Chapter 23: The Missing Psychic Beast

Luo Qi did not know when he had fallen asleep; a skilled magical force had lifted him steadily and placed him on the bed.

"Nice," he mumbled vaguely, "if I were a full glass of beer, I wouldn't have spilled a single drop."

He heard Du Zhengyi's low laughter; he was already half-asleep when the door sounded, knowing it was Du Zhengyi walking out.

He turned over, sinking into a deeper sleep. For a while, he just slept comfortably, but after a time, he heard someone singing again, like a girl's voice. He wanted to ask if Guan Xinyue had returned, but his eyelids were too heavy to lift, so he fell back into sleep, though this time he was half-awake.

He felt someone walk in and sit down beside him. The footsteps were too heavy, so it was not Guan Xinyue, nor did it have the familiar feeling of Du Zhengyi. This person picked up a book beside him, announced to himself that he would read to him, and then began to recite Grimm's Fairy Tales, but those tales were darker than the last. Drowned children, a little girl whose hands were chopped off by her father, children turned into meat paste by wizards... The gaps between the stories were intertwined with humanity's fear of Magic, and he vaguely remembered that it was the original version of Grimm's Fairy Tales.

He groaned in his dream, hoping this person would get lost, but the man's voice stubbornly recited on, eventually turning from stories into clumsy prose poetry.

"God said: You are brothers."

Ailinka said: "... and sisters."

"God said: Very well, then you are like fruits borne from the same tree; you share the same origin, and your roots suckle from the water of the same river. One of you was born on a sun-drenched branch, the other shyly hidden in the shade of the foliage, but both are equally sweet."

Ailinka sat high in the tree, the sun kissing her forehead, the wind carrying away the sweat beads on the tip of her nose.

"God said: Seventy thousand years ago you awakened and broke away from the tribe. It is a pity your numbers were not large enough, an unsuccessful species... destined to decline."

She stood up, her hand resting on the tree trunk, gazing at the distant wilderness.

Ailinka said: "Please accept our sacrifice; thirty-three Temples will sound their bells, we offer up the enemy's spears, for thirty-three million three hundred thousand days and nights we chant in unison, crimson paper kites fly over the Underworld River, the Lamp Lighter guides the way on the river, and the Ferryman has long since returned."

His Yajian continued to drift, the voice of the recitation fragmented.

His head ached terribly; he suddenly remembered who the man speaking was and snapped his eyes open. In the dark room, the man stood by the bed, looking at him sorrowfully.

He shuddered in fear, "Am I already dead?"

The man shook his head in grief, his expression compassionate, like a high monk. "I killed him, I had to kill him, I had no choice."

"Who did you kill?" Luo Qi asked, gasping for breath, but as the question slipped out, he vaguely felt he already knew the answer, and his head suddenly ached as if it were about to split open. He painfully forced himself to think, but there was no need to think at all; the answer was obvious. "You killed Du Zhengyi? Why?"

He struggled desperately, wanting to see Li Xu more clearly in the darkness. The man looked back at him unfathomably, his black eyes like the Abyss.

"What?" Luo Qi briefly thought everything he said was nonsense; his chest constricted with pain, and then he realized it wasn't pain, but anger and grief tangled violently together.

This isn't right... he muttered, and suddenly a huge sound shattered his world. He snapped his eyes open, the violent gasping making the wound on his chest begin to ache faintly again.

He saw a shadow nimbly slide past him, and then the curtains were ripped open.

Then, intense light seemed to explode in the room, and he covered his eyes and cried out in pain. The mattress rose and fell beneath him; someone had jumped onto his bed.

"Luo Qi!" It was a girl's mischievous scream, clearly stinging his eardrums, no longer the blur of a nightmare.

Luo Qi woke up, calling out irritably, "Why are you back again? Didn't I tell you I'd notify you via WeChat if there was progress?"

The room was silent for a minute, and a hand stroked his forehead.

"What's wrong with you?" Guan Xinyue lowered her voice, "Why is your complexion so terrible?"

She sniffed the air like a puppy, "The smell of a hospital. Are you hurt?"

Luo Qi remembered she was the daughter of a Doctor. He moved his hand away from his eyes, and large swaths of sunlight fell upon his face; the gloomy dream from just moments ago vanished. It was as if two worlds were switching in front of him, and he was like a computer that couldn't keep up, stuck on the spinning loading icon. Although the intense emotions had vanished, they had left a shadow behind.

He opened his eyes wide, breathing lightly, staring motionless at the dust dancing in the sunlight. The clearer this bright world became, the dimmer the world in the dream grew; he knew that in a moment, the details of the dream would disappear completely.

"Have you seen Du Zhengyi?" Luo Qi tried to focus on Guan Xinyue's face. She had combed her hair into a ponytail today, and her complexion seemed much better than the past few days; perhaps she could finally sleep.

She shook her head, "I received a WeChat from him this morning—sent from your phone. He told me to buy you this!"

She turned around, hooked a shopping bag from the floor, and showed it to him; it probably contained clothes.

Luo Qi sat up from the bed and steadied himself.

Guan Xinyue curiously and disdainfully tugged at the frog sewn onto his pocket, "Where did you buy these pajamas?"

Luo Qi ignored her, "I'm going to find Du Zhengyi; he should be finished on his end. What time is it?"

It was already half-past eleven.

Luo Qi grew anxious. If the Temple hadn't given a new mission to catch the mad dog, then Du Zhengyi should have returned; he had nowhere else to go here. If he had finished the mission himself, then it shouldn't be so quiet outside; it should have been chaotic long ago.

Sitting up made him feel a bit nauseous; he insisted on getting out of bed and walked to wash up, feeling dizzy. Guan Xinyue kept observing him, following him to the bathroom door, "Did you get bitten by a mad dog?"

Luo Qi closed the bathroom door in her face; his combat effectiveness was a bit low today, and he didn't even have the energy to talk back.

Guan Xinyue knocked on the door, "I'm serious! Did you go to the Center for Disease Control to get a vaccine?"

Luo Qi splashed cold water on his face, trying his best to ignore Guan Xinyue. He didn't believe she was giving serious advice; she was always trying her best to provoke him. Before he had even finished washing his face, Guan Xinyue suddenly called out again, "Ah, the boss is back!"

He hurriedly turned off the faucet, wiped his face, and ran out. Du Zhengyi's shadow flickered into the hallway at that moment. Guan Xinyue followed him with light steps; having not seen him for two days, she was no longer as afraid of Du Zhengyi as she had been at the start.

Before he could completely dispel the ominous dream, he realized that Du Zhengyi's expression was truly foul.

"What happened?" he blurted out, his nerves tightening again, his gaze unable to stop scanning Du Zhengyi up and down.

Du Zhengyi probably saw through his thoughts, and his expression changed abruptly. Luo Qi was starting to get familiar with him and knew that geniuses basically only had two operating modes: "The wise, silent machine" and "The impatient firecracker." His own neurotic concern must have been viewed as a major insult to a genius. The genius might have just had a slightly rough morning, and he had blindly triggered the critical condition for this genius "firecracker" to explode.

Luo Qi was no brave man; he subconsciously took a step back, fearing that Du Zhengyi was about to take his temper out on him and curse him out.

However, his cowardly appearance also reminded Du Zhengyi, who closed his mouth, which had already opened, and when he spoke again, his anger had subsided quite a bit, "Someone killed all the dogs." "What?" Luo Qi shouted in shock, seeing out of the corner of his eye that Guan Xinyue also gasped.

Guan Xinyue's expression turned very ugly, "They wouldn't have already eaten your dogs, would they?"

Luo Qi looked at Guan Xinyue in astonishment; judging by her expression, which looked like she was about to vomit, she was definitely serious. He felt her speculation might have some basis; after all, she surely understood the local customs better. "Can the villagers here deal with a Psychic Beast?"

Du Zhengyi looked at Luo Qi's expression with utter heartbreak, "She doesn't understand the situation, are you really that stupid?"

Luo Qi came back to his senses, finally getting back on track, and the hair-raising feeling from the dream returned. "Have other Mages come here?"

Du Zhengyi nodded.