Chapter 286
Chapter 286
Mao Jingxuan had single-handedly offended more than a dozen major sects across East China. He certainly had guts!
Of course, there was another possibility: before he sent out those elixir pills, he hadn’t known that Fang Chuanzong had invited those sects to help with this operation.
So… those pills had been prepared for us?
But through a bizarre twist of fate, not so much as a drop passed our lips. Instead, people from more than a dozen major sects drank it?
No, that didn’t make sense either. Mao Jingxuan had had the chance to stop them.
But he hadn’t.
That meant the Three-Eyed Toad was more important to him than all those major sects combined.
Once he obtained the Three-Eyed Toad, he would no longer have to take any of the major sects in East China seriously.
Such was Mao Jingxuan’s ambition!
With ambition that great, he should have prepared himself to bear even greater risks and consequences.
Death by a thousand cuts would be no more than he deserved!
But right now, I couldn’t concern myself with any of that. Nor was it my place to interfere.
Fang Chuanzong had suffered such a crushing loss at Mao Jingxuan’s hands. He wouldn’t let Mao Jingxuan off easy.
By having his Senior Sister relay this message to me now, he was reassuring me on the one hand and making an indirect overture of goodwill on the other.
Fang Chuanzong had always wanted to bring our Pawnshop over to his side.
Once they finished speaking, they returned to Fang Chuanzong’s group.
My gaze remained fixed on Liu Junyan’s back.
I watched the figure covered from head to toe in Golden Copper Coin charms. I watched him approach Xiaoyingkou step by step. I watched him raise a hand and press it forward, then pass through the barrier and vanish completely from our sight.
My heart felt as if an invisible hand had seized it and squeezed until it was mangled and dripping blood.
Just then, I sensed a hostile gaze lock onto me from nearby.
I looked up and met Bai Songlan’s bloodshot eyes.
The next moment, she wrenched free of Bai Jingmo and charged at me.
She was incredibly fast, her white robes fluttering as her ghostly figure crossed the distance in the blink of an eye. With a wave of her right hand, she sent a white spike as long as a chopstick stabbing toward the carotid artery in my neck.
I bent almost ninety degrees backward, then twisted around and launched a flying kick straight into Bai Songlan’s lower abdomen. When I landed, I staggered and nearly fell.
Only because my mother’s Inner Core had been bolstering my body lately had I managed to cultivate some internal force.
Otherwise, Bai Songlan’s attack just now would have killed me.
She had clearly underestimated me.
By then, Bai Jingmo had finally caught up. He reached out to pull me away, but Bai Songlan flicked her hand and shot the white spike at me again.
Bai Jingmo flashed in front of me. The spike drove into his left shoulder, drawing a muffled grunt from him. To my shock, it punched straight through his body and continued hurtling toward me.
Only now had Bai Songlan put any real power into her attack.
Bai Jingmo’s body slowed the spike just enough to give me time to dodge.
But immediately afterward, another white spike came flying at me…
I dodged one after another, growing not only irritated but exhausted.
Then three more white spikes lined up side by side and shot straight toward my face.
This time, I didn’t move.
Clutching his left shoulder, Bai Jingmo shouted, “Xiao Jiu, dodge!”
I didn’t.
I simply transferred the Soul-Guiding Lantern, which I had been carrying in my right hand all this time, to my left. Then I raised my right hand, turned my palm toward the white spikes — and Bai Songlan beyond them — and recited a shamanic incantation.
The three white spikes stopped abruptly just inches from my palm. It was as though they had struck the surface of a mirror, and all three fell to the ground in unison.
Bai Jingmo stood there, still shaken by what had nearly happened.
Not far behind him, Bai Songlan stood perfectly motionless, as if an immobilization spell had been cast on her.
But her emotions soon began to churn. Her expression darkened by the second, and her lips trembled incessantly.
“No!”
“Xingyi! Xingyi!”
“No!”
She screamed and sobbed in anguish, her hands reaching out and flailing wildly as if desperate to stop something, yet utterly powerless to do so.
Her crazed, broken state stunned Bai Jingmo.
He abruptly turned to me and demanded, “Xiao Jiu, what did you do to her?”
I didn’t answer. I merely withdrew my hand calmly and said, “Her inner demons run too deep, Bai Jingmo. If you don’t want the White Immortal Hall and the Bai Family Medical Hall to be completely destroyed one day, you’d better keep a close eye on her.”
As soon as I finished speaking, Bai Songlan emerged from the emotions that had consumed her moments ago.
Her body went limp, and she collapsed.
Bai Jingmo caught her and propped her against his shoulder.
He glanced at me again and opened his mouth as if to say something, but in the end, he said nothing.
Supporting Bai Songlan, he walked toward the car.
Only after the car started and drove away did I open my faintly trembling right hand.
A crimson stain was spreading across my palm.
That had been close.
If I had reacted even a fraction slower, one of those white spikes might really have pierced straight through my palm and struck me.
Bai Songlan had gone completely mad.
She couldn’t control her inner demons and had turned me into an imaginary enemy.
At the critical moment, I had used Nightmare Amplification, a chapter of Dreamweaving from Ancient Witchcraft.
Dreamweaving, an art of Ancient Witchcraft, was divided into five chapters: Dream Construction, Dreambreaking, Nightmare Amplification, Retrospection, and Dreamweaving into Reality.
At present, I had only mastered the first three chapters of Dreamweaving.
When I wove a dream for Hui Cong, I had used the first chapter, Dream Construction.
This time, I had used the third chapter, Nightmare Amplification.
As its name implied, Nightmare Amplification magnified the fear buried deepest in a person’s heart without limit, driving them to a mental breakdown and completely shattering their psychological defenses.
The Copper-Coin Figure was Bai Songlan’s inner demon, and the fear buried deepest in her heart was most likely the scene of the Copper-Coin Figure being placed under a Seal in the West Room.
I had chosen correctly.
However, Dream Construction, Dreambreaking, and Nightmare Amplification were all low-level Witchcraft within Dreamweaving. Retrospection and Dreamweaving into Reality were the truly advanced chapters.
Retrospection could trace back through all the dreams of the person under the spell, even reaching into their past lives.
Dreamweaving into Reality was even more terrifying. Once it reached a high enough level, it could directly alter the course of the target’s future life.
Put simply, it could defy the heavens and change one’s fate!
Even the Grand Witch had failed to break through to the realms of Retrospection and Dreamweaving into Reality in her entire life.
Needless to say, I was nowhere close.
Still, the first three chapters were enough to keep me alive.
I pressed down on the bleeding wound in my palm. Only after the bleeding had completely stopped did I look toward Xiaoyingkou.
There was no movement whatsoever in that direction.
Yet the quieter it was, the more uneasy it made me.
Because I knew this eerie stillness was the darkness before dawn, the calm before the storm.
I frowned and glanced at my right shoulder.
Where was the Black Cat?
When had it left?
The Black Cat and the Red Banner Child had both followed Zhao Zixun to Chang City. Now that Zhao Zixun had left, had those two little fellows returned to Wufu Town with him?
That might be for the best. They could help Li Qingying guard the Pawnshop.
Just as I was thinking this, a thunderclap suddenly exploded overhead, shaking heaven and earth.
The spiderweb-like lightning in the sky converged into a single bolt. It was a rare blood-red, like a demon-binding rope whipping down from the celestial realm as it lashed viciously toward Xiaoyingkou.
The sight was staggering.
A thought instantly flashed through my mind — the Three-Eyed Toad’s Calamity had begun…