Something's off about this magical girl.

Chapter 26: I Unearthed the Remains of a Magical Girl

The valley walls shook the loudest during the rain.

There was a real earthquake!

Perhaps the damage caused to the valley walls by that enormous beast put pressure on this already ancient and loosely rocked valley beyond its critical point.

The entire valley wall bulged outwards from top to bottom, and then a gap opened up on the right side of the wall near the top, carrying mud and debris, which rolled down to the bottom of the valley with a rumble.

"Teacher, you'll have to rely on me now."

Tao Zhuo and Gu Bai entered the open grassland together, simultaneously deploying a magical barrier to prevent being hit by rolling stones.

Pfft!

A rock suddenly fell beside them, splashing mud and water onto the surface of the barrier.

Then came the second piece, the third piece...

The chirping of insects, the sound of rain, the sound of falling stones.

Everything was mixed together, pressed down in the valley, and only stopped after a long time.

Finally, the gap was sealed. The original narrow opening had collapsed on both sides, and the fallen rocks had blocked most of the entrance. The remaining space was not even big enough for half a person to squeeze in sideways.

Tao Zhuo stood in front of the gap, looked up and gazed at it for a moment, then sighed, "Damn, we can't get out now."

"Um."

Gu Bai was also looking at the pile of fallen rocks. The rock layers on top were already loose. If someone rashly pushed down this section, it would probably cause an even larger section to collapse.

At this moment, Tao Zhuo placed her hand on the falling rocks, gently probing her magic into it before withdrawing it:

"This is really bad. The rock strata are unstable, and the intervention of magic will expand the area of ​​collapse."

"Then use flight magic?" Gu Bai asked matter-of-factly.

"Ugh, I can't throw paper airplanes that high, and I don't know how to use wands or anything! Why are you looking at me? Even though I'm really powerful, I'm still a five-star official magical girl, so I can't use pressure!"

"If you can't do it, don't add so many prefixes to yourself." Gu Bai tapped Tao Zhuo's head.

Tao Zhuo reviewed the battle in her mind, then turned her gaze back to Gu Bai: "...If Teacher could fly, you could hold my hand, and I'd reluctantly agree!"

"I can fly, I'll leave you behind right now."

"If the Love Peach Channel were to launch, and the female host were Dong Meimei, then the male host would be Teacher!"

Tao Zhuo raised her hand and made a face, then changed her approach: "Then we can only wait for the rain to stop and the rock strata to stabilize before we think of a solution, or perhaps look for another exit in the valley?"

"Hmm." Gu Bai had already turned and walked deeper into the valley.

Tao Zhuo followed, took a couple of steps, then suddenly remembered something and slapped her forehead:

"Yes, yes, we came here to find the Epiphyllum. Sigh, those strange beasts made me almost forget!"

Then he recalled the rewind magic in his mind—oh no, he had forgotten, no, this must be a trap set by Qi Xin!

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

The two returned to the bottom of the valley.

The once flat grassland was now marred by an unsightly 'wound' after the strange beast emerged.

Gu Bai glanced at Tao Zhuo, indicating that they could test it with magic, and Tao Zhuo turned her head away:

"Um, I called Winter over, please wait a moment."

"..." Gu Bai's previous hopes for this guy vanished once again.

At the same time, they discovered that something was wrong.

The epiphyllum grew denser and denser as I walked, not in the kind of density that grows naturally, but in a density that is deliberately gathered in a certain direction, with leaves touching leaves and stems touching stems, completely covering the ground beneath my feet.

Upon reaching the 'wound', the two of them slowed their pace simultaneously.

"Something's not right." Tao Zhu looked down and extended her full-power perception magic to her feet. She sensed something, and her brows furrowed even deeper: "There's something underground."

"What is it?"

"This magical fluctuation... is hard to read, it's too chaotic, and it's diminishing the precision of my magical perception."

She stopped walking, and Gu Bai stopped too.

There was a sound coming from the clump of night-blooming cereus ahead.

A dense, subtle rustling sound, as if countless things were moving back and forth among the blades of grass, busy in a corner unseen by the two.

Gu Bai's right hand was loosely clenched, ready to enter combat at any moment.

"Teacher, everything should be alright."

But Tao Zhuo boldly took two steps forward, parted the dense clump of Epiphyllum in front of her, bent down, and looked inside.

"Down below, that thing doesn't seem aggressive."

Gu Bai walked over and stood beside Tao Zhuo, following her gaze into the room.

In the very center of the clump of night-blooming cereus, the ground collapsed, not deep, about the height of two or three people.

But it was extremely wide, almost half the width of the valley floor, as if something underground had slowly hollowed out the soil from the inside, and finally, during this torrential rain, even the surface of the ground sank, causing a landslide.

At the bottom of the depression, there was a layer of white, translucent substance.

It wasn't rock or stagnant water, but that familiar dirty white, the same texture as the shells of those round, strange beasts. But here, it was a continuous, uniform, dense layer of soil, clinging tightly to the ground, undulating slowly with a certain rhythm.

It trembled, one beat at a time, like breathing.

"If it's a mother nest that can give birth to silver beasts, then that's terrifying."

Tao Zhuo was somewhat moved, but quickly understood the reason for the strange changes after entering the valley: "It seems that those strange beasts today came from here, but we can't see their cores?"

"Let's sense it and solve it."

Don't worry, it's happening now.

The two traveled together again, but this time, Gu Bai walked in front.

Tao Zhuo then slowly spread out her perception magic, adjusting the frequency to its finest, seeping it in little by little, attempting to penetrate the white covering beneath the ground—

Then she suddenly stopped.

"...There's someone there."

She spoke those two words so softly that they were almost drowned out by the sound of the rain.

Gu Bai turned his head, stopped walking, and waited for her to continue.

Tao Zhuo's brows furrowed, her magical sensing tentacles struggling to maintain precision in the chaotic magical environment. She detected something, then retracted a section of the tentacles, reconfirmed, probed again, and retracted once more—

"Right front...yes, right here, teacher, there's a magical girl buried underneath!"

Tao Zhuo finally said those words, and then her voice became somewhat strange:

"It looks like he's dead?"

She paused, and as she spoke her next sentence, she realized how contradictory it was:

"But it seems like he's not dead?"

Seeing is believing, let's dig it up and take a look.

Gu Baining conjured a black sword and plunged it into the ground covered by a white film.

However, in the next moment, the white film on the ground melted away wherever the raindrops fell, revealing the ephemeral, figure-eight-shaped Epiphyllum. To the astonishment of the two, the Epiphyllum bloomed with small white flowers.

Why does the white flower bloom at this time?

So much had happened in a short time that the two of them took a half step back, waiting for the answer to be revealed.

The white film beneath the white light began to melt away little by little.

Finally, a complete human skeleton appeared before the two.

"Ah, this..." Tao Zhuo's hands trembled, but she finally gave her assessment: "How... how can there still be magical fluctuations?!"

She tried to circulate her magic, but it didn't seem to have recovered yet. She took out a bottle of potion labeled "Nine-Turn Great Tonic" from her storage bag and drank it.

I tried using the rewind magic, but it still failed.

She then activated her perception magic, but the activation startled her: "How is this possible? This is really a magical girl!"

"Dead?"

"No, she's alive!"