Embers Ad Infinitum

emed to think that she wouldn’t react in a random manner that might cause an irreversible outcome or be affected by the hallucinations too much if she didn’t move, look, or listen.

Jiang Baimian jumped and rolled before arriving at the door.

Just as she opened the door and wanted to take out a grenade from her tactical backpack and throw it outside to create a commotion to attract reinforcements, she was suddenly stunned.

What am I doing? Why am I so impulsive? Wasn’t I planning on waiting for Shang Jianyao to ‘clear’ the consciousnesses outside and ‘urge’ the real humans to retreat before ‘informing’ the robot guards and Nanke Convent with a grenade? As her thoughts raced, Jiang Baimian cast her gaze at Shang Jianyao.

Shang Jianyao had already thrown away the loudspeaker and tried to rush past her to the door.

The small speaker not far away from him was still singing.
“Dare I ask where the road is…”

The next second, a hoarse, high-pitched bestial roar sounded dozens of meters away from everyone outside Wild Pigeon Bar.
“Roar!”

The roar was so loud that not only did it penetrate the illusion, but it also allowed Jiang Baimian to hear it clearly.

With this roar, the wind suddenly stopped.
The Heartless in Long Yuehong’s bloodshot eyes turned back into humans, and the dim lights in the bar returned to normal.

Shang Jianyao didn’t stop.
He ran out and approached the spot where the roar came from as quickly as possible.
He wanted to shorten the distance and enter within range of his abilities.

Upon seeing this, Jiang Baimian didn’t hesitate to hold her pistol and follow closely.
She wanted to fire continuously, not giving the target a chance to reinstate the illusion.

In just a few seconds, Shang Jianyao rolled, propped himself up with his hands, and looked at the dark corner of another street.

His eyes were deep.

Corny Person!

The next second, a figure jumped down from nowhere and entered the area illuminated by the street lamps.
He appeared in front of Shang Jianyao and Jiang Baimian in an open and aboveboard manner.

He had long, grayish-white, and messy hair.
He looked like an old man past his prime.
His clothes were tattered in all kinds of ways as if they had been peeled off from many corpses and constantly piled over him.

His face was warped, and his eyes were turbid.
They were filled with countless blood vessels, and there were red traces at the corners of his mouth.
It was obvious that he was a Heartless.

Jiang Baimian didn’t hesitate to raise her pistol, but her conditioned reflex of ‘discovering the target—aiming at the target’ had failed.

She was no longer aiming at the target but at the sky!

Bang!

Jiang Baimian’s bullet flew into the night.

Almost at the same time, she saw the Superior Heartless raise his right hand.

He held a United 202.

In the face of such a situation, Jiang Baimian’s instinctive reaction was to pounce, roll, and dodge.
However, with a thought, she couldn’t help but stop in her tracks.
She even assumed a forward posture.

This was like raising an arm instead of her calf after her knee was hit in the right spot.

On the other side, Shang Jianyao’s subconscious reaction to such a change should’ve been employing Hands Immobility, preventing the target from pulling the trigger.
But at this moment, he actually chose Inference Clowning.

“Look…”

Before he could finish his sentence, the Superior Heartless had already aimed at Jiang Baimian.

At this moment, Abbess Zhou Yue—who was shamanic dancing—followed the roar and rushed to the vicinity.

The moment she saw the Superior Heartless standing under the street lamps, she threw away the flashlight in her hand without thinking.

Right on the heels of that, she released her thumb from the bottle’s mouth and threw the plastic bottle containing the talisman water at the target.

Talisman water splattered as the bottle rolled, producing a drizzle along the way.

Before she became a target and was affected, Zhou Yue used her free hand—which had been relieved after she abandoned the flashlight—to take off the Eight Trigrams Mirror hanging from the hemp rope around her waist and shone it at the enemy.

Amidst these seemingly useless actions, the Superior Heartless actually didn’t pull the trigger.

He hurriedly raised his hands to shield his face.
He then roared, turned around, and fled in a sorry state.

With a smack, the plastic bottle—which only had a little talisman water left—smashed to the ground.
The Superior Heartless’s figure alternated between a tall state and a short state as he disappeared into the darkness that the street lamps couldn’t illuminate.

Jiang Baimian caught her breath and fired at his back several times, but it was already too late.
All that was left in her eyes was the messy, grayish-white hair.

“Thankfully it worked…” After Nanke Convent’s Abbess Zhou Yue watched the Superior Heartless escape, she heaved a long sigh of relief.

Before she could finish speaking, an electronic voice sounded from a surveillance camera on the street lamp pole beside her.

“Circuit malfunction eliminated, rebooting.”

This… As Jiang Baimian was surprised that Zhou Yue’s charlatan-like performance was effective, she frowned.

More and more facts showed that the Superior Heartless could affect electromagnetic signals and interfere with circuitry.

This might be the reason why communications with the robot guards were lost… Fortunately, he doesn’t seem to know that there are bioelectric signals in the human body and didn’t deal with it.
Sigh, knowledge can indeed be equivalent to strength… As Jiang Baimian’s thoughts raced, she turned her head to look at Shang Jianyao.