Chapter 236: Waiting Patiently

"This is..." Only at this moment did Bishop Muse have the time to ask Brenna about Lucy's identity; after all, he had never seen Yun Mu summon her before.

"Her name is Lucy, she is a Heroic Spirit contracted by Miss Yun." Brenna, having also come to her senses, introduced Lucy's identity to Bishop Muse.

"A contract found inside a Treasure Chest?" After hearing Brenna's introduction, Bishop Muse's expression turned somewhat strange.

"The patterns on that Treasure Chest, along with other motifs, are of the style from the Scarlet Court era." Yun Mu also shared the information she had learned from the curator at the Frost Library.

As for whether he believes it or not, that doesn't matter.

In any case, the facts are right before his eyes, which is the best proof; he has no choice but to believe it.

As for the matter of Lucy's corpse being a Scarlet Anchor, she had not yet mentioned it to anyone else.

Therefore, regarding this point, even Brenna did not know.

Now she could finally show her cards, because she could say that Lucy told her.

Why didn't she say it earlier? Naturally, because before seeing the painting Meiyin created, even Lucy herself wasn't sure.

How could one just casually speak of things one isn't certain about? "Everyone, please stop for a moment; the channeling should be over." Just then, Lucy suddenly spoke up, reminding everyone.

Oh right, the channeling wasn't over yet! Her words successfully shifted everyone's attention.

Meiyin was clearly on the verge of collapse; her face was pale, the hand holding the paintbrush was trembling slightly, and the painting was covered in many discordant lines that seemed severed from the main subject.

It was like a strand of noise; focusing one's attention on it gave the feeling that even one's spirit would be sucked into it.

Is this what pollution is?

Yun Mu forced herself to stay alert, keeping her gaze away from those discordant lines.

Just being separated by the image had such power; she dared not imagine what kind of scene Meiyin was seeing while in the middle of channeling.

It is no wonder that channelers do not retain memories of the channeling after it ends; this is likely a self-protection mechanism of the body.

"I am going to wake her up."

Bishop Muse walked to Meiyin's side; he opened the Holy Scripture with one hand, while a glowing green light lit up on his other palm.

And just the moment before Bishop Muse was about to wake Meiyin, a profound sense of Fear suddenly lingered in Yun Mu's heart.

Even though the entire room was brightly lit by the Guard Hall's incandescent lights, she felt as if she were shrouded in Darkness.

Lucy's expression changed abruptly, her eyes flickering as she urged Bishop Muse to wake Meiyin quickly.

"Wake!"

There was no need for her reminder; Bishop Muse slapped the light in his hand into Meiyin's body.

Plop.

The next second, Meiyin opened her eyes, trembling, and the Paintbrush in her hand fell directly to the floor.

However, that heart-trembling Darkness did not dissipate; although it had lost Meiyin as a bright target, it turned and possessed Yun Mu instead!

An indescribable chill covered her body from head to toe, sinking deep into her marrow.

Her body couldn't stop shivering, and then, boundless Darkness blocked her Perception.

"Where is this?"

Dilapidated architectural ruins, and everything in sight was Scarlet.

A full moon that seemed to be dripping blood appeared in the sky; the scene before her was as if she were in a Dungeon of the Scarlet Path.

Yun Mu did not know where this was and could only walk forward without a destination.

Behind what should have been the gate of a ruined church, a field of flowers stained with blood-red roses appeared before her.

Patter.

Crimson blood welled up under her feet at some point; Yun Mu looked down and saw that her feet had been covered in blood.

Instinct drove her to continue walking forward, but she suddenly stepped into thin air, her body falling into a boundless lake of blood.

Greenish-brown thorny vines grew tangled deep in the lake water; Yun Mu felt her wrist grabbed by a cold hand, constantly pulling her downward.

She subconsciously wanted to resist, but it had no effect; she could only be pulled deeper and deeper into the lake.

In a trance, she seemed to see a figure.

A crown of thorns, blood-colored pupils... Her consciousness suddenly became very blurred; a warm sensation came from her neck and the back of her head, followed by a cold touch brushing across her lips.

【Affected by 【Scarlet Pumelas lv??? (Myth)】, your Path 【Scarlet】 points +80!】 【Your Path 【Scarlet lv3】 has been upgraded to 【Scarlet lv4】】 【Your Max HP +8, Attack +4, Spell Strength +4, Defense +3, Dodge +5, Speed +2, Precision Correction +6, Critical Hit +1%】 Yun Mu woke up from the hallucination, and the Game Panel's notifications immediately appeared in her mind.

The increase in Max HP made her body healthier, while Attack and Spell Strength increased her physical power and Spirituality respectively.

And the attribute of Defense... it seemed to increase more than just the toughness of her skin.

Yun Mu felt as if the bones in her body were also growing, becoming harder, and even her internal organs had received a certain degree of resistance enhancement.

Besides that, there was the sense of bodily coordination brought by Dodge, the accelerated reflexes from the Speed attribute, and Precision Correction seemed related to the control of power.

As for Critical Hit, she didn't feel anything.

Could it be the probability of an extraordinary performance in battle? She wasn't very sure either.

【You have obtained the trait 【Blood Core】】 【An organ 【Blood Core】 that can move at will will appear in your body; no matter how severely your body is damaged, as long as the 【Blood Core】 exists, you will not truly die.】

【In addition, you can store up to 80% of your Max HP in the 【Blood Core】; the HP stored within can be called upon at any time to restore your own health.】

【Note ①: The player will not die if the Blood Core is destroyed.】

【Note ②: When a player's vital organs such as the heart or brain die, they will still lose consciousness briefly until the Blood Core resurrects them.】

The Game Panel's information continued to flash in her mind; with an inexplicable palpitation, Yun Mu felt a blood-red crystal core, resembling a gemstone, gradually condensing within her chest.

"Is this the Blood Core?"

Yun Mu's palm stroked her chest, feeling the strange new organ within her body.

She felt that she could manipulate the position of the Blood Core at will; besides that, she could also inject the life force within her body into the Blood Core.

However, compared to researching this, she actually had more important things to do right now.

Yun Mu sat up from where she had been lying and discovered that she had returned to the room in the Frost Bank at some point. She had probably been brought back by Brenna and the others while she was trapped in the hallucination.

She didn't know how much time had passed... She looked at the clock hanging on the wall of the room—10:22. Ten-thirty, then.

She looked at the sky outside the window; only the light from the streetlamps remained on the surface of the dim street.

This was clearly not daytime, but evening.

At this hour, the meeting had likely already ended, and she had no idea what Brenna and the others had discussed.

Yun Mu had a mind to go to Brenna's room to ask her, but felt it would be inappropriate to disturb her rest at this time.

Therefore, she chose to summon Lucy from the Game Panel.

"You're awake?"

This was the first sentence Lucy said after being summoned by her.

"Mm, I'm awake."

Yun Mu nodded, then asked her: "What happened while I was unconscious?"

"Nothing worth noting in particular," Lucy said, though she still recounted what had happened after Yun Mu fell unconscious in great detail.

Yun Mu listened for the key points and soon understood the current situation.

First, after she fell unconscious, Brenna and the others were clearly startled; fortunately, after a careful examination, they found that she had not sustained any injuries, and her spiritual body was very stable.

Thus, they soon calmed down and brought her back to the Frost Bank.

Then there was the matter of the evening meeting; Lucy had taken her place to listen in.

Brenna explained what happened today to everyone in detail, and during this time, Lucy revealed that her own corpse was a Scarlet Anchor.

She did not tell Yun Mu how she had explained it; of course, Yun Mu did not care about that matter either.

The most important news, in fact, was from Lienie's side.

Brenna's Shadow Guard, Ai Yi, informed Father Chelman of Lienie's need for more samples, or even living subjects that had been infected by Parasitism, for research.

Although the latter stated that he could not obtain living subjects infected by Parasitism, he could give Lienie a few juvenile Parasites to use for research.

His meaning was very clear: he wanted them to use the juvenile Parasites to infect some poor soul to use as a test subject.

When Ai Yi obtained the juvenile Parasites in the afternoon, he even thoughtfully included a tutorial on how to raise the Parasites, as well as how to make the juvenile Parasites infect humans.

After a heated discussion at the meeting, everyone finally decided to find a death-row inmate whose life was of no consequence to serve as this unfortunate experimental subject.

The specific details were still up for debate, but finding a death-row inmate for the research was clearly set in stone.

Before Lienie could figure out how to remove the Parasites, everyone would temporarily avoid causing trouble for the Church.

This was not just out of a desire to save those high-ranking Church members who had been infected; most importantly, they hoped to have a means of rescue if they were infected while acting themselves.

Otherwise, fighting in a situation where one might be infected just by being grazed or touched by an infected body was simply too nerve-wracking.

Of course, this research had a time limit; regardless of whether it was successful or not, Yun Mu and the others would choose to act on the night of October 20th.

According to Bishop Muse, the Sacred Night each year was the period when the Lady of the Night's power was at its strongest, and acting at that time would be safer.

Of course, Land, as the Bishop of the Local Church, was clearly aware of this as well, so he would certainly be very cautious on the night of the Sacred Night.

But that did not matter, because no matter how cautious he was, according to custom, the Church was required to host a banquet for all the nobles in the city on the Sacred Night.

The purpose, of course, was to have the nobles pay money to the Church; that was the private explanation.

The official explanation was that it allowed everyone to receive the baptism of the Lady of the Night on the Sacred Night.

However, since the Church could not fit everyone in the city, only the nobles needed to be present; once the nobles received the baptism, the citizens under them would be baptized as well.

That was roughly how it worked.

In short, as long as Bishop Land did not want to openly declare to the whole world that he had betrayed the Lady of the Night, he had to hold this banquet no matter what.

And he had to participate in it! This would ensure that he remained inside the Church; when the time came, as long as they surrounded the entire cathedral, he would absolutely have no possibility of escape.

Even if the Scarlet intervened to save him, it would be useless, because as mentioned before, on the Sacred Night, the Lady of the Night's power would reach its strongest point of the year; a mere Scarlet Outer God would simply be unable to contend with her. Speaking of the Scarlet, Yun Mu suddenly remembered the Hallucination she had seen earlier—no, were those really Hallucinations?

The ruined cathedral architecture, the scarlet Moon, the roses growing in the Blood Pool, and the woman who pulled her under the water... The Crown of Thorns, the blood-colored pupils.

Yun Mu recalled what had happened in the Hallucination, her left-hand fingers involuntarily brushing lightly over her lips.

At that time, she seemed to... "Ugh!" Yun Mu suddenly flushed red.

When she was in the Hallucination earlier, she had been thinking about how to get out, so she hadn't thought much about it.

Now that she thought back, that feeling—it wasn't hateful. Whether before or after transmigrating, she had never experienced that kind of thing, and yet her first time had actually been taken away just like that, just like that.

So, could that figure be the Scarlet Outer God? Yun Mu's expression was somewhat strange as she looked at the remaining message notification on the Game Panel.

【Affected by 【Scarlet Pumelas lv??? (Myth)】, your Path 【Scarlet】 points +80!】 Scarlet Pumelas... Was this His name? Yun Mu did not dare to say the other party's name directly, only thinking it secretly in her heart.

Just by having brief contact with the other party, her Path 【Scarlet】 points had increased by eighty.

If she could have such gains every time, then... having it happen a few more times wouldn't be unacceptable. Her only doubt was, if that Pumelas really was the Scarlet, why would the other party do such a thing?

It was as if the other party were showing her goodwill.

No, no, no, she couldn't think like that.

Perhaps this was just an accident; the other party had initially pulled her into the Blood Pool, maybe they wanted to drown her—how could that be?

Yun Mu was amused by her own thought.

Her spirit had already been trapped in that Hallucination; if the other party truly had any hostility, finishing her off would have been a matter of an instant, so why go to such trouble?

"Ah, so annoying."

Unable to make sense of it, Yun Mu lay on the bed in frustration, yet the events that had occurred in that dream kept echoing in her mind uncontrollably.

The sensation remaining on her lips felt as if it had happened just a second ago, making it difficult for her thoughts to calm down.

That really was her first time, her first time! (End of chapter)