Chapter 296

Tenisi was startled, turned his head to look around but found nothing, then used magic power to encrypt his voice and angrily cursed at the air.

Turns out you cripple are still here; I thought your lack of reaction for half a day meant even your corpse had stiffened.

Now the entire Inner City has descended into chaos like a pot of porridge, and the most burnt part of that porridge is the Sheng Guang Jiao Tang before us; naturally, the one who would actively go into this dragon's pool and tiger's den at this moment is Ms. Buluowa, carrying her IV bag onto the battlefield.

Buluowa let out a snort, her hoarse voice also filled with resentment.

I had originally planned to help Ji Ming protect his assistant, but seeing AdaiEr rush out of the Clinic, she abandoned me and ran off without looking back!

Tenisi didn't dare speak, after all, the other party had at most run off with half a disciple, while my own student still hasn't sent any news.

According to Murphy's Law, when a person feels embarrassed, they are most likely to have someone bring up the very topic they wish to avoid, so Buluowa's next words were:

"By the way, Ailinnuo, you must protect her at all costs; otherwise, if she runs into trouble, you old thing will lose your reputation in your twilight years."

……

"Speak up…… Good heavens, I don't want to hear something like 'Holy Light Knight, charge!' Damn it, you couldn't have really lost Ailinnuo, could you?"

Tenisi trembled as he pointed his finger, bombarding the densest concentration of undead with a head-sized ball of light, and speaking again under the cover of the rumbling explosions.

"How would I know she sneaked off with the rescue team…… I've been looking, I've been looking, don't ask, oh no, I don't know where she is!"

……

"Ailinnuo, how did you end up here?"

While Tenisi struggled to escape reality, trying to salvage his fading old face, Ji Ming encountered an unexpected person on his way to the City Lord's Mansion.

However, today's Ailinnuo seemed to have no energy left to maintain the persona of 'a noble from Guanghui Capital, devout follower of the Holy Light, essentially a good person'; her Holy Light Mage's standard armor was riddled with holes and tears, and several bright tooth marks dangled from it.

As for why she, with her armor in tatters, hadn't joined the undead horde, she came over smelling Ji Ming's presence to savor the fresh, juicy Chosen One's meat……

As a high-ranking noble, she claimed to wear standard armor like everyone else, but in fact she had an extra layer of specially crafted soft armor underneath; its strength and flexibility, boosted by her wealth, were already almost heaven-defying compared to a Talisman Robe.

Undead: "This skin feels kinda tight…… Ow…… What kind of takeout did you give me? Look, my teeth are all broken."

And upon seeing that Ji Ming, whose person bore not a speck of dust, had a thousand mercenaries clearing the way and the Heng and Ha Generals guarding his flanks, the disheveled Ailinnuo burst into tears of frustration.

In the future, laying out Guanghui will still need this immortal to pull strings and build bridges; although many places are unreliable, she is also a quite important noble ally, so Ji Ming hurried forward to comfort her.

However, Ji Ming had barely begun when Ke Li Si Ting furrowed her brows, walked over, and grabbed his shoulder.

"Hey, why didn't you tell me you still have an illegitimate daughter? Could it be because of this that…… It's fine, I don't mind this, I said before, we're just……"

Ji Ming couldn't help but suspect that this war horse girl's head had gotten stuck in the doorway of the prenatal education room her mother prepared for her at birth, due to her overly huge body, which is why she talks so nonsensically.

He quickly pried open Ke Li Si Ting's hand.

"Lady Alliance Leader, this is our Sheng Guang Jiao Tang's Priest Ailinnuo; don't you know her?"

"How come you're suddenly speaking so formally?"

Ke Li Si Ting stepped closer, lowering her head like a cat about to eat, frightening Ailinnuo so much she almost became a mouse.

"Oh, so you're Priest Ailinnuo…… you…… aren't as white as before, you're…… a bit dirty, so I didn't recognize you."

Ailinnuo: Nima QWQ.

Ji Ming still had plenty of experience comforting elementary school students, after all, the best way for college students to earn money through work-study is to rely on their academic credentials, conning those parents who want their kids to become dragons into hiring him as a tutor.

At first, Ji Ming received an invitation from a middle school homeroom teacher to tutor her daughter, who was in her senior year of high school; he actually did a pretty good job, but was fired after only half a month when the homeroom teacher discovered a love confession plan on the daughter's phone, leaving her sleepless all night.

However, the homeroom teacher's character was still top-notch, and she again recommended Ji Ming to tutor her students; this time he also did well, but after teaching for a month the students quit, because when his girlfriend came over to play games and saw Ji Ming, she started arguing about wanting to break up.

Ji Ming went emo, accidentally becoming a yellow-haired delinquent, but the homeroom teacher encouraged him to perk up, having her younger brother at the youth activity center find him a job; it's a fine, earnest young man who shouldn't let this ruin him.

Thus Ji Ming became a writing class teacher, mainly having children read books and write essays; if someone's child named Zihan couldn't write well and started crying from frustration, he would kindly persuade and comfort them, as long as he kept a distance from their mothers, he could work steadily.

Coaxing children and coaxing Ailinnuo are no different; the little girl's worldly savvy might even be less than that of a recently crammed fat-head fish, and she quickly recounted her whole ordeal to Ji Ming.

But after hearing that, not only Ji Ming, but everyone present felt a bit hard to console.

To uphold the so‑called noble spirit that doesn't actually exist but everyone pretends does, Eleanor decided to do something in this sun‑lit city's dire moment, so she quietly slipped into a knight squad and rode with them on horseback to rescue the townsfolk being attacked by the walking dead.

The walking dead and the townsfolk turned into walking dead exclaimed, "I swear, whose kind soul sent this canned meat? Or is it a big‑and‑small bundle tied up? Too polite!"

The knight squad was surrounded and attacked by the surging wraiths and walking dead; Eleanor, relying on her wealthy background, managed to escape, thinking that in this situation she probably couldn't go back, and prepared to find a place to cry before the walking dead could tear her apart bite by bite, then she would hang herself with a torn white cloth, her long hair covering her face, at the door.

Ji Ming: "Wrong, you should be looking for a crooked‑necked tree… ah, you actually found one."

Eleanor:???

As it turned out, she had even prepared a handkerchief, was working up her emotions, when she suddenly noticed that all the strange occurrences around her seemed to be drifting toward the church, so she plucked up her courage and went to a high place to take a look.

Then she realized, good grief, that side was completely sealed off, with crackling holy light flashing and magical explosions erupting nonstop—even the king's celebration at the Royal Capital's autumn harvest festival wasn't this lively.

The bad news is that the church is now completely inaccessible unless one is skilled in elf‑step technique and has magical assistance, allowing one to parkour past the endless stretch of buildings.

The good news is that the density of the strange phenomena around has sharply dropped, so she can sneak off to other places.

Her first thought was to flee, but seeing that the isolation barrier had been fully activated, the Inner City had become a dead‑end with no exit, leaving no way to escape.

Her second thought was to call for help; although everyone in the church was trapped, Ji Ming the Divine Chosen was still outside, and finding him would count as linking up with her comrades.

However, his current whereabouts are the mercenaries' lair, which is never a good place to go at any time, and Ke Li Si Ting is obviously pursuing Ji Ming the Divine Chosen, so she will surely protect him, whereas I'm not so sure……

Thinking of this, a scene from a novel suddenly popped into her mind, except the characters had been automatically replaced.

【"Hey, my beloved Divine Chosen, you're not usually so arrogant, so why do you become so meek when disaster strikes?"】

【"I… I just want to survive… I'm already like this; if you're satisfied with this, then that's enough, right?"】

【"Hah, interesting man, you can't still be holding onto fantasies now—listen, let go…"】

Stop!!!

Ji Ming let out a startled cry, cutting off Eleanor's increasingly excited description.

"No, if I don't speak up to interrupt you, are you planning to just kill off this book? Can we skip this unnecessary psychological narration?"

Ke Li Si Ting: "She's not talking about this, which is pretty good… okay, okay, although I don't really know you, but remember to tell me the details of this part later."

Thus Eleanor found herself in the same predicament as the mercenaries—every solution she thought of turned out to be no solution at all, and she lacked a confident Divine Chosen to help her make decisions.

So, if it were Father, Teacher, or Ji Ming the Divine Chosen in this situation, what would they do……

She swung the noose rope around a few times, and as she was about to climb the wall she suddenly had an epiphany—her mind cleared, her intelligence seized the high ground, and, as if Ji Ming had possessed her, she came up with a plan that was both remarkably bold and utterly crazy.

——You steal from me, then I'll steal Ning!

The solution to the previous zombie plague was to directly rush in and destroy the teleportation gate; this time we can classicly replicate it, taking advantage of them mobilizing their entire nest to surround the church, heading to the lord's manor that previously emitted strange purple light, and in one go blast this group of weird old homes into the sky.

As for whether it succeeds or not, she no longer thinks about it; dying on the road to save the world is anyway better than ignominiously hanging herself here—this is the glorious ending a noble should have, or put another way, even if she hangs herself, she wants to hang herself at the enemy's doorstep; I'll die of spite and take him with me!

Thus Eleanor embarked on this long journey of stealing homes, dodging east and west along the way, danger at every turn, escaping death many times, and with great difficulty finally arrived here, only to see Ji Ming chatting and laughing, under the protection of a large group of mercenaries, as if on a spring outing in the city.

She felt as if she had become a court jester in a daze, lacking only an extravagant costume.

"Well... at least you're still brave, worthy of praise!"

Acting rashly is indeed foolish, but if someone can bulldoze their way through all the way, then it's merely a victory of luck.

Destroying the teleportation gate will inevitably be a fierce battle against superior numbers; even if Ji Ming is ferocious, he cannot fight alone, so bringing this magic artillery platform is definitely the right choice.

However, he soon realized that Eleanor's ability to arrive here unharmed might not be due to luck alone; at least the proportion of her wealth-based ability is absolutely far greater than he imagined……

Because not long after setting out again, she beside him pulled out a rather compact, imaginative-looking monocular and scanned the surroundings; after looking around, she pointed in another direction.

"There's a surveillance demon ahead; let's detour around it and go this way!"

The so-called surveillance demon is actually of the same kind as the eye demon; both are a large, Cassie-lens-like eye floating in midair, but because its vision is better, it can transmit information in real time via a mental network, yet it is not good at combat; they usually exist as the external eyes of the aberrant forces.

Its strategic significance needs no elaboration, but precisely because of this, they have become a hot asset on our side of the battlefield and a bitter enemy on the opposing side; their extremely high attrition rate means that no matter how they are bred, their numbers remain consistently low.

Therefore, even though the Wendigo places great importance on this battle and has equipped the three councilors with many surveillance demons, they can only be stationed at a few relatively important points in Sunlight City, such as near the teleportation gate, near the Sheng Guang Jiao Tang, and at some major crossroads.

As for other places, they save wherever possible; for instance, Suo La pats her chest and promises to make this group of Deep Forest people have a mercenary base with no return, and therefore they did not deploy surveillance demons there.

Thus we can only say their party's luck wasn't bad either; after traveling for so long, just as they were about to enter the surveillance range, they encountered Eleanor, who possesses anti-reconnaissance abilities.

Acting rashly by clearing eyes is no different than startling the snake; therefore they chose to detour the whole way, only letting Kristin use an ordinary spear to perform long-range sniping when they encountered eye positions that could not be detoured.

And as they wound their way step by step toward the lord's manor, the old lady who had descended from the sky onto the battlefield had already gone berserk.

Unlike her usual lethargic self, who only sits down when there's nothing to do unless she's trying to hit Ji Ming, today Buluowa is literally a lively dragon and vigorous tiger.

The withered wood long spear in her hand rapidly grew under magical stimulation, turning into an exaggeratedly long dragon spear; thereafter every Ping A is an AOE, and every heavy slash is a cleave.

All this power comes from the canister on her back, filled with the SpiritGathering Liquid that Ji Ming gave her; after installing a medical circulatory system, the liquid continuously feeds into her body through the needle, letting her maintain vigorous vitality and inexhaustible strength, so that even a powerful curse cannot offset it.

This outfit truly makes Titans fall silent, elders tear up, and even Ben exclaims 'professional!'

The two super-powered elderly women rely on various large-scale damage heavy punches to strike, clearing the aberrant armies area by area; the mindless zombies keep foolishly filling positions as cannon fodder, but the somewhat sentient skeleton undead are genuinely frightened by the blows.

The skeletons clatter backward, holding their companions' remaining limbs and squawking wildly.

"Ahhh, these Holy Light dogs have gone mad!"