Chapter 211: Epilogue (1) |
In the dim light of the cave, the copper coin displaying ‘heads’ came into her view.
This is Professor Ma’s copper coin, and it seems to be his good luck charm.
Until now, it has never shown me anything positive. If it’s doing so now, it must be warning me of something.
It means that there is something very wrong with the Serpent in front of me! As I suspected!
She calmly picked up the coin and stuffed it back into her pocket, and she said calmly to the Serpent, “I suppose I could help you.”
“O’ Great Witch Who Brings Forth Disasters, I am grateful for the mercy you have bestowed upon me. I have nothing but the utmost respect for you.”
“You really don’t have to use that many prefixes to talk to me,” she sighed, raising a finger towards the Serpent. “Before I grant your wish, you must grant me your knowledge first! It’s not that I don’t trust you, but when making deals with beings like you, it’s good to be safe.”
…
It was silent for a moment, and she couldn’t help but want to swallow her words.
This Serpent is strong. If I expose it for trying to trick me, I don’t think I’ll be able to win the fight.
The Serpent silently stared at the Witch before it with its golden slits that glimmered in the dark cave. Its pupils would expand and shrink, revealing an unconcealable cold behind its eyes.
The psychic energy fluctuations radiating from the Witch made the Serpent a little fearful. Judging from how calm she looked, she must be confident in her own strength.
Plus, after experiencing the deadly battle just now, it had already expended most of its strength. It wasn’t sure if it was able to defeat her, devour her, and seize the slumbering power within the Witch for itself.
It continued to stare as it spoke into the Witch’s mind.
“Very well, you are being reasonable.”
The Serpent only needed to reveal relevant knowledge, it thinks. If it offered her knowledge without exposing its plan, it could lower her guard and gauge her way of thinking.
Plus, the complex knowledge that it bears could break the most rigid of minds.
“Just being safe,” the Witch whispered, wiping away the sweat gathered on her palms.
“Look into my eyes, O’ Witch. Look into it and feast upon my knowledge.”
She hesitated for a moment before raising her head, looking into its eyes like shimmering stars that danced around a black hole’s event horizon. The next moment, her eyes burnt with intensity, illuminating the area around them further.
Soon, her eyes dimmed, and she found herself in a hazy dreamscape.
The haze gradually cleared, and she saw a vast sea of stars before her. The stars endlessly morphed as they hovered around her.
These tiny yet lively stars were mystical and otherworldly as if they were alive with knowledge.
She swallowed and looked at the star right before her. It seemed to be filled with otherworldly knowledge that didn’t exist in the outside world. It was colourful and dreamy, and she reached out to touch it.
The next moment, the other stars around her vanished, and she seemed to be swallowed by the rich darkness.
Waves of incomprehensible murmurs entered her mind, followed by unbearable noise.
Like nails on a chalkboard, foam rubbing against each other, sounds of tables being pushed around…
She cringed heavily at the sounds, but her eyes widened as knowledge began to echo in her mind.
She could clearly feel the surge of information filling her mind.
Some of them were directions for making charms, not unlike her own charms; some were spells and potions; some were runic patterns.
However, they were foreign to her.
Attempting to understand the knowledge, she felt her soul being slammed by an invisible sledgehammer, and countless incomprehensible thoughts emerged in her mind.
She forced her brain to halt her consciousness and let the knowledge fill the crevices of her mind.
No. Not all at once.
I have plenty of time to go through it later.
Before she blocked off her thought process, she could see three different ways to make up for her own shortcomings.
Although it was all vague, it already made her feel that she had gained a lot.
Only a second passed as the Serpent passed on its knowledge to her, but she felt as if a century had passed.
When she found herself back in the dark cave, she felt intense fatigue, and it felt as if her skull was thumping against her head.
Jumeng was right. Ordinary people simply can’t comprehend foreign knowledge.
If the Serpent presented her with more complex, obscure knowledge, she feared that she wouldn’t even have the clarity to block out her own thought process.
I was right; this Snake was way too quick to share knowledge with me. It’s trying to drive me insane.
“O’ Great Witch, the Disastrous World Ender, I have shared all of my knowledge with you. How do you feel?”
“Not bad,” she said as calmly as possible. “Unfortunately, I already know most of these things. Still, I find some information useful, and I am grateful that you have decided to share it with me.”
To be fair, it wasn’t an exaggeration. She did find her potential areas of improvement useful, and to be honest, she could simply ask Jumeng for more information.
She forced herself to stay calm, gripping her robe behind her back.
The Serpent’s golden slits undulated with curiosity. Indeed, this Witch is the World Ender. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have known so many things, and she wouldn’t have been able to stay sane.
This made the Serpent glad that it didn’t act rashly, feeling ecstatic that it seemed to lower the Witch’s vigilance.
After all, if it possessed a core as pure and true as the Witch before it, it had a chance of reincarnating from the dead.
Yes, the Serpent did want to kill itself, walking through endless mountains and boundless seas, content with dying while facing a scenery that was foreign to it.
However, even a single speck of belief held onto it, refusing to let the Serpent fade away.
In the dark abyss, tortured by the manic, evil thoughts of the villagers endlessly Even a great god like itself would break.
I was right.
This terrifying Snake, prisoner to those villagers and their beliefs, a shadow of its former glory…
The Serpent thought that death was its best escape, but upon seeing a new ‘god’ enter its domain, it gave the Serpent hope.
“Well then, Great Witch. Could you help me remove the seal?”
“No problem,” she shrugged. “Shall we start now?”
“Absolutely. Once again, I would like to express my greatest respect and gratitude to you.”
And thank you for your core.
The Serpent revealed an abdomen that was wrapped in malignant tumours.
“No need to do all that. We are just making a fair transaction. It’s reasonable.”
No need to do all that because you were trying to kill me and backstab me! Stupid fucking snake!
She walked forward calmly, strolling forward with her hands in her pockets.
She grasped her kitchen knife hidden in the pocket, and its blade turned red as she willed her powers into it.
Now!
Her eyes suddenly flashed with bloodlust, and she used all her strength to fling the kitchen knife forward.
Like a shooting star, the kitchen knife arced with flames, piercing into the Serpent’s body.
The psychic energy imbued into the blade began to spread fire into the Serpent’s body, and its painful roar resonated throughout the cave system.
Roar!
And it could feel itself burning.
Meanwhile.
Gu Qianqian, while escaping, stumbled upon the ancestral hall, which stood proudly in the centre of a huge underground lake.
The lake was like a snake that entangled the little oasis. A platform raised the ancestral hall high up; its grey walls and black tiles were ancient and rough, carved with the unique etchings of ethnic minorities.
The system immediately urged Gu Qianqian to rush in. However, inside, they did not find any traces of the Serpent God. All that was left within was a pile of bamboo scrolls in a state of rot.
“Golden Silkworm? Flying Men? Zombie Puppets? Miasma Avoidance Pills? Urban Legend? Extermination Talismans? What… are these?”
Hearing the system mutter the title of the scrolls before them, Gu Qianqian whispered, “System, what are these?”
“Hmm… I’m not sure, but you can sell these in the Urban Legend forums for good money.”
The moment she heard that there was money to be made, her eyes lit up: “Isn’t that great? I can treat myself to McDonald’s every day! Ooh, I can’t wait for fried chicken!”
“It isn’t really great,” the system sighed. It could easily find substitutes for these spells on the bamboo scrolls. They didn’t have much use for them.
If there were any ancient, powerful spells that could make up for her flaws, that would be great, but the system was frustrated.
Because there was not a single one inside the hall!
The system cursed, but at the same time, a terrifying roar shook the foundations of the ancestral hall.
Heavy stones began to fall outside the ancestral hall, splashing into the lake and setting off turbulent waves, and the frightening sound of falling stones could be heard as they fell upon the roof of the hall.
Feeling the terrifying waves of energy that could only signify the blood of a corrupted god, the system yelled in Gu Qianqian’s mind, “Gu Qianqian! We need to leave! The pit is about to collapse. What the hell?”
At some point, Gu Qianqian utilised her powers to pack all of the scrolls using a torn curtain and leapt out of the hall in a single step.
From a distance, it looked like she was carrying a giant boulder behind her back, with another hand cradling the baby in her arms.
Money is power.
The wind blew violently in the cave as the rain seemed to pour down from nowhere as if a typhoon had appeared within the pit.
The petite Witch was caught by the typhoon, colliding with the falling stone as she yelled in pain, tasting iron in her mouth.
Even though the Serpent had exhausted most of its powers, the Witch felt that her own powers were seemingly insufficient to deal with its dregs of power.
She could no longer remember how many times she had struck the Serpent with her knife or she had been flung away by the powerful typhoon.
Her bones ached.
As she landed on the ground with a loud crash, she rolled forward and immediately rushed towards the Serpent once again, landing on its back.
Being afraid of dying means that, once she chooses to take action, she will do absolutely anything to survive.
Imbuing her knife with blazing energy and etching a charm into the tip, she stabbed the charm into the Serpent’s body as it erupted within its pulsing wound.
The typhoon blew her away once again, but she forced herself to regain her footing mid-air, dodging the lightning strikes aimed at her.
With each stab, she could see the Serpent’s struggle beginning to slow down.
She didn’t know why, but she could feel a cruel bloodlust rising in her heart, and her scarlet hair turned into a blazing white.
As pale as a blizzard, with the heat of a star’s core.
“Wait!” The Serpent pleaded in her mind.
But the Witch didn’t heed its pleas. She didn’t want the enemy to escape. Perhaps it would fake its death; perhaps it had a second phase; perhaps reinforcements would come to aid it; perhaps she would be convinced by its begging.
“Silence!” she yelled.
She rushed forward and twisted in the air, slicing a giant wound onto the Serpent’s back and slashing a hole into her bag, letting the remaining charms rain upon it.
“Fan the winds of flames and perish underneath my flames!”
Blazing pillars of fire erupted from her palm, and she pressed them against the wound, sending the spell deep into the Serpent’s body.
On top of the spell, the powers obtained from praying to Jumeng combined with the charms triggered a powerful, emerald-red explosion, and a shiny-black substance continued to flow out like a geyser from the wound.
The typhoon became unbearable, and the Witch fell to the ground, paralysed by the final struggles of the Serpent.
“Do you truly think you have won against me, Foul Witch?” The Serpent spat in her mind. “You won’t be able to survive my corrupted blood; when the time comes, you will regret not letting me devour you!”
“And you will be buried here. Forever.”
The Serpent gradually faded away into the storm, carrying its blood into its heavy wind. Translucent, grey figures emerged from its blood, and other strange figures in the darkness fled.
Not long after, a huge skeleton hit the ground hard, turning into ash.
Corrupted blood? She thought as she sat up with difficulty. Feeling sticky black blood staining her face, she felt waves of numbness that pulsed within her body.
The cave system began to shake violently, and with the Serpent’s dying roars fading away, the Witch could see the sinkhole above her, like a giant snake’s maw, beginning to close.
