Volume 2, Chapter 61 (Chapter 99): Not Enough

Bright didn’t know what the charm did, considering she never successfully made it, and even the ancient archives she read through were vague.

The archives elaborated that the charm was like the breeze that welcomed spring—reintroducing the breath of life to all things, dispelling evil spirits, and refreshing one’s mind.

Originally, after he made the first charm last night, he wanted to test it out on the apparitions in his apartment, but they were too nimble for him to catch them.

Now was a good time to test it out.

Lu Yibei thought about it and opened his bag, only for Professor Ma to ask, “Are you about to start?”

“Yes, but…” he paused. “The things in my bag are a bit strange. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Being a teacher for so many years, he has seen too many students take out strange things from their bags, from cigarettes and alcohol to mobile phones, game consoles, pets, household appliances, and even various family planning products and sex toys. Not uncommon.

“Oh, thank god,” he responded, as he whipped out his kitchen knife and stuck it to the floor in one swift motion.

The technique was smooth, and Professor Ma swore he saw a chef in Lu Yibei.

“Ah… oh…”

He never expected a student to be carrying a kitchen knife with him.

“My bad. I have other things in my bag that I need to take out.”

He grabbed a handful of charms as he spoke and threw them on the floor.

Professor Ma had just recovered from the shock of witnessing the kitchen knife and was slightly taken aback when he saw the words engraved on the charm.

“It’s an exorcism spell I learnt,” he explained as he looked away. “Got it from a book.”

“It’s not a problem.” Professor Ma replied. “The text… it’s interesting.”

“Interesting?”

“Well,” Professor Ma nodded slightly, then pointed to Lu Xu. “Let’s help him first; then, I’ll tell you what the text means.”

Professor Ma glanced at the charms, and he knew that they would work without a doubt.

He was a little sceptical at first, but he knew that it was potent; on the other hand, Lu Yibei could care less for what the charm represented.

Taking a charm, he walked over to Lu Xu, and in a hoarse voice, he croaked out,

“Useless…”

As he spoke, he cracked his stiff neck to look at Yibei, like a puppet snapping its neck at its audience.

Lu Yibei felt a little terrified by him and stopped moving forward, and yet he felt unsatisfied rather than scared.

‘I worked so hard on these charms! How could you say it’s useless?’

“Try it, for his sake.”

Lu Xu stared at Lu Yibei intently, then glanced at Professor Ma with scarlet eyes and said, “I told you… it’s useless! Get out, get out!”

As he shouted, he ripped the quilt off of his body, revealing his severely malnourished upper chest.

Only skin and bones were left, and his veins were a strange green like a parasite was inside his body.

Besides, Lu Yibei saw more things than Professor Ma.

The moment Lu Xu lifted the quilt off his body, Lu Yibei’s eyes began to burn violently.

A grotesque stream of light flew past his peripheral vision, and a burst of pained cries from women and children rang in his ears. Shielding his eyes from the light, he saw fog behind Lu Xu.

Through the thick fog, Lu Yibei saw a pale figure shrouded within the fog. It held a blood-red lantern in one hand and rested the other on Lu Xu’s wrist. Where its fingers fell, blood-red lines began to fester.

Professor Ma didn’t know what Lu Yibei saw; he only saw Lu Xu lifting the quilt to reveal a body covered with horrible, red lines that followed Lu Yibei’s petrified face.

Lu Xu stood up unsteadily, panting violently. He let out low growls that did not resemble human beings; his eyes stared at Lu Yibei like a ghost, and he flew towards him.

His eyes were about to burst out of their sockets, and his teeth and claws pounced towards Yibei’s neck.

“Yibei, be careful!”

Professor Ma’s exclamation sounded in his ears, and the dense fog and figures in front of Lu Yibei disappeared in an instant.

‘What the…?’

Lu Yibei exclaimed in his heart and threw the charm towards him in a panic.

It flew past his shoulder.

Lu Xu was already right in front of him, and in a panic, he threw all the charms in his hand towards him.

Seven or eight charms fluttered in the air, and five of them hit Lu Xu square in the chest.

“Ack!”

As soon as the charm hit his body, a wisp of blue smoke was forced out of his body, and explosions, like a firework, burst into his room.

Lu Yibei stood in the blue light illuminating the room; he felt rejuvenated and fresh as if spring had just started, and the faint fragrance of flowers blooming filled the room.

But Lu Xu didn’t seem to think so.

He wailed as he trembled erratically on the ground, and his wailings pierced through both of their ears like nails to a chalkboard. Yibei hurriedly picked up his bag and pushed Professor Ma out of the room before throwing the remainder of the charms towards Lu Xu’s body.

Running out of the room and shutting the door, more intense wailings of despair plagued their eardrums.

It really was necessary to make two or three hundred more of these charms.

The screams drowned out behind them, and Professor Ma trembled, “What was that?”

“Something is possessing him; that is true,” Lu Yibei said. “It’s just that he’ll be unable to communicate for now.”

Professor Ma couldn’t help but glance at Yibei.

Why is he so calm, as if he won? Will Lu Xu be alright?

“Will he be alright?”

“I’ll find out later.” Lu Yibei replied ambiguously, turning his head away.

In Bright’s memory, this charm was meant to ward off evil and rejuvenate oneself. How the hell would he know that the charm would be this powerful?

He may have eliminated whatever was possessing Lu Xu, but Lu Xu might fade away alongside that strange entity.

The wailing gradually stopped, and Lu Xu came back to his senses.

“Professor, I… I’m okay.”

The professor was about to barge into the room, but Lu Yibei held him back as he mouthed the word ‘imposter’ to him.

Grabbing two more charms from his bag, Lu Yibei came to the gap above the door and saw Lu Xu lying on the ground. He threw the charm at Lu Xu’s head, which bounced off with a clear clack.

The charm simply bounced off his forehead, and nothing happened.

Yibei, jumping off the door frame, turned to the professor and said, “It should be fine now, but we have to stay on guard.”

“Let’s ask him what happened.”

The disturbingly thick fog behind Lu Xu remained, but the pale figure was farther away. Yibei could still make out the scarlet lantern in the distance, as if it were retreating away from them.

In other words, the charm simply chased it away. It will still return.

“Lu Xu, what happened to you?”

“Someone is going to kill me… it… It had a scarlet lantern as it chased behind me, and it wants to enter me, invade me, tear open my skin.”

He couldn’t stop looking behind him, and in a daze, he fell into a state of unconsciousness.