Volume 2, Chapter 64 (Chapter 102): Escape

Du Sixian’s rejection of the rune came and went quickly.

High fever, intermittent golden scales appearing on her forehead, shortness of breath—all of these side effects disappeared in an instant, to the point where An Qing was caught off guard.

In her memory, the side effects of rejecting a rune take time to alleviate.

“How do you feel?” An Qing hurried over and asked with concern.

“I…” Sixian looked at An Qing blankly as she sat up on the bed. “I feel dizzy…”

Her ears rang as she recalled hearing a loud curse while she was unconscious, as if it came from a distant time and space, beckoning her to wake up.

“Other than that, I feel okay.”

“That’s good,” An Qing nodded. “Why don’t you rest here overnight? I’ll leave you be.”

An Qing left the office and turned off the lights, and Sixian was left in a daze. She sighed as she laid back on the bed and stared at the ceiling in the dark.

Recalling carefully, she was sure that the voice she had just heard was the same voice that guided her to the Night Division.

But why? What is my connection with her? she thought.

This unknown connection made her feel uneasy as if a pair of eyes were always on her.

Tap, tap, tap.

Just as she was deep in thought, a soft collection of footfalls stopped outside An Qing’s office, and somebody entered the room.

A girl.

A shade of silver moonlight seemed to surround her, and the coarse cloth of her skirt was engraved with strange patterns. It attached thinly to her body, reflecting her perfect figure.

Under her skirt, a pair of slender legs were connected to a pair of bare feet, which donned a pair of bronze bells that hung around her ankles like an anklet. The bells collided gently with each other with every step; the chiming was crisp yet melodious.

Her face was bright and clean as jade, and her peach lips and jade complexion were framed by meticulously tied, long, black hair with a hairpin fashioned in the design of a bone stuck in it.

She looked as if she had travelled from a distant past, and a tinge of a primal aura was hidden underneath her face.

Before this, Sixian never thought of anyone (other than herself) as perfect, but seeing the mysterious girl before her, she felt that if the perfect girl doesn’t exist, then the girl before her is not human.

‘And if she’s not human, how the hell did she break into the Night Division without anyone noticing?’

She felt a chill run down her spine.

As she was staring at the girl, the girl looked around blankly as if she didn’t exist and muttered to herself, “Strange… I could feel him for a moment just now; why did he suddenly disappear?”

“Uh, excuse me…?”

Hearing Sixian’s voice, the girl was stunned for a moment as she yelled.

The girl put her hand to her heart, and when she calmed herself down, she asked Sixian, “Excuse me, but have you seen a man just now? I don’t know what he looks like, but I can tell you that he’s about the same age as me.”

“You could be describing anyone.”

“Right? Ah, I’d better go back and wait,” the girl pouted as she walked towards the window and opened it. With her toes gripping the rims of the window, accompanied by a burst of air that flung all the papers on An Qing’s desk across the room, her figure transformed into a stream of moonlight, and she was gone.

“What the hell? Should I tell An Qing about this?” Sixian uttered this, staring blankly at the window.

On a cool night, at Huacheng Hospital.

Lu Xu couldn’t sleep, or more accurately, didn’t want to sleep. As long as he fell asleep, the scarlet lanterns would keep haunting him, trying to invade his body.

But he fell asleep after all.

He slept longer than he had spent sleeping in the past week, and when he woke up, he couldn’t help but recall the conversation he had with the doctor.

“The reports all came out normal. If there’s nothing wrong, we’ll keep you here for another day, and you can leave,” the doctor said as he flipped through Lu Xu’s reports, smiling.

“That can’t be…” Lu Xu spoke weakly with a hoarse throat. “Are you sure?”

The doctor was obviously taken aback by his reaction and assured him, “Yes, I am sure. You should rest and not worry too much.”

Just as the doctor was about to get up and leave, Lu Xu propped his body up on the bed and let out a hoarse shout.

“Doctor!”

The doctor stopped and looked at him suspiciously.

“Y-you’re wrong! I can feel myself getting weaker; it-it’s that damn lantern I told you about in my dreams! It’s getting closer every time I sleep… I don’t want to die, please!”

The doctor wordlessly shook his head and nodded towards Lu Xu before leaving the ward.

The ward was silent, and he sat on the bed with a blank expression.

‘Nobody can help me—not the doctor, not Professor Ma, and even Lu Yibei could only delay my death. I can only rely on myself.’

‘If that old man in my dream could escape, why not me?’

Lu Xu woke up to a cool breeze hitting his face.

His head was pounding, and when he opened his eyes, he was shocked to find himself sleeping on the bed of his dorm room.

The area surrounding his bed was dark; the darkness seemed to swallow all light, and everything in his room could only be discerned by a vague outline.

No scarlet lanterns, no weird villages—just the warm touch of his usually damp bed in his dorm and the faint waft of sweat that was eternally present in a boys’ dormitory.

It all just seemed so real.

For a moment, he thought that everything he had experienced was just a dream.

A strong wind blew in from the open windows, and the hooks on the curtain caused a cacophony of irritating clangs.

A cold sweat dripped down his forehead, and he leapt down from his top bunk, picked up a chair, and walked towards the window.

Holding the curtain with one hand and the chair in the other, he prepared himself to swing at any time and opened the curtain with one swift motion.

It was empty outside the window. The dark, thick fog vaguely outlines the campus.

Lu Xu swallowed as he stared into the void and hurriedly closed the slightly open window and pulled the curtains tightly together, pressing the chair firmly against the hem of the curtains.

Laying back on his bed, drowsiness struck.

In the darkness, any slight sound seemed to be amplified tenfold, and he heard the faint sound again in the darkness.

Something tugged at his curtains, and even the chair that restricted the curtain’s movements were being dragged slowly away from the window, like nails to a chalkboard.

The drowsiness left him in an instant, and he sat up and he stared at the balcony.

A faint scarlet light shone through his dark-blue curtains, painting the darkness a very slight violet.

The corner of the curtain rose slightly with the wind.

The cold wind fell on Lu Xu’s body, freezing him. His heartbeats were so fast that he swore that his heart was about to leap out of his throat; his breaths were shallow and short, and his chest felt tight.

He held his quilt tightly against him with both hands, peering at the window from the top of his quilt.

The tormenting sound of the chair being dragged away from the window stopped as it was slightly pushed over, hitting the floor with a clear, crisp sound, and the whole dorm fell into still silence.

There was no wind, but the chair moved again as it centred itself in his room.

Lu Xu felt that there was somebody sitting on it, watching him quietly in the dark with a sinister smile.

Whoosh!

The curtains of his window were suddenly pulled aside, and a scarlet lantern loomed outside.

The lantern hovered outside the window like a strange eye, as if it were studying Lu Xu closely.

At this moment, his only sense of security was gone. His hair was damp with cold sweat, his body trembled with a fearful vigour, and his teeth collided with each other uncontrollably.

The lantern entered through the window and floated closer and closer, and the faint scarlet light reflected upon his cheeks.

His pupils contracted, and his eyeball spun uncontrollably in his eye sockets. His body twitched continuously as he let out dying groans.

A few seconds later, drowsiness washed over him, and he fell asleep.

The hospital at night fills one with a sense of dread.

The lunatic remarks of that patient named Lu Xu made the doctor feel uneasy whenever he went to the toilet alone.

I must change to another ward tomorrow, the doctor thought mindlessly.

Leaving the toilet by the end of the corridor, he passed by Lu Xu’s ward as he straightened his clothes. A wave of cold washed over him, and he shouted in a panic, “W-who goes there?”

Lu Xu’s door was slightly ajar, and the doctor could see him sitting by the bed, a strange smile being the only feature he could discern in the dark.

“Don’t be afraid; it’s me. I… escaped.”

As he spoke, his hand seemed to toss something to the ground, making a light clack-clack sound.

Two pieces of burnt wood.