v<o)】
【√ Grow up folowing the five great princibles, don't go to skool on an empty tummy, when the wether is good shai the quilts, watch out for veehickles when you cross the road, don't reley on other peeple's strenth, play barefoot on the ground, and then, become evrybody's light!】
Line after line of writing riddled with wrong characters, string after string of adorable emoticons, and bright red checkmarks lined up one after another.
"Who wrote this?" Fang Xiaoxia tilted her head back to look, a mutter rising in her heart. "Where did all these typos come from? And they're weirdly good at acting cute..." The more she looked, the more familiar it seemed. Something strange stirred in her, as if an extremely distant memory were slowly waking from the depths of her mind. Soon, as the pages turned, a crayon picture tucked into the notebook appeared.
It was a crayon portrait of a person, the strokes childish: round glasses, a school uniform, twin ponytails.
A heavier familiarity struck her, and her heart gave a lurch. Her gaze moved upward, and sure enough a line of large characters at the top met her eyes.
"Forever Number One!"
Beside the big characters, someone had scrawled a large signature in crayon, the strokes childish and crooked, though the ink had long since faded and dried. Those three characters were unmistakably—
"Fang Xiaoxia"!
Darkness swam before Fang Xiaoxia's eyes.
She remembered. She remembered all of it...
Wasn't this her dark history?!
A homework assignment from kindergarten. The person little Fang Xiaoxia had wanted to become...
The girl nearly covered her face.
This was far too cursed. A glowing thing that seemed to be some divine artifact had suddenly appeared over her head, and when she flipped through it, it turned out to be her childhood homework, wrong characters packed in a row—and on it a stick-figure self-portrait she had drawn, crooked eyes, slanted mouth, big head and tiny body?
Not even dreams went this far.
But...
What were these red checkmarks?
Fang Xiaoxia's eyes were blank with confusion.
Had she checked them?
Rustle!
The notebook turned another page.
After all, the notebook held only three or four pages, the writing all in huge characters, so it quickly reached the last page.
A brilliant little red flower came into view, like a child's face blooming into a great big smile.
It clashed with the yellowed paper. The vivid red ink showed no trace of fading at all.
...Where had this little red flower come from? Why didn't she have any memory of it?
Fang Xiaoxia blinked twice.
On the last page, above the little red flower, there was another passage clearly different from the other "goals."
"Fang Xiaoxia, you must become a stong grown-up!"
Before this line, there was no red checkmark like the others.
But at this moment every stroke of the passage was outlined in light. Dazzling radiance burst forth, and the whole notebook hummed. Bai Zhou's gaze slowly drew away from the little red flower.
The glowing characters caught his eye. In his heart, he understood, if only dimly.
Sure enough...
It was just as he had thought.
Because Fang Xiaoyan had never been able to fulfill this wish in Fang Xiaoxia's place, the notebook had never been able to complete itself. Until this moment.
The multicolored radiance seemed to have become whole. That gradual fading with the passage of time vanished. The light on the notebook could sustain itself.
A constant quantity of light poured out, flowing ceaselessly over Fang Xiaoxia.
Fang Xiaoxia's eyes reflected the brilliant colors, like a dreamlike aurora sweeping the night sky. Extraordinary color filled her gaze. She raised a hand, wanting to touch the light before her, yet too wary to dare touch it.
The girl was bewildered by it, but Bai Zhou knew the meaning behind this.
Her parents' fulfillment of her, and their departure, had let Fang Xiaoxia, finally facing reality, become a strong grown-up overnight.
Although Bai Zhou could not know the path her heart had traveled, watching the struggle on her face just now, he could vaguely guess some of it... Fang Xiaoxia had grown up. She had become a strong grown-up.
The wish from when she was a little girl was fulfilled.
It was also the same as Fang Xiaoyan's "last words" being completed.
And so the notebook—or rather, Fang Xiaoyan's main body—arrived at its complete form.
From now on, Fang Xiaoxia would at least no longer be affected by the Major's soul-summoning.
But just as with the Exam King's school uniform before its metamorphosis—helping Bai Zhou slip into Yuanmeng Middle School in the Reflected Ruin Realm had only been an added extra effect; its power to beguile, and its enslavement of wronged souls, were where its true nature lay—
shielding Fang Xiaoxia from soul-summoning was only a special resonance between the notebook and Fang Xiaoxia, this "main body."
Its true function was only now opening toward Bai Zhou.
The corresponding knowledge surfaced in his mind.
"Somewhat unsurprising, but still a pleasant surprise..."
Having digested this knowledge, a mutter rose in Bai Zhou's heart.
Just as with the Exam King's main body, where that school uniform's abilities were more or less the same as the abilities the Exam King displayed.
As the "anomaly" standing opposite the Exam King, the main body Fang Xiaoyan had left behind—
this notebook's ability let its user influence other people's emotions and turn them positive and aspiring, and through encouragement make them fiercely focused and keyed up, as if pumped full of adrenaline.
It suddenly reminded Bai Zhou that he also had a Totoro backpack that could absorb other people's worries.
Shoulder the backpack, pick up the notebook, and he could practically mask his face and play the Happy Superman.
But as Bai Zhou knew—people like this often had another name in the stories of Wancheng.
Shaman.
The sort of old wizard who could sing a war song and set his green-skinned underlings' beast blood boiling so they were all but invincible, skull trophies clinking all over him, more of them than the crunchy bones an ordinary person had ever eaten.
Simply put, it encouraged morale, making people more focused in battle, fiercer, and unafraid of death.
Bai Zhou saw at a glance what this ability could do in actual combat.
Honestly, it was a very good and practical ability.
It was only a pity that those who appeared before Bai Zhou in the form of an army were usually enemies. Standing at his side, there were only the Gem Witch and a Fang Xiaoxia who would have trouble catching so much as a chicken.
"Bzz."
Sensing the notebook's completion, the thing Bai Zhou had most looked forward to appeared.
The school uniform in its metamorphosis stage, which he was digesting, produced a resonance.
But for some reason, they showed no intention, for the time being, of fusing or linking.
Only two stretches of imagery flowed out, spliced together, and were slowly cast into the depths of Bai Zhou's mind, surfacing and drifting like a revolving lantern. As he watched, Bai Zhou's brows knit tight, and he stood silent where he was.
Because the spliced images flowing into his mind were complex and broken.
But from these broken images, Bai Zhou faintly glimpsed the tip of the iceberg of certain key information, and from that could trace a few things back to their source. They concerned the first birth of Fang Xiaoyan and the Exam King, and also what was special about Fang Xiaoxia—for instance, the reason she looked the way she did now, and why the Major had fixed his attention on her...
In this moment Bai Zhou felt that even if the notebook had not been completed, and could not be used—
just obtaining these clues meant the trip had not been in vain.
Thinking this, he turned his head toward Crow and Fang Xiaoxia.
About this matter, he needed to ask Fang Xiaoxia and cross-check it against what she knew, and then talk it over carefully with Crow...
"Knock! Knock knock knock..."
Amid the tossing wind and rain, the window was suddenly tapped, lightly.
Just then lightning flashed. A bright bolt split the pitch-black rainy night and lit the black figure hanging upside down in the dark beyond the window.
The uninvited guest's shadow was stretched long by the lightning, like a bat with its wings spread, and like a great spider dangling upside down from a thread.
Falling into the eyes of the people in the room, the scene was extraordinarily horrifying.
Fang Xiaoxia couldn't help a shiver.
But Bai Zhou blinked twice.
"Gem Witch? Why are you showing up like this... It's a little scary."
The window was opened.
Damp wind swept in, carrying dense rain.
The woman outside hung upside down, the rain stayed half a meter away all around her of its own accord.
Her two long legs were wound around the thin rope of a grappling hook. Her long hair poured down like a waterfall. Her masked head faced downward, and the young witch's eyes were exactly level with the mouth of Bai Zhou, who stood close enough to touch.
"This is called Crow Rides a Plane." The Gem Witch said it as if it were perfectly justified. "Don't you think this way of making an entrance is really cool?"
"?" Miss Crow and the crow on her shoulder turned toward the window at the same time. The Three-Legged Crow's scarlet gaze carried a trace of displeasure.
What crow rides a plane... Non-crow creatures had better not go casually claiming ties to our noble crows!
"But I do have something important to say."
The Gem Witch, who had been keeping watch out in the rain, grew grave.
"Two streets away, I found two..."
The witch's voice hitched. Face heavy, she weighed her words. "Carriages. I found two carriages."
"Carriages?!" Bai Zhou thought he had misheard.
"Yes. Two carriages in the fog of the storm, coming slowly toward us."
The Gem Witch's expression was strange, and tense.
"They're not fast, but the carriages are covered in flowing paint, as if it were alive—you know what I'm talking about, right?"
Bai Zhou drew a deep breath. "It's the Fine Arts Society. Or rather, a Master Painter has come."
Maybe even... more than one Master Painter?
Two living-paint carriages?
That was quite a procession.
Brazen enough!
But his group had only just come off the overpass a short while ago, and already, in the city's downpour, they had run into the Fine Arts Society's tall carriages...
The Society was closing in tight.
Bai Zhou leaned his head out the window. The dim yellow light outside was hazy in the rain. Thick fog spread at the end of the street. He could see nothing. The pitch-black night seemed ready to swallow everything.
"Clop. Clop. Clop-clop..."
But Bai Zhou's keen hearing still caught the distant sound of hooves.
Unhurried, coming slowly, as if inspecting something. He could faintly hear a horse snort.
Every hoofbeat on the ground was like a blow upon a person's heart.
But Bai Zhou felt no panic now. Instead there was a sense that this was within expectations.
"In fact, they're coming a little slower than I expected."
As he spoke, Bai Zhou turned to look at tonight's protagonist, the girl in the white dress standing there, bright and poised.
"Maybe you should change into something easier to run in. At least put on a coat."
"We should keep fleeing."
Bai Zhou said, "Remember to bring an umbrella."
The bewilderment in her eyes slowly faded. Fang Xiaoxia let out a long breath.
"Then I want to bring my little bear plush."
"Of course. You really do need enough luggage, but you'd better be quick." Bai Zhou nodded. "The road ahead won't be easy. You need to be ready."
"And the big-mouth monkey plush."
Bai Zhou went on, "Actually, I'm really sorry for dragging you into all this. But I just got some information. Maybe I can finally explain it clearly to you."
"—They're both my favorites."
The girl, hugging two plush toys, threw a denim jacket over her white dress. Her originally frail air looked a good deal sharper. "I can't sleep without them."
"You..." Bai Zhou froze, only then realizing the girl had not answered his question at all.
Under the upside-down Gem Witch's astonished, blank stare, the two people in the room had been talking past each other the whole time.
How marvelous.
"—Actually, what I wanted to say is, I'm already ready."
Cold wind blew in through the open window. The heavy rain poured down, and the girl's voice rang out, clear and crisp.
"Anything can be explained slowly. But those things don't seem all that important either."
The girl in the denim jacket tucked a plush under each arm, as if this were all the luggage she had.
"Wherever you go, I'll go."
She seemed a little like a stranger. She stood planted there, looking into Bai Zhou's eyes, and said with care, word by word:
"Let's escape beyond the world together."
"Let none of us be found by fate."
Chapter 192