This time, Mili aimed for the gap in the other’s momentary daze—the lance pierced through her chest cavity, shattering the body outright.
But even piercing her chest in this dimension was useless.
Then Luo Sha fired quickly, two holy bullets hitting the priest dead on.
She reeled backward, yet rose again the very next instant. Mili grew frantic.
“You missed! Aim for the heart! Do you hear me? Aim for the heart!”
“Understood, Your Excellency.”
Luo Sha’s voice remained calm. However, the priest’s arm regenerated once more.
Dozens of iron lances shot out from within her body, scattering like buckshot, instantly piercing through both Mili and Luo Sha.
Mili was pinned to the ground, at least three lances through her lower abdomen, the pain turning her vision black.
‘The Mili in the novel… really is tough.’
She actually still had the leisure to have such a thought.
Luo Sha’s situation, however, was even worse.
She had dodged the vital areas, but a lance shattered her right shoulder, and her entire arm dropped to the ground.
But she didn’t hesitate. Gripping the gunblade with her left hand, she forced herself forward using the momentum of the lance piercing through her.
The blade pierced the priest’s chest, blood flowing from the priest’s body.
But Luo Sha’s gaze darkened. She realized that heart had never once beaten.
The priest looked down at her and smiled.
“I died… a long time ago, in that accident.”
“In that vile scheme carried out by No. 37!!!”
“They carved out my memories.”
“They hollowed out my body.”
Luo Sha looked at her, and for the first time, something resembling pity surfaced in her eyes.
“Is that so, Your Excellency.”
“You have long since lost your soul.”
As her words fell, Luo Sha swiftly withdrew her blade, spun around, and cut the monster in half at the waist.
A great deal of blood splattered across the ground.
Mili stumbled over and grabbed Luo Sha’s shoulder.
“That thing is way beyond what we can handle. Too many unknown factors—retreat!”
But Luo Sha didn’t move. Beneath the Holy Guilt Eye, she saw death lines.
Not just one—two extremely thin, extremely faint lines, almost swallowed by nothingness.
As long as those two lines were severed, it could be killed.
At least, that was what the eye told her. Mili immediately sensed something wrong.
“Hey, you brat—!!”
Luo Sha shook off her hand.
“I’m sorry, Your Excellency.”
The next moment, without hesitation, she drew her gunblade and charged.
Just as the monster was rising to its feet, Luo Sha was already before it, severing the priest’s head with a single stroke.
Then Luo Sha immediately pulled the trigger on her sword, two holy bullets striking the priest’s head in succession. Still feeling unsafe, she swung the longsword at once.
Once. Twice.
Thirty times. Fifty times.
Luo Sha swung the sword rapidly with a single left hand, the gunblade spinning in her palm, blade-light and gunfire erupting in alternation.
She carved the priest’s upper body into fragments that could no longer hold a human shape, the death lines snapping one by one before her eyes.
But—
She was wrong. The moment the last death line broke, not only did that thing not die.
On the contrary, a hand shot out from the shredded flesh, piercing straight through Luo Sha’s chest.
Luo Sha’s heart was ripped out.
The priest clutched the heart that was still faintly beating. Mili froze.
“Hahaha… just as I thought.”
“If I do this, you end up like this.”
?
The next moment, rage nearly burned through her sanity.
“You monster—”
She charged, Omnis gouging across the ground. Her lance severed the priest’s arm as she tried to snatch back Luo Sha’s heart.
But it was already too late.
The heart had part of its flesh drained by the priest, its surface crawling with gray-white death marks—it had long since lost its vitality.
Mili gritted her teeth, scooped up Luo Sha, and turned to run.
She wrapped mana around Omnis, then, with a single charged strike, smashed through the hospital wall.
She leaped through the breach, forcibly fleeing that space.
However, countless iron lances appeared behind Mili once more.
Luo Sha opened her eyes, her consciousness hazy.
“Your Excellency…”
Mili roared:
“You brat, don’t you know what retreat means? Can’t you lis—”
Before she could finish, her lower abdomen was pierced by an iron lance once more.
This time, she saw herself—not a reflection in a mirror, but her own body lying ahead of her. Mili was stunned.
“What’s going on?”
She realized she had become a soul body.
Her physical body lay collapsed in a pool of blood, the Book of Revelation slipping from her waist.
The pages were soaked in the blood flowing from Mili’s body, giving off a blinding white light.
It began flipping its own pages at incredible speed, as if content that had never been revealed before had finally been forcibly awakened by blood.
Mili floated in midair, watching the words on the pages, her pupils slowly contracting.
She saw Qiu Meng’s destiny.
On it was recorded Xia Yin’s student number—No. 37—along with her transmigration into this world.
Mili’s voice began to tremble.
“Why… and… this can’t be right?!”
There was more text on the pages.
But the key parts had been deliberately erased by something.
“But the deity ▇▇ed â–‡’s ▇▇; after ▇▇, â–‡’s fate ▇▇▇▇.”
“And ▇▇▇▇ is none other than â–‡ Xia â–‡’s true ▇▇.”
Mili wanted to slam a table.
“Revelation, if you knew, couldn’t you have told me sooner!”
“It’s too late now!”
The white light swallowed everything.
Mili and Luo Sha fell into darkness together.
When Mili opened her eyes again, she was lying on the forest floor.
The hospital around her was gone, and so were all those bizarre things.
The priest’s body had shattered into a scattering of porcelain-like white fragments. The inside of the fragments was hollow—no flesh, no organs either.
But the thing truly hidden within had already escaped.
Mili propped herself up on her lance and sat up with difficulty.
She could feel that her mana volume had clearly dropped a notch.
It didn’t feel like mana exhaustion, but rather as if part of her foundation had been bitten away by something.
Luo Sha opened her eyes as well. Her right arm had lost its vitality, hanging limp at her side, looking like the arm of someone in their seventies or eighties.
What was worse, her heart was beating slower and slower.
The Book of Revelation lay between them, covered in blood, its pages still faintly glowing.
Luo Sha used her gun to support herself against the ground and stood up with difficulty.
“Off to a bad start…”
She said it very calmly. But Mili knew just how terrible the reality behind those words was.
They had let that monster get away.
And the connection between that monster, Xia Yin, Qiu Meng, and that so-called accident had only just begun to surface.
Just then, the Book of Revelation opened again.
Bloodstains spread along the edges of the pages, finally condensing into a document that wasn’t part of the original storyline.
Mili and Luo Sha both looked down at it at the same time.
It was a research file heavily blacked out.
________________________________________
File Number: INDRA-PROJ-0037-██
Author: Chief Arcane Researcher ██████ · Von · ██Xia
Affiliation: United Kingdom · Seventh Experimental Division ‘Hermes’
Security Classification: Top Secret · For the eyes of ██ and three ██ only
Date Written: Dark Decade, Month â–ˆ, Day 37
Since the dawn of civilization, all things in the world have been bound by the Law of Fate and Causality.
The living have their lives, and the dead have their deaths.
The soul clings to the flesh; the flesh returns to dust; the soul returns to the River of Reincarnation, where it is redistributed by the hand of the Goddess of Destiny and cast into a new vessel.
This is the iron law of the universe, and the final covenant between gods and mortals.
However, our institute unearthed a batch of damaged ancient ██ tablets from the Redacted Ancient Ruins ‘██’.
After spending several years deciphering them, we reached a conclusion that shocked every researcher:
The Law of Fate and Causality is not unassailable.
And the ancient civilizations had clearly already discovered this flaw.
And named it:
‘The Eye of ███’
According to the existing system of arcane theory, the operation of the Law of Fate and ███ depends on the following █ anchoring elements:
Anima Sigil.
The unique mark that ███ a living being’s essential code, bestowed by the Goddess ██ at the moment of birth.
Corpus Axis.
The living █ carrier that anchors the ██ soul to the ███ world, possessing uniqueness.
Memory Weave.
The consciousness â–ˆ band linking the spâ–ˆrit and the fl███, forming the continuity of ‘██’.
All three are indispensable.
The Law of Fate and Causality identifies, marks, and weaves destiny for a living being precisely by tracking the unity of these three elements.
In other words:
As long as inconsistency exists among the three, the Web of Fate cannot complete its identification.
If a â–ˆ life form’s (hereinafter referred to as the ‘â–ˆ body’) three elements are subjected to ██ dismantling and re██-arranged recombination, so that its final â–ˆ-formed state cannot be categorized by the â–ˆ Fate and ███ recognition mechanism, then that life form will ‘██ out’ from the Web of Fate, becoming an independent existence that the law of cauâ–ˆality cannot ██ touch.
We call this state a ‘Causal Blind Entity’ (CBE).
Experiment██ Report · ‘Indra Project’
Phase â–ˆ · ‘██ Art’
Objective: Complete extraction of the ███ from the ██ original, while preserving the uniqueness of the ███ elements.
Experiment Code Name: IN██A-PHASE-I ‘â–ˆ Shell’
Step 01 · ██ Brand █ Extraction
Use the ‘███ Resonance Apparatus’ to conduct a continuous ██-hour soul ██ scan of the original.
Map the ██ body’s soul brand ████.
Using the â–ˆ-thirteen sealing arts recorded in the ‘███’, separate the ████ from the â–ˆ body’s ██.
Store it temporarily in the ‘â–ˆerâ–ˆes Crystal’ (maintenance period: no more than ██ days).
During the ███ extraction process, the â–ˆ body’s mortality rate is approximately 67% (data from the â–ˆth to â–ˆth experiments).
The recorded ███ has █ self-repair ███, and may re███ the original ██ body.
The He██ crystal cannot be kept for ██ long; the experiment must proceed quickly.
________________________________________
The text came to an abrupt halt there.
The pages that followed were soaked through with black blood, no longer legible.
Mili stared at the number ‘0037’, her face slowly turning pale.
“You’ve got to be kidding me…”
She finally understood why the Book of Revelation hadn’t given her answers.
It wasn’t that it refused to write.
Rather, certain existences had long since broken away from destiny.
“Xia Yin… No. 37… Qiu Meng…”
Mili murmured these names under her breath.
She suddenly felt a coldness in her stomach.
If Qiu Meng wasn’t a simple transmigrator… then there was bound to be something far more troublesome behind all of this.
Mili looked into the depths of the forest.
Morning light had fully spilled down.
“I know.”
Mili picked up the blood-soaked Book of Revelation and held it to her chest once more.
“But before that…”
She glanced at Luo Sha’s lifeless right arm, then at the wound on her own abdomen that still hadn’t fully healed, and forced an extremely bitter smile.
“We need to make sure we don’t die on the way first.”
But they both knew that the monster hadn’t truly died.
And the real ‘No. 37’—or rather, the thing truly connected to ‘No. 37’—still lurked in depths they couldn’t comprehend. Mili gritted her teeth.
“Let’s go, Luo Sha.”
“We’re going to find Qiu Meng.”
Luo Sha nodded. The two supported each other as they made their way through the shattered forest.
Sunlight fell on the porcelain-like remains scattered behind them. The fragments split open silently, but deep within the cracks, a faint glimmer of deep red light was visible.
That light resembled an eye that had yet to close, silently watching them leave, before beginning to condense once more.