Willow frowned and responded immediately, "That's the one thing I wanted to tell them. If there's someone they should pick a fight with, it should be with Hades, not all of the gods in Greece. However, right now, everyone in the palace is probably stuck investigating into the matter closer before they can come up with an answer. Not even the Jade Emperor would sit still if all this fighting will cause more destruction and death, you know. I mean, I bet things are partly chaotic in the Yellow Springs already. All the souls that have to be judged must be driving a lot of the officials crazy. So rest assured that their decision in this matter won't be for a good while."
However, despite her words, Willow shook her head in disappointment, "That, however, doesn't mean that the situation doesn't agitate them for sure. I mean, when I was about to die, there was a greek goddess next to my father when he thought of blackmailing me. They needed the permission of the emperor just to interfere with my death and save me. So, you can rest assured that some won't just sit idly in Greece and watch it all unfold like this."
"A greek goddess?" Belen raised a brow as he heard this.
Willow looked to him as she recalled it, "That's right. You're father is a greek god. Maybe you'd know of a goddess figure dressed in gold and silver with a white tunic and with her hair tied up- Ah, wait, there's too many goddesses with that description..."
"Right." Belen sighed, "With vague description like that, I won't be able to narrow down who it was that helped your father save you. You were very lucky though, you know that?"
"You could say that again." Willow frowned in exasperation, "According to him, I was just randomly chosen amongst all of the other dying souls and it just so happened that he picked me amongst my other siblings. So, it didn't have to be me apparently."
"That's..." Belen hesitated and could barely pick his next words in worry if he would offend her later or not.
It was Akira who saved him as he spoke up, "So, do you plan to go find the Keres, then? It's not a simple thing to go out and just randomly encounter a celestial figure regardless of how bloodthirsty they are."
"Ah, I don't want them." Willow responded with a frown, "That would be very scary too. I'm actually thinking of finding someone else."
"Someone else?" Belen furrowed his brows before it dawned upon him, "Ah, that's right! The guards of the Underworld."
Willow nodded, "The greek's guard of the Underworld is Cerberus, but, in China, we have two guards that guard the Underworld. They're also the ones who bring the souls to the Underworld like Thanatos and Hermes would. Yet, all the people that Hades got from here are people that should go to Yellow Springs."
"Yeah?" Belen raised a brow.
Willow smirked, "Here's the thing, though. The Yama, or the king of the Underworld, and his officials keeps check of all the souls that come and go in this world. There are quite a number of people here in China that are in the Buddhism religion and close to eighty, if not ninety, percent of the people in Bejing have either gone missing or perished here. But, if all of them have gone to Hades' place, then..."
"Those officials are probably running back and forth trying to figure out what in the world is going on with the missing numbers of souls that should've been reported to them." Akira concluded having figured everything out, "Then, why haven't they done anything."
"They've only just started, probably." Willow sighed, "They've must've reported this to the officials in Heaven for this outrageous event. Hence the permission the Emperor sent to my father just as the greek goddess arrived asking for or giving aid. They won't just randomly revive or interfere with death, you know. The problem is how much does the Heavens know and how is the enemy going about with freeing their dad. The ones who knows most should be the Greek Gods and goddesses, but we can't communicate with them and neither can I. At most, I can only receive word from my parent since he plans to keep an eye on me so I don't neglect our deal."
"That's harsh..." Belen frowned, "However, you should be aware that some demigod would do anything to be in your position."
"I know." Willow nodded with understanding, "Which is why I can assume why Serah might be willing to help her father? If it meant that they would be able to communicate with him, she would probably do anything for his attention. At least, that should be one of the reasons behind her motive to take part in all this."
"Then, why do you want to find the guards?" Belen asked in confusion.
"The souls are turning up missing and I bet the best that the Heaven could assume is that Hades ordered someone to steal these souls right from under their noses." Willow explained, "They're probably not too happy about that in regards to their pride either, so they should be pushing their guards to work harder to gather the souls before they continue to be taken away. At this point, it wouldn't be surprising if the officials also took part in some of the things outside of their expertise but that would be difficult for multiple reasons. So, what can they do but push their soul collectors to work harder. Since, they should be going around gathering souls, we should be able to come across them. The only thing I'm lost is how to sneak a message to them about the Keres. Not just that, but, if we take it that they don't know about them, then how are we going to help support them to catch those sisters?"
"So, that's why you brought this up." Belen grumbled, "A demigod can't catch a god so easily, but that doesn't mean a god can't catch another god. But, you do realize that I don't have any idea how to help you here since I'm not this well-verse with Chinese mythology as you are."
He wasn't wrong. Even Willow had to be taught the majority of what she knew by her teacher. Willow nodded with a sigh, "That's what I thought, so I've asked my teacher about the guards, but I don't know how much he knows about them."
"So, you're going to call him." Belen stated.
"Can't do that." Willow shook her head in exasperation, " Serah has control of the phone lines. That was one of the reason how I got caught before."
"Then, how are you going to get in contact with him?" The demigod stared at her in confusion.
"I've sent my father's messenger on an errand."
"Messenger?"
He raised a brow and turned to Akira who clarified, "A pigeon."
"So, we're waiting our answer to this massive problem..."
"On a pigeon." Akira finished with a mischievous smirk on his cat face almost ruining the innocent image of a cat's facial expression.
"Can you... repeat that again?"
After that brief little meeting, Willow was able to get another room open where she had the boy and Belen to stay for the time being. When she got the door open, she reminded to him that, since Li Yan had yet to learn of her heritage and they weren't too certain at the moment, it would be better to keep it a secret from the family till they were sure.
That night, Willow was in her room with Li Yan sleeping closely next to her on the bed. However, Willow didn't have the time to be sleeping. She truly was tired, but something else bothered her. Even when she had told Belen and Akira was had been on her mind, she wasn't ready to leave everything to them yet. She was fortunate that the guy, Belen, was not a complete musclehead and used power to overcome everything. However, that didn't mean she could give him all of her troubles to solve.
Their alliance right now was temporary too since Willow knows that the guy will later try to make it on his own outside of Beijing. Sure, she could always go find the two figures that tried to bring her to hell when she wasn't conscious, but, aside from the ability to find them, she was still just a demigod with hardly any ability to protect herself. Thus, she had to think of something quickly and effective enough to keep her safe from the chances of reaching the danger zone. After all, she wasn't the monkey king who could play pranks on others and get away with it.
Besides, thanks to the pranks he played, he got himself in trouble with the monks thanks to his rebellion on Heaven. If she did something like that, she wouldn't be able to survive the wrath of the officials in the underworld to start with, much less the emperor of heaven. Most would question why she would think about so far, but it's simply because those guards are rather close to the officials and are extremely loyal. They'd definitely report everything to their superiors without a second thought. Ox head and Horse face, also know as Niutou and Manian, are were said to have become guards after the King Yama took pity on them as they were worked to death by their owners during life and rewarded them by making them into guards retaining their head appearance but with a human-like body.
Since it became like this, they are loyal to King Yama who is the ruler of the underworld. So, bribing them was already out of the options. It also wasn't like she had anything to bribe them with too. At the same time, they wouldn't give her any information so easily without the consent of the King. As one can see, it was similar to running in circles yet always ending up right at the starting line. She scowled at her own uselessness. Again, it was as if she was back on that little patch of dirt bemoaning her own unfortunate position!
She gnashed her teeth in anger and curled her first around the blanket.
What a mess!
Even if she knew what it was that the enemy was doing, it won't be enough for her to go through with fixing it. Willow sighed in deep thought before turning on the bedside light and began reading her book from her duffel bag leaning against the bed just to clear her mind. Having finished reading the book of magic, arrays, and magic circles of western territories, Willow have turned her focus to finishing up the book of herbal medicine and more magic. After all, it was thanks to this little purple book that had gotten her out of today's mess with the mother. Yet, she still had a book on mythology of Egypt, Encyclopedia of China's mythological herbs and infinite numbers more secrets, the land of the immortals, the history of the gods, and the monsters and creatures of the world unseen...
Right, very stupid names. Half of the time was her reading the useful knowledge from these papers and the other half was her hoping her teacher wouldn't try to make her say the title of these books because it sounded so much like something an elementary student or what kids would read to gain some form of amusement and trivia.