Chapter 121: Heavy Rain, Tokyo, Bloody Storm Auction (5) |
"What a mess... I need to get there before my second character beats Su Zimai half to death."
On a certain street in Tokyo, the rain poured down in torrents. Not a single pedestrian could be seen on the road. Only a black Maybach was parked out of place by the curb, enduring the wind and rain.
Inside the Maybach, Black Cocoon pulled back his legs that were propped against the front windshield. He sighed and slowly got up from his seat.
He used a restraining band to open the car door, and the freezing rainwater immediately rushed against his face. The torrential rain pierced through the power cables and countless neon signs, battering every inch of the restraining bands wrapped around his body.
Tokyo in the rain was damp, claustrophobic, and sluggish.
Black Cocoon slowly tilted his head up and launched a restraining band to wrap around a traffic light sign overhead. Distributing the bands across his entire body, his slender figure sliced through the curtain of rain. He swung upward like a swift, landing accurately on top of the sign.
He crouched on top of the traffic light like a cat, lifting his head to gaze at the Amamiya Building shrouded in the distant downpour.
'I cannot interfere with the Mirror World side of things. My brother and Li Qingping will have to fend for themselves. If Old Man Ghost Bell arrives in time, he should be able to lend them a hand. And if that big shot who is currently sleeping happens to wake up, he should be able to save their lives too.'
Thinking this, Black Cocoon used his restraining bands to latch onto a billboard shifting between red and blue colors straight ahead.
It was as if he had been completely swallowed by the endless downpour.
Meanwhile, on the fifth floor of the Amamiya Building, inside the Real Auction House.
Blood Progenitor raised her beautiful eyebrows. Lifting her crimson eyes from the floor littered with corpses, she glanced at Ke Qirui near the entrance in the distance, and then at Lin Zhengquan.
The corners of her lips curled up. She turned her head to look at Xia Pingzhou and declared with great interest, "After beating up the little babies, someone actually worth looking at has finally arrived. Otherwise, I would have regretted tagging along with the rookie to play over here."
At this moment, Xia Pingzhou and Ke Qirui were locking eyes from across the room.
The former's gaze was so cold it felt like ice, while the latter's eyes seemed to carry a hint of persuasion.
In truth, according to Ke Qirui's plan, as long as she lured the two Near-Calamity Tier members away from the scene, she could buy Xia Pingzhou a chance to escape from the White Raven Brigade.
Of course... even if Xia Pingzhou did not want to seize this opportunity to leave the brigade and instead chose to stay as an undercover agent, it would not have much of an impact.
Because, setting Xia Pingzhou aside, Lan Duo Duo was actually the only member left in the Real Auction House. With the combined abilities of Xu Sanyan and Lin Zhengquan, dealing with a single member would be more than enough.
With this in mind, Ke Qirui stepped forward while expressionlessly instructing the three people behind her:
"I am going to hold off these two Near-Calamity Tier enemies. Sanyan, Zhengquan, you two subdue the remaining brigade members. I will not be able to look after anyone outside once I am in the film screen, so do your absolute best to protect Maimai. Her safety is the top priority. If you realize you cannot defeat the opponents, evacuate the auction house immediately."
Having said that, Ke Qirui peered through her retro monocle, gazing at Blood Progenitor and Ayase Origami from afar.
The moment her gaze locked onto the two of them, a strange light flashed across the lens.
The next moment, both Ayase Origami and Blood Progenitor widened their eyes slightly as a black-and-white screen suddenly formed behind them.
They snapped their heads back, but an irresistible force yanked them straight into the film screen.
Immediately after, the two film screens within the auction house vanished at the exact same time.
In their place, a dimly lit screen materialized right in front of Ke Qirui.
She glanced at the two silhouettes inside the film screen, then looked back at Su Zimai, flashing her a calm smile. "Keep my hat safe."
After saying this, Ke Qirui stepped right into the film screen.
When Blood Progenitor opened her eyes again, a long black-and-white street reflected in her vision.
At this moment, she and Ayase Origami were standing beneath a pitch-black moon. Black streetlights and black moonlight shined down, enveloping their bodies. The colors on the long street were dizzying, and the black-and-white gradients made them feel as if they had been thrust into the most desolate abyss in the world.
"Oh... what kind of place is this?"
Like a hundred-year-old little girl, Blood Progenitor widened her eyes and looked around with curiosity.
Then she slowly turned her head toward Ke Qirui, who stood not far away. Curling her lips, she whispered softly, "Oh... so you are the Exorcist the Captain mentioned before. I remember now. The wielder of the Train Demon and Film Demon."
"Ke Qirui. That is my name."
Ke Qirui introduced herself.
As she spoke, she instinctively reached to lower the brim of her hat, only to remember that her Luster Hat had already been transferred to Su Zimai's head. She shook her head, her hair—as bright and black as polished lead—gently swaying in the air.
This was a world as silently still as a silent film. No noise came from anywhere. The entire world was reduced to the faint rustling sounds made by the three figures. Even when they spoke in the softest of whispers, their voices echoed with incredible clarity.
Ayase Origami remained silent. Her vacant eyes suddenly turned freezing cold, seemingly having realized that Number 12 was still outside.
The majority of her paper pages had been left behind in the auction house, leaving her only with the backup pages hidden within her kimono and a notebook—the one she used to play Gomoku with Xia Pingzhou.
Stacks of paper pages fluttered out from her sleeves, congregating in mid-air to form a massive paper dragon. The scales, made entirely of paper, overlapped each other, opening and closing in a rhythmic pattern. The paper dragon descended from the sky, crouching upon the silent street.
All of a sudden, the faint rumbling of an engine echoed from above, resounding throughout the muted street.
'The sound of a train engine?' Blood Progenitor thought.
Ayase Origami did not waste a single second. She commanded the paper dragon to flap its wings, shooting explosively toward Ke Qirui.
At that very moment, a film screen abruptly appeared behind Ke Qirui. She took a slight step backward and was immediately absorbed by the screen, her figure reappearing on the roof of a building on the western side of the long street.
She stood beneath the pitch-black moon, quietly looking down at Blood Progenitor and Ayase Origami on the street below.
As time passed, the roaring engine echoing over the silent street grew louder and louder, as if it was on the verge of drowning out the entire world.
Ke Qirui spoke in a calm tone, "It has been a long time since I faced an opponent worthy of its appearance. It has made everyone think it is merely a means of transportation, but in truth... it is a man-eating monster."
In a flash, the paper dragon flapped its wings, whipping up a howling gale. It roared as it soared into the sky, charging toward Ke Qirui like a bone-white drill.
But in that exact second, the engine noise enveloping the silent world reached its absolute peak.
"Rumble—!"
Accompanied by a deafening roar, a spatial rift violently ripped open in mid-air.
Beneath the black moon, the dark red front of a retro train burst out of the rift, followed by a body that stretched nearly a hundred meters long. The absolute silence of the world seemed to be shredded to pieces by this sudden streak of dark crimson.
The next instant, the train slammed into the paper dragon head-on as it surged upwards. The moment the train's front collided with the bone-white paper scales, the entire world seemed to shake.
Immediately after, the body of the paper dragon was pulverized into thousands of individual pages by an unstoppable force.
The scattered pages drifted down through the silent world, falling gently toward the street like rain, brushing past the tops of Blood Progenitor's and Ayase Origami's heads.
The two of them raised their eyebrows and stared at the front of the train.
Embedded directly onto the front of the engine was a dark red face. It had an aged appearance, but its two eyebrows were long and thick. Steam puffed out of its nostrils, and its mouth was pressed tightly into a grim line. It looked exactly like an infuriated little old man.
"So this is the legendary monster... the 'Train Demon'."
Staring at the demonic face grafted onto the train, Blood Progenitor could not help but tug at the corners of her lips. "I have certainly broadened my horizons today."
"Annoying..."
Ayase Origami muttered softly, her gaze growing colder by the second. She manipulated the scattered pages falling through the air, folding them into paper butterflies that fluttered around her body.
Meanwhile, Ke Qirui slowly pulled a pipe from her trench coat pocket and clamped it between her lips. Film screens began to materialize in the air above her.
The massive form of the Train Demon was segmented by countless film screens, scattering chaotically through the air. North, west, south, east—no matter which direction one looked, fragments of the train's body could be seen bursting out from the screens.
Eventually, these fragmented train cars twisted together in mid-air, forming the shape of a "Möbius Strip". They hovered above Ke Qirui's head in a seemingly folded, overlapping loop.
Beneath the dark moon, Ke Qirui's sleek hair swayed in the wind.
With her left hand tucked into her coat pocket and her right hand holding the stem of the pipe, she lowered her head and calmly took a draw from the pipe. Her eyes looked down at the two women on the street.
"Now then... two lovely ladies, let us see who the real protagonist of this silent film is." Peering through her monocle at Blood Progenitor and Ayase Origami, a slow smile curved upon her lips.
At the same time, inside the Real Auction House.
On the auction stage, Lan Duo Duo, gripping her Anecdote Catalog, bobbed her head around as she scanned her surroundings. She simply could not find any trace of Blood Progenitor or Ayase Origami in the auction hall.
Leaning sideways against Xia Pingzhou's shoulder, she shook his neck and exclaimed in surprise:
"Holy crap, crap, crap! Rookie! Where did the vampire and the young miss go? Did they just vanish?"
"They were taken away by that woman's Film Demon," Xia Pingzhou replied expressionlessly.
He stared unblinkingly at the entrance of the auction house.
Xu Sanyan summoned his Celestial Drive as he walked toward the auction stage, a pitch-black Umbrella manifesting out of thin air. He leaned forward slightly, grasping the dark red handle. Then, he abruptly raised the tip of the umbrella, aimed it directly at Lan Duo Duo on the stage, and pulled the trigger on the handle.
"Bang!" Accompanied by a sharp gunshot, a silver bullet shot out from the opening at the tip of the umbrella!
Lan Duo Duo glanced sideways as a card engraved with silver patterns flew out from her Anecdote Catalog. She caught the card and crushed it in her hand with a sharp crack.
"Common-tier Anomaly: Mountain Yeti," Lan Duo Duo mouthed silently.
As soon as the words fell, a snow-covered giant standing seven meters tall materialized, shielding Lan Duo Duo. It lowered its crimson eyes and crossed its massive arms.
The silver bullet slammed into the Mountain Yeti's arms, violently erupting into a cloud of scorching mist. The heat viciously tore at the giant's body, melting the snow packed across its surface, but ultimately failed to pierce its thick hide.
Xu Sanyan remained expressionless. "An Anecdote Envoy, huh... I sure hope she does not pull out a Generation-tier Anomaly."
Lin Zhengquan said coldly, "Xu Sanyan, Generation-tier Anomalies are not cheap trinkets you can find anywhere on the street."
The Mountain Yeti gasped heavily for air. Lifting its crimson eyes, it stomped its feet, cracking a web-like crater into the floor, and launched itself at Xu Sanyan like a massive cannonball.
In that very moment, Lin Zhengquan summoned his Celestial Drive.
His entire body was enveloped in bulky Mechanical Prosthetics, turning him into a three-meter-tall mechanical giant. Stomping forward with heavy, thudding steps, he let out a low roar and charged at the yeti, throwing a punch with his metal-plated right hand.
The Mountain Yeti's massive frame was blasted backward by two meters, sending a spray of loose snow fluttering to the ground.
"Number 5, hold off these two," Xia Pingzhou told Lan Duo Duo. "I will go take care of the minnow hiding in the back, then I will come back to help you."
"Do not call me Number 5! Call me Lan Duo Duo!" she grumbled. Pulling another silver card from her Anecdote Catalog, she raised her hand and crushed it. "Common-tier Anomaly: Headless Horseman."
A sharp, piercing neigh instantly echoed across the auction house. Immediately after, a Ghost Horse galloped down from mid-air, bearing a fully armored Headless Horseman who wielded a long spear in his hand.
The Headless Horseman charged forward atop his Ghost Horse, joining the Mountain Yeti to confront Lin Zhengquan.
"Calm down... calm down, calm down. I cannot just do nothing."
Su Zimai furrowed her brows and summoned her Celestial Drive. A Magic Glove instantly appeared on her right hand, while a Black Top Hat materialized on her head and a red cape draped down her back.
She looked exactly like a little magician.
Just as she was about to rush forward, she suddenly spotted a silver-white silhouette emerge from the corner of the auction house, sprinting toward her at phantom-like speed.
Su Zimai froze for a second. Lowering her head, she squinted to get a better look. It was a luxurious, silver stone statue. Blue flames burned within its eye sockets, leaving long, freezing trails of fire through the air, while the dagger grasped in its right hand gleamed with a deadly chill.
At the same time, Xia Pingzhou bypassed the battlefield between Lan Duo Duo and the Lin-Xu duo, slowly stepping out from the corner of the auction stage.
Black and white halos shrouded his body, forming a circular chessboard. The ghostly projections of chess pieces orbited slowly around him like satellites.
Xia Pingzhou stared at Su Zimai expressionlessly, as though looking at a corpse.
Su Zimai glared coldly back into his eyes, muttering to herself word by word:
"Bring it on."