While Ashley conversed with the City Lord, the lolis stood to the side, each reacting differently.
Amber was slightly shocked to see Ashley not only enter her teacher’s secret studio but also chat amiably with the City Lord. Meanwhile, she had spent two or three years cautiously trying to get on familiar terms with the Tribunal’s cadres, remaining a mere background figure. A sense of grievance and discomfort welled up in her heart.
Delwei, on the other hand, showed tension and unease toward the Twilight Girl, hiding behind Amber and peeking out with half her face, vigilantly observing her.
Ashley calculated the time. It had been about two hours since she used “Twilight Eternal Extinction” at the party, and the City Lord should have received the news even earlier. She lowered her voice and asked,
“Lady Seriskona, you didn’t plant any spies among the Blood Nobles, did you?”
“Nothing of the sort—don’t talk nonsense. Union City and the Blood Nobles are strategic partners. How could we use spies against our ‘partners’?”
The girl’s small face bore a warm smile, but her fingertips secretly tightened, pinching the Blue-Haired Loli until she let out a pained grunt. She continued,
“Since you’ve chosen to expose your ability, it means you want to complete the trials of the Path of the Strong. If someone finds a targeted counter to your ability, your strength will be greatly diminished—you’d only be a pseudo-strong. Work hard to prove yourself, little one.”
After the girl left, Ashley let out a long breath and instructed the lolis not to leave the city, effectively placing them under house arrest—it was the classic “step out of bounds and get snatched by monsters” scenario again.
Even under the City Lord’s protection inside the city, troubles abounded.
Yinsu Helin took stock of the Sheep and Crow Families’ overt societal forces.
Over half the hospitals in the city were Crow Family businesses. Most of the medical school’s professors were products of the Crow Clan’s inbreeding, and the freelance plague doctors outside were either Crow Clan disciples or their students. These people formed a terrifying academic clique.
The Sheep Family controlled the mining, stone, earthworks, and river sand trades, dominated the heavy Cadaver market, and had intricate ties with numerous criminal groups.
“Both families will definitely use their social connections to pressure us. We must prepare defenses,” Ashley reminded them.
Among everyone, Amber was the least to worry about; she had been subtly singled out.
This was because the dispute was one Ashley had provoked, making the families’ retaliation reasonable—even the Trial Judge couldn’t object. But if they touched the uninvolved Amber, Letisia would make them understand the terror of the Witch.
The lolis were discussing countermeasures when suddenly, the door lock emitted the metallic sound of a spring turning. The bolt, locked from the inside, retracted automatically, and the door creaked open!
Everyone tensed up like they were facing a great enemy, instinctively holding their breath.
With a whoosh, a cold wind carrying fallen leaves blew in, and a girl’s figure appeared at the doorway.
“Teacher!”
Ashley looked delighted and rushed over, but she was blocked by an air wall two meters away.
Letisia clicked her tongue in disdain, raised her wristwatch, glanced at the time, and said,
“It’s time to depart. You have two minutes to say goodbye.”
Amber had never seen her teacher’s girl form before and frowned in confusion, but the familiar beckoning gesture stirred memories etched into her DNA. She hurried over and tentatively asked, “Teacher?”
Unblocked by the air wall, she reached the girl’s side directly.
The girl’s deep, calm gaze fell on her face, her tone different from usual, grave as if entrusting final affairs.
“My little Amber, if one day your teacher becomes an undead, can you take care of teacher’s body?”
As she spoke, her fingers fell on the loli’s head like a leaf, gently stroking her soft black hair.
Amber felt as if an arrow had pierced her chest; her body stiffened and trembled. She said hoarsely,
“Teacher is so powerful… how could she…”
“Please let me do it! After you’re done, I’ll wash teacher clean carefully!” Ashley raised her hand straight up—like a good student eager to answer.
“You bastard! How can you say something like that!”
Amber shoved Ashley in a fit of anger, but even as she grabbed her collar and shook her back and forth, the Blue-Haired Loli grinned heartlessly.
Only when tears welled in Amber’s eyes did she straighten up, tilting her little head and countering,
“Why not? I’m going with teacher—maybe you’ll have to take care of two bodies. Hey, Amber, if I drink the medicine and turn into a dumb loli, I permit you to use me too. Just wash me clean after you dirty me.”
Ashley stood with hands behind her back, swaying her body as camouflage. When she sidled up to Amber, she pecked her lightly on the cheek.
While the dumb loli stiffened as if electrocuted, Ashley bolted out the door and boarded the Tribunal’s carriage.
Letisia sighed helplessly and followed.
Several metallic cubes lay in the rear compartment of the four carriages. Their gray surfaces were engraved with the Tribunal’s emblem, and they were unusually heavy, sinking deep into the cushions.
Ashley turned her face and asked the girl boarding the carriage with her slender legs clad in black stockings, her tone slightly excited. “Are these the Ancient Relics for subjugating the King Insect? Any leads on that front?”
“From past human subjugations of the King Insect, its abilities usually manifested simply and intuitively. But the phenomena in Rift City were complex and obscure—no reasonable explanation could be found.”
The girl’s slim legs pressed together, her fingers lightly overlapping on her knee, exuding an elegance and poise beyond her years.
Ashley glanced over. Even without a trace of excess flesh, her teacher’s feet looked small in their shiny little leather shoes, cutely crossed, making her heart race.
Ignoring her rude stare, the girl continued on her own,
“First, pinpointing the location—that’s my specialty. If space is a layer of velvet fabric, the Lost City hides in the fabric’s long folds—not hard to find. After determining the boundaries, I used the second ability of ‘Time Sequence Heterostructure’ to shift test subjects inside. The result: all non-living objects could be retrieved again, but the experimental white mouse vanished, leaving only the cage.”
Ashley had used it before, so she understood easily; the actual operation was like a revolving door—the mouse’s space rotated in, while the axially symmetric space rotated out.
“Poor Rat Rat… Was it annihilated by supernatural power? Or trapped inside?”
“The results leaned toward the latter. In follow-up tests, a certain inert supernatural gas lifeform contained at the Miles Research Center proved immune to annihilation, yet it too vanished after transfer.”
The coachman reined in the horses, and the carriage stopped at the entrance to Saint Dormer Community.
Letisia turned her head, staring into the Blue-Haired Loli’s eyes. “If the King Insect can intercept any lifeform, then why could the parrot leave the Lost City?”
A chill shot up Ashley’s spine, her little face paling. “It has a problem?”
“Go get your parrot.”
“Eh…”
With no choice, Ashley braced herself, returned to the dorm to fetch Sasha, and came back to the carriage.
“What you don’t know is that a few days later, the tape disappeared. Though we knew early on it was an object manifested by supernatural power, for it to cross hundreds of kilometers and retain its shape for days—that supernatural power was extraordinarily strong,” Letisia continued.
“What about the tape’s contents?” Ashley no longer knew what was true or false.
“What can be confirmed is that it absolutely wasn’t the message Miss Xixi truly wanted to convey.”
“Then Sasha probably has a problem.”
Ashley gripped the parrot’s neck tightly to prevent it from lashing out.
The clueless Sasha twisted its little head back and forth like a startled hen.
Ashley pondered with her head down for a moment, then looked up and analyzed,
“Sending the message is a continuous process: first, Xixi records it; then hands it to the parrot to swallow; finally, it flies out of Rift City. To tamper in this process, one would need supernatural power to forge Xixi’s audio, conjure a carrier tape out of thin air, and then use spatial substitution to swap it from the flying parrot’s belly remotely… This isn’t a composite ability—the powers aren’t linked. It’s more like two or three abilities coordinated, just to pass a message of little significance that didn’t even mislead us? And the King Insect didn’t know the parrot’s destination, right?”
“What if the parrot has no issue?” the girl suddenly said.
Ashley’s mind jolted; in an instant, a flash of clarity cut through her murky thoughts!
“Then it means the Xixi she interacted with was fake! The tape is manifested supernatural power—’Xixi’ might be too. That explains it: from start to finish, only two abilities exist—manifestation and spatial manipulation. The parrot lacks the intelligence to distinguish real from manifested, and in its world, maybe not just Xixi—everything could be fake, with only it being real!”
