Miss Witch's Spirit-Name Secret Treasure

When Bai Zhou said, "Remember to bring that umbrella," the girl in the white dress realized all at once that in the real world she truly was not empty of everything. The moonlight was with her. Her parents were with her. And more importantly— she still had him. No matter the other's purpose, and no matter when the two of them might one day part ways—at least before this journey reached its end, they would share life and death. At least for now, their lives were briefly bound together in all of it. So Fang Xiaoxia said, "Wherever you go, I go." They would flee together beyond the world, and not let fate find them. "These two..." The Gem Witch's eyes blinked and blinked. A mutter rose in her heart. She was bewildered, and at the same time deeply interested, every inch the look of someone watching a show. She kept feeling that, in the stretch of time she had been gone, something had happened between the two of them that she did not know about... Curious as she was, there was unfortunately no time to look into it now. The rain roared. A downpour. The hoofbeats drew nearer. That clip-clop was like a drumbeat hastening death, and it came from different directions. "They've split up. One from the head of the street, one from the tail, closing in from left and right." The Gem Witch looked left and right. The gems at her waist flickered, and light flowed through her eyes as she reported the distant situation in real time. Going downstairs now would be seeking death. Without wasting a moment, Bai Zhou led Fang Xiaoxia up toward the rooftop terrace. Whoosh. The instant he pushed open the door to the roof, wind and rain rushed into their faces. Rain lashed their faces until it stung. Violent gusts mixed with icy water blew the sleeves and hem of Bai Zhou's coat streaming backward, snapping in the wind. Screech! The three of them had only just stepped out when the wind snatched the iron door, flung it backward to slam against the wall, and shut it again. Bai Zhou raised a hand and pressed forward against the wind over the slick ground. Fang Xiaoxia followed behind him, her steps unsteady. She instinctively caught the hem of his black windbreaker, and only then barely kept her footing in the storm. Bai Zhou glanced back, raised a hand, and lightly tapped the girl twice. Spirituality gathered. A simple miniature ritual was completed. The air around Fang Xiaoxia began to stir; an invisible force blew the rain back outward, forming a blank domain that wind and rain could not enter. By now there was no longer any need to worry that a reaction of spirituality would draw something down on them— after all, those people from the Fine Arts Society had most likely already discovered them. Bai Zhou stood at the edge of the rooftop, set a foot on the rim, and leaned out to look down. Sure enough, he saw in the distance those two enormous things approaching with such ostentation. In the pitch-black night, the two gorgeous masses of colored light were far too conspicuous. Even with some distance still between them, a single glance from this height took them in. They were not what one might have imagined. They were not stealing forward in silence. They came in a posture of proclamation, hoofbeats rolling like thunder, advancing toward each other from the two ends of the long street, about to meet. "Neigh!" What came rumbling in from the eastern mouth of the street was an incomparably huge carriage. Undried oil paint wriggled and flowed all over it, forming strange blocks of color that dizzied the eye. The brilliantly multicolored carriage was like a mass of writhing ink, advancing in brazen, flailing arrogance. Horses! Celestial horses! Bronze Celestial Horses! Drawing the carriage were four enormous monsters that looked like horses. They were as hulking as mountains, their whole bodies cast of bronze, a faint golden radiance burning over them. Every corner of these bronze celestial-horse sculptures was filled with a beauty of vigor and sanctity, as if they ought to have been the mounts of heavenly gods. When their hooves struck the asphalt, each step corroded out a deep pit. Strange patches of color burned there like fire, then quickly faded. Bai Zhou felt that these four Bronze Celestial Horses, tall as mountains, ought to have been enshrined upon altars and painted into ancient murals and totems. What divine craftsmanship could have brought such sculptures to life, as if they had walked out of myth into the human world? But they were only pulling a cart. The carriage behind had neither canopy nor roof. To put it more precisely, it was more like a war chariot. The man standing on it wore heavy metal armor, his whole body knotted with muscle. Rain pouring over armor and muscle formed a faint sheen of flame. A bronze face-mask covered his face. The man looked very much like a demigod out of ancient myth, or a hero beamed out of an epic into reality, so that one felt there ought once to have been a long poem praising that past of his, now drowned in history. "One of the three Master Painters of the Fine Arts Society—Michelangelo!" "—Of course, not the genuine article from history." The Gem Witch had clearly done no small amount of homework on the Fine Arts Society these past few days. The instant she made out who had come, she let out a low sigh. "They say those four celestial horses are spoils he took in the Reflected Ruin Realm—living-spirit sculptures made from four powerful anomalies, each comparable to a level-5 Extraordinary." "Then..." Bai Zhou turned to look opposite the Bronze Celestial Horses, at the other carriage clip-clopping in from the western end of the street. "What's the story with this one?" Unlike Michelangelo, whose momentum was vast, like a war god in procession, the other carriage was exceptionally quiet—quiet and unassuming to an absurd degree. The four small horses drawing it were not large. They were pure white all over, their forms exquisite, their bodies sheathed in silver metal, looking like mechanical constructs. The angle and height of every step they took were perfectly identical, weaving a peculiar beauty, while the click-clack of running machinery made Bai Zhou think of the Trojan Horse once its gears began to turn. These four little mechanical horses drew an ornate silver-white carriage, carved all over with intricate patterns. At the front of the silent carriage hung a cloth curtain. The wind lifted it. A gap slid open without a sound, revealing the one seated within... A woman. Two soft bare feet were crossed beneath her. A figure draped in a plain linen robe sat upright there, full-figured and graceful, yet sacred in bearing, like a divine image seated upon the carriage. Her posture was tall and elegant. A hazy veil lay over her face. Rain that fell beside her turned of itself into dense vapor wreathing her; mist steamed upward. The rain was like devotees worshipping a sacred statue. Yet even with the veil covering her, anyone who saw her was drawn to her in the first instant—especially by those eyes. In her gaze there was a mysterious smile and a faint sorrow. From any angle, so long as one glimpsed her eyes from afar, one would be certain she was smiling beneath the veil, and a strange illusion would rise that she was looking at oneself. "What is that..." Bai Zhou shivered. Studying from afar that "goddess" who seemed to sit upon a moving altar, Bai Zhou had to admit that her mysterious, hazy temperament counted heavily in her favor. She was, without question, a beauty. Yet in the mystic world, mysterious and hazy were not happy words. Unlike Michelangelo, who laid the whole of his power open to see, like an upright general of antiquity arraying his forces and standing at the front of the ranks—where one had only to fight, and fight to the death— it was a woman filled with mystery like this who, in the mystic world, was most often unfathomable, and whom Extraordinary dreaded. "Da Vinci. She is Da Vinci!" The Gem Witch spoke in a grave voice. "Another Master Painter of the Fine Arts Society." "Two whole Titled Extraordinary. Those people certainly think highly enough of us..." Slanting torrents poured over the rooftop terrace on the thirteenth floor. Every drop of rain seemed to carry a bone-piercing intent to kill, chilling the heart. "Da Vinci is a woman?" Bai Zhou blinked twice. "That doesn't quite match what Eight Thousand Questions of Naughty Black Cat says." Because the Fine Arts Society was an old enemy, whenever Bai Zhou read Eight Thousand Questions of Naughty Black Cat he paid particular attention to the introductions of the painters. "The Fine Arts Society is a pack of clumsy imitators. Since they are imitators, who says an imitator has to match in gender?" The Gem Witch shook her head. "The real Da Vinci of history was wrapped in layer upon layer of fog to begin with—an extremely powerful and deeply learned mystic. There shouldn't be anyone who doesn't know his masterpiece handed down through the ages, Mona Lisa's Smile, yes? The paintings museums show to ordinary people are not the genuine work. The true piece long ago became a powerful Black Box in the collection of the Louvre of the Western Federation." "Some believe a portion of her self-portrait may have been blended into that painting, and that this is why it possesses certain inconceivable abilities." "...So, in some unofficial histories of the mystic world, one occasionally finds people claiming that Da Vinci's true body was a woman." The Gem Witch sighed quietly. "I never used to believe unofficial histories shittier than dog shit. After all, it sounded as bizarre as someone saying that famous sovereigns like Li Erfeng, King Arthur, and Caesar were all women—until today." She raised a hand toward that holy, hazy image of a goddess, worshipped by the rain and crowded round by mist. Judging by the spectacle of an entrance alone, this Da Vinci and the Gem Witch—a Lolita enthusiast who sewed every stitch of her own clothes by hand—were simply not in the same dimension. "In the Fine Arts Society, clumsy imitators in masks are everywhere, outlandish costumes with nothing beneath the surface... but this person is different." "A woman imitating a man, wearing no mask, only a single veil, and yet unfathomable. There is something in it of a return to what is plain and true—I fear she really has borrowed a measure of Da Vinci's power through imitation." The Gem Witch clicked her tongue. "This truly makes me wonder whether that Da Vinci of history was a woman as well, and looked more or less like this..." Bai Zhou's heart thudded. The mysterious Da Vinci. The forceful Michelangelo. One to the east and one to the west, one on the left and one on the right. Eight horses, two carriages, drawing slowly nearer through the rain. It was obvious. Bai Zhou and the others were surrounded. Honestly—was this really a situation he could handle? The 59-Point Paper Airplane was still in its cooldown. Bai Zhou had no way to put on wings and fly off again. "Have the law officers all gone off to sleep? They were lively enough when they chased me on the elevated highway." Bai Zhou could not help saying it aloud. "And the surveillance cameras? Two sinister carriages appear in a downpour, and nobody notices?" "How could that be." The Gem Witch rolled her eyes. "—They're professional killers!" "They distort cognition and block perception. In all of Tinghai, few are better at it than these two." "Otherwise the Fine Arts Society could never have operated in Tinghai for so many years." The Gem Witch went on, "If I hadn't been watching carefully the whole time, and if I didn't have a specialty of my own... those carriages of theirs would probably have had to roll onto my face before I noticed them." "And..." The Gem Witch looked up at the rain all around. Everything appeared perfectly ordinary, but her gaze was exceptionally sharp. "The Spirit Intent Domains of these two have already covered the surroundings. Ordinary people cannot see them, no matter what." Spirit Intent Domain again? Just as a level-3 Extraordinary bore a "Qi" of their own, and just as a level-4 Extraordinary, having opened the circulation of spirituality within and without, began with a spread across heaven and earth, a domain forming of itself at their side— the so-called Spirit Intent Domain was the most famous signature method of a level-6 Titled Extraordinary, and the great completion of an Extraordinary's work where "domain" was concerned. It was of little use against Extraordinary of a higher tier, but against those weaker than oneself it could be called a crushing advantage. Like a tiger in the forest, able to cow a hundred beasts with a single roar. Only among its own kind did it need claws, and a fight at close quarters. A chill tightened in Bai Zhou's chest. "Then it seems this fight can't be avoided." "...The first stumbling block of setting out again, and it's already this big?" More than a stumbling block. It could trip a person into losing a limb, and the stone might not even have to budge. But in truth, Bai Zhou was not entirely without a method. From the first minute he had cut in at the class reunion and taken Fang Xiaoxia onto the road, he had been ready to face a Titled Extraordinary head-on. They might not be so remarkable either. Even a demon countless times stronger than a Titled Extraordinary had been shot to slag right in front of him. Even if he did not have so much spirituality gathered upon him this time, if Bai Zhou drank the potion, laid the ritual upon himself, transformed into the Cursebound Colossus, emptied his whole body, and loosed one arrow from the Thunderous Heavenly Bow— even a Titled Extraordinary would be shot apart on the spot! He had only the strength of a single arrow—but a one-arrow Superman was still Superman! This left a subtle feeling in Bai Zhou's heart. So, without his noticing, these mystic beings he had once thought too high to reach—the ceiling of the mystic road in the eyes of most Extraordinary—no longer seemed, for him, such lofty nightmares that the mere sound of the name made it impossible to breathe. But... Bai Zhou had only this one arrow's chance. Once the rush was over, he would face still more trouble. By then, emptied of everything, fleeing with an ordinary person like Fang Xiaoxia in tow... It would be grim. He could not leave it all to the Gem Witch when the time came, could he? —Was there any other way? Bai Zhou's heart hung heavy as he weighed a way to drive the enemy back, or a strategy for escape. But just then the Gem Witch spoke. "No. You have it wrong." What she said made Bai Zhou's head jerk up. "This is my fight—not yours." "Wh-what do you mean?" Bai Zhou froze. "You've already provided so much information, and you have in hand the card the one surnamed Luo needs most." The Gem Witch spread her hands. "You ought to let an ally be of some use, shouldn't you?" "Otherwise, after we succeed, how am I supposed to share in the credit?" Her tone was exaggerated. "I can't bustle about for half the day and then, when the credit is counted up, find that I actually did nothing and won't receive a single reward, can I?" "..." Hearing this, Bai Zhou was struck speechless. Even Fang Xiaoxia, standing to one side with a blank look on her face, could tell the Gem Witch's words were only an excuse. Sharing credit, coveting a reward—her meaning was clearly— "You aren't about to say," Bai Zhou's voice was full of disbelief, "that you mean to hold off those two unfathomable monsters by yourself?" Had she lost her mind? Bai Zhou was deeply moved, and then he refused at once. "Courting death and being a hero are two different things. I won't be moved by that." "Reality isn't a legend, and miracles are not so plentiful... You had better take this idea back, and quickly!" "No..." The Gem Witch was briefly at a loss for words. Her eyes on Bai Zhou turned dangerous. "Who do you think I am?" "I know who you are." Bai Zhou nodded, perfectly serious. "Which is how I also know that last time you had just been badly hurt by Picasso." "..." The Gem Witch's face went red at once. From anger. Bai Zhou pressed the point. "And the wounds still haven't healed properly—I can smell the medicinal plaster on you. Perfume can't cover a smell like that." "Last time—last time I wasn't prepared—" The Gem Witch drew a deep breath. "But this time is different!" With that, she reached back into the cloak behind her, felt about, and carefully drew something out from behind her waist. With an expression close to reverence, she held it out in both hands. "Look at this first. Then talk." A lady's pride was in her tone, but her chest was already lifted in pride. "Can you tell what it is? I suspect you've never seen this sort of thing." "Haters, speak up!" "This is...?" Bai Zhou looked down. A wand. A decayed wand. At a glance it looked like a piece of rotten wood, yet a special aura circled it. It was much like the "dynamite stick" Bai Zhou had helped the Gem Witch repair at the ghost market last time—the one of hers that had boomed and burst open like a flower—only the magic runes on this one were countless times more complex. The paths of these magic runes, and the way their circuits were formed, resembled the relics of that era Bai Zhou had seen on the battlefield of Troy. But these things, by comparison, were not what mattered. What mattered was that, upon this old wand so decayed it was nearly rotting away, Bai Zhou felt an extremely familiar, spine-chilling, peculiar sense of deadliness. That familiar feeling came from... Bai Zhou remembered, and his heart abruptly lost half a beat. He had felt it on the Thunderous Heavenly Bow. Back then the divine object had abased itself. The Thunderous Heavenly Bow, ordinary at a glance and looking like a length of withered branch, had not appeared much different from the rotten stick before him now. But once Bai Zhou took it in hand and looked closely, he could sense that special aura upon the Thunderous Heavenly Bow! So—could it be... Bai Zhou was dumbfounded. He looked it over and confirmed it again and again, and found that he would probably have to take back his doubts about the Gem Witch. This wand in the Gem Witch's hands, looking as though it were about to rot away, was actually a— "A Spirit-Name... Secret Treasure?!" He blurted it out. The Gem Witch's eyes went wide, astonished that Bai Zhou knew Spirit-Name Secret Treasures existed. She was just about to say something when— an invisible domain filled heaven and earth. The rain halted for a moment. Or rather, it congealed in midair. "Come and pay homage." Standing on the paint war chariot behind the Bronze Celestial Horses, the man armored like a god of heaven cast a sharp gaze up toward the floors above. "Little thief who spies upon my heroic bearing." "Renowned through China and the West, one of the greatest painters in the long river of history, the highest peak of art—Grandmaster Michelangelo is here!" He recited a long string of titles no less imposing than the Gem Witch's, his voice like rolling thunder filling the sky and covering the earth. "Come and pay homage at once!"