two double-walled arched gates. Each gate has two guard towers, one on the right and one on the left. The surface of the walls is covered with patterns made of colored glaze. Lin Luoran recognizes the pattern of an ox and another majestic mythical animal that she doesn’t find a match in all the animals she knows in the legends and fairy tales. It stands on its four feet and has fish’s head, snake’s neck, common beasts’ body and scales. Its forelimbs look like those of lions while its hind limbs are eagle claws.
If Lin Luoran were more familiar with the history of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, she would recognize that the gate is the famous “Ishtar Gate”. In the future, the Hanging Gardens which is one of the seven wonders of the ancient world will be built next to it.
Of course, there are guards who are armed to the teeth at the gate. After all, this is a crucial part of the imperial city of Babylon. Lin Luoran looks at the mud wall that is ten meters high and feels not sure about whether she can jump up.
It’s impossible to break into the city. She has to wait.
Lin Luoran hides in the shadows and checks her space. She can take things out of it, but she can’t hide inside. It is forbidden after she passes through time. A secret force is preventing Lin Luoran from using spells after she gets to the past. Is it because spells will disturb the course of history? Apart from this, Lin Luoran can’t think of any other reasons.
She feels a little dizzy, so she quickly takes out the last Teleport Figure and Ice Needle Figure from her space and puts them in her pocket. There are disadvantages of turning against the Qingcheng Taoist Temple. After running out of the last two pieces of figure paper, Lin Luoran will have to say goodbye to these handy secret weapons that can be used both at home and during trips.
With these two pieces of figure paper, Lin Luoran feels more secure. She was supposed to take out the Bright Sword, but Yang Lisha said before she ran away that there could be other cultivators in the city. Lin Luoran gives up the idea after thinking that the Bright Sword is a fifth-tier flying sword and someone may want to steal it. She can’t use her Reiki now anyway.
If other cultivators do exist, Yang Lisha might be in a more dangerous situation than herself. At least, the cultivators from Huaxia whom Lin Luoran might meet are all seniors to her. She won’t get robbed as long as she doesn’t show her wealth. However, Yang Lisha is a monster and this is not the era when cultivation wanes. It won’t be hard for cultivators who travel thousands of miles to the city of Babylon to recognize who she really is.
Damn! The dizziness is getting worse. Is it because of the food she ate tonight? Who says that the ancients are simple? Lin Luoran picks a few mint leaves from her space and puts them under her tongue to make herself feels better.
It sounds that the city is in tumult inside the gorgeous city gate. Two masked women are sitting on two jeweled sedan chairs that are more luxury than those Lin Luoran and Yang Lisha took when they entered Babylon. The women’s servants seem to be talking to the guards.
Lin Luoran understands one word, “Medes”. She remembers it is an ethnic group in the region of the Two Rivers, but she doesn’t remember clearly and doesn’t know who they really are. The soldiers guarding the city clearly understand the meaning of the word better than she does.
They open the gate of the city, give way respectfully and wave to let the team of people who are going out late at night pass.
Regardless of whether Babylon has a curfew as Huaxia does, only people in authority can go out of the city in the middle of the night. Lin Luoran takes a look at her white robe. It looks similar to what hundreds of maids in the team are wearing.
Here comes her chance to get into the city, Lin Luoran smears dirt on her face and neck in order to make her skin tone two shades deeper. She also tears down a sleeve of her robe, so that it looks more like what a local woman would wear. Oh, she needs to tear off the bottom half of her dress as well.
The team has already gone halfway forward. The soldiers still don’t dare to look up, so Lin Luoran jumps out of the shadows.
The maids are all holding things in their hands while Lin Luoran has nothing. She finds a wooden box with painted flowers from her space and holds it like the maids do.
The swords are just a few steps away from Lin Luoran. When she passes the blue city wall and enters the gate, she worries whether someone would suddenly recognize her. If this really happened, those swords would all come to her, even Tai Chi would be useless.
One minute feels like decades for Lin Luoran. Her neck is covered with sweat. Only after the bronze city gate is closed next to her heel, does she feel relieved.
Appearing in front of her is the Babylonian inner city that will become relics in two thousand years.
Lin Luoran takes a deep breath and looks at the temple-like building. It is covered with reliefs, various patterns made of glazed bricks and decorations in the shape of roses. There are also gorgeous belts in bright blue, cyan, red, white and yellow.
The building doesn’t have eaves like the palaces in Huaxia and looks more like a giant colorful round stone.
Nevertheless, it is still the palace of Babylon that is one of the four ancient civilizations.
Lin Luoran hastens to go forward. At the front of the team, one of the masked women on the sedan chairs suddenly blinks and smiles.
“Teacher, are you laughing?”, another masked woman asks. She has a pair of clear eyes like the blue sky as well as an accent that definitely belongs to Huaxia, but her accent is too heavy. It takes a while for Lin Luoran to recognize.
The woman who is called “teacher” smiles, “Amytis, we’ve got some company.”
The woman speaks in the standard language of Huaxia during the Spring and Autumn period. It is similar to mandarin nowadays. The woman’s tone is gentle and soft. Nobody can speak in a better accent than her. However, Lin Luoran still knows nothing about all of these and follows behind the team, holding a silly wooden box and wishing to use her eyes as a camera to shoot the entire palace.