Volume 2, Chapter 85 (Chapter 123): Help

‘It still works!’ Lu Yibei praised.

However, it continued to nag at her. If she did this, it may cause psychic fluctuations in real life, and Li Xuan is still investigating the incident at school.

Not my problem, she thought.

Her body flung closer and closer to the edge, and the gaping maw of darkness seemed to open as if it sensed her arrival. She could even smell the stench that accompanied the biting wind at the bottom of the pit.

Surrounding the pit, figures with deformed bodies emerged behind the scarlet lanterns, and Lu Xu’s vague form could be seen among the crowd.

They turned around in unison, staring at Yibei’s descending figure, and hissed, “Kill her! Kill the blasphemer…”

With each sullen word, they babbled an unknown prayer.

Her heart beat against her chest wildly, and the disturbing prayers in her ear became more and more intense.

Her body skidded down the cobblestone road, and something seemed to ignite; the figures by the pit hovered closer and closer to the edge, waving their twisted, bloody limbs towards her…

Ten metres, five metres… three metres…

Just as she was about to fall into the pit, she could feel her body becoming lighter—weightless—and she soared into the air with the forward momentum brought about by her sliding, kicking Lu Xu’s body square on the chest.

His body was flung alongside his accompanying lantern, and like a blazing comet, he slashed straight across the pit, hovering directly above it.

With the lantern’s light, she could see what was within the pit: irregular, mounded shapes of the earth, like a big mouth filled with sharp fangs.

“Kill the blasphemer…!”

Lu Xu had no concept of death, and he continued to yell out curses as his body was ignited from the inside out, bursting into flames.

His body fell straight into the pit, and he fell and fell and fell into the never-ending maw.

The sound of thunder exploded in the sky.

The sudden noise made her jump slightly. Raising her head, she could see the lightning moving about the clouds.

The sky was eerily dark despite the flashes of light, and the dark clouds seemed to shape themselves into huge eggs.

But the quieter it was, the more restless Lu Yibei felt; a huge and lifeless sense of oppression came from all directions.

Staring at the gloomy sky, then staring into the bottomless pit. Something tells her that something will appear, either from the sky or the gaping maw.

The egg-shaped cloud in the sky burst open, revealing dazzling lightning that burst into the sky. The water contained in these clouds, like a flood, poured into the pit; her body temperature rose to a terrifying height, and her blazing, crimson hair floated behind her like a cape.

The rain falling upon her vaporised into a thin mist as if she were wearing a shawl made of water.

Roar!

A deep roar could be heard from within the pit, like a whale in the deep sea, combined with the hissing of snakes and the lamentations of thousands of people.

She was visibly stunned and peeked her head down into the pit.

A huge shadow emerged from within the pit and rolled into a gross amalgamation of corpses that bit into one another, and the ball of corpses scrambled to climb up the pit.

It was a ball of dead, but it was strangely alive.

The ball morphed into itself, and beyond the cracks, countless scarlet lights emerged from the ball.

Lanterns! She thought, and beyond the ball, she could see that the thing hidden deep under the pit was also covered with scarlet lanterns.

She found it difficult to stare at the thing beyond the pit; bright, exaggerated images flooded her mind and buzzed in her ear.

Her consciousness was pulled into an amorphous whirlpool of dreams, and a feeling of nausea hit her.

‘Can’t stay here any longer. I need to fly away.’

She tried stabilising her head, but at this moment, something neighed within the darkness, and a sticky, blue-black figure flew straight up from the pit, like a whale leaping out of the sea, and flew straight towards her.

She wanted to dodge, but a strange force pinned her down.

In desperation, she frowned and bit her lip, raised her hands in front of her, and yelled out Du Sixian’s incantation from within her dreams.

“Desolate wilderness; grass, bones… Fan the winds of fire into a blazing flame!”

A pillar of fire formed at her fingertips, and it soon formed itself into a basketball-sized fireball. Waving her arm slightly, she launched the fireball straight at the figure, and it collided with the figure; it twisted into various shapes as it struggled against the light, only for the fireball to fizzle out into nothing.

At first, the figure was like a whale, but it turned into a serpent that spat out strange words, accompanied by hideous faces that emerged from the cracks of its skin.

‘Damn it,’ she couldn’t help but curse, and a disgusting stench hit her, and she felt suffocated as it got closer and closer…

Densely packed eyes like scarlet lanterns stared straight into her soul.

Rage, greed, despair… Under these negative emotions that threatened to break her psyche, she could hear a broken incantation. Something unmistakably familiar to her.

Her mind was a mess, but she trained her ears on that strange voice.

Then she heard a whisper.

“O’ Respected Witch, the one destined to bring about disaster, I beg thee to show me mercy and fill me with grace.”

She was startled upon hearing this. Just as she was about to open her mouth, a chill washed over her.

As if she had walked into a room and a bucket of water had splashed onto her.

Professor Ma stared anxiously at Lu Yibei.

He was practically a living smoke machine, but what’s worse was that the bamboo scrolls themselves were emitting smoke, and the whole lab was as hot as a sauna.

He planned on getting closer to Yibei to somehow wake him up but found that he was surprisingly chilly.

Like an ice cube.

‘Is he going to melt?’

The heat in the lab was getting unbearable, and he needed to get out before he passed out from the intense heat, but…

Something must have happened to Yibei. He couldn’t just leave his student behind, right?

Staring at the bamboo scrolls intently, he thought that Yibei’s life mattered more than the bamboo scrolls, but his research…

He took out the coin again and threw it into the air.

Heads to save him, tails to run away…

The copper coin landed perfectly on its side as it endlessly spun as if it were refusing to land on one side.

“What the hell! I need to… I need to…”

His eyes darted around the lab anxiously, and he found an unused bucket in the janitor’s closet.

He hurriedly filled the bucket up with water and splashed the entire bucket on Yibei.