Chapter 14
Chapter 14
Inside the garbage collection area, the Vengeful Infant of the Blood Coffin ate like a starving dog. Its little hands grabbed plastic bags, scraps of paper, rotten fruit, and spoiled food, stuffing everything madly into its mouth.
It chewed with obvious relish.
“Chen Jun, all of you should eat some too,” Zhao Xueru ordered calmly.
Her subordinates’ eyes lit up.
Crimson Netherworld was supposedly inside this garbage heap. Eating it would greatly benefit their own anomalous entities.
They immediately buried their heads in the trash and began gorging themselves.
Chen Jun had excellent social instincts. He deliberately selected a few items that looked easier to swallow, including several bottles of rancid yogurt, half a rotten apple, and a few filthy spicy strips. Then he turned and offered them to Zhao Xueru.
“Team Leader, have a taste!”
The items looked completely inedible, but as an anomaly wielder, Zhao Xueru really could smell an extraordinary fragrance from them.
Suppressing her disgust, she grabbed a handful and put it in her mouth. The texture was horrible, but the aura couldn’t deceive her.
She was immensely satisfied.
As she ate, she looked at Leng Qingyan and sneered.
“Leng Qingyan, did you really think you could fool me? The treasure in this garbage heap was destined to belong to me!”
Seizing Leng Qingyan’s opportunity right in front of her felt wonderful.
“Aren’t you furious? Enraged? Don’t you want to kill me?”
Zhao Xueru deliberately provoked her. “What a shame. You won’t get a single bite of this treasure!”
Leng Qingyan was a battle-hardened B-minus-class anomaly wielder. Zhao Xueru wanted to avoid unnecessary trouble, so enraging her before making a move would make everything much easier.
But Leng Qingyan could only stare speechlessly as Zhao Xueru ate garbage.
She had finally remembered what was in the garbage area: scraps of clay that Li Que’s students had swept up and thrown away.
She never imagined Zhao Xueru would go to such extraordinary lengths to seize something Li Que and his students had discarded without a second glance.
The trash had only picked up traces of anomalous aura from the clay, yet Zhao Xueru was eating it with such delight.
“It’s all right. As long as you eat your fill, little sister, I don’t mind going hungry,” Leng Qingyan said with a complicated expression.
Zhao Xueru froze.
Leng Qingyan wasn’t reacting at all?
Her face darkened.
“Didn’t you once ask whether I deliberately contained the Undying Yin Locust Tree? I can tell you the truth now. I did!”
“Why did everyone always have to look at you, Leng Qingyan? What was so remarkable about you?”
“You merely obtained the Tear of the Charm Demon! If it had been mine, I would have done far better than you!”
“Now I have both the Undying Yin Locust Tree and the Vengeful Infant of the Blood Coffin. You’ll never catch up to me in this lifetime!”
She was practically screaming.
This resentment had festered like a thorn in her heart for years.
Anger finally flashed through Leng Qingyan’s eyes.
She still remembered the four teammates who had died.
“You want to attack me? Come on!” Zhao Xueru taunted.
But at that very moment…
“Waaah!”
A baby’s cry suddenly rang out.
The blood-covered infant in the garbage heap began wailing.
A white figure flashed into the scene. It was a female corpse. She charged into the garbage heap and tore away the umbilical cord running from the Vengeful Infant’s back.
The cord was Zhao Xueru’s link of control over the Vengeful Infant. The instant it broke, she lost control.
“Wraith-Mother?”
Zhao Xueru started, then sneered.
“So someone really is backing you. Good. Since you’re here, I’ll take you too!”
Two much thicker bloodred cords suddenly shot from Zhao Xueru’s navel and wrapped around the Wraith-Mother and the Vengeful Infant.
The mother held the blood-covered infant in her arms. Reunited, the pair formed an A-class anomaly. Yet when Zhao Xueru’s cords descended, the Wraith-Mother shuddered as though she were about to fall under Zhao’s control.
Zhao Xueru had prepared for this long ago.
“You really think you’re the one moving all the pieces, Zhao?”
A cold voice rang out. Qin Yuandong appeared, holding a rope braided from two strands of white hair. He tied it into a loop, cast it over, and snared the Wraith-Mother.
Zhao Xueru wanted to control the Wraith-Mother through the infant. Qin Yuandong wanted to help the mother reclaim her child.
For a moment, the two sides were locked in a tug-of-war over control of the mother and child.
“Quick! Kill her!” Qin Yuandong shouted.
Gu Xiaomeng stepped out behind him without hesitation. Blue ghostfire suddenly flared in her eyes.
But in the next instant, blue flame flashed from a revolver’s muzzle without a sound.
Chen Jun fired several shots at Gu Xiaomeng.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Gu Xiaomeng hurriedly dodged. Chen Jun tried to fire again, only to feel as though his eyes were being scorched.
“Don’t look into her eyes!”
He shouted a warning, and the nearby subordinates rushed her.
The scene descended into chaos.
Before long, Qin Yuandong began to run out of strength. Cold sweat covered his forehead. Zhao Xueru, by contrast, remained perfectly calm and relaxed, mockery in her gaze.
“Wait…”
Qin Yuandong suddenly understood.
“You… set me up?”
They thought they were the hunters. They never imagined Zhao Xueru’s trap was meant to kill them too.
“When the Wraith-Mother escaped, we knew someone else must also be after Rain. Now that you’ve shown yourselves, we can wipe you all out together…”
Blood suddenly welled inside her abdomen and flowed down the umbilical cords toward the mother and child in the garbage heap. In an instant, the pair broke free of Qin Yuandong’s restraint. They whipped around, and the Wraith-Mother slashed a claw at him.
Splurt!
A huge cavity was torn from Qin Yuandong’s chest. He staggered back in horror, clutching the wound.
“Yuandong!”
Gu Xiaomeng rushed over and caught him, her eyes frantic with worry.
“It’s the Eclipse Organization. She’s using the Eclipse Organization’s anomaly-control technique… She’s one of them!”
Qin Yuandong stared at Zhao Xueru, his eyes filled with terror and rage.
Even Leng Qingyan’s expression changed drastically at the name.
The Eclipse Organization had become notorious in recent years. Supposedly, it had been founded by a group of anomaly wielders who had lost control.
To stay alive, those anomaly wielders had abandoned their duty completely. They committed every atrocity imaginable and were more monstrous than the anomalies themselves.
Zhao Xueru had actually joined them?
“Zhao Xueru, how dare you…”
Leng Qingyan was furious.
“What if I did?”
Zhao Xueru sneered.
“I expected you to ambush me. I never thought you’d be this stupid…”
If Leng Qingyan had joined Qin Yuandong’s attack earlier, they might have caused her some trouble.
Instead, Leng Qingyan had given her all the time she needed.
“You’re every bit as stupid as you were back then!”
Zhao Xueru sneered again. Blood surged through the umbilical cords, and the Wraith-Mother of the Vengeful Infant turned toward Leng Qingyan with her child in her arms.
“Raargh!”
The Wraith-Mother growled and charged, intent on killing Leng Qingyan.
Leng Qingyan’s expression changed. She was just about to fight back when something inside her clothes suddenly flashed.
The Wraith-Mother stopped dead three paces away.
She stood there blankly, cradling her child.
Even the Vengeful Infant, which had been crying without pause, suddenly fell quiet.
“My child… I’m dying, but my baby hasn’t been born yet. He doesn’t deserve such a cruel fate. I have to bring him into this world…”
The Wraith-Mother suddenly sank to her knees. At that moment, she seemed to return to the time just before her death.
Back then, she had been nothing more than a pregnant woman about to give birth.
Her unborn child had been her greatest worry as she lay dying.
The Vengeful Infant in her arms seemed to become an ordinary baby as well. It sobbed softly.
“I don’t want Mommy to die. I don’t want to leave Mommy…”
The scene was inexplicably heartbreaking.
Zhao Xueru, however, was dumbfounded.
What was going on?
She had ordered the mother and child to kill Leng Qingyan.
Why had they suddenly dropped to their knees and started acting out a tearjerker?
Qin Yuandong was equally baffled. The people behind his family had personally cultivated the Vengeful Infant of the Blood Coffin and its Wraith-Mother, so he knew exactly how murderous and vicious they were.
Why had they suddenly stopped?
Even Leng Qingyan was confused. Then something occurred to her, and she pulled an object from inside her clothes.
It was an angel doll molded from clay.
Now she remembered. This clay possessed the power to touch the softest part of the heart.
Even anomalies like Meng Mo and Nian Youyu had sat quietly and behaved themselves while making crafts in class.
So the mother and child had been affected by it too?
“Crimson Netherworld?!”
The instant Zhao Xueru saw the object in Leng Qingyan’s hand, she cried out in shock.
…
Meanwhile, on the cultural street…
“The night is dark. Follow Grandma. Follow Granny away…”
The lantern-bearing crone reached Li Que’s stall.
Lin Xiaoyu suddenly looked up. She picked up the little river lantern she had just finished, turned to Li Que, and asked, “Sir, can I give this lantern to her?”
Li Que smiled. “Of course.”
Lin Xiaoyu nodded and held the river lantern out to the crone.
“It’s yours. No need to thank me.”
The lantern-bearing crone froze.
Then she woodenly accepted Lin Xiaoyu’s river lantern, turned around, and walked away in another direction. A long line of students trailed behind her.
“Well done, Xiaoyu.”
Li Que gently stroked Lin Xiaoyu’s hair. The girl had autism, yet now she was voluntarily sharing something nice with another person.
That was progress.
He was immensely gratified.
Still, the student playing the lantern-bearing crone was a little rude. She hadn’t even said thank you.
Lin Xiaoyu suddenly turned her head toward another direction.
She had sensed a familiar presence.
…
The lantern-bearing crone entered a deserted grove.
Her entire body abruptly began to tremble. Then the river lantern erupted in raging flames.
The crone couldn’t move. The fire swallowed her whole.
Soon, nothing remained but a pile of ashes.
The students under her spell all jolted awake.
…