“That, uh… actually… uh… what I mean is… I was just performing a magic trick just now!” Because her mind was a complete mess of paste, at this very moment Xia Li could only think of this kind of most clumsy excuse, attempting to deceive Lunene, “That’s right, those were all just visual special effects! Not any kind of terrible thing!”
Unfortunately, although Lunene was ordinarily a stupid loli who always committed muddled mistakes, the excuse Xia Li had hastily thought up still could not deceive her.
After retreating several steps, Lunene instinctively arched her back; the fur on her ears and tail all stood on end.
“You… you really are ‘that’ Xia Li!” After shrinking into the corner, Lunene shouted in panic—because the name Xia Li was extremely common whether in the “heavens” or on the ground, when previously announcing her name, neither Lunene nor the others had produced any suspicion toward Xia Li, “You are the ‘Fallen Evil Crown Princess’!”
“Hey hey hey! Where did this idiotic title come from?!” Xia Li was immediately somewhat caught between laughter and tears.
Although in these past days she had already heard many terrible nicknames about herself from storytellers and street-stall tabloids—things like “Extremely Evil Imperial Daughter,” “Chief of Traitors,” “Regicide,” “Kin-slayer,” “Bloodthirsty Princess,” “Black Crown Princess,” “Death Princess Knight,” all sorts of strange and horrifying ones—however…
This title of “Fallen Evil Crown Princess,” no matter how one looked at it, easily made people associate it with those female characters in a certain large category of literary and artistic works of the past who after being XX’d then XX’d and then continued XX’ing and XX’ing again, finally turned into figures with exposed clothing, faces full of lewd expressions, and both hands making V signs!
“Don’t talk nonsense, Lunene! I’m not! I didn’t!” Xia Li immediately firmly denied—other titles she could accept if she had to, but this kind of title was absolutely one she could not acknowledge!
Acknowledging it would truly mean social death ahhhhhh!
“But the broadcasts, and the newspapers sold at the newspaper kiosks, all said that the previous emperor was personally assassinated by you!” Lunene shouted, “Everyone says that you led an army of living dead to charge up to the throne, personally slit open your own mother’s throat, and used her blood to offer sacrifice to the demons of hell. Then, at an evil and blasphemous ceremony, while trampling the sacred crest of the empire, you also let those living dead take turns imposing terrible atrocities upon your mother…”
“How could there be something so outrageous?!” Xia Li suddenly grew anxious.
Why could that bunch of people who had clearly never seen the scene invent things so well?
Were the fellows studying journalism in this era all this awesome?!
“I only—”
“Can you swear that you have not done these things?” Lunene widened her clear eyes and tightly stared at Xia Li.
“Of course I haven’t!” Xia Li said nimbly, “I can guarantee it! This kind of thing doesn’t have even one mao’s worth of relationship with me! No, not even five fen! You must believe your most reliable Big Sister Xia Li—wah leh?!”
Before Xia Li could finish speaking, she suddenly noticed that the piece of gauze stuck on her face had actually turned red—no, what had turned red was not the gauze, but the red eight-pointed star brand representing a heavy criminal that had been carefully covered underneath!
This thing actually lit up like a neon light, and even the gauze could not block it!
“This is terrible…” Weeping of the Shadow gripped in Xia Li’s hand said, “This thing… has been activated.”
“Activated? What does that mean?!”
“You still remember, right? The brand on your face was originally used in the Golden Age to punish cheating external-program dogs and other severely violating players. Aside from locking lottery luck value at L rank, as well as experience point penalties and hatred value penalties, this thing also has one more use,” Weeping of the Shadow answered, “If it detects a lie that significantly violates conscience, it will automatically light up… ‘When the Mark of the Sinner lights up, it means the exposure of an evil lie’; this counts as general common knowledge on Elysia.”
“What is that?!” Lunene trembled, “Take, take the gauze off, let me see!”
“This… the situation is very complicated…” Xia Li shuddered.
Clearly, although the pile of content Lunene had recited was full of journalistic charm, the problem was that contents such as “assassinating the emperor” and “leading an army of living dead” were indeed true.
Once Xia Li swore claiming “I have not done it,” it would likewise activate the lie-detection function of the brand.
“Liar!” Lunene let out a sharp cry and threw her only weapon—that rust-covered fruit knife—toward Xia Li.
Xia Li subconsciously sidestepped, allowing the blade to sever the medical tape fixing the gauze and completely expose the blood-red eight-pointed star below.
Then, Lunene, just like a startled little kitten, fled outside in a flash.
“Wait, Lunene! Don’t run! Listen to my explanation!”
“No! Don’t eat me—” Lunene ran out while tumbling and crawling, completely unwilling to listen to Xia Li’s defense.
And what was even worse was that at the same time, dense footsteps also came from the surroundings!
Without a doubt, as that true enemy hidden underground began taking action, the players who had only been focused on guarding against attackers from outside the school yet knew nothing of the danger by their sides immediately became its easiest prey.
Under completely unprepared conditions, the majority of people very likely completely failed to understand what had happened before falling into becoming puppets of that thing.
And now, this group of puppets had also already begun acting, starting to hunt the remaining survivors.
“Bastards, all of you get lost for me!” The Xia Li who already could not bother to conceal herself, and no longer had the necessity of concealing, directly raised the black sword high and began meeting her opponents in battle.
Because she knew that the other party’s weakness was the semi-transparent tentacle behind them, the difficulty of this battle was actually not particularly great—even without the assistance of the power armor and with strength far inferior to before, the Xia Li who possessed Weeping of the Shadow still easily severed the tentacles behind the several fellows who first charged toward her, causing them to collapse onto the ground.
“Forgive my bluntness, coming one by one like this is too low in efficiency.” Weeping of the Shadow said, “I have an idea; perhaps it can—”
“I know.” Xia Li retreated one step, pointed the black sword toward the top of her head, and let large masses of black dense mist roll and surge toward the surrounding unconscious bodies collapsed on the ground—after spending more than half a month stockpiling blue bars, the effect of this move now was almost identical to the one used in the grand hall back then, “Sorrowful Night City’s Thousand Cherry Blossoms!”
Although these young girls who had fallen and could not rise were merely unconscious, this move still successfully “raised” them—according to Weeping of the Shadow’s previous explanation, this was because this move was essentially closer to a kind of puppet technique, intervening in the nervous system through external force to issue commands and force the body to move.
Therefore, whether recently dead corpses or deeply comatose living people were both its effective targets of action.
“Block them!” Xia Li issued a command to these people who had just been “raised,” “Try not to injure people as much as possible!”
The newly obtained puppets silently charged toward their opponents, then unfolded the most eerie battle: because one side’s purpose was to restrain the opponents, while the other side had received the instruction to implant parasites without harming the targets, the result was that both sides abandoned weapons, and even strove to avoid using nails and teeth to scratch and bite, instead choosing to push and wrestle with each other.
Soon, more than ten human silhouettes entangled with each other in strange postures and began rolling all over the ground around the warehouse.
Of course, while this unique wrestling♀ tournament was being carried out, Xia Li naturally was also not idle: she rapidly followed one severed transparent tentacle and found a sewer entrance whose width was just enough for her to drill into, then sliced open the metal cover plate above with one sword stroke and jumped down.
Inside the sewer there was almost completely no accumulated water, only some shallow dust and silt.
As well as… many strip-shaped sticky fluids that looked extremely unfavorable at a glance.
Although the emitted smell made one feel nauseated, Xia Li quickly suppressed her sense of discomfort and continued advancing while chasing the sticky fluids.
After all, these sticky fluids were all the products after the strip-shaped tentacles that had previously been severed by her melted.
Although emotionally speaking she more hoped to continue tracking the fleeing Lunene, the tactical intuition belonging to “Xia Li” told her that at this very moment, directly resolving the source of the problem was the best method—if there were still survivors inside the school right now, rather than saving them one by one, preventing them from being controlled was the key.
The sticky fluids continuously extended inside the narrow and long sewer, ultimately disappearing onto a stretch of empty concrete ground.
Seeing this situation, Xia Li had no choice but to stop her footsteps.
“Did we… take the wrong path?”
“It doesn’t look like it!” Weeping of the Shadow answered, “I can sense many signals of living organisms in the surroundings; I’m afraid this is…”
Just at this moment, the originally “empty” concrete ground suddenly moved.