Chapter Fourteen: The Eye of the Abyss
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The eastern district of Yeqiu City—the place where the Abyssal invasion had finally been halted.
It was also where the strongest king among the Abyssal creatures, the Calamity Beast Titan, had fallen.
After Titan’s enormous body, a monstrous mass of flesh and machinery roughly the size of Godzilla, had been cut apart, packed up, and hauled away, people seemed to have forgotten this area altogether. The industrial district’s landmark, the Construction Building, had nearly been severed in half, and even now the wreckage of armored vehicles, tanks, and fighter jets could be seen scattered everywhere.
Desolate weeds had grown savagely through the cracks between the wall bricks and across the fissures in the asphalt, already reaching calf height. The paint on the abandoned cars lining the roadside was covered in cracks.
The exposed soil along the riverbank still bore traces of someone having tried to grow vegetables, though there were not many.
Among the ruins, exposed rebar, scattered rubble, and dismantled armor components could be seen everywhere.
Once he entered this area, the Abyssal Evil Eye had completely escaped human society. Yet after fleeing for half an hour, he did not continue onward. Instead, he revealed himself.
It was not that he did not want to run. Someone had blocked his path.
Before him stood a tiny, flat-chested girl barely one hundred and forty-five centimeters tall. She wore an exquisite pale-violet magical dress, while thin, waterlike white stockings encased her slender, graceful legs.
A diminutive female human in a magical dress was not, by itself, enough to frighten him. What truly terrified him was the conspicuous butterfly-transforming scythe in her hands. That was the weapon that stirred both his excitement and his fear.
The former meant that he had finally encountered the Phantom Butterfly Princess of his dreams.
The latter meant that this was the Phantom Butterfly Princess before she had transformed into her cursed battle attire—and she was utterly merciless when slaughtering Calamity Beasts.
Remembering the princess’s peculiar habits, the Abyssal Evil Eye suppressed his fear and transformed himself into a human form. Then he performed an Abyssal student’s salute.
“Good evening, Your Highness, Phantom Butterfly.”
The girl glanced at him and nodded without speaking. Her gaze swept across the ruins beyond eastern Yeqiu City, lingering as she searched the desolate landscape.
Broken walls and shattered cliffs rose into the clouds, yet seemed ready to collapse at any moment, as though recounting the glory of the past and the desolation of the present. Vines and moss covered the walls, adding a touch of bleakness and age to the ruins.
The wind passed through, stirring a faint veil of dust.
The expressionless Phantom Butterfly Princess said nothing, and the Abyssal Evil Eye did not dare move. They simply stood there in silence.
After a long while, the girl finally spoke.
“Because you were once considered my student, I will give you one chance to explain yourself.”
The Abyssal creature before her, disguised as a human, was known as the Eye of the Abyss.
When feigning death, it transformed into a black stone sphere. No instrument could detect its presence, and it possessed an ability resembling that of a high-definition liquid-crystal camera with a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree field of vision.
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It was often used as a scout to investigate human movements.
Once activated, it gained the ability to shapeshift, and its strength lay somewhere between Moon Erosion and Sunfall.
In its activated state, the Eye of the Abyss grew a pair of powerful pincers. Its central eye could emit terrifying white lightning, causing anyone who saw it to fall into an illusion before being torn to pieces by those formidable claws.
Its weakness was not its eye, but the seemingly powerful pincers.
Many magical girls had always assumed that the eyes were their weakness. In truth, the eyes were the part with the strongest defenses. As for why anyone had given them such a misleading name, that was a question for the Phantom Butterfly Princess standing before him.
“Your Highness, Phantom Butterfly, please forgive my intrusion. I came here only to deliver a message from Her Highness Evening Mist. Her Highness Twinflower will soon dispatch an Abyssal Demon General—the Flame Demon Binghe—to Yeqiu City.”
The Abyssal Evil Eye blurted out everything he needed to say in one breath. He was terrified that the Phantom Butterfly Princess might kill him instantly without even granting him a chance to explain.
Even though he could become Abyssal essence after death and enter the princess’s body, that was not the manner of entry he wished to experience for the time being.
“Then why did you run? Why not simply wait for me to come and speak with you?”
“This subordinate would never dare.”
“Why?”
The Abyssal Evil Eye fell silent.
The Phantom Butterfly did not speak either. If he had really stayed where he was, he probably would not even have had time to utter a single word.
After a while, Phantom Butterfly changed the subject.
“Are you certain that little girl, Demon Queen Evening Mist, was the one who sent you?”
“Indeed. Her Highness Evening Mist ordered me to come and report this to you.” The Abyssal Evil Eye lowered his head. After a brief pause, he continued, “Also, Her Highness Evening Mist instructed me to ask that you address her as ‘Big Sister.’”
“Ha!”
The girl gave a cold laugh, the mockery plain in her dark eyes.
“Your Highness, Evening Mist also said that if, after I finished speaking, that flat-chested dwarf dismissed her with contempt, then the next time they met, she would make certain you suffered for it.”
“Pfft. Go back and tell her that I’ll be waiting for her.”
The girl seemed amused. Smiling, she waved her hand to indicate that he could leave.
Seeing that there was no murderous intent on the girl’s face, the Abyssal Evil Eye secretly breathed a sigh of relief. The Demon Queen was not as bloodthirsty as the rumors claimed.
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Yet the moment he turned around—
The scythe descended in a straight stroke, becoming a streak of afterimage as it carried away the figure that was about to sink into the darkness.
Dark Abyssal essence crawled up the scythe and onto the girl’s body. A pale-violet vine-shaped mark appeared across her snow-white skin, then quickly vanished.
Gazing toward the brightly lit Yeqiu City, a trace of melancholy touched the girl’s otherwise indifferent face. The arrival of the Abyssal Demon General Binghe could never be as simple as a casual visit. He had certainly come to Yeqiu City bearing some kind of mission.
What she had not expected was that Evening Mist would actually send someone to deliver a message to her.
The sun must have risen in the west.
Back when they had still been in the Abyss, she had been unable to defeat either Twinflower or Iris.
The only one she could beat was Demon Queen Evening Mist.
The latter had flushed with embarrassment, like a proud white swan lifting her long neck, and repeatedly declared that if one day her strength surpassed Phantom Butterfly’s, she would absolutely send Phantom Butterfly to the Abyssal Hall.
The Abyssal Hall—whose full name was the Grand Hall of the Abyssal Warrior Breeding Center—could simply be understood as a nursery that provided breeding grounds for all kinds of Abyssal creatures.
By the time he returned home, it was already around eleven o’clock.
The light in the room was still on. Bai Yuze felt a little warmth in his heart. It seemed that, after everything she had gone through, his younger sister had finally grown up and knew to leave a light on for him.
When he opened the door, the aroma of Lao Tan pickled-cabbage beef noodles rushed toward him.
The girl’s petite figure was wrapped in delicate, exquisite pajamas, her tender, snow-white skin exposed to the air. Unfortunately, her messy hair completely ruined that unique beauty, making it clear that she was in a very bad mood.
Bai Yuze chose to keep silent and avoid any unnecessary trouble.
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