novelraw Chapter 943: Remembering the Past
Chapter 943: Remembering the Past
“Mother?”
Lu Li caught the way she addressed Professor Kris.
“A mere student wouldn’t dare secretly give you the wrong potion.”
Professor Kris suddenly leaned closer to Lu Li, her presence creating a sense of pressure and a strange intimacy. Her pale hand gently brushed over his shoulder, a touch that was barely there at all.
When she pulled her hand back, a black beetle rested in her palm. As Lu Li watched, she tossed it into the cauldron.
Professor Kris leaned back in her chair, and her large bust seemed to spread, as if melting.
“So you didn’t throw the potion away after all, you even used it!” Claire blurted out with incredible enthusiasm, speaking to Lu Li as if she were making a vow.
“From now on, no one in the Academy of Giant Trees will be able to harm you. You’re my friend—Claire’s friend.”
“No one would dare to bother an exorcist anyway,” Professor Kris said, displeased with her daughter’s excitement. She explained to Lu Li,
“She wasn’t always like this, but after a few incidents... When you reach the senior courses, you’ll understand the value of trust.”“Any other questions? The potion’s effect will wear off soon.”
Professor Kris stretched languidly, a soft moan escaping her red lips.
“I’d like to learn about the Cursed Title in advance,” Lu Li said, ignoring her lazy intimacy and the open display of her body.
“What did Haig tell you?”
“That releasing a Cursed Title is like building a house: direct contact is the equivalent of skipping all the steps and immediately putting on the roof.”
“Something like that.”
Professor Kris opened a briefcase beside her chair, pulled out a toad, and dropped it into the cauldron. In the blink of an eye, the toad leaped out of the boiling liquid, sprang to a corner of the room, and vanished.
“But if the temperature isn’t so high...”
Professor Kris paid no mind to its escape. She placed her palm against the searing-hot cauldron, and the boiling, bubbling liquid suddenly began to calm.
She took out another toad and dropped it into the cauldron. This one didn’t flee like the first. Instead, it sank into the slime, which to it was real and alluring.
Not until the flames licking the bottom of the cauldron brought warmth did the toad, now moving with difficulty, sink deeper into the suspicious liquid, releasing a stream of boiling bubbles.
“Building up a tolerance?”
“Tolerance? Something like that.”
Professor Kris found the word quite fitting. Gazing at him with her narrow eyes, she said,
“You look much weaker than the last time we met. Do you need help?”
“No.”
It was only because Lu Li hadn’t brought the Book of the Apocalypse with him.
Before he left, Lu Li had one last question: he hoped Professor Kris could demonstrate the power to resist anomalies.
Claire offered to demonstrate, but her mother stopped her.
“You will see it, but not now.”
Lu Li rose from his chair and headed for the office door.
“Wait, you’re not planning to... go out like that, are you?” Claire suddenly asked.
Professor Kris, leaning lazily against the back of her chair, surveyed Lu Li’s silhouette. Covering her mouth, she let out a quiet laugh.
“Perhaps our dear Mister Lu Li likes it this way? Don’t forget, he came here with no clothes on.”
“Daughter, why don’t you give him your pantaloons?”
“They’d be too big for Lu Li,” Claire replied. Asking him to wait, she went into an inner room and found a pair of plain linen shorts.
“My childhood clothes. They’re a gift.”
Lu Li didn’t refuse Claire’s strange gift. He put on the shorts, which fit perfectly, and, avoiding the gazes of both mother and daughter, said his goodbyes.
As he reached the door, Lu Li noticed it was larger than he had expected. The thought prompted a completely unrelated memory.
“I’ve noticed there are differences between the three courses... Are you doing that intentionally?”
“My dear, I knew you would notice.”
On this topic, Professor Kris did not hold back her knowledge.
The environment for the junior courses was the best. No pressure, no conspiracies, no incursions by anomalies. For the middle courses, it was a little worse, but still not bad. One could choose between safety and danger. The senior courses... they began to border the surface.
As for the lower levels of the academy, they were almost indistinguishable from the outside world.
“What’s the point?”
“We want people to know what we are protecting, what we are fighting for.” Professor Kris straightened her body, which resembled that of a small giant.
“Enjoy this rare moment of peace in your life...”
Lu Li’s silhouette vanished behind the closing door. Professor Kris leaned back in her chair again and whispered softly.
“It won’t last long...”
...
On the surface, Vinnelag was calm.
All the crises were unfolding underground.
When the primordial darkness spread from unknown lands, only three-fifths of the citizens took shelter in the underground bunkers.
The plague, famine, cold, anomalies, and other crises that followed reduced the population by another fifth...
In half a month, hundreds of thousands had died from the cold, from starvation, and in the darkness.
The only piece of “not-so-bad news” was that the citizens were not yet broken; they maintained order and held onto hope—
Because the underground communities were isolated, it was difficult to know what was happening beyond their own zone. They had no way of knowing whether fellow citizens were huddled on the other side of the thick stone walls, or if anomalies were clawing through the rock.
Resources from Midnight City flowed continuously to Vinnelag via the Merchant. But even that was only enough to keep Vinnelag, that great ship of a city, from sinking in the storm.
This terrible situation would continue until the number of people in the underground shelters stabilized.
That number was unlikely to be large.
Every minute, someone died. Every minute, someone fled.
The fugitives set out on a journey, searching for the legendary Land of Light.
“How can I help these people?”
Lu Li wondered, having received a letter from Matteus. He summoned the Merchant, Antoni, and instructed him to pass a message to Andrea: open a sea route from Belfast to Vinnelag.
Fortunately, Sugard Mountain, now called the Land of Light, was vast enough that even with many anomalies still lingering, the Distorted Figure and the Church of the Vine could still occupy the lands around Agate Lake.
This was because the anomalies maintained a certain reverence... a reverence for the undying power of a deity.
Then Lu Li’s thoughts turned to the curse of the “Door,” and a breathtaking suspicion formed in his mind.
Anna knew about the “Door.”
She had never seen or heard of the “Door” curse, but she possessed the memories of what Lu Li had experienced.
Was it because of Lu Li’s special connection to her, or had the “Door” chosen her as the next host to follow him?
“I’m sorry...”
A whispered apology reached him, but it wasn’t Anna’s voice.
Lu Li was pulled from his thoughts, and the noisy bustle of the assembly hall once again filled his ears.
Lu Li turned his head. The ever-proud Fudot was standing beside him, her head lowered.
“I shouldn’t have let the eye-worms follow you...”
Because of the mutation potion’s side effect, Lu Li hadn’t spoken for the past two days. This coldness had started after he left Professor Kris’s office.
“Maybe something happened.” A certain rumor about Lu Li, Professor Kris, and her daughter had spread throughout the Academy of Giant Trees, and its content did not paint Lu Li in a favorable light.
Just as Professor Kris had said, his every move would be watched.
Fudot, however, simply assumed that Lu Li had discovered the eye-worms she had left on him.