You Are Just a Sorcery Spirit

"Ah!" The instant the chandelier plummeted, Substitute yanked Lisi back. The square chandelier crashed onto the hallway floor right before her with a loud smash, and flying shards slashed her little feet clad in white silk stockings. Ignoring the minor scrapes, Lisi nervously looked at Substitute. "Are you all right?" Unlike her, Substitute would disperse immediately if it sustained even the slightest damage. If she was currently a helpless doll, Substitute was truly as fragile as a bubble. Substitute didn't respond, merely lifting Lisi into its arms and stepping past the shattered debris, fleeing down the hallway in silent, loyal retreat. Behind them, the aloof Black Knight pursued at an unhurried pace. It wore dense scale-armor tassets; a crow-feathered plume trailed from its ebony helmet, and its dark-silver steel boots thudded heavily against the carpet. Its stride felt like a blot of dark ink pressing across drawing paper. It wasn't particularly tall, nor was it especially burly even in armor, yet that silent oppression was enough to suffocate any prey. It brandished no weapon, holding only a book bound in black and silver—the Book of Gospel. When Substitute and Lisi passed a window, the Black Knight behind them flicked a finger. The glass suddenly shattered into a cloud of tiny shards. Had Substitute not clutched Lisi and lunged forward in time, they would have been caught in a rain of jagged glass. The thirteenth time. This was already the thirteenth "accident" Lisi had encountered. The instant Lisi saw the Black Knight in the bedroom, Substitute scooped her up and bolted outside. Unexpectedly, the Black Knight didn't attack immediately, even permitting them to run ahead a few steps, as though a doctor were gauging a patient's capacity. Once they put some distance between them, just as Lisi was beginning to wonder if the Black Knight had simply walked through the wrong door, the "accidents" began. And they came in a whole family pack. A crashing chandelier, an exploding fire extinguisher, shattering windows, falling plaster, splintering doors... This building housing the core members of the Sennheiser clan had abruptly turned into a hazardous death trap, riddled with jump scares at every turn. Just moments ago, when Lisi tried to dash toward the emergency exit stairs, she watched helplessly as a sturdy, thick wall collapsed with a roar, turning into a pile of rubble that blocked the fire exit—transforming the escape route into the greatest fire hazard of all. Compared to the stairs, the elevator fared much better: it had merely aged into smoking obsolescence, taking an early retirement. Obviously, the Black Knight didn't intend to kill her, but it had no intention of letting her escape this floor either. Lisi had only two choices: hide in another room and play hide-and-seek with the Black Knight, or jump out the window. Never mind that the Black Knight had already demonstrated an extraordinary knack for hide-and-seek; Lisi had experienced firsthand just a few days ago what it felt like to play hide-and-seek against someone holding a Book of Gospel—Yaxiu was truly shameless, spending Gospel points to cheat against a child in hide-and-seek. Lisi didn't know what to do. Though she desperately wanted to discuss it with her big sisters, when she spotted the Black Knight earlier, the sisters hadn't appeared in the mirror. At that moment, the Little Witch understood what they meant. If she wasn't mistaken, this Black Knight was after her sisters. They couldn't reveal themselves easily! Now it was her turn to protect her sisters! "Why are you chasing me?!" Lisi scrambled onto Substitute's shoulder and yelled back at the Black Knight. "I don't even know you, and I haven't done anything bad! Why are you doing this?!" "My foot got scratched and it hurts so much, and I banged my hand earlier and it hurts too, waah..." As she spoke, big tears fell pitter-patter from Lisi's eyes. She bit her lip in aggrieved misery and rubbed her eyes clumsily, smearing her face. Her hairband had been torn off while running, and snow-white locks tumbled over her trembling shoulders. Her nose stung with sorrow—the more she spoke, the more aggrieved she felt, until anger surged through her fear and she shook her fist at the Black Knight from afar. She had to act utterly innocent; this was truly a mission only she could pull off, one her sisters couldn't possibly manage! Faced with Lisi's interrogation and tears, the Black Knight actually paused to think, then pulled a pen from the book spine and began jotting in the Book of Gospel. Suddenly, a mechanical, monotone voice crackled from a loudspeaker in the corner of the corridor: "The white mist has completely cleared, yet you remain entirely unaffected." Lisi froze. Glancing out the window, she realized that the white mist that had blanketed Fanmula for hundreds of years had quietly hidden away at some point, and the tender night seemed to be searching for it. Though they had focused these past few days on searching for information about the Gospel Incarnation, this was Fanmula after all, so they had inevitably picked up plenty of intelligence regarding the city. Lisi couldn't be bothered to remember the various social impacts caused by the Beauty Mist, but she remembered one crucial detail: anyone staying in Fanmula for more than six hours had to undergo special treatment before leaving the dense mist area, or they would suffer the most severe withdrawal symptoms. Note that this didn't mean leaving Fanmula—it simply meant leaving the dense mist zone. For example, the intercity new district currently under development was a thin-mist forbidden zone that Fanmula citizens couldn't step foot into. Conversely, even if you never left Fanmula, as long as the mist's concentration dropped, withdrawal would seize you by the throat just the same! When reading the files, Lisi had thought it sounded horrifying. Ordinary people undergoing withdrawal almost all fell into catatonic stupor, their eyes blank, consciousness fading, and some even suffered incontinence. She had once asked Yaxiu how to solve this problem, and Yaxiu's proposed solution was to prepare diapers. That was when Lisi profoundly realized the limitations of a single-parent household—finding a stepmother had to be put on the schedule as soon as possible. Just then, Lisi suddenly recalled seeing several maids lying on the hallway floor earlier. She had assumed they'd been knocked out by the Black Knight, but they had no injuries on them, and all of them were vacant-eyed and drooling—a textbook match for withdrawal symptoms! No wonder the Sennheiser clan was so quiet. Perhaps everyone except her had already lost bladder control; hopefully they'd prepared diapers. ...So why was she completely fine? "So what?!" The Little Witch stiffened her neck and argued, "Can't it just be that I'm healthy and unaffected?! Is being healthy a crime?! Aren't you unaffected too?!" The Black Knight continued writing and sketching, speaking through the hallway speaker: "You said earlier that you were injured and in pain. Is that true?" "Could it be fake?!" Lisi waved her fist indignantly. "My hand is still bleeding!" Boom! The Black Knight suddenly pointed from afar. The ceiling above Lisi and Substitute instantly fractured and collapsed in a massive section. Falling stone dragged thick dust along with it, on the verge of crushing Lisi and shattering Substitute! "Get down!" Substitute couldn't speak; it only obeyed. It curled into a tight ball on the floor immediately. Countless chunks of rubble crashed loudly against the ground around it, yet not a single pebble touched it. Yet it wasn't truly unscathed. Drops of blood fell and spread across its face, mixing with dust into a filthy, sticky paint. It turned its head upward, and into its sight came an exquisite, porcelain-like young figure. Lisi spread her arms over Substitute. Resting against her back was a slab of stone larger than she was. The back of her head appeared injured; crimson droplets trickled down under gravity's pull, blazing a trail of blood through the dust-coated meadow of her white hair, drooping over her slender eyebrows, and pattering down like dewdrops onto Substitute's face. Her knees buckled slightly, her white silk stockings now tattered and torn, rust-red leaking from her wounds and blooming outward against the white silk like roses blossoming in snow. This fragile crystal child, seemingly so delicate she might shatter at a touch, now stood like an impregnable rampart, bearing every ounce of harm alone just to protect a bubble. "Take me away," she said. Substitute scooped up Lisi and bolted outward, narrowly evading the falling rubble of a secondary collapse. Lisi held Substitute tight, glaring at the Black Knight with eyes full of hatred. "In truth, you don't feel pain at all. Given your current injuries, you should have passed out." At this moment, resentment overwhelmed reason. Lisi shouted at the top of her lungs, "Go die, die, die! I'm not scared of someone like you! I'm not going to pass out! Waaah, I'm going to call Daddy over to beat you to death in a minute!" The Black Knight paid Lisi no heed, continuing methodically in its own monologue: "Originally, it was merely a suspicion, but now I can be fundamentally certain. Your so-called pain is nothing more than a sensation born of your imagination. Hormones and neurons cannot truly affect you." "Why are you unaffected by the white mist? Because you cannot imagine the effects of withdrawal." "Why haven't you fainted despite such severe injuries? Because you do not wish to pass out." "So long as you do not care or do not think about it, none of it exists." For some reason, hearing the Black Knight analyze her condition point by point, an indescribable panic welled up within Lisi. Suppressing the urge to take out her hand mirror, she gripped Substitute's neck with all her might, her fingernails digging in so hard they nearly ruptured Substitute, as if terrified that the Black Knight's next words would strip everything away from her. "What... what are you trying to say?!" Crash! Another window beside them shattered, and Substitute dodged the shower of glass shards with Lisi in its arms. Through the chaotic curtain of flying fragments, Lisi saw the Black Knight pen a line in the Book of Gospel, and the loudspeaker overhead delivered the aloof verdict: "You are not the master of this body, and so this body cannot affect you." "You are not even human." "You are just a sorcery spirit."