[Translator/Editor: otwentyfirst]
[Host: justreads.net]
[Mar. 24th, 2019]
... Feng Wu turned to look at Jier, then she turned back to the girl. She pointed a finger at the girl flying around the room.
“Her.”
Her who? The air? Jier could tell this was going to be confusing… “There’s nothing there.”
“A girl.” Feng Wu nodded her very seriously and she once again pointed her finger at the flying figure.
When the girl’s ghost saw what was happening, she said, “You don’t have to tell him. Ordinary magicians can’t see me. I don’t know why they can’t but you can.”
Feng Wu turned to Jier again, “She said ordinary magicians can’t see her.”
Good thing Jier was a clever child. He understood the situation immediately. The person Feng Wu was talking to wasn’t a person but a ghost.
“Xiao Wu… you can see this kind of thing?” Jier felt goose pimples break out all over his body. Even if he was a powerful magician, fear of the dead was just a natural instinct humans had, OK?
Feng Wu didn’t understand Jier so she turned to ask him, “Hm? Kind of thing?” the confusion clear in her eyes.
“Nevermind. Forget it.” Jier went over and pulled Feng Wu along with him as he strode out the way they came in. He wasn’t going to stay for another second.
The girl’s ghost chased after Feng Wu. “Wait! Wait! Take me with you! I can’t leave here on my own!” Her voice was full of pleading plaintive. Who knew when her next opportunity would come? She had waited so long already for this one chance.
“How do I take you away?” Feng Wu saw the girl’s eyes. The glimmering hope in them made her decide to help.
“You just have to ask if I’m willing to go with you.”
“Are you willing to go with me?” Feng Wu replied.
“Willing! Willing!” The thought of freedom filled the girl’s voice with eagerness. She spoke out enthusiastically with all her heart.
The moment she did, Feng Wu felt her connection to the girl strengthen.
Jier gripped Feng Wu’s hand tighter and moved forward even faster than before. He heard what she said… to whoever she was saying it to. Earlier he was fine. Although ghosts were fearsome, they were weak ent.i.ties on their own.
When he heard Feng Wu ask if the spirit wanted to come with her, he completely lost his cool. He did NOT want that kind of trouble. Girl! You’re not a magician. You’re a swordmaster. What the h.e.l.l are you going to do with a spirit?!
The opening finally came into view. Jier, Feng Wu, and the spirit of the girl came out together. They sped down the mountain, through polar bear territory towards the base of the forest. When they neared the bottom, he pulled Feng Wu to a nearby tree. He had to ask her before they properly reached the bottom where more ears would be around. This was something better asked in private.
Before the two were even at a full stop he asked, “She came out with you?”
“Yes.” Feng Wu nodded, while blinking her eyes at him.
Next question. The number of corpses in the cave was a lot. He breathed in. “Just her?”
“Yes.”
Jier let out a sigh of relief. “That’s good.” One dead spirit was vastly different from a hundred.
“Ask her if she was caught by the same killer that killed the other girls in the cave.” Jier couldn’t speak to the girl’s spirit directly so he could only go through Feng Wu.
Feng Wu obediently asked.
The spirit rolled her eyes. “I can hear him just fine.”
Feng Wu listened to the rest of her answer before relaying it to Jier. “She said she can hear you fine. She said she was killed by the same demonic person that killed the other girls in the cave.”
Jier’s face stiffened. If he could see her, he’d make her eat a fireball. “There were a lot of others dead in the cave. Why was she the only one that wanted to leave?”
The spirit’s eyes darkened when she thought about the question.
Feng Wu said, “She said the other girls’ all lost their sense of selves, their consciousness. If we’d shown up any later, she would have turned out like them too.”
Jier wasn’t a necromancer. He didn’t know anything about the dead, so he couldn’t know that the place girls died overflowed with hatred and resentment. The amount was so great it fouled the air and was capable of creating disruptions in the mind. The foulness caused the girls’ consciousness and sense of self to erode far faster than normal, emptying them out and turning them into vessels of resentment. Without a sense of consciousness or self, the idea of leaving never occurred to them.
This explained why she was the only one to appear before Feng Wu, but it raised another question.
“Wait. Then why are you OK?” asked Jier. The place was so rotten everyone else went crazy. Why was this girl the only one still frisky and sane?
“I don’t know either!” She wasn’t the first one brought into the cave. She wasn’t the last one either. Dozens of other girls had come in before her. All the other girls before her changed. The ones that came after changed too. If Feng Wu hadn’t come, she was sure she would have gone mad and lost her sanity too.
It was a rhetorical question and he hadn’t actually expected her to answer. He didn’t dwell on it; there were other more important things to think about.
“Do you know who killed you?” he asked.
The girl thought about it before answering.
“She said it was a horiible person. A terrible demonic person,” Feng Wu relayed.
Demon? Seriously? What kind of answer is that? Might as well not even answer. Jier continued asking a few more questions but the answers were all disappointing and they were unable to get any new clues.
... Fundraiser for OASNG
otwentyfirst: Well h.e.l.lo World. Putting notice here so it"ll be visible in all aggregators and platforms that use bots for the story. I will be running a small fundraiser for OASNG soon. I haven"t worked out the accounts and art design yet, but should have it in gear by next month. Different chapter releases will be open for different goals reached, so please check it out. Also if you want the fastest updates, then read it here at my site, justreads.net. I tend to test it here the day before listing it on novelupdates.com and opening it up to all the other aggregator sites.
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That"s all. Thanks. Back to the story.
... After talking they walked to the chief’s house.
Dinner in the small village was normally served early, so by the time they got there, everyone had already finished eating. Everyone was shocked at the sight of them. No one had made it back out of the mountain forest filled with polar bears alive before.