Chapter 347: Bo He's Annoyance

"Yes, your guess is correct."

After a night had passed, at noon the next day, in a café in the Emerald District, Bo He rested her cheek on one hand while holding a colorful, exotic drink in the other, her teeth biting down on the straw as she spoke indistinctly.

Lin Xiaolu naturally had to honor the "treat" she and Bo He had agreed upon earlier, so on the rest day before the second assessment, they had followed online recommendations to find a well-regarded café. At this moment, the three of them were having lunch in a corner of the café.

"Although I could still find many excuses if I were to nitpick the wordplay, from the most fundamental relationship, I am indeed one of the people from the 'Black Ash Dawn' you speak of."

Lin Xiaolu had assumed the other party might not be willing to tell much of the truth, but she hadn't expected that halfway through the meal, Bo He would quite candidly lay her cards on the table: "Rather than that, do you two still need to ask me this? Could it be that you two aren't one as well?"

"Huh? Me? Black Ash Dawn? What kind of nonsense are you spouting?"

Lin Xiaolu only felt it was inexplicable, her voice involuntarily rising by half an octave. However, considering the café was a public space, even if there were no other customers around, she still tried to lower her volume and said with some vigilance: "When I first became a magical girl, I was almost killed by you people several times, okay? What on earth are you thinking, to believe I'm one of yours? If anything, I want to call the magistrate right now. What are you Black Ash Dawn people doing running into the Magical Kingdom?"

"Stop pretending. I, a Beast Child, have already laid my cards on the table, so why are you two Sacrifice Children still putting on an act with me?"

Bo He sipped her drink with an indifferent expression: "Just as you could sense me, any random Ash Soldier could feel the fluctuations of Remnant Beast magic on you two. Not to mention that in the eyes of a Beast Child, you are practically walking human lightbulbs; it's impossible to mistake you."

"You sought me out, isn't it because you wanted to ask about things related to the Beast Children, and whether the people above have any schemes?"

She spread her hands: "There was surveillance while we were in the labyrinth, which is why I wasn't willing to say much. Now that we've left the labyrinth, what is there left to hide? If you aren't even willing to admit this much, then there's no way to continue this conversation."

Lin Xiaolu was momentarily speechless.

It wasn't that she couldn't out-argue Bo He, but rather that the things revealed in the other party's few words contained far too much information.

Terms like "Beast Child" and "Sacrifice Child" were not things Lin Xiaolu or Bai Jingxuan were hearing for the first time. As early as last year, during the incident where the Fuli Academy in Fang Ting was attacked by the Black Ash Dawn, that Ash Soldier called "Bing Chu San" had already used these titles to describe Bai Jingxuan.

And by now, Lin Xiaolu and the others were no longer ignorant of the so-called "Saint Child Project," so they naturally knew that this series of titles were extensions of that project. It was just that she hadn't expected that by coming to the Magical Kingdom to participate in an assessment, she would actually run into the real deal.

"You're saying... you are that, what, Beast Child?"

Struggling to sort through her somewhat chaotic thoughts, Lin Xiaolu decided to start with the more important question: "Then could you first explain what these so-called Sacrifice Children and Beast Children actually are?"

"You really don't know?"

Lin Xiaolu's expression of confusion did not look fake, and Bai Jingxuan beside her also wore a blank look. It was clear that both of them lacked knowledge of these concepts, and this display finally made Bo He believe them a little: "Wait a second, are you both un-naturalized?"

"What is 'un-naturalized'?"

This question from Bai Jingxuan finally caused Bo He to lose her composure.

She wore an expression of "this is trouble," her face shifting through various colors, and she even stopped drinking her beverage. After a long while, she spoke again: "Un-naturalized, literally, means not having returned to the embrace of the Beast Master... or in other words, Sacrifice Children who haven't joined the Black Ash Dawn and are wandering outside."

"But generally speaking, 'un-naturalized' Sacrifice Children are often just ordinary people. Ash Soldiers will quickly find those children suitable to become Sacrifice Children, bring them back into the Black Ash Dawn, and let them learn and adapt to the power that is rightfully theirs."

"Which means, like you two..."

She pointed at Bai Jingxuan and Lin Xiaolu, stopping mid-sentence: "Not only were you not found by the organization, but you also became Sacrifice Children for magical girls, which theoretically shouldn't exist."

"Aren't you a magical girl too?" Lin Xiaolu asked, feeling somewhat strange.

"No, we are different from you..."

Bo He's expression was somewhat strange: "No, are you two for real? You really don't know anything? I, uh, oh my... I originally thought I had just happened to run into two Sacrifice Children left behind by Moth, and I was quite happy about it, but now this is trouble."

Clearly, she seemed to have mistaken the identities of Lin Xiaolu and Bai Jingxuan for some reason, to the point that now that she discovered something was wrong, she was particularly annoyed.

But Lin Xiaolu and Bai Jingxuan clearly couldn't empathize with her distress, so the two could only look at each other, feeling confused by Bo He's reaction.

Bo He's struggle continued; not only was she talking to herself, but she even began to wallow in self-pity, scratching her hair in a somewhat frantic manner:

"No, so can you two answer me first, what is your situation? Wasn't Moth in your city? Why did you actually become magical girls? Did no one manage that?"

"Even if you say that..."

Lin Xiaolu blinked: "It's not like no one came looking, right?"

"There were, and more than once," Bai Jingxuan added in agreement.

"That's exactly it, someone must have come looking, right? And then? Why didn't you follow them? Or rather, why did they let you go?" Bo He looked completely bewildered.

"Because they were taken out by Cui Que."

"Because they were taken out by me."

Lin Xiaolu and Bai Jingxuan continued to chime in.

"Ha... ha? Taken out?"

Bo He wore an expression as if she were listening to a tall tale: "Is that something that can be taken out? No, wait, if there are magical girls in your city capable of taking out Moth, it's normal that other Ash Soldiers and Ash Guards couldn't beat them, but that means..."

She clapped her hands together: "You two aren't Moth's Sacrifice Children? You were chosen to be magical girls from the very beginning? I'll be damned... I was wondering how Moth had the ability to hide two Sacrifice Children under the nose of Cornflower, it turns out she really didn't accomplish anything in your Fang Ting!"

Now she had completely figured it out: she had been too clever for her own good.

And the reason she was acting so broken down actually went back to before the labyrinth assessment began.

When she was initially assigned to Squad 629 and noticed the fluctuations of Remnant Beast magic on her two teammates, she thought she had discovered the hidden truth: that Moth hadn't died having accomplished nothing; although she was taken out by Cornflower, she had successfully hidden two Sacrifice Children.

After realizing this "truth," Bo He's mind became active. Although she really wanted to confess her identity to these two Sacrifice Children, they were in the examination hall at the time, and there were inevitably walls with ears. So she still managed to concoct a story, using the excuse that "I'm from the Central City and have heard about the Fang Ting affair" to fool them.

However, as a Beast Child, her control over Remnant Beast magic was far superior to that of a Sacrifice Child. As long as she wanted to, she could use a very subtle method to display her magic fluctuations to her two teammates on a small scale. In Bo He's thinking, since both of them were Sacrifice Children, as long as they felt her Remnant Beast magic, they would naturally know her identity.

As it turned out, things did not go smoothly at all.

Of these two teammates, the one with the codename Thin Snow did indeed notice her magic fluctuations, but it was completely different from what Bo He had imagined. When Thin Snow discovered her magic fluctuations, she didn't show any attitude of closeness; instead, she became even more hostile toward her.

As for the one called Bai Mei, she was even more of a fool, as if she hadn't noticed her magic fluctuations at all. And no matter how she hinted with her words, she didn't have the slightest reaction.

Bo He had been probing throughout the entire assessment, but she felt like she was casting flirtatious glances at a blind person, to the point that by the middle and later stages of the assessment, she began to get anxious and deliberately amplified the range of her magic fluctuations.

As it turned out, that was great—her two teammates didn't react, but she ended up attracting an Arrowroot.