High School of Demon Hunting

Chapter 1255: Chapter 2 Sleepwalking

In the morning, when he left the house humming a tune and singing a song, the sunlight was so bright and life was so beautiful.

In the evening, when he returned home, the warm breeze was gentle, and the world hadn’t changed, but his state of mind was utterly different.

In just a single day, so much had happened, and he learned too many deep secrets. Even though he now had a reconditioned mind, Zheng Qing still felt it wasn’t quite sufficient—perhaps precisely because the mind had been refurbished, and he wasn’t quite used to it yet.

Anyway, following Yellow Flowered Cat back to school, finding the dormitory, climbing onto his bunk, and burying his head in the pillow—all throughout this process, Zheng Qing’s mind felt numb.

It wasn’t a blank slate, nor was it too heavy with thoughts, just wooden.

Perhaps a good sleep would fix it, he thought simply. The young cost student drank a tranquilizer, donned an eye mask, and forced his thoughts to slowly sink down, reluctantly entering a dream.

In his sleep, he seemed to hear the earth-shaking roars and the deep explosions; he seemed to see the sky filled with red light and an endless white world.

Then he woke with a start from his sleep.

The blinding sunlight shone through the glass window and directly onto his face, making the young wizard moan lowly,

”...does today’s sunlight cost nothing...”

”Whether sunlight costs money, I don’t know, but you should start saving some for yourself,” Xin Fat Man’s familiar voice sounded from behind Zheng Qing, startling him.

He turned his head around with great effort, and immediately, a greasy, round, fat face squeezed into his field of vision.

The two faces were almost touching each other.

”Fuck!” the young cost student exclaimed in surprise, his body instinctively leaning backward, hitting the desk behind him hard: ”Fat man, who are you scaring?! Can you not suddenly hide behind someone okay?!... Ow! That hurts like hell!!”

The desk’s hard edge jabbed into his bones, making a cringe-inducing collision sound. Zheng Qing felt like his ribs had broken.

Xin Fat Man looked at him with a sense of grievance.

”I’m scaring you?” he pointed his stubby finger at the tip of his own nose, the strong sense of resentment in his tone bursting forth: ”You were sleepwalking, drawing talismans above my bed with red eyes all night long, did I say anything?! I’m scaring you? You scared yourself, I’d say!”

Zheng Qing paused for a moment, then realized that he wasn’t on the bed, but was sitting at the desk in his pajamas.

On the desk, a wilted daisy was slanted in a vase. Below the daisy, Fat Cat curled up, resting its head on its paws, curiously looking at the young wizard; little Sprites clung to Fat Cat in bunches, watching their owner with concern.

Across the table, Doctor Xiao sat holding a notebook, staring at him motionless; not far diagonally above, Dylan’s head drooped over the edge of his coffin, also staring at him eagerly.

From behind him, Xin Fat Man’s sad accusation came: ”... I already spent a whole day editing drafts, which was hard enough, and yet I still couldn’t get a good sleep at night... Do you know you look like an evil spirit when you’re sleepwalking? You shouldn’t scare people like that!”

”Scariest than a ghost.” Dylan spoke with certainty: ”I’ve seen many malicious spirits, they’re mostly just gross... but not as scary as that.”

Zheng Qing swallowed a small gulp of saliva.

He felt he needed to sort things out.

”So, you’re telling me that I was sleepwalking last night?” The young cost student stood up, but felt a bit dizzy and immediately sat back down, finally clearing his thoughts a lot: ”... so I was doing things with my eyes open, without being conscious?”

The three roommates nodded in unison, like little chicks pecking at grains.

”...I didn’t say anything weird, did I?” he quietly confirmed.

Again, the roommates shook their heads together.

Zheng Qing let out a sigh of relief—he almost thought he had said some terrifying dream talk—he certainly did not want to be seen as a freak by his companions on the first night they learned the truth.

”Sleepwalking is nothing to be scared of,” said the young cost student, waving his hand dismissively with an expression that read ’you’re making a mountain out of a molehill’ ’don’t mind it’: ”Just drawing a talisman... Have I ever told you, when I was a kid, I sleepwalked and drew over a thousand talismans in one night?”

Xiao Xiao coughed lightly, interrupting the young wizard’s self-consolation.

”If it was merely drawing a talisman or writing a spell, no one would say anything,” he said, pointing to several small piles of ashes on the table as a reminder: ”The key is that what you wrote wasn’t ordinary spells, and what you drew weren’t ordinary talismans.”

Zheng Qing looked intently.

The gray ash looked like little mounds, big and small, leaving ugly scars on the tabletop. Beyond these ’mounds’ lay Zheng Qing’s Law Book, tightly closed.

”Last night, out of the blue, you got up, didn’t turn on the light, lay down at the desk, and started scribbling away,” Xiao Xiao went on to describe without waiting for Zheng Qing to ask:

”Just with ordinary cinnabar ink, Yellow Paper, and a brush, you drew common Calm Heart Talismans. But after drawing each one, you’d set it ablaze... as if the talisman papers couldn’t withstand the force of the pen or bear the infusion of magic power.”

As he spoke, Xiao Xiao also pointed to those smaller ’mounds’ on the desk, indicating that they were the burnt talisman papers:

”After destroying a dozen or so talisman papers, you seemed a bit angry and took out a Law Book from the Grey Cloth Bag and started to copy spell formulas onto it... At first, you used the soft-cover Law Books provided to cost students by the school, and the pen you copied the spells with was a regular Feather Pen. But just like those previous talismans, halfway through copying, the Law Books would start smoking and turn to ash on their own.”

He pointed to those larger ’mounds’ on the desk:

”You burned through five or six Law Books—I reckon you don’t have a single spare left in your bag now—and it was only with your own Law Book that you managed to copy anything at all, and barely at that.”

Xin Fat Man chimed in emphatically, ”While copying, your law book kept glowing and making ’creak-creak’ noises, as if it were going to explode at any moment... Do you think we dared to sleep under those circumstances?”

”It’s quite possible to wake up and find nothing left of oneself but a soul floating amongst the ashes,” Doctor Xiao added darkly.

”Coffins are not safe either,” Dylan remarked, with a sense of shared dread.

Zheng Qing looked carefully at his companions and, unsurprisingly, saw deep bags under their eyes.

The young cost student laughed awkwardly and reached for his Law Book, ”What spell did I copy inside... You guys got scared, ha, haha...”

As soon as the Law Book was opened, Zheng Qing caught a glimpse and then quickly snapped it shut again.

In that instant, he saw numerous complicated and profound Spell Formulas rolling within the pages of the Law Book like living things, all emanating an eerie, dark red light.

Zheng Qing could guess with his toes that those Spell Formulas had something to do with Forbidden Curses.

Looking up, he just caught Doctor Xiao slowly retracting his arm.

”I was just about to remind you that Law Book couldn’t be opened,” Xiao Xiao said, adjusting his glasses, a look of considerable curiosity on his face: ”But I didn’t think you could actually open it... That makes sense, though, since it’s your own Law Book, and you copied the spells yourself... What did you just see, what spell is in there?”