Chapter 474: Ruins 18

The sky above the city was surging with wind and clouds; Magic condensed every thin wisp of water vapor in the air, accumulating into thick, heavy clouds above Obelisk Square.

A fishy-smelling wind blew past. Du Zhengyi tilted his head back to look at the ominous, churning clouds overhead, which looked like a pot of dark, viscous soup hanging upside down above them. He turned back; the little puppet was also tilting its head back, its brown pupils reflecting the churning cloud shadows, yet its face was frozen like a marble statue, showing no emotion, no reaction at all.

"Another high-energy Mage!" Xiang Qian said beside him. "He is creating a superstorm."

Du Zhengyi took a step back, maintaining a distance that would allow him to take the little puppet away at any moment. He could feel the Magic, and he could feel that extreme weather was about to appear; the wind was growing more urgent, the wind speed increasing with the rhythm of the minutes. All his senses were telling him about the temperature, the humidity, the air pressure, and especially the violent changes in air pressure.

"The air pressure change is too great," he said suddenly, reaching out to grip the little puppet's wrist.

"We must find that high-energy Mage immediately," Xiang Qian asked.

"It's too late!" Du Zhengyi shouted. The wind grew even stronger; just as he spoke, a torrential rain suddenly fell, instantly soaking them through. Amidst the noise of the gale and the downpour, even though he and Xiang Qian were standing at the one-meter distance of a Battle Mage, he had to shout to be heard. "The air pressure is changing too fast, the hurricane will begin within ten minutes, we won't even be able to stand, we'll be swept away immediately. We must leave! The ground is not reliable at all, we're going underground!"

"What?" Xiang Qian shouted, "Give me ten minutes, and I can find that puppet doing the casting."

"Don't forget there is an assassin here who can use Teleportation; he must be looking for an opportunity. There are other puppets beside the one controlling the weather; I saw more than one figure just now!" Du Zhengyi shouted.

Xiang Qian looked at the clouds overhead, hesitated for a moment, and shouted at Du Zhengyi, "How can you be sure the hurricane will start within ten minutes? How can you predict it down to the minute?"

Du Zhengyi looked at her, and it was a full minute before he shouted, "Because I once caught a deranged high-energy Mage, and the situation that day was exactly the same as it is now! My partners all died!"

As a Battle Mage whose work environment was extremely similar to his, Xiang Qian nodded immediately and shouted, "Say no more, let's go!"

"I'll take you by Teleportation." Du Zhengyi used his free hand to grab Xiang Qian's wrist and shouted, "Cast a Clearing Magic, balance the environmental parameters within a five-meter radius; I want a Balance Force Field. Add a Barrier Magic, five-meter range."

Xiang Qian nodded, and the power of Magic instantly swept out forcefully from her body.

"Five-second countdown; cancel all Magic on the second-to-last second," Du Zhengyi shouted the countdown crisply. "Five, four, three, two... one."

On the second-to-last second, Xiang Qian withdrew all Magic. On the final second, Du Zhengyi gripped her and the little puppet's wrists tightly and pierced into another space. He felt someone trying to cut in; that Magic tentatively touched him, only to be repelled by him. When a Mage is traversing, trying to cut in is something only a madman would do.

He jumped out of the temporary space, and the three of them appeared in a dim corridor. This place looked like a semi-underground building, with a row of narrow windows near the top of the wall by the ceiling. As soon as Xiang Qian stood steady, she immediately sent a dim Light Magic to the other end of the corridor.

"No one," Du Zhengyi said, turning his head to check the wound on the little puppet's shoulder. Traversing while injured often leads to accidents. The little puppet stood quietly, letting him pull open its clothes to examine the wound; its obedient and quiet appearance when injured was also extremely like Luo Qi. Even though he knew all puppets were quiet and submissive when they hadn't received attack commands, what kind of special reaction could you expect from a wooden doll?

"I remember this exam tests strategy," Xiang Qian said from the side. "This place should have restricted the use of many high-energy Magics, making our combat power similar to the puppets, using this situation to simulate the circumstances after we are trapped in the city by a large number of enemies. After a few days of complex street fighting, we should have been able to find some clues implying that what we were looking for was in Obelisk Square. Only after we arrived there would we discover the clues were false, and we had been lured into a trap. But now the difficulty of the trap has clearly increased several times over." "The trap is the puppet warehouse under the square; it was originally meant to randomly spawn various types of puppets, and the Sandbox would unlock corresponding Magic restrictions based on the characteristics of the spawned puppets. That is to say, whatever Magic the puppet is good at, the Sandbox will restore the protocol for that Magic," Du Zhengyi said calmly, his fingers brushing over the little puppet's wound, hesitating for a moment. "Mage Xiang, I remember your Healing Magic is rated very highly."

Xiang Qian was looking at the window frame, which was shaking violently from the gale; she turned her head to look at Du Zhengyi, then glanced at the puppet. "If he really is Luo Qi, then he is already dead."

"I know," Du Zhengyi said calmly.

If someone else had said her words, it would have seemed cruel and heartless. But coming from the mouth of a Battle Mage in a combat state, to the ears of another Battle Mage, it was just a normal and accurate conversation, not even bordering on offensive.

Xiang Qian looked at him for a few seconds. "Your pulse is too fast, and your breathing is too shallow; this is very unprofessional. Why haven't you completely shut down this part of your emotions? Grief is just like the pain of a wound; it can only be processed later. If I were your mentor, I would demote you. Even if I am not your mentor, I will state this in the mission report afterward. You even asked me to provide Healing Magic for a puppet; if I add this, Qionglin will evaluate your mental stability."

"I respect your professional opinion." Du Zhengyi lowered his eyes. Luo Qi's blood was flowing out of the wound continuously; the blood flowed too fast and too violently, causing a blood-red dizziness to appear before his eyes. "Mage Xiang, I apologize for my previous insolence. This is a private request; if you are willing to help me, I will owe you a private favor, and I am willing to repay it at any time. No matter how bad my personality is, my reputation has always been the best among the Battle Mages, right?"

Xiang Qian's hand reached over and covered the puppet's wound; the blood stopped almost immediately. She stayed for a while, and Du Zhengyi could feel a vigorous yet exquisite stream of Magic flowing from her hand into Luo Qi's body. He could almost see the body tissue being rapidly repaired, and the scent of the Healing Magic he was familiar with gradually wafted out.

"That's not what I meant," Xiang Qian said as she withdrew her hand, and she glanced at Du Zhengyi. "I'm not that inhuman yet."

"Thank you," Du Zhengyi said in a low voice.

The hurricane arrived at this very moment; the narrow windows on the wall shattered in response, and the walls of the entire building trembled, as if an invisible giant were trying hard to pull up this house made of building blocks.

Du Zhengyi didn't say anything more; he gripped the puppet's wrist tightly and then said to Xiang Qian, "Let's go down."