Chapter Twenty-Two

-Deng Xiqi-

We handed the battlefield over to the two top-tier sorcerers, and then hurriedly went downstairs.

I had just returned to the first floor when I saw Xiao Lan flexing her wrists—if I still didn't understand what she was planning to do by now, I'd be a complete idiot. "No, no, no, no..." I waved my hands and backed away, "What? At least tell me why you're angry?"

"Wait, Xiao Lan." At the critical moment, I saw Xiao Lan's fist about to strike my head. I nervously closed my eyes, but the expected pain did not occur. Yu Shaohan grabbed Xiao Lan's sleeve, "You can hit her anytime you want. The most important thing right now is to get this business done."

Me: "Waaaaah."

"Alright." Xiao Lan loosened her grip. She broke free from Yu Shaohan's hand that was holding her sleeve, casually sat down on the ground, and crossed her legs. "You're right, so let's just explain why you're here."

Rewind to half an hour earlier—

"Okay, I think I get it." Yu Shaohan sat cross-legged on a tattered chair. "So, you were afraid I'd find out you kidnapped Yi Gu, so you panicked and ran away immediately. As for that bunch of random mathematical characters, they were just to trap Yi Gu and buy time until the Night Parade of a Hundred Ghosts ended?" Yu Shaohan's voice grew louder and louder. "What's wrong with you?"

"No, no." I immediately started shaking my head rapidly. "But think about it carefully. When we were studying at Hengshui Sect, every time the elders put us in solitary confinement, didn't they always like to make us slowly do arithmetic problems in a small dark room? Didn't time pass especially quickly every time we started doing arithmetic problems? Time would pass in the blink of an eye."

"That's us!" Yu Shaohan practically yelled, grabbing my ear. "We are us, and Yi Gu is Yi Gu! Your thought process is still as incomprehensible as ever! Have you ever considered how many points we get on our math tests? Time flies by in the blink of an eye because you fall asleep while doing your calculations!"

Me: "Huh? Is that so? Is that so?"

Yu Shaohan sighed: "Look at your stupid face, what can I say?"

I was speechless for a long time after being choked by Yu Shaohan's words. I frantically grabbed some chalk stubs scattered on the ground and drew circles on the cement floor: "But...but I was thinking about the bigger picture! The mathematical barrier is a strategic deployment that I spent forty-nine days and nights conceiving. How can you say it's without flaws..."

"Forty-nine days? You must have spent forty-nine minutes thinking that up in your sleep." Yu Shaohan sneered, about to say something more sarcastic, when her phone suddenly chimed. She glanced at the screen, her brows instantly furrowing.

"What's wrong?" Yu Shaohan's expression was definitely unusual. I leaned over to look; it was a message from Xiao Lan: [Shaohan, Teacher Wu told me, Ji, and Panda to go back to the vocational high school first! Xia Youjie might be causing trouble over there—by the way, what's he going back to the magic high school for? To bomb the school? There are too many cursed spirits in Shinjuku, we can't spare any manpower, so we'll go back first to keep him occupied—although I don't think I can really keep him occupied.]

【Haha.】Yu Shaohan typed with her pockmarked eyebrows, 【Maybe she's going back to the Spellcasting Academy to get her graduation photo?】

"Xia Youjie is in a vocational college?" The piece of chalk in my hand fell to the ground with a "thud," and my monorimine almost slipped down to the tip of my nose. "No, no, no, can Xiao Lan handle him?"

"You still don't believe in her abilities?" Yu Shaohan said. "Aside from her passive mode being a bit difficult to deal with, everything else about her is fine, right?"

"Speaking of which, how did you make her angry again? She just told me to call her as soon as I see you, and then she wants me to beat you up for her."

I:"……?"

I was completely baffled: "Me? But I didn't do anything!"

"Think about it some more?" Yu Shaohan said, standing up from her chair. She skillfully pricked her finger and began setting up a teleportation array on the ground. "We're going to the vocational college now," she announced loudly to me. "By the way, Yi Gu, you're coming with us. You're a top-level sorcerer, after all. You should be able to handle that mere Monkey King."

Beside him, Yuuta Otsukoshi, who had been staring blankly at the math problem, blinked when he heard his name called: "Oh, oh..."

Yu Shaohan dripped a drop of blood from her fingertip onto the center of the formation. Golden light instantly spread out from the center of the formation like a spider web, and a faint spiritual energy fluctuation filled the air. Even though it wasn't the first time I'd seen it, I was still startled by the sight and took a half step back, but she quickly pulled me back into the formation: "Stand still, or I won't be responsible for rescuing you if you fall out."

Yi Gu You Tai was squatting at the edge of the formation, hugging his knees, with the cardboard covered in trigonometric functions in his arms. He was pulled by Yu Shao Han and staggered in as well.

"Ready!" Yu Shaohan formed hand seals, and the patterns beneath her feet suddenly burst forth with dazzling light. "Ready! Shrinking the Earth a Thousand Miles!"

I have to say, Angela Yu's ability to shrink distances is truly amazing. In the blink of an eye, I vanished from the abandoned warehouse and appeared at what is supposedly the "Tokyo High School of Spellcasting."

"No, no, no, no..." I looked at the dilapidated scene around me and almost burst into tears. "Yu Shaohan, Xiao Lan, I never thought you would live in such a dilapidated place. You have really suffered!"

“Uh…” Yu Shaohan and Yi Guyou blinked, also somewhat incredulous. They looked at each other and said in unison, “This place is the High School of Spellcasting? / The High School of Spellcasting wasn’t like this before I left last time.”

We didn't have time to dwell on how the once charming campus had become like this, because we suddenly heard Xia Youjie's voice descend from the sky.

"...Wu only sent you to guard this lousy school? How naive of you."

Xia Youjie's voice, tinged with a nonchalant laugh, drifted down from the rooftop of the teaching building. The oppressive power of the curse enveloping his voice instantly reminded me of his actions within the Panxing Sect, and I instinctively clenched my fists.

"On the rooftop!" Yu Shaohan grabbed me and rushed toward the teaching building, with Yi Gu You Tai following closely behind, the cardboard in their arms rustling in the wind.

...

"...In short, that's the whole story of why we're here. Any questions?" Yu Shaohan's throat was dry from explaining, so she went to the vending machine next door to buy a drink.

“Yes, and there are big problems.” Xiao Lan raised his hand and asked, “The most pressing question is, Deng Xiqi, when exactly did you kidnap You Tai? Wasn’t Rika with You Tai? Why didn’t Rika appear? Why didn’t he break free?”

I was startled by Xiao Lan's question, and my monorimimone almost slipped off my nose again: "It wasn't kidnapping! It was strategic protection! If you don't believe me, wait until Yi Gu You Tai finishes fighting and ask him yourself. Didn't I treat him to good food and drink? I even shared half of the compressed biscuits in the warehouse with him!"

"Is the focus on the compressed biscuits? The focus isn't on the compressed biscuits... Yu Shaohan, stop secretly eating them! Where did you get those biscuits from? The focus is on Rika, understand? Rika!"

I shrank back at Xiao Lan's shout: "How would I know why Rika didn't react! Maybe it's my 'undead shielding field' that's working? Look at my aura, it naturally exudes an aura that keeps the living at bay—oh no, it's that keeps the dead at bay!"

Yu Shaohan finished the last bite of the compressed biscuit and mumbled, "Stop talking nonsense. Li Xiang died in a car accident before she became a cursed spirit." She glanced at me, "Do you remember what Deng Xiqi was? A ghost cultivator, she has a natural ability to suppress souls, especially dead souls, who can't get close to her at all."

"Huh?" I was stunned, my monocle finally slipping down to the tip of my nose. "So... I'm destined to bring bad luck to people?"

"That's roughly the idea." Yu Shaohan brushed the cookie crumbs off her hands. "Yigu probably didn't realize why Rika hadn't shown up, and he was also intimidated by your bunch of trigonometric functions, so he didn't struggle. By the way, these cookies are pretty good...where did you buy them?"

Xiao Lan was stunned, and after a long while, he managed to stammer out, "So you didn't bind people with your skills, but with your racial talent?"

"What racial talent! I'm human, okay! I'm human! This is called strategic deterrence!" I immediately bristled, hands on my hips, retorting, "Look, my ghost cultivator aura combined with the mathematical barrier is practically a flawless 'dual-layered composite defense system'—"

"The roof is about to collapse!" Yu Shaohan suddenly pointed to the roof of the teaching building, where a loud "boom" came from, accompanied by Xia Youjie's light laughter and Yi Guyou's suppressed shout, "If you keep making noise, the top-level sorcerer will be beaten into a top-level disabled person!"

"Go!" Xiao Lan suddenly pulled me up and rushed towards the stairs. Her hand holding the Instantaneous Sword was still trembling, but it was much steadyer than before. Spiritual energy flowed down the sword tassel, condensing into a thin layer of frost on the ground.

Yu Shaohan followed closely behind, her fingertips holding seven or eight talismans, muttering, "I should have brought more explosive talismans..."

The three of us had just rushed to the rooftop, panting as we climbed to the top, when we witnessed the grand closing act of today's performance. Yi Gu You Tai was thrown back by Xia You Jie's curse, crashing heavily into the water tank. The cardboard in his arms fell to the ground, swept by the wind towards the edge of the rooftop; the trigonometric formulas on it were exceptionally clear in the sunlight.

"Is this all a top-tier sorcerer can do?" Xia Youjie stood in the center of the rooftop, his five robes billowing in the sorcery. He spread his arms wide and laughed exaggeratedly, "Just as expected, he's no different from those monkeys."

Yi Gu You Tai struggled to his feet, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, but his eyes remained unusually calm. "Senior Xia You Jie," he said softly, yet with extraordinary determination, "you don't understand."

"...I don't understand?" Xia Youjie's laughter stopped abruptly, and he raised an eyebrow at him. "Don't understand what? Don't you understand you pathetic creatures bound by curses, or don't you understand the twisted relationship between you and that cursed spirit?"

“Neither.” Yuuta Otsukotsu straightened up, sunlight filtering through his sweat-dampened hair and casting dappled patterns on his face. “To me, Rika is neither a curse nor a tool.” His magical power began to surge, no longer a gentle gold, but a torrent carrying a scorching heat. He turned around and gently placed a kiss on Rika’s body. “We have pure love.”

"Pure love?" Xia Youjie laughed so hard his shoulders shook, as if he had heard the biggest joke of the century. "You two are pure love?"

"If your love is purely platonic, then I am acting out of righteousness!"

A tremendous amount of magical power poured out from both sides. The light from the magical power on both sides was so dazzling that we, standing at the doorway, couldn't help but close our eyes the moment the light hit us.

When the intense light faded, the concrete floor of the rooftop had completely cracked. Yuta's cursed power surged, turning into golden waves of flame around him. Rika's figure appeared and disappeared within the flames, no longer in her ferocious cursed spirit form, but as a cute girl smiling.

"Wow, wow—" A spectacular battle of spells! I opened my mouth wide in exaggerated disbelief to express my surging emotions.

“Pure love is not something you can laugh at.” Yi Gu You Tai’s voice was filled with unprecedented determination. He took a step forward, and the cracks beneath his feet instantly spread to Xia You Jie’s feet.

Xia Youjie's smile vanished completely. He raised his hand to form a hand seal, and countless cursed spirits swarmed out from his sleeves, rushing towards the opponent in a dark mass: "Naive! Can love fight against curses? Can it save this world corrupted by non-magicians?"

"That's at least more reliable than your 'righteousness'."

Yu Shaohan suddenly threw out three rest notes, the yellow paper exploding in the air with golden light, forcefully cutting the group of cursed spirits in half. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a hint of pity in her eyes: "Your so-called righteousness is nothing more than packaging your own prejudice as truth."

"Do you understand, Monkey King?"