Free Web NovelChapter 846: Devil (4)
Back near the castle!
Xue Lan scooped up little Eirene and dashed up the grand royal stairs, her tight white shirt unfortunately straining against her generous chest with every hurried step, the undone buttons offering fleeting glimpses of soft, pale skin flushed from the chill.
The hallways blurred past in a swirl of polished stone and flickering lantern light until they reached Victoria’s reinforced chamber door, sealed shut like a virgin’s chastity belt.
"Can you open it?" Xue Lan asked, breathless.
"Nn!" Eirene nodded innocently.
In the next heartbeat, the girl simply phased through the thick metal as if it were morning mist, her control over that whimsical power growing sharper by the day.
"..."
Xue Lan stood there, staring at the unyielding door like a fool left behind at the altar.
The little rascal had misunderstood and abandoned her without a second thought.
She didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or curse the heavens for giving her such an useless little sister in a crisis.
Unlike the battle-hardened Victoria and the eternally controlling Eleanor, Xue Lan felt little panic over mere life and death here.
Her concern lay in uncovering the truth behind the mess. She had grown up witnessing Eleanor’s pragmatic brutality: killing those whose psychokinesis fractured too easily, even deploying massive hunting cats to kill off the unstable.
It was eugenics wrapped in necessity, since the ancient curse forbade them from killing their own kind outright, leadership had adapted with cold efficiency.
As the realm’s reluctant successor, Xue Lan had seen enough corpses to numb her to mortal frailty.
Victoria, for all her battlefield scars, loved the raw, everyday horror of monsters claiming the innocent.
Their views on "disaster" could never fully align.
Sighing, Xue Lan refused to give up.
She pulled out a small rectangular talisman paper, its surface deep black etched with dark violet sigils that seemed to writhe like living veins. "I hope the damn thing still works..."
This was one of Wang Xiao’s parting gifts from his last visit, the ancient art of talismans, originally forged for Aether manipulation.
The very lantern arrays binding the black mist owed their foundation to these lost techniques, forgotten once the final Aether pockets dried up.
Xue Lan had begged him to restore a sliver of Aether so she could experiment properly, but he had withdrawn it again for reasons only he understood.
Undeterred, Xue Lan had adapted the ancient craft with raw essence and immortal ingenuity.
The paper was steeped in gunpowder-infused mulberry bark and crushed snow lotus petals for elemental attunement; the ink distilled from thunder-fused bird marrow and dark quartz powder through a grueling seven-day ritual of lunar drying.
Where true Aether once flowed as pure catalyst, she had altered the recipe, removing Aether entirely and improvising a living bio-battery in its stead.
Marrow and quartz fused to store volatile energies without leakage, while the rest of the inscription served as conductor and trigger.
A single dried lotus-petal dot, mixed with lunar-charged explosive bark, served as the igniter.
She scratched it with a sharp nail.
The patterns ignited at once.
Pressing the talisman to the door in haste—
Crackle... Crackle...
Violet lightning-veined fire bloomed like slow venom from a serpent’s fang. The paper melted into liquid amethyst fury, not a crude blast but a deliberate, scorching leak that vomited deadly purple lightning and blistering heat.
Sizzlee...!
Reinforced metal groaned and cracked under the assault, locks disintegrating in a hiss of superheated slag.
"It’s working!" Xue Lan grinned, triumphant mischief sparkling in her eyes.
Yet as a small hole carved open, her face stiffened.
The tang of blood wafted through the breach, her eyes traced the terrifying sight: crimson stains splattered across the flooring and soaked bedsheets in violent streaks
_____
Meanwhile, outside in the snow-lashed courtyard...
Eleanor had already examined Seth and Ray.
No visible wounds.
No signs of struggle.
A deep frown etched her timeless features. "Did they simply lose consciousness? Some manner of poison mist, perhaps?"
The question went unanswered.
Had the python done this, or was another hand at play?
"Hahahaha! Found this sneaky little bastard!"
Heavy footsteps crunched through the snow behind her. A bald monk in tattered robes emerged, laughing heartily as he dangled a writhing serpent by its tail like a fresh-caught fish.
"Monk Shin?!" Eleanor’s frown deepened.
Blood still seeped from gashes along his legs, this was once the realm’s mightiest warrior, second only to herself until Victoria’s rise.
"What are you doing?"
The monk scratched his bald head awkwardly, suddenly sheepish like a child caught stealing sweets.
In front of Eleanor, the monk’s usual stern asceticism always melted away like frost under spring sun. She never seemed to age a day, while he felt every one of his hundred and thirty years pressing down upon him like the crushing weight of eternal mountain snow.
’Decades left at most..’ he thought with quiet lament. Even for one such as him, two hundred years would be a generous lifespan, yet the entity before him had not aged a single day.
She looked just as ethereally beautiful as two centuries ago, when he was but a child: she was an untouchable fairy, forever frozen in divine grace.
Yet he was keenly aware of the abyss between them.
Choosing the ascetic path long ago, he removed the scarf covering his forehead, revealing two hidden eyes.
Unlike ordinary folks, he possessed four in total.
He proudly thrust his catch forward. "This sneaky serpent was trying to infiltrate the castle. It uses its eyes to enchant and befuddle the mind!"
Eleanor’s expression grew even more unnatural.
Monk Shin’s grin faltered. "Is something wrong, Lady Eleanor?"
She nodded with visible hesitation. "You... are holding a stick."
"What?!"
Monk Shin’s eyes bulged as he glanced down at his hands. Sure enough, a pathetic twig dangled there, dry, lifeless, and utterly harmless.
No serpent.
No writhing coils.
Just a fucking stick!
"..."
The treachery hit him like a karmic slap from the heavens. He had been enchanted, played like a blind fool by the very beast he thought he had captured.
Eleanor shook her head, a mix of exasperation and ancient weariness in her voice. "You possess four eyes, Monk, yet you still cannot tell a serpent from a worthless twig? How many centuries must the sky mock you?"
"I-" The monk opened his mouth, but words failed, his bald head flushed crimson with shame.
Eleanor wasted no more breath.
She turned sharply and soared toward the castle balcony, ’Lanlan... let her have found something useful than this farce.’
____
Far away, in the skeletal valleys of leafless, frost-bitten trees...
Victoria chased the abomination with murderous fury, her powerful form passing through the swirling snow like a vengeful storm god.
She barely noticed when the frozen lake gave way beneath her feet and the world darkened, the black mist zone swallowing her whole.
The lake’s surface thawed into treacherous, ink-black waters. The python glided ahead like liquid shadow, slipping through the icy currents with mocking ease.
Victoria pushed harder, heart pounding like war drums, her breath ragged as the cold gripped at her lungs.
Before she could curse the heavens, she reached the lip of a roaring waterfall.
Below yawned an abyss of impenetrable mist, bottomless, devouring, endless.
The serpent had vanished into its throat.
’Damn it all...’ She hesitated only a heartbeat, then leaped.
Her body plummeted through freezing air.
Seconds stretched into eternity.
SPLASH!
Icy water ultimately engulfed her like the jaws of a primordial beast. She clamped her mouth shut, eyes snapping open against the bone-chilling cold.
The water in these depths were shockingly crystal clear.
A shadow flickered ahead, she lunged, psychokinesis surging, ready to tear apart whatever poison awaited.
"!!"
But as she reached the bottom, her mouth fell open in raw shock. ƒreewebηoveℓ.com
Water flooded in.
There, meditating in perfect serenity upon the lakebed like some otherworldly god, sat a figure she knew all too well.
A chilling voice slowly creeped behind her, smooth as wind yet filled with predatory amusement.
"For the strongest publicly known warrior in all Xianthera... you are awfully easy to bait and trick, Victoria."
Whoosh!
She spun, spine icing over with primal terror. A massive python stood, jaws unhinged wide enough to swallow her whole, red eyes gleaming with sadistic hunger. freёwebnovel.com
Her body froze, every instinct screaming death.
Then the form rippled and melted into a familiar human silhouette, those same piercing red eyes.
She whipped her head back in horror.
The meditating figure had vanished!
He now stood before her, utterly at ease in the crushing depths.
Was the python him all along?
"It’s not a python," Wang Xiao clarified with that signature lazy drawl, bubbles barely disturbing the water around his lips. "It’s just a giant snake."
Victoria’s eyes widened further, panic flooding her mind. ’He can read my thoughts?!’
"Not precisely reading them," he answered her unspoken dread, voice crystal clear as if spoken in open air. "Merely estimating through your delightful expressions. Though I won’t rule out the possibility... it’s simply not the crude method I prefer.
"!!"
Victoria could endure no more.
Her lungs burned like forge fires as she opened her mouth to speak...
Only to choke on a lungful of icy water.
Violent coughs wracked her powerful frame, her vision blurring in the crushing depths.
In a surge of desperate will, she unleashed her psychokinesis. The crystal clear waters parted violently around her, forming a massive shimmering bubble of displaced liquid that hummed with unstable power.
Air precious, breathable air filled the sphere as the cold mud squelched between her toes on the lakebed.
"Cough... Cough... Y-You are the Devil..." she rasped, voice trembling within the bubble’s fragile sanctuary.
She stared at him in utter disbelief, chest heaving, they had glimpsed the Devil only fleetingly amid the danger of that last ambush, shadow and fury, never a clear form.
But if it had been him all along... it would explain everything.
How she, the realm’s strongest warrior, had been defeated so effortlessly.
How the ambush had moved like a cruel script written by the gods themselves.
