novelraw Chapter 942: Nobody Knows
Chapter 942: Nobody Knows
After the unsettling slap of shed skin on the floor, an eerie silence fell over the study, broken only by the bubbling of the cauldron.
Until Professor Kris’s voice spoke again.
“There’s a cloak on the chair by the fireplace.”
She recognized the strange black cat that had snuck into her study.
Lu Li’s thoughts pulled away from the grotesque image of what he assumed was shed skin, and he saw the gray cloak hanging over the arm of a chair near the fire.
He leaped from the chair, landed on the soft carpet, then jumped onto the chair in front of the fireplace. With his tail, he nudged over the vial of sesame oil and reached out a hand—only to see black claws and pink paw pads.
Lu Li changed his approach. He used his tail to unscrew the vial’s cap, wrapped it around the small bottle, and poured the contents into his mouth.
The sensation of swallowing pure oil was disgusting, as if his entire body had been plunged into a vat of it, but thankfully, the dose was small, and the change happened quickly—
The tail wrapped around the sesame oil vial vanished. Before the vial could fall to the carpet, a human hand snatched it from the air and drained the last drop.
Picking up the gray cloak, Lu Li quickly checked himself over, finding no stray fur or extraneous organs.Creak—
Just then, the door swung open, and a figure burst into the fire-lit room.
“Did I interrupt something?” the person at the door asked, surprised.
...
Was this just a coincidence?
Lu Li calmly pulled on the gray cloak.
“Just in time. Care to join us?” Professor Kris’s lazy voice drifted over.
Having changed into a silky-smooth, milky-white robe, she walked to the fireplace and sat in the armchair where Lu Li had been sitting as a cat.
Her legs beneath the hem were as white as ivory, but the image was marred by her exaggerated, terrifying proportions.
“A normal person? He’d be crushed,” the person at the door said, realizing that either nothing had happened or it was already over. She closed the door.
It was hard to describe her as a girl or a woman. Beneath her beautiful, youthful face was a muscular body nearly two meters tall, like a sculptor’s perfect creation. Her forehead nearly reached Professor Kris’s collarbone.
“I think I know you,” she said, looking at Lu Li.
“I’m Lu Li, meow.”
Lu Li trailed off, a wave of uncertainty washing over him.
“You just used a potion, didn’t you?”
Her eyes suddenly flashed—it was no illusion or reflection from the fire. In an instant, her powerful body was in front of Lu Li, the flames flickering in the resulting gust of wind.
“I know who you are!”
“Claire! Don’t use your anomaly’s power in my room,” Professor Kris chided softly.
“My apologies, Teacher.”
“What’s with this way of speaking, meow.” Lu Li couldn’t suppress the “meow” at the end of his sentence, as if it were an involuntary verbal tic.
“The potion contains paddle-flesh to speed up adaptation to the transformation. The side effect is the meowing.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll be back to normal in three days when the potion wears off completely,” Claire replied.
“An excellent ingredient. Bring me the purple tea.” After her student returned with a box of purple powder, Professor Kris scooped some thick liquid from the cauldron and sprinkled an ounce of the purple tea into a wooden bowl.
“Drink this, and you’ll temporarily get rid of that cute meow. But it’ll only last for two-thirds of a time mark, so hurry up and tell me about the curse, dear.”
“May I listen, Teacher?” Claire asked.
Professor Kris’s narrow eyes fell upon Lu Li, who drank the thick potion. It was neither hot nor even warm.
“I don’t mind.”
The thick potion tasted like porridge, and indeed, the strange verbal tic was gone.
Claire sat down beside Professor Kris, looking like her sister. Before mentioning the “Door,” Lu Li briefly described its rules.
“Memory loss?”
Leaning forward so that her deep cleavage became visible, Professor Kris picked up a notebook from a small table. She flipped through it page by page until she reached the middle, where a quill pen was drawn. At her drowsy call, the quill floated out smoothly and hovered over a blank page.
“You may speak.”
Lu Li nodded and began to recount his first encounter with the “Door” and the three stages of its curse.
But he was quickly interrupted by Professor Kris.
“Dear?”
“What?”
“You can start talking now.”
Just like the others, Professor Kris and her student had no memory of what he had said.
“Perhaps he’s already finished,” Claire realized.
“Is that so?” Professor Kris asked Lu Li.
After he confirmed it, she glanced down at the book. The quill was still hovering naturally, but the pages were blank.
“And there are no notes, either.”
Snap—
The quill vanished as the book snapped shut, and Kris placed it back on the small table. “Can you tell me how you contracted this curse? Just don’t describe the curse itself.”
Fortunately, a simple description of how he came into contact with the “Door” was not distorted.
“I think the key is that notebook... All your knowledge and understanding of the curse comes from it, and the curse erases memories... Could we interpret this as the curse having chosen you?” Professor Kris mused.
“Is that notebook still around?”
“Yes...”
Lu Li frowned, unable to remember where the notebook was. It wasn’t at Sea Gaze Cliff, either.
“No.”
“Then there’s a good conclusion and a bad one. The good news is that the notebook might not exist. You could just be sick, and it’s causing you to have a false perception... As you said, it has never affected reality, and no one but you has seen, heard, or perceived it, correct? Our lack of memory could also be because of your misperception: in your mind, you were telling a story, but in reality, you just sat there and did nothing.”
“And the bad conclusion?”
Lu Li asked, though he already knew the answer.
“A problem we can’t solve... You should have asked the Deep God for help when you were with Him.”
It was an oversight. After escaping from underground, the “Door” hadn’t appeared again, and Lu Li had paid it so little mind for so long that he thought it was over.
“Is the source of the curse nearby?” Professor Kris crossed her legs and leaned back lazily in the armchair, which was just the right size for her.
“The Allen Peninsula isn’t that close to the Wastelands. It will take some time for it to get to me,” Lu Li replied.
“Then I’ll prepare for the bad conclusion. When it manifests, come find me. This is for you.” Professor Kris pulled a badge from her décolletage and tossed it to Lu Li.
“With this, you won’t have to sneak in here naked anymore.”
Catching the badge, Lu Li, having no pockets, could only clutch the warm metal in his hand.
“You seem to have more questions.” Professor Kris’s sharp intuition allowed her to sense his unease.
Lu Li nodded. “My location has been exposed.”
Professor Kris was one of the few people at the Academy of Giant Trees Lu Li had interacted with before, and she was clearly trustworthy.
However, she paid no mind to Lu Li’s concern and said with a faint smile:
“Dear, relax. There are more people watching you here than you think.”
“For example, many eyes saw you, disguised as a cat, enter my mother’s study, spend a long time in there with a mother and daughter who are called witches, and then leave wearing the mother’s cloak.”
Claire added, right on cue.