Chapter 638: Modes of Transmission and the Arrival of a Superstar

"Rare to see you so domineering."

Kali said.

"This village once supplied ninety percent of Shi Ying Town's mutton and wool before the Henry Farm developed, then stopped supplying after the Coral Bay was sealed and threats from the Duke of Purgatory became rampant."

Rod shook his head. "They probably rely on this special status, wanting a way out from me so cooperation can continue. They really think they're something."

He spoke without any reservation.

Striding into the village, the angry village chief and the burly man followed behind, their faces turning iron-green, with pallor and cold sweat gradually appearing.

Rod advanced along the direction of the mana fluctuation until he arrived before a wooden house.

Ignoring the farmer's obstruction at the door, he kicked the wooden door open with his foot.

Inside the door.

A woman hastily raised the quilt to cover herself; a middle-aged mage with a lecherous face had just taken off his tattered mage robe, revealing his emaciated upper body.

The middle-aged mage was greatly shocked.

He pointed at that farmer and cursed loudly: "What do you mean? Mage jump?! I kindly treated your wife's illness, and this is how you treat me?! Do you believe I'll blast you to death with a fireball spell?!"

Rod turned to look at Kali.

The Young Lady shook her head, her face full of disgust: "Irrelevant, a third-tier Ye Fa."

"Mage Lord, it has nothing to do with me! They forced their way in!"

The farmer wailed.

That Ye Fa looked closely, saw Lady Kali's breathtaking appearance, and instantly froze.

Then lust arose; with buck teeth and two mustaches on his lips, he was extremely lecherous:

"This elf is the source of the plague! Come, someone! Seize her!"

"This..."

The surrounding villagers gradually increased in number; seeing the three people in bright clothes, they hesitated to act.

"Do you want treatment?! If the cruel and unkind Rod of Coral Bay finds out your village has an infectious disease, do you think you'll survive?! Seize her quickly! I'll treat the illness!"

With these words spoken.

The villagers were swayed one by one, silently pulling out sickles and hoes.

Lady Kali smiled rarely, looking at Rod: "Cruel and unkind."

Rod helplessly spread his hands: "Do you want to do it, or me?"

"You can't come! You can't come! He is Rod! Put down the hoes, you damn fools!"

The burly man and the village chief who hurriedly arrived behind were greatly shocked, terrified out of their wits.

This is a killing star who drove away the Duke of Purgatory; these few villagers aren't enough for him to kill!

That Ye Fa paused for a moment.

The surging lust cooled down; only now did he feel the three people before him had terrifying accumulation of spiritual mana, solid and compressed, with an aura that, leaking even a tiny bit, seemed to carry an imagery of overwhelming rising power.

Without a word, he took a swift step to grab the staff on the bedside table.

However, the moment he turned his head, a fist the size of a sandbag instantly appeared before his face, coming straight at his nose.

"Waaah..."

Boom!

Blood mixed with wood chips sprayed into the air.

The wooden house's wall crashed open; the figure tumbled awkwardly in mid-air, his sunken face directly biting into the mud, leaving a long scratch.

Just like that, he was pressed headfirst into the mud, collapsed softly, and completely lost his breath.

Rod flicked the blood from his fist, splattering tiny droplets onto the ground, abnormally glaring.

He paid no mind to the screaming farmer's wife behind him.

He looked at the shocked and terrified village chief and others.

"Illness? What illness? Tell me."

One hour later.

In a certain dark mountain gully, looking at three heads dug up before him, with swollen limbs and grotesquely over-sewn corpses.

Rod frowned tightly.

Behind him stood the trembling, gray-faced village chief of Shepherd Village and some villagers.

Lady Kali, with a cold face, turned to look at the pile of bubbling, rotating petri dishes in the arms of Rat Girl Number Thirteen.

She sighed and voiced her worst guess: "It is indeed a beast-transformation disease, but the good news is... this beast-transformation disease has lost the function of blood-contact transmission. The bad news is, it has transformed into another, even more stubborn mode of transmission."

"Nightmare...?"

According to the village chief's description.

Starting from over two months ago, some people in the village began having nightmares; at first, it happened only every few days, and no one cared.

But later it became more and more frequent, even reaching the point of sleepless nights.

The inability to sleep and the evil torment in dreams gradually drove those people mad.

Starting from a disease of consciousness, it rapidly spread to the body, erupting into grotesque changes.

The villagers discovered it in time and, in terror, beat to death the neighbor whose flesh was still deforming.

Since then, it has always started with nightmares, then progressed to bodily distortion.

The village chief of Shepherd Village dared not report it; he believed in the protection of the ancestors' spirits and worried about retaliation from Shi Ying Town and Coral Bay, with whom he had had conflicts.

Even in the end, he preferred to listen to the words of a passing Ye Fa rather than seek help.

Rod rubbed his forehead.

He and Kali had spent a week investigating; they encountered many villages by the water, but none had such changes.

Is there something special about Shepherd's Village?

If you had to say so, they have a certain faith worship — namely the ancestral spirits of Etheron.

Is that relevant?

Hard to say, that's all.

"What are your thoughts, Lady Kali."

"Seal off the village first. This is also my first time seeing this kind of infection method."

Coral Bay.

Outside the city walls, the space was already packed with surging crowds. Countless fans held up lanterns and banners, with spell-lights and recording stones raised high above their heads, the flashes of cameras linking into a sea of silver.

The instant that familiar figure appeared on the stone-paved merchant road not far away, the screams exploded like a tsunami—

"Ahhhh — sis, look this way!!!"

"Layla! Layla! We love you forever!!!"

"Sis, kill me!!!"

The crowd surged forward madly, the human wall the guards had built swaying slightly under the pressure.

People stood on tiptoe, cheeks flushed red, some so excited their eyes brimmed with tears, frantically waving dwarf glow-sticks and cheering banners.

Like a being personally sculpted by moonlight.

—The cloud sprite Layla · Starwhisper had a lithe figure, the cloud-like wings on her back still, floating on half-tiptoe, exceedingly graceful.

She smiled and nodded in greeting, her slender fingers lightly accepting a few letters, instantly sparking an even wilder wave of sound.

Someone lost control and sobbed out his name, voice hoarse yet still refusing to stop.

This situation continued all the way until Layla · Starwhisper's team passed through Coral Bay's neat streets, only stopping once they entered the grounds of a luxurious inn called "Wind and Rain."

They had booked out this inn a week in advance.

Actually, originally they had wanted to reserve the Coral Bay Manor, but they heard that place was still under renovation and not yet open to the public (actually, the misprinted-body girls couldn't let it be known).

Bang.

The door of the luxury suite on the top floor of the inn closed, as if all the clamorous sounds had vanished completely.

"Haa."

An undisguisable weariness appeared on Layla · Starwhisper's exquisite face, and she collapsed onto the sofa at once, letting out a comfortable sigh.

"Layla! Your posture!" the middle-aged female manager reminded her.

"I can't hold on anymore. The Mage Guild's 【Long-Distance Teleportation】 is down, and we've been rushing along the road for two whole weeks straight. Camille, just let me rest a little, will you~"

Manager Camille sighed indulgently.

Still, she took out her notebook and flipped to the precautions page:

"Coral Bay is different from the other stable, safe places we've been to before. Not long ago, this place was only just set to rights, breaking free from the control of the dark elf warlocks and the Infernal Duke. So there are quite a few things you need to pay attention to, especially that underground king, the power behind the scenes, of Coral Bay."

"Mm-hmm. The Forester Rod, I know. I won't provoke him, that's all."

Layla replied lazily.

"It's not about whether you provoke him or not, but about how to let you evade his clutches. According to intelligence, this Mr. Rod is an ultimate enthusiast for non-human races."

"You mean he might set his sights on me? That shouldn't be, right? My father—"

"The influence of Lord Starwhisper naturally exists; as a Ninth-Tier, my lord's strength is also at the top. But Cloud-Weave City's influence on the surface is limited. The fellows below don't know their place, and there's always some reckless ones daring to make moves."

"Even though I have two Eighth-Tier upper-stage guards?"

"That person's strength can slay dragons and has repelled the Infernal Duke — he cannot be underestimated. Not only that, the threatening letter sent last month, have you forgotten?"

Manager Camille clearly cared a great deal about this, worry written all over her face.

Layla, however, was quite optimistic.

She waved her hand: "I just won't leave Coral Bay, that's all. That Forester Rod might be coveting me, but he can't let something happen to me in the city, right? And besides, my new song is stuck right now; I might have to go into closed-door writing right up until the concert begins."

Camille wailed:

"Still not finished?! You told me last month it was almost done! And you said you'd reveal the new song at the Coral Bay concert — isn't the deadline almost here already!"

Layla lightly covered her small mouth, vexed at having let the cat out of the bag.

She hurriedly changed the subject: "Speaking of which, the power behind the scenes of Coral Bay is also called Rod — that happens to be the same name as the savior who rescued me in Deep Water City that one time."

"Hmph! Anyone called Rod is hardly a good person."

Camille was successfully led off-track, showing utter disdain for the name Rod.

Last time, going to celebrate with the dragon-slaying squad in Deep Water City was a mistake — she nearly got blown up by a triggered magic trap, to say nothing of it.

The ones called Rod and Lily who were invited didn't even feel honored, and gave me a good dressing-down, so angry my old lady's chest hurt.

Layla, not understanding, blinked her pale-white eyes.

Whoosh—

A heavy, thunderous wing-flapping sound swept across the sky overhead, and the giant floor-to-ceiling window beside the room buzzed and rattled from the gusting wind.

Layla reacted quickly, immediately catching the figure in the sky.

A star-spirit mage sitting atop a gargoyle.

Her eyesight was extremely sharp, and her imagination and artistic sense were both top-notch.

Even the star-spirit with a deep-blue, semi-transparent body, she could spot at a glance as being beautiful — and the towering prominence on her chest went without saying, far more domineering than her own cool, jade-maiden, flat-chest image.

"Wow, what a pretty star-spirit. Huh? Wearing such short safety shorts under a mage's robe — is that the style at Dusk Hills?"

"Where? How come I can't see it. Layla, your eyesight is too sharp; ordinary people would be doing well just to see that the one up there is a star-spirit. I'd say Coral Bay's defenses are really poor — how do they not even know to set up a no-fly zone."

(End of chapter)