Chapter 300 Family Event : Witch Night (XIV)

In the sky, the stage installation called “Witch’s Night” was collapsing completely, just like the setting sun, slowly sinking towards the horizon.

At this time, only the huge cross that bound the Ember Witch and the remaining carriages of the time and space train were still standing motionless in the air.

From a distance, the space-time train looked like a Möbius strip, twisted into a strange ring, like an Ouroboros made of steel, but the magical girls stood steadily on the top of the ring.

But no matter where they were in the circular train, there was no sign of falling.

Xiziyue stood at the front of the car, looking up at the huge cross in the center of the city. If you look closely, you can vaguely see the shape of the sled in the whistling and turbulent deep blue storm.

Although it was surrounded by a bright aurora, the existence of the sled was still insignificant inside the violent magic storm – just like a flickering firefly, emitting a faint light in the deep night.

At this moment, everyone’s attention was focused on the firefly flying through the storm as much as possible, so as not to lose sight of it.

The one who was the most nervous and turbulent among them was naturally the Black Judge of the Control Bureau.

His two closest relatives were currently in the most dangerous place in the entire city.

If Little Red Riding Hood made a mistake, either Ke Mingye would die, or Bai Zini would die, or…

Two people died together.

Before this scene happened, Ke Yinzhi had never felt so powerless: his younger brothers and sisters were clearly right in front of him, but he could only watch indifferently and wait for an outcome.

It’s like a gambler who is heavily in debt. He throws the dice on the gambling table that determines his fate, and watches it flip around with a cold sweat on his forehead.

But just a few seconds later, the wind and snow in the storm stopped howling, and then the arc as clear as the aurora dimmed.

Seeing this scene, everyone’s mood turned cold.

They all knew what this meant…

This meant that Little Red Riding Hood’s Christmas sleigh was annihilated in the magic vortex of the Witch of Ember. Soon, the slowly rotating Christmas Eve pattern on the blue sky slowly faded away like a drifting cloud, and the obscure aurora disappeared without a trace, leaving only the sound of a beating heart coming from the magic cocoon surrounding the cross.

thump…

dong dong…

The Black Judge stared blankly ahead, and blurted out a name hoarsely:

“Akino…”

As he muttered to himself, dark energy continued to flow out of his body like a tide, like shadows floating in the air, flickering. At this time, the V-shaped mask was showing an unconcealable dazzling scarlet.

But the next moment, a low shout suddenly came from above the circular train.

“Look at the cross.” Qili’s eyes widened slightly under the brim of her hat.

Hearing the sound, everyone turned their eyes away from the disintegrating sled and looked up, only to see a figure on the cross in the center of the storm. The red and blue combat uniform he was wearing had been stripped away to almost nothing.

What can be seen with the naked eye is that the center of the cross seems to be the only safe haven in this gray-blue world. The raging magic power around it cannot reach it at all, but is blocked outside.

So what everyone can confirm is… the blue owl is safe for a short time.

Xiziyue gently lifted a strand of hair by her ear and lowered her eyes, her expression unclear whether it was sadness or joy.

Yufei looked at the blue owl, then turned her head to look at the black judge, “He survived.”

The Black Judge remained silent, staring at Ke Mingye’s tiny shadow.

“He did it…”

Kunou Sakura was stunned, then muttered to herself.

“Then…where is Little Red Riding Hood?” Ryukako asked softly, with a slight cry in her tone.

Hearing this, Kunezakura silently shook her head. The others were silent, with complicated expressions on their faces.

At this moment, there was a loud noise in the sky. Everyone looked up and saw that Witch Night had not yet completely reached the land, and a corner of the crumbling ruins had fallen first.

When the huge fragments hit the tall building, there was a loud rumbling sound that lasted for a long time.

Not long ago, you could see paper figures holding hands and spinning at high speed on the periphery of the stage, forming a pale circle. But now, the circle that symbolizes truth has withered, and the paper figures have withered one by one.

They swallowed the sound of chanting “Erlsung (salvation)” into their pale bellies, and the next second, an unexpected scene happened. The palm-sized paper people’s paper bodies suddenly changed from pure white to a deep black. The corners of their mouths pulled towards the sides of their cheeks, and fangs slowly protruded.

Then, their bodies suddenly expanded visibly, transforming into giant creatures that were hundreds of meters tall.

The next moment, the dark paper giants lifted the shaky stage device high up, making it taller than the Beijing Ring Tower again and reaching the top of the city.

Like an emperor surrounding them.

“Rache——! Rache——! Rache——! Rache——! Rache——! Rache——! (Revenge)” they roared, and the stage equipment of Witch Night began to change drastically, transforming into a huge insect chrysalis.

The sky suddenly changed color, and the bottomless night covered the city like a curtain, as if the shadow of some huge monster that blocked out the sky and the sun was quietly descending, and the fanatical roars of the black paper people continued to be heard in the darkness.

Black Judge looked up and saw his swallowtail windbreaker fluttering in the wind pressure from above.

“What… is going on?” Kunezakura was stunned.

“Miss, they raised the Witch Night?” Ryukako leaned next to Kunou Sakura.

“Those paper figures suddenly mutated?” Qili stared at the sky in a daze through the brim of her cowboy hat.

“It seems… that legend is true.”

Looking at this scene, Xiziyue widened her eyes slightly and muttered to herself.

Lilai stared blankly at the insect pupa held high in the sky by the giants, and asked in a low voice: “You mean… once the Witch Night is destroyed, the ‘Witch of Vengeance’ sealed in it will be released?”

“Yes, according to rumors, the ‘Witch of Redemption’ and the ‘Witch of Vengeance’ are the right-hand men of the ‘Witch of Jealousy’, the most powerful witch in history, but there is a grudge between them.” Xiziyue said slowly, “The ‘Witch of Jealousy’ created the Witch Night as her own tomb, and that is why her statue stands in the center of the Witch Night.”

She paused, “After the death of the Witch of Jealousy, the Witch of Vengeance and the Witch of Redemption lost their control, and the conflict between them was on the verge of breaking out. In the end, the Witch of Redemption defeated the Witch of Vengeance. She used a magic circle to seal the Witch of Vengeance above the Witch Night. That magic circle…”

“That magic circle is the paper figures surrounding the edge of Witch Night?”

Lilai interrupted Xiziyue and guessed quietly.

Xiziyue nodded and said expressionlessly: “It seems that because the Witch Night was greatly damaged, the effect of the paper figurine magic array has also declined. The Witch of Vengeance took this opportunity to erode the subordinates of the Witch of Redemption, that is, those paper figurines. Because of this… she is about to break free from this seal that has lasted for thousands of years.”

Lilai was slightly startled. No wonder those paper figures were holding hands and shouting “Erlsung (salvation)” just now. At this time, they had expanded countless times. The bodies made of paper suddenly turned from white to black, and the words they shouted changed to – “Rache (revenge)”.

This also corresponds to the identities of the two witches.

“Then let’s…”

Utena said this while covering her injured arm and tightly gripping the hilt of the demon sword.

Xiziyue lowered her eyes and interrupted her, “We just lent our magic power to Little Red Riding Hood. It will be difficult for us to recover to a state that can handle this battle in a short time.”

“If it is as you said, then if we break the chrysalis of the Witch of Vengeance, will we be able to prevent her from breaking free from the seal?”

As the Black Judge spoke, he looked up at the pitch-black insect pupa that had transformed from Witch Night.

“It’s possible.” Xiziyue nodded.

“Then I will stop her, and you will be responsible for keeping an eye on the Ember Witch and the Blue Owl. We don’t know when they will make a move…” The Black Judge turned his head to look at the Wind Cross in the center of the storm, pondered for a moment, and then stepped onto the stairs made of dark matter and moved closer to the group of pitch-black paper giants.

Yuffie opened her mouth, wanting to call out to him.

But with her existing magic power, she was unable to summon a second mechanical castle. Thinking of this, she was suddenly speechless.

But at this moment, a sinister voice suddenly came from the back of the train – although the tone was so, the voice was childish, so it sounded like a domineering junior high school girl calling out to someone coldly.

“Hehehe, don’t worry, Black Judge, we are still here in this city…”

The Black Judge looked in the direction of the sound, and saw a red-haired girl in a dark red magic dress and holding a sickle, flying towards him in a blood-red arc.

The magical girl Hongyue raised her hand to her chin, slightly raised the corners of her mouth, and her eyes were evil and stern.

Behind her was a giant dragon covered in jet-black metal, and a figure wearing a red and black combat uniform, standing on a somersault cloud.

At the same time, the center of the storm.

Ke Mingye leaned forward and gently hugged the girl on the cross. He pressed his body tightly against her warm and cool cheek and whispered something in her ear. Then his consciousness gradually faded and his vision closed.

Like diving into the deep ocean.

Falling…

Falling…

Keep falling…

When he came to his senses, Ke Mingye pried open his heavy eyelids, slowly raised his head, his expression slightly dazed.

Looking around, I found myself sitting in the classroom of Rong’s Welfare Home.

“I won’t die…”

Thinking of this, he turned his head and looked around. The time period in his spiritual space was still fixed at dusk, and the surrounding wooden tables and chairs were shrouded in a warm light yellow afterglow.

Looking out the window, the setting sun is like blood.

But now, the strange thing, the blue owl, the dice man, and Nezha were all gone, and the classroom was as abnormally empty as before. Instead, a red and black shadow was sitting quietly on the podium. It was slender, like a young girl, with a blood-red mouth raised high.

Looking at the shadow on the podium, Ke Mingye was slightly stunned.

Of course he had seen this black shadow before, because before, Bai Zini used this shadow extending from behind her to “eat” the war witch, and then copied the characteristics of the war witch, creating the bloodiest and most violent scene he had ever seen.

At this moment, the girl-like shadow seemed unusually calm, like a frequent visitor to an orphanage.

“You are…” Ke Mingye began.

Hearing this, the girl’s shadow raised her long finger and pointed outside the window.

Ke Mingye looked over and saw that the personalities in his mind were playing football on the playground of the welfare home. The strange thing was blowing the whistle as the referee. Among them, Blue Owl and Nezha were the happiest. They were the forwards of their respective teams.

In a corner of the playground, Gastello and Little Red Riding Hood were sitting on a public wooden chair, and the girls were whispering to each other; Kobe was sitting in a wheelchair next to them, mumbling something, and it seemed that the two of them didn’t want to pay attention to it.

The shadow raised his hand, and with a blood-red shadow, he wove words in the air:

–【corridor.】

Looking at the crooked blood-red words, Ke Mingye raised his hand and pointed outside the classroom.

“corridor?”

The girl’s shadow nodded.

Following her, Ke Mingye walked out of the classroom. As he passed through the door frame and stepped into the corridor, he caught a glimpse of two figures out of the corner of his eye.

The boy with red eyes was hiding in the shadows, his head lowered and looking at the ground; and by the wall, a boy in a hospital gown was flipping through a book silently with his eyes lowered.

The girl’s shadow raised her hand, and the blood-red shadow wove into words in mid-air:

——【Observer, tell him the truth.】

“It seems… you brought something strange in.” The boy in hospital gown who was reading a book raised his eyes to look at the shadow of the girl, then looked at Ke Mingye. After saying such a creepy sentence, he lowered his eyes and continued reading.

Ke Mingye was slightly stunned, and then tried to ask:
“What is she?”

It was clear that no matter how he greeted him before, the boy in the hospital gown outside the classroom had never spoken to him, but this time, he spoke.
The boy in the hospital gown closed the book and looked at the girl’s shadow quietly.

He began to speak, “This is a shadow left by the Witch of Jealousy. She will only possess the most talented witches and fulfill the wishes of the owner. She will not leave until she has fulfilled the wish to the best of her ability. Although it has fulfilled the wish of the Witch of Embers, it still has a wish of its own, so it has not left yet.”

“What does it want?” Ke Mingye asked blankly.

“It hopes… that I can tell you some truth.”

“The truth…what truth?” Ke Mingye lowered his head, sorting out the chaotic thoughts in his mind, and then asked: “Compared to this, what about Bai Zini? Did I…go find her?”

He thought, one of the personalities living in my mind can’t possibly have information that I don’t know… What the hell is this person in a hospital gown?
At this time, the boy in the hospital gown sat down silently against the wall, and the girl’s shadow was attached to his shadow, with the corners of her blood-red mouth still raised high.

“If you don’t want to listen, it will save me the trouble,” the boy whispered.

Hearing this, Ke Mingye was silent for a moment, then slowly walked towards the boy.

Then sat down next to him.

The two men were standing shoulder to shoulder, having never been so close in the past few months. Ke Mingye had always consciously kept a distance from this unknown personality, and the boy had disdained to pay attention to him. But now, because of the shadow of the witch of jealousy, the two men had the opportunity to come into contact.

“I need a mind sketch,” said the boy in the hospital gown.

Ke Mingye said without hesitation: “Mind sketch.”

As the command came down, a mental sketch suddenly opened in front of the two of them. Ke Mingye adjusted the size of the sketch, stretching it and widening it until it was as big as an Imax screen in a regular cinema, and then made it hover in the air.

The boy in the hospital gown looked at the mental sketch, and his thoughts gradually emerged above the sketch.

“In order to fulfill Witch Shadow’s wish, I have no choice but to tell you this in advance.”

He reiterated.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

As soon as Ke Mingye finished speaking, a picture appeared on his mind sketch.

[It was a gloomy rainy day. Between the tall buildings, under the traffic light with a cracked lampshade, Ke Mingye knelt in the center of the intersection, holding a figure in a red and blue combat uniform in his arms, lowering his eyes, staring blankly at his face.]

“Blue Owl?”

Ke Mingye looked at the dying man wearing a bird-beak mask in the picture and couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows.

“Yes, Blue Owl.”

The boy in the hospital gown spoke calmly while manipulating the mind sketch.

[At this moment, Blue Owl was lying on top of a pile of broken glass. His battle uniform was already tattered, and under his shattered mask was a bloody face. He smiled softly, his pale lips trembling slightly.]

【“It’ll be alright…right?” Blue Owl asked hoarsely. 】

[“You will be fine… you will definitely be fine.” In the scene, Ke Mingye held his hand and repeated this sentence over and over again until Blue Owl completely closed his eyes and the rain flooded over him.]

Ke Mingye was slightly stunned, then turned to the boy in the hospital gown and asked, “…what do you mean?”

“You have tried many times so far…”

The boy in the hospital gown said calmly.

“What do you mean by tried many times?” Ke Mingye frowned.

The boy in the hospital gown did not answer, and then the second picture appeared above the mind sketch.

[It was a snowy night. A girl in a Christmas dress was nailed to death on top of a tall building by a thorn spear. She lowered her snow-white face, and blood slowly flowed from the corner of her mouth.]

[Ke Mingye landed on a high-altitude work platform, raised his head, and looked at her silently.]

[Little Red Riding Hood said intermittently: “Mr. Ke Mingye, tell your sister for me… She is the only one who is willing to be my friend. And please rest assured that I have never… never told her your identity. I have always kept it a secret for you because… You are a very important person to me.”]

[It was Christmas night, snow was falling, the girl in the Christmas dress slowly closed her eyes, the blood flowing from the wound in her abdomen dyed the aerial work platform red, and soon, the comet fragments in her palm slowly broke apart, and her figure also turned into a burst of spiritual light and dissipated.]

Ke Mingye watched this scene until the screen went black before looking away.

“What do you want to say?” he asked.

“You have tried many times before. Every time you wanted to meet the requirements of the fire, you failed… Every time, every time, you failed to successfully exterminate the superhuman race. And every time before the final countdown ended, you would hold the fire and travel back to the place where the story began.”

The boy in hospital gown spoke slowly, and the girl behind him smiled.

Tinder?

Ke Mingye suddenly recalled the boy he saw in the subway window that day, who was also mumbling “spark”.

He said hoarsely: “I don’t understand…”

The boy in the hospital gown ignored his ability to accept and continued, “Every time you use the fire to time jump, you will enter a new world line. And every time you do this, some people will disappear silently in this world line. They are erased by history… It is better to say that they never existed from the beginning. I have heard of the ‘butterfly effect’. Sometimes it is just a step late, a breath late, which affects the development a little bit, and it is not them who appear in the world, but others.”

After a pause, he continued, “It’s like, Blue Owl didn’t become a superhero for various reasons, or…the magical girl Little Red Riding Hood stayed in that mountain village from beginning to end, she died of illness there, and was buried in the soil, instead of being brought back to the Alliance by Xi Ziyue who happened to pass by the mountain village.

“And in the end, these people who disappeared during the process of the world line changing… can only exist in your memory. You are extremely desperate, but you cannot go against the adjustment and change of the world line. You can only watch the people you know disappear and accept this fact.”

Ke Mingye’s brain almost crashed.

He sorted out his thoughts and was silent for a while. Then he said with a voice full of doubt: “So… what you mean is that Blue Owl and Little Red Riding Hood are actually real people in a certain world line that I have experienced before?”

“Yes.”

Having said that, the boy in the hospital gown paused slightly and opened the book in his hand.

“During the first time jump, you discovered that your best friend, the superhero Blue Owl, had disappeared from the world. He and his parents died in a car accident… In the original world, he should have survived the accident and awakened his ability to change places, but because the world line had changed, the operation failed and he was buried in the ground. Therefore, there would be no Blue Owl in the world.
“During the second time jump, you discovered that the magical girl Little Red Riding Hood, also known as You Minglu, had died of illness in that damp and dark mountain village before Xi Ziyue accidentally discovered her talent. She never left there from the beginning to the end, so her dream of becoming a magical girl was naturally never realized;”

“In the third time jump, you discovered that the weak villain, the Dice Man, who was very close to you, often provided you with various intelligence, and even lurked in the Watchmakers’ Alliance for you, was gone. You began to miss this weirdo who seemed to lack love, but he never appeared in Huanjing City again, and never harassed you to provide you with interesting information. Later, you discovered that the Dice Man was actually dead. In this timeline, he was abused by his parents in his childhood and hanged himself, so he never became the Dice Man, but was just a corpse forgotten in the old times.”

At this point, the voice of the boy in the hospital gown stopped, and a picture appeared on his mind sketch.

[In the live broadcast room of a blogger named “Clock Watcher”, a figure with a dim halo flowing all over his body was lying on a hospital bed, waiting to be dissected. Clock Watcher turned on the live broadcast and said to the screen that he wanted a person named “Ke Mingye” to accept the live broadcast, so that he might let the dice monster go. ]

[Ke Mingye accepted the live broadcast application from the watch guest, and his face was exposed to the eyes of the people on the Internet. ]

[The watch man said, “Great… I just wanted to see your expression.” He pressed the clock, and half a second later, the two arms of the dice man had fallen to the ground, blood splattered everywhere, messily staining the entire operating room red.]

[Before the final autopsy, the dice man lay weakly on the bed. Because his arms had fallen to the floor, he could only grin with the corners of his bloodstained mouth. With his dying breath, he smiled at the screen, the same smile as always.]

[“Isn’t this our Mr. Ke Mingye… Why do you have such a sad expression? Oh… Are you sad about the death of a small villain? What… You said I have never done anything bad, this is really embarrassing.”]

[“Maybe you need to…change an intelligence provider. You are very good at predicting things, and someone will cooperate with you. This time it’s just that I didn’t do a good enough job. You shouldn’t have answered the call…I’m a little tired, a little tired.”]

[“Good night… Mr. Ke Mingye, oh, let’s not be so serious, smile, weird things like to see others smile the most.”]

The image on the mind sketch was frozen on the grin on the weird thing’s face, its empty eyes reflecting a sad, pale face.

Seeing this, Ke Mingye could no longer open his mouth.

The boy in the hospital gown looked up at the ceiling and explained slowly, “All the images I showed you are your memories of getting along with those disappeared people in the past timeline, but you have forgotten them…”

He paused. “The last one is the fourth jump, which is also your last timeline jump…”

“enough……”

Ke Mingye interrupted him and said calmly, “I don’t remember any of this at all. It’s useless for you to talk nonsense. Now I understand why you stayed in the corridor with that monster. It seems that you and he are birds of a feather.”

“Of course, you won’t remember.” The boy said expressionlessly, “Because the memories of several timelines overlapped at that time, your spirit was tortured to the point of collapse, so… before you made the last time jump, you asked the Spark to delete your memory.”

At this point, the boy paused for a moment, “So in this last journey, you forgot everything, just like now.”

“You’ve really fooled me to the point of making me cripple.”

Ke Mingye muttered to himself.

He was silent for a moment, then asked, “Since you said my memory was deleted, then why did they appear in my mind? It’s better to say… why did I create them naturally? This doesn’t make sense.”

“Your memory has been deleted, but that doesn’t mean it never existed. As long as it existed, it would leave some vague ‘impressions’, and you are relying on these impressions to play them subconsciously.”

The boy in the hospital gown spoke slowly.

“It’s not until later on that they actually split off and stay with you forever in this way. Of course, you don’t realise it. It’s normal because you think – ‘They’re all you, they’re just you’.”

He paused, and then continued, “It’s worth mentioning that in the second timeline, after the death of the girl in the Christmas dress called ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, you were depressed for a long time. Later, you desperately came back to do it again, but found that she had already died of illness in that remote mountain village, just like this world line. You almost went crazy at the time, so I suggest you cherish the ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ in your mind now.”

“Even if what you say is true, they are already dead. This is just self-deception.”

Ke Mingye took a deep breath.

He lowered his head slightly, and his falling hair covered his eyes.

“Yes, they are dead, but at least you can remember them in this way, instead of letting them be lost in the long river of time. Those who have left have all returned to you and accompany you in this way.”

“Since I didn’t want to forget in the first place, why would I choose to delete my memory?”

“Because you’re going crazy.”

“Okay, I’ll give you the right to talk nonsense. But not now. I don’t have time for you now.”

“I know it’s hard for you to accept, but this is the truth… The shadow of the Witch of Jealousy is watching me, so I can’t hide any facts from you for now. As for whether you are willing to believe it, it’s entirely up to you.”

The boy in the hospital gown said calmly, looking back at the shadow of the girl attached to his back.

“Why is this the last time?” Ke Mingye paused and continued to ask: “After I fail, can I no longer use the ‘spark’ you mentioned to time jump?”

“It was the last time because before you made the fourth time jump, the will of the ‘Spark’ awakened from its slumber. It no longer let you control it, but instead asked you to trade with it.” The boy said calmly, “I said before that your spirit was close to collapse at that time, so you asked the Spark to delete your memory, but in addition to that… Ke Mingye, you made another request.”

“Another request?” Ke Mingye asked word by word.

“That’s right.” The boy nodded. “This request is to make those people who were deleted and abandoned by the world during the previous world line changes return to your side.”

He paused. “But unfortunately, if you really do this, it will involve countless things. In the end, the Spark can only fulfill your needs in this way now – let them stay in your mind in the form of ‘personality’.”

“…What’s the point?”

Ke Mingye tried to follow his nonsense and asked according to his train of thought.

The boy had a blank expression on his face. He lowered his head and flipped through the book in his hand. He said softly, “You have to ask yourself, because this is a choice you made, even if you have forgotten the process of making the choice.”

Ke Mingye was silent.

“No matter what the final result is, I suggest you cherish their existence. Because this time, it is very likely to be the last journey of your life.”

Ke Mingye remained silent, as if the amount of information was too much to digest.

He turned his head and looked at the ‘shadow of the witch of hatred’ behind the boy in the hospital gown. If it weren’t for this shadow, Ke Mingye would never believe anything he said.

“By the way…I suggest you take a look at the situation outside.” The boy suddenly said.

“What’s the situation outside?” Ke Mingye was puzzled.

“Yes, the situation outside.”

After saying that, the boy in the hospital gown closed his book and stood up. He dusted himself off, then slowly turned around and walked towards the end of the corridor without looking back, his figure gradually being swallowed by the shadows.

“What’s going on outside?”

Ke Mingye was muttering to himself when the picture of the mental sketch that was open in the air suddenly changed.

The mental sketch showed a scene of the center of Beijing—the pitch-black paper people held up the stage of Witch Night and screamed in unison at the blue sky: “Rache (Revenge) Rache (Revenge) Rache (Revenge)——!!!”

Looking at this scene, Ke Mingye was stunned for a long time.

“How is it possible…that those witches still have a backup plan after such a terrible situation?” He thought to himself with a frown.

At this moment, the shadow of the Witch of Hate slowly emerged from behind the boy in hospital gown, and she slid along the ground like a small ghost.

Ke Mingye took a deep breath, closed his mind sketch, raised his head, and said to the witch’s shadow:

“Take me to see Bai Zini, okay?”

(End of this chapter)