Chapter 246: Major Event Three: Night of the Witches (6)

Chapter 246: Major Event Three: Night of the Witches (Part 6)

Absolute silence filled the church, a blood-red spring burbling as it flowed.

"Xie Lin—"

Bound to the cross, Ember raised her pale face and stared blankly at the schoolgirl standing at the church entrance. The figure before her was exactly the same as her deceased friend, Xie Lin.

Xie Lin's lips were curled into a faint smile as she looked down, fiddling with the camera in her hands.

"Perfect. That's the reaction I wanted. I thought you might pretend you didn't know her." The Doll Witch clapped her hands. "I'll let you two catch up. I need to go; I have guests waiting outside to entertain."

With that, the Doll Witch tilted her head and dropped from the cross, landing on the church floor.

She glanced back at Ember with a teasing smirk. "By the way, your friends are all here to save you—though they're just throwing their lives away. Aside from Xi Ziyue, the rest of the magical girls aren't worth mentioning."

The witch let out a soft sigh. "When it comes down to it, aren't magical girls just inferior versions of witches? I don't know why everyone struggles to understand that. Those defective knockoffs always insist on using sheer numbers to hunt down us evolved, superior beings. Now they're facing the consequences."

Her eyes suddenly lit up. "Oh, right! That frail-looking boy I ran into at the bookstore earlier—I thought he was just an ordinary person, so I ignored him. I never expected him to join the rescue team and march right up here with those magical girls."

Ember froze. Fragmented memories flashed through her mind.

They were from ten minutes ago—images of her playing hide-and-seek with Ke Mingqing in the bookstore. He had pulled a book from the shelf, and she had leaned in to rest her chin in his palm, quietly studying his face.

Ember furrowed her brow, her head splitting with pain.

She quickly sorted it out. Those weren't her memories; they were Little Grey's.

Other bizarre memory fragments flooded her mind. Sitting on the toilet in the middle of the night, staring blankly at a phone and poking the screen one finger at a time to type out pinyin. Standing alone in a sewer, watching a dying Clock Maker and a hunched boy. The boy had been supporting the Clock Maker's back, trembling as he looked up to meet her eyes—only for their bodies to be twisted into mangled heaps of flesh a split second later, splattering her hands with blood.

There were other blurry memories, too: hiding in the courtyard, peering into the living room as Ke Mingwei placed the Brain Imaging Helmet onto Ke Mingqing's head. She had been about to help, but the exact details were too blurry to make out.

These memories pierced her brain like shards of broken glass. Ember's body trembled, faintly rattling the chains that bound her to the cross.

"You... save... brother... save him."

Ember's eyes widened slightly as she suddenly heard Cinderella's voice echoing in her mind.

"Brother..." she murmured.

"Oh, so that boy is your brother?" The Doll Witch paused, arching an eyebrow as her lips curled. "How about I catch him and turn him into a doll to play with you? You're going to be our friend from now on, anyway. As the fourth witch of the Terminus Tower, you deserve at least that much special treatment. Don't you agree?"

The girl in the gothic dress snapped her head up and roared, "If you dare touch my brother, I'll slaughter you! I don't care where you run, I'll kill you!"

The chains on the cross thrashed and clanged furiously, reaching the Doll Witch's ears alongside the girl's furious screams.

The Doll Witch merely licked her lips. "The more you act like this, the more I want to see your reaction. By the way, your brother just ran into the Witch of Despair."

With that, a massive plush bear slowly rose from behind her. It wrapped its arms around her, swallowing her into the darkness.

"Come back!" Ember snarled, but it was useless. No teasing response drifted back from the shadows. Instead, a sharp click echoed from the church entrance.

Ember froze. She recognized the sound of a camera shutter. Turning her head, she watched as Xie Lin slowly lifted her finger from the button, pulled out the photograph, and gave it a gentle shake.

The photograph drifted through the air like a butterfly, landing right at Ember's feet. Trembling, she lowered her gaze to look at the grotesque image on the ground.

The picture showed intestines. Mangled, half-chewed lengths of intestines spat across the ground. The ground was wet, rain washing over every inch, looking like a long street on a rainy day, complete with an overturned manhole cover.

Ember's shrinking pupils reflected the image in the photograph. She recognized it as a scene from a few months ago. She still remembered what had happened back then; rather, she would never be able to forget what had unfolded right in front of her eyes.

Suddenly, a sickening squelch shattered the absolute silence of the church, tearing Ember's focus away from the photograph at her feet.

The girl in the gothic dress snapped her eyes up from the photograph, staring blankly at Xie Lin's figure.

A bloody gash suddenly ripped open across Xie Lin's waist, tearing her school uniform with it. Accompanied by dripping blood, loops of her intestines flew out of the gaping wound and scattered across the floor.

"It hurts..." she whispered. "It hurts, it hurts..."

Ember froze for a long, long time. Face deathly pale, she shook her head, staring at her in mute shock.

Dragging her heavily injured body, Xie Lin hobbled closer, raised the camera, and pressed the shutter.

With another sharp click, she pulled a new photograph from the camera, gave it a gentle shake, and let it flutter lightly down to Ember's feet.

It was on a rainy day. A schoolgirl, with her heart, intestines, and kidneys gouged out, lay collapsed on a long street. Her eyes were half-open, staring hollowly up at the ferocious, sinister girl in a gothic dress in the sky.

At the time, Xie Lin's pale, bloodless lips had been murmuring something, but a beam of magic blasted from the tip of the gothic-dressed girl's umbrella. It drowned out the sound of the torrential rain, swallowing those faint words along with it.

The photograph captured that exact moment.

"How..."

Ember murmured hoarsely, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks.

Suddenly, the sound of another laceration rang out through the church. As if realizing something, Ember snapped her head up, only to see new gashes rip open across Xie Lin's chest and waist. Blood gushed out like a waterfall as her heart and kidneys slid out with it, spilling all over the floor.

"No, no!" the girl in the gothic dress cried hoarsely, tears spilling from the corners of her eyes.

Xie Lin collapsed to the ground. After a long moment, clutching the bloody hole in her chest, she slowly pulled herself back to her feet.

Amidst the gothic-dressed girl's hoarse, barely audible pleas, Xie Lin stumbled closer, step by step. Her feet reached the edge of the altar, and for every inch she climbed, her blood dyed another inch of the steps red.

"I kept calling your name back then, thinking you would come save me, that you would use your omnipotent powers to save me," Xie Lin said. "But you didn't. You only cared about venting your anger. You didn't care about me at all... But of course, you're a magical girl, and I'm just an unlucky, ordinary person. Nobody cares how many people like me die."

"It's not like that..."

"But that is what you showed me," she replied.

Leaving those words behind, Xie Lin raised the camera, pressing her bleeding forehead and eye against it. She aimed the lens directly at Ember on the cross. With a final click, she took one last photograph.

In an instant, a gust of wind thick with the stench of blood swept past, carrying the photograph to Ember's feet. Trembling, she shook her head, and it was a long time before she finally lowered her eyes to look at it.

The picture showed a schoolgirl collapsed on the altar. She was covered in wounds, her uniform soaked in dripping blood. Her head was flying upward, entirely separated from her body.

The lens had frozen on this bizarre scene, the head still locked in an inverted, upward pose.

"No!" Ember shrieked hoarsely.

Yet in the very next second, the scene from the photograph overlaid reality once more. Xie Lin suddenly collapsed to her knees on the steps, her head drooping heavily. A thin slit appeared across her neck. Then, the laceration rapidly widened, and her head tore completely free, rolling forward to come to a rest at the gothic-dressed girl's feet.

Ember stared in a daze for a long time before finally lowering her tear-filled eyes, staring at the severed head through a thick veil of moisture.

Absolute silence fell over the altar. The entire church was dead quiet, save for the sound of flowing blood. Within moments, the girl's black leather shoes were dyed red.

Meanwhile, directly beneath the Terminus Night, on a long street in Leijing's City Center.

White Jack narrowed his eyes and pointed a finger at himself. "Why are you looking at me like that, Mr. Rain Crow? You should know I came all this way just to help you, and this is the attitude I get?"

Rain Crow fell silent for a moment. He seemed to recall that during their last fight against the Clock Maker, White Jack had played a crucial role. He shook his head. "Forget it. You can come with me, but if I catch you trying to pull any tricks, I'll wring your head right off."

"As you command." White Jack spread his hands, shaking his head as he spoke. "But a White Jack without tricks wouldn't be White Jack. You'd only get my body, not my soul. Love like that is meaningless, Mr. Crow."

"Shut up."

"Fine."

With that, White Jack and Rain Crow blasted upward in an instant, rushing to reinforce Officer Girl.

Ke Mingqing looked up at the sky. Above, Officer Girl had yet to begin her clash with the Witch of Calamity.

He couldn't help but raise an eyebrow. Given Officer Girl's notoriously ruthless and decisive nature, she should have struck the moment she laid eyes on the witch. Surprisingly, it seemed this woman was waiting for the Magical Girl Three Giants and Rain Crow to reinforce her.

"This pure-blooded Russian battle maniac is being awfully cautious today. Did she get possessed?"

Ke Mingqing shook his head, then reconsidered. 'Instead of having all the fun herself, she probably just wants a chance to fight side-by-side with my old man,' he thought. 'Man... she's really obsessed with him. Does she honestly think she can compete with my psycho alien mom?'

Watching White Jack and Rain Crow fly off, Ke Mingqing kicked off the ground and landed atop a traffic light. Using the traffic light as a springboard, he launched himself up in one go, landing on the roof of a six-story building.

A fierce headwind battered him. Ke Mingqing stomped his foot in the darkness, throwing an arm up to shield his forehead. "Not knowing how to fly is such a pain. I should've just learned those trash-tier skills when I had the chance."

At that moment, he pulled his phone from his windbreaker pocket and glanced at it.

[Xia Ningzhi: A'Qing, where are you and Little Li?]

[Ke Linye: I'm heading to the City Center right now. Don't do anything reckless; wait for me to get there. How is Little Li?]

'How come these guys are usually as quiet as the dead, but they send so many messages at a time like this? How am I supposed to reply?' Ke Mingqing thought.

He knew there was no need to reply to these two. With the Terminus Tower coming in so aggressively and out in the open, given the speed of those two family-heroes, they were probably already rushing toward the City Center by now.

So, he lowered his eyes to the third account messaging him.

[Match-Selling Little Red Riding Hood: Where is Senior Ember? Is she with you? I can't reach her. Please tell her we're in the Magical Girl Company's emergency conference room and to get here immediately.]

[Match-Selling Little Red Riding Hood: No, if possible, I hope you can ensure Senior's safety and keep her far away from here.]

[Ke Mingqing: She's already been taken.]

[Match-Selling Little Red Riding Hood: What an efficient reply. I already know; I just heard it from Teacher Xi Ziyue. So you have time to reply to her messages but no time for mine? As expected, a country girl like me who grew up eating garbage doesn't deserve the time of day.]

[Ke Mingqing: Stop whining. I can't fly and need someone to carry me. Your magic gear happens to be a "sleigh," so you can give me a lift.]

[Match-Selling Little Red Riding Hood: Oh, I see. So you just treat me as a mount to use "Secret Skill: Flight"?]

[Ke Mingqing: Where are you right now?]

[Match-Selling Little Red Riding Hood: Why don't you look up?]

Ke Mingqing froze. He looked up from his phone toward the sky directly above, only to see a magical girl in a Christmas dress riding a sleigh, hurtling toward him from the distance.

"Stop spacing out." The blonde, blue-eyed girl reached her hand out to him from the sleigh.

A moment later, the two reindeer pulling the sleigh drew to a halt. Ke Mingqing leaped from the roof's railing, grabbed Little Red Riding Hood's right hand, and sat down inside the sleigh.

The reindeer sleigh immediately surged forward, hurtling through the sky amidst a howling blizzard. Upon reaching an altitude of five hundred meters, Ke Mingqing finally got a clear look at the very center of the Terminus Night. A bizarre mansion sat right in the middle of it.

"My sister should be in there—" Ke Mingqing murmured.

"I can see that just fine without you telling me," Little Red Riding Hood said expressionlessly.

The two reindeer cried to the heavens as the Christmas Sleigh tore through the sky, galloping forward like a massive python wrapped in snow. Gale-force winds howled, and a blizzard swept across the skies of Leijing.

However, at that exact moment, a terrifying aura suddenly washed over them. Even the howling blizzard seemed to stall for a fraction of a second.

It was as if an invisible fortress was blocking the outer perimeter of the Terminus Night, the air rippling with black and red magic.

The reindeer halted their hooves, and the Christmas Sleigh came to a stop in midair.

Ke Mingqing and Little Red Riding Hood both froze in place. They exchanged a glance, a horrifying name appearing simultaneously in their minds:

The Witch of Despair.

After a moment, the two of them finally looked up from the sleigh.

Standing at the outermost edge of the Terminus Night was a figure entirely wreathed in chaotic grey currents. From a distance, the streaming light looked like television static, every single speck of it grey.

Slowly, she raised her head. A pair of eyes as deep as a grey curtain met Ke Mingqing's gaze.