CH 32

About an hour ago…

On the ground floor of the Flowers & Sunshine Resort…

In the huge and empty space, there was a faint light shining from an invisible source, and the air was damp and dusty.

The large steam boilers creaked and clicked from time to time.

It was located by the sewage treatment station of the resort.

In the boiler room, Lu Yibei chattered endlessly in the eerie, quiet darkness.

“These high-end resorts are unbelievable. I can’t believe they specialize in hot springs, and yet all the water in the boiler is dirty! This is clearly a health violation; I really want to report them…”

“Can’t you just mind your own business?” a man asked.

“No! If you report it, don’t you get a bonus yourself?”

The man could feel his eyeball twitch painfully.

He swore he was about to die of annoyance—the boy before him was about to die, yet all he could think about was money. Is this person insane?

“Just look in the tank! The water and boiler are so dirty. Jesus, I think you might get some weird disease if you bathe in it. Speaking of which, are there any urban legends because of diseases? Like a sewer mermaid?”

“No.”

“What a pity!” Yibei sighed. “Wait, wait, wait! Speaking of urban legends, I wanna talk about witches!”

The man frowned and growled impatiently, “Aren’t you scared that you’re about to die?”

“I am scared!” he retaliated. “I’m about to sh*t myself!”

He swore he could still hear the cicadas chewing.

A few minutes ago…

The man who broke into the resort hotel was stopped by the guards of the Night Division.

Lu Yibei was elated, thinking he was about to be saved. However…

In an instant, the dense chirps of cicadas echoed through the forest, and the guards seemed to freeze in place.

The cicadas chirped with madness and malice, and it radiated from the man’s body.

In an instant, the scars on the man’s body were torn apart, and a stench filled the air.

Countless cicadas clawed their way out between the scars, and his body shrivelled up. In the end, all that was left were his skin and skeleton.

The blood-stained cicadas flapped their wings as they started to form a dense tornado of cicadas, and the swarm of cicadas rushed towards the guards.

The cicadas were ruthless, rushing into every single open orifice of the guards. The screams of pain died down quickly, and not even a single bone remained.

‘Human-eating cicadas…’

Yibei’s temples throbbed violently, and he felt his stomach turn uncontrollably.

Rabbits and frozen food, now cicadas…

He didn’t think he could see them the same anymore.

“Listen, the more I’m afraid, the more I want to talk. You’re not killing me for the time being, so join me! Make me feel less anxious!”

“Talk again, and I’ll cut your tongue off and stuff it into your ass, and I’ll pull all of your teeth out and paste them on your face.”

“…”

Lu Yibei stared at him. Without opening his mouth, he spoke, “Do you like ventriloquism?”

The man couldn’t take it any longer; his headache pounded against his skull, and in an instant, he threw Yibei onto the cover of stone slabs.

His back hit the slab violently, and he let out a painful groan, feeling like his bones were about to fall out.

Why is he getting so angry with me? I just wanted to talk… were the only thoughts that ran through his brain.

Swish… swish…

He heard strange sounds in the darkness, and strands of black extended from the cracks in the stone cover like water.

With the help of that strange, faint light, he could barely make out the appearance. Taking a closer look, he could see hair!

The strands of hair joined together, tangling themselves to become as thick as an arm. The mass of hair crawled over him like a snake, wrapping itself around his limbs and tying him to the stone slab.

“C-could you please not tie me up with this? You already know I’m not gonna run away!”

“Shut up for once in your life, my god!” the man bellowed.

Seeing that Yibei had calmed down, the man snorted and tore open a scar with his bare hands. He took out a palm-sized iron box and produced a crystal bottle from within the box.

With a slight grip, the crystal bottle shattered, turning into powder and dissipating in the air immediately.

The ball of white, gelatinous liquid from the bottle was suspended in the air. As soon as it was exposed to the air, it moved as if it were free from its prison. The liquid let out piercing screams and squirmed violently in the air, and desperate faces started to visibly echo out of the liquid.

One, two, three faces…

A total of three souls….

The man rubbed his index finger and thumb together, and a flame rose from his fingertips. He directed the flames towards the wriggling Primordial Spirits to roast them and chanted an obscure spell, putting his hands together in complex formations.

Soon, the desperate screams started distorting.

The spirits were pulled by some kind of force and stretched endlessly, drawing out strange, runic spells in mid-air.

The combination of dense runes would remind someone of a totem being showered by brilliant sunlight, but this fills one with despair and chills.

Seeing that the mantra was gradually taking shape, the man sneered and thought: ‘If that rabbit comes here and completes the ceremony, shall I pick my own fruits of victory?’

That man had no intention of letting Mr Rabbit succeed.

The payment of ten Primordial Spirits wasn’t enough to satisfy him at all. Even twenty or thirty wouldn’t be enough.

However, if he were able to capture a bit of a witch’s essence and refine it a bit, it would be worth more than two hundred Primordial Spirits!

A sinister smile appeared on the man’s face, and Lu Yibei couldn’t help but shiver.

‘Something’s wrong. Some infighting is going on.’

Soon.

The spell used to imprison Mr Rabbit was ready, and the light from the spell gradually faded. The man faded into the darkness as well, and Yibei’s breath hitched.

A dazzling crimson light suddenly blinded him and illuminated the entirety of the boiler room.

It seemed that the psychic energy in the space was frozen in this light, and the man’s figure was frozen in place.

The hair that bound Yibei shook violently as it rustled and crawled all over him. The stone slab beneath him trembled as if something were about to emerge.

Feeling that the surrounding energy seemed to be under control, the man’s face contorted violently.

“Damn it! That damned rabbit!”

That man never expected Mr Rabbit to take a risk and stab the Eclipse Society in the back.

Frightened and angry, the man was about to cast a spell to escape Mr Rabbit’s control, only to be interrupted by a loud explosion.

Boom!

Yibei didn’t know what had hit him. He was on the stone slab, confused, and the next thing he knew was that he was being swept across the boiler room.

The foul-smelling sewage splashed everywhere, and the hair, like a giant python, pounced towards the man and wrapped around his mouth and nose.

The hair was a spell cast by Mr Rabbit as a trap for the man and the two women who were about to arrive. The moment the hair feels a trace of psychic energy and magic in the air, it will pounce on the target violently.

When Yibei regained his senses, he stood up, supporting himself by leaning on the wall. However, the man disappeared, and he could only see a huge cocoon made of hair.

The hair looked alive—wriggling, tightening, and rustling in place. More hairs crept from the shadows, adding to the mass of hair.

“I can’t stay here anymore,” he muttered in a low voice, recalling the route that he had secretly memorized when he was brought here. The moment the coast was clear, he ran out of the boiler room.

Bathed in crimson light, Yibei ran with his head buried in his arms. At this moment, he could hear ethereal singing, like whispers in the wind that caressed his very brain, and it echoed and vibrated deep in his soul.

‘Sh*t.’

No matter how hard he tried to struggle against the binds of the song, his legs uncontrollably moved towards the direction of the singing.

His feet moved him towards a narrow and dark alleyway, and the singing started getting louder and louder. After a while, he found himself in another boiler room.

Above the clearing hung a fresh corpse, and a stone platform was directly below the corpse. Crimson incantations covered the entire boiler room and gathered under the stone platform.

And that strange egg that Yibei had seen in his dream space rested on the stone platform.

Blood dripped down the corpse like a leaking faucet, and distorted female faces would reveal themselves with every single drop of blood. Their whispers, their singing—it all engraved itself into Yibei’s mind.

And he swore he could hear two voices singing in harmonious resonance deep in his soul.

Driven by this song, he couldn’t help but walk towards the egg like a corpse.

A greedy light flashed in his scarlet eyes, and his lips opened and closed intermittently. “M-mine…”

Weak psychic energy began to emerge from his body, and like a wave, it gradually became intense and stronger.

The singing echoed loudly in his mind, and the hairs, sensing psychic energy, rushed violently towards Yibei.

The moment he stretched out his hand, his eyes sensed something dangerous, and a sharp, burning pain snapped him out of his enthrallment.

“F*ck!”

Seeing that his fingers were less than a centimetre away from the egg, his pupils shrank violently as he backed away from the egg.

An evil aura seeped out of the egg like a flowing river…

Yibei needed to leave, and he quickly turned around, but he realized that a lock of black hair had wrapped around his ankle, and strand by strand, it groped upwards…

And it pierced straight through his chest in a swift motion.