Era of Magic and Martial Arts

Chapter 420 - 404: Life-Stealing Calamity Mirror

Feng Yuhuai’s throat was dry, her gaze continued to roam, seeing the vast array of students, parents, and spectators.

There were classmates holding banners, their vivid colors particularly striking in the crowd;

There were parents laughing heartily, faces radiating pride and joy;

There was a woman biting a straw, appearing at ease and relaxed;

There was a man squatting on the curb, silently watching everything on the stage...

These images, like rapidly flipping slides, flashed swiftly before her eyes.

Feng Yuhuai felt as if everyone was staring straight at her, their eyes seemingly filled with various emotions and secrets.

Yet, she was trapped on the stage, unable to discern anyone’s true nature.

She still stood on the high stage, basking in the glory under the bright and dazzling spotlight.

Suddenly, a strong sense of fear surged from the depths of her heart, drowning her like a tide.

Feng Yuhuai felt as if she were on the edge of a precipice, and the countless eyes below the stage were like countless invisible hands, cold and clammy, with a terrifyingly real touch, wantonly groping her body.

Every touch felt like sharp needles stabbing her nerves, filling her heart with endless chill.

Feng Yuhuai felt as if she were about to be consumed by this endless fear and confusion, her mind as if pierced by countless needles, excruciatingly painful.

She felt she was about to go mad, her skull seeming to split open.

Her forehead was covered in fine beads of sweat, sliding down her cheeks, dripping from her chin onto the stage.

Her lips trembled, her teeth chattered uncontrollably, making a "cluck cluck" sound.

Hungry,

She was so hungry,

She no longer wanted to stand on the stage; she just wanted to leap down, into the vast sea of people.

Then, to devour those faceless, fear-inducing people below the stage completely...

The Wild Beast sat on the curb, mouth slightly closed, Adam’s apple moving, expelling sound frequencies inaudible to human ears from his nostrils.

These frequencies stimulate animals, returning them to their primal instincts.

And maintaining a sense of hunger is the most primitive and irresistible instinct of beasts.

"She can indeed hear it, but that’s not surprising. The hunger and desire to feed induced by the Evil Sacrifice are thousands of times stronger than those of beasts."

The Red Dragonfly’s milk tea was finished; she was merely biting the straw.

The Master of Ceremonies unknowingly walked to the stage, head lowered, eyes half-closed showing a dead white, mumbling softly:

"Her willpower is more tenacious than I imagined; she might need a little stimulation from fresh blood."

The Red Dragonfly said blandly, "Leave it to me."

She discarded the empty milk tea cup, rolled her tongue to swallow the straw into her mouth, chewing it like gum, and squeezed through the crowd, walking towards Zhou Hu’s back.

Zhou Hu, completely unaware, tilted his head, looking at the stage, his face suddenly darkening.

He recognized that the female student on stage seemed to be Feng Mu’s sister.

He looked up at the screen, which was displaying the information of the two contestants—Feng Yuhuai vs. Qian Duoyu.

"Yes, it’s Feng Mu’s sister."

Zhou Hu lowered his head, took out his phone, and dialed a number with a sullen face.

Outside the school walls, a bald man indifferently took out his phone and answered the call.

"Hello, you’re too slow, let me tell you, Feng Yuhuai is at the Eighth Academy now, hurry up..."

The bald man patiently waited for Zhou Hu to finish speaking, then revealed a cruel smile:

"I know, no need to rush, my people are already in the school, heh heh—"

Zhou Hu paused for a moment, hung up the phone, and instinctively glanced around, catching a glimpse of a sexy woman gracefully walking towards him.

Not far from Zhou Hu, a modestly dressed young boy named Luo Ji was raising his head, eyes burning as he stared at the stage, his gaze flashing with a complex and inexplicable gleam.

Four days ago, the Hidden Sect in Zone 9 was repaired, and he received a notification to go down the Hidden Sect again with a new Advanced Team.

The Advanced Team is what the officials call it; privately, they call themselves the Suicide Squad.

Their mission is to venture into the Hidden Sect to clear the fog, because the physical rules behind each Hidden Sect are different, rendering many high-tech devices and methods ineffective.

In gaming terms, the world beyond the Hidden Sect is shrouded in a "fog of war."

The first step in exploration is to clear the fog, using the most primitive means—blood and death—to mark the dangerous areas on the map.

The Advanced Team shoulders this task, paving the way with their corpses.

Once the Advanced Team has laid a path with their bodies, the main Investigation Corps can enter like vultures, using specially designed anti-interference equipment to gradually chart the map and formulate a formal exploration strategy.

This time, when the Advanced Team entered the Hidden Sect, they reached an exploration area that was a massive White Bone Palace.

The bones weren’t ordinary; they were the remains of an unknown creature—each emitting a metallic sheen, the surface covered with intricate runes.

The palace’s dome was made of countless vertebrae, the rib-formed archway soaring a hundred meters high, with the scent of blood and iron permeating the air.

It’s like the scent of composted flowers mixed with iron, each breath chilling to the core.

The process of clearing the map was a near-death experience, and Luo Ji did not wish to recall those details.

He only remembered the screams of his teammates echoing through the palace, some swallowed by suddenly moving bone walls, others pierced by bone spikes shooting from the ground, and some suffocated by bone dust suddenly coalescing in the air.

In short, the end result was that of the 741-member Advanced Team, only 61 survived. In Luo Ji’s squad, he was the sole survivor among 10.

He survived solely due to the power bestowed by the "Master"—the ability to shape and manipulate bones.

Those bone spikes that erupted from his body unexpectedly pierced several of his "teammates."

As their blood stained his bones, as their eyes shifted from shock to resentment, finally freezing into ashy gray, he survived.

He then covered his entire body with blood-stained bones, resembling the bone monsters rising from the ground to slay within the palace.

Then, he was accepted by the palace, and he walked out alive...

Luo Ji blinked his dry eyes, as if doing so could banish the nightmarish memories from his mind.

His hand slipped into his pocket, the palm creasing oddly, revealing a palm-sized bronze antique mirror.

This mirror could eerily meld into flesh, and with this ability, he evaded the Investigation Corps’ security checks, bringing it out of the Hidden Sect.

At this moment, the mirror in his palm slightly warmed, as if urging him to use it promptly.

"Life-Stealing Calamity Mirror."

Luo Ji softly murmured a name, gazing with burning intensity and complexity at the "prodigies" on stage, dryly uttering:

"Whose life should I steal?"