High School of Demon Hunting

Chapter 2986: Chapter 30: Yellow Flowered Cat (Part 1)

A gigantic black crow crossed the void and alighted on a vast, blinding white ice field.

Snow flew up in a flurry, mingling with the Magic Power surging from the crow’s body, forming a hazy mass of Mist. Sunlight fell upon that Mist, and it seemed to turn into a huge white egg with indistinct edges; the smear of black shadow within was already vague and blurred, making it impossible to discern the crow’s shape.

Inside the giant egg.

The black crow was curled into a ball, both wings folded over its belly, its head lolling to one side, its eyes drained of spirit. It was dead. Undeniably. Its feathers were slowly disintegrating one by one, and the Magic Power dissipating from it melted directly into the void, as though it had never existed in this World.

”—So this is Dao-ization!”

Behind the window of San You Bookstore, Yellow Flowered Cat’s fat face was pressed tight against the glass. It looked outward, yet in its eyes there were no young Wizards coming and going along the Pedestrian Street, only the reflection of that dead crow on the ice field. Its tone carried a trace of wistfulness: ”To draw enough Magic Power from the natural World to become a Legendary Wizard might take a hundred years, but to return that Magic Power to this World only takes a minute... or even less. If the old man were still around, I’d really like to ask him: are we refining Magic Power for the World, or has the World been plundered of its Magic Power by us... Ugh! How is it alive again?”

It sighed and pondered these profound contents that belonged to the realm of Philosophy of Magic, hesitating over whether to make some aphoristic notes, when it suddenly realized that the crow that ought to have been utterly dead had twitched ever so slightly.

As if it had come back to life.

But at once, Yellow Flowered Cat denied such a possibility.

”No, not alive, still dead.” It muttered, pressing its face even harder against the glass: ”The crow isn’t moving; what’s moving is the thing in its belly...”

Before the words had finished.

An arm smeared with pitch-black blood thrust out from the crow’s belly, then a second, a third, a fourth.

Four blood-drenched arms followed the wound, yanking hard. The dead crow’s belly was ripped open from the inside out, and two short figures tumbled and scrambled out of the crow’s guts.

Zhou and Zhu.

Or rather.

Nikita and the Faceless Demon.

The slit belly accelerated the crow’s Dao-ization, and at the same time, the black bloodstains clinging to the Female Demons’ bodies met the air and, like frost under sunlight, sublimated swiftly and vanished into the void.

In only a short while, the ice field was left with just two small, solitary figures.

Zhou stared at the vacant patch where the crow had vanished, saying nothing. In the silence, her figure slowly lengthened and grew taller, once more filling out that wide, blood-red robe.

”—I’m actually still alive!” Zhuzhu patted her chest, her tone tinged with disbelief: ”Lord Xiangliu above! I thought I just died together with you!”

She clutched at the sleeve of the tall Female Demon beside her, face alight with excitement. 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

Nikita reached out and stroked her head.

”We won’t die... we’ll go on living.” She lowered her eyelids and spoke very softly.

The little Female Demon happily circled around her, hopped a few times, then suddenly stopped in her tracks: ”—So what’s next? Where are we going? Are we still going to look for Thomas? This time just because you heard he was here, you rushed over and walked right into the Wizards’ scheme...”

”We’re not looking for him anymore.”

Nikita drew in a long breath and lifted her head to gaze at the gray, murky sky: ”I understand what he meant. The two of us together have a much higher chance of being hunted... When he wants to see me, he’ll naturally come find me.”

As she spoke, she shook off the black bracelet on her wrist.

The bracelet hit the ground and, catching the wind, stretched and grew; in an instant it turned into a black Flood Dragon with three heads. Coiling its body, it crouched upon the ice, looking up at the Female Demons ingratiatingly.

Nikita took the little Female Demon’s hand, leapt onto the dragon’s back, and pointed toward the north of the World: ”—Now, we’re going back to the Mist Ship!”

”Oh.”

The little Female Demon nodded just the tiniest bit, biting her finger, and finally couldn’t hold back her question: ”What about Zhou? Will she come out again? Is she actually alive, or dead?”

The black Flood Dragon swished its tail, shattered the eggshell condensed from Mist, and a gale rushed head-on toward them, tearing Nikita’s voice into broken, intermittent fragments: ”—She’s been in a bad mood lately, probably won’t come out... She’s still alive... just like me.”

Knock knock!

The light, jaunty knocking sound cut off the Female Demon’s last words.

Yellow Flowered Cat’s face, flattened against the window glass, did not move; it only rolled its eyeballs to look toward the door—and saw a figure it had not expected.

Creak!

The bookstore door opened just a narrow slit.

The guest outside took the chance to squeeze in.

”What are you here for? Can’t you see the big characters ’Temporarily Closed’ on the door?” Yellow Flowered Cat, in a foul temper, glared at the uninvited guest who had taken off his hood to reveal sallow skin and slicked-back hair.

”The Divination Group drew up a little plan some time ago, intending to bring Thomas and the others back.” The dean of Jiuyou Academy skipped all pleasantries and went straight to the point: ”But the plan ran into a small hitch... So the Divination Group added to it, wanting to first capture Nikita. And then it hit another hitch.”

The Flower Cat knew what he wanted to say.

But it had no intention of chiming in; instead, it deliberately disrupted his rhythm: ”Nikita? That little girl who’s stirred up trouble on the island several times? How exactly did you plan to catch her? Send out a Legendary Wizard and bully a child?”

”In matters like this, ’big’ or ’small’ is irrelevant.”

Old Yao looked with calm composure at the ill-tempered Flower Cat on the windowsill, explaining unhurriedly: ”It’s just that we’ve had too many things to watch over recently and no time to waste on children, so we assigned the Assistant Tutor Group to handle this task... by borrowing a bit of simple Magic logic.”

”Ha! Simple!”

Yellow Flowered Cat twitched its ears, its tone edged with disdain: ”...Although a child has been born, it is as if there remains an invisible umbilical cord linking her to her mother. Based on the Magic principle of mysterious aggregation, she will follow that cord to her birthplace, and the mother will also follow it to find her daughter. And finding the daughter amounts to finding Nikita. Truly a simple bit of logic!”

”That’s precisely where the problem lies.”

Professor Yao’s expression grew slightly more severe: ”The school did manage to locate Nikita, just as easily as we found Thomas... but Nikita once again escaped from the realm of ’impossible.’ I know you were also watching just now—from Teacher Zhou’s Dao-ization into a crow onward, this plan was once more out of control...”

”Nikita underwent Thomas’s modification surgery; she has crow flesh and blood in her body. It’s no surprise that she contaminated a concept in the midst of Dao-ization.” Yellow Flowered Cat muttered, dropping the pretense of playing dumb, yet still skirting around the heart of the matter.