Chapter 242: Major Event Three: Night of the Witches (2)

"Fucking hell, I should've known Little Grey would act up. It would've been better if White Jack had just locked my sister away. At least things wouldn't have gotten this damn bad—"

In the dead silence of the library, Ke Mingqing recalled the puppet witch's face as he looked up, gazing through the display windows at the magnificent, massive structure in the sky.

At that moment, emergency evacuation broadcasts echoed down the long streets. The massive blaring washed into the library like a tidal wave: "Warning, warning. A disaster artificially caused by super-human species criminals has been detected. All residents, please follow the instructions of the police, superheroes, and magical girls to evacuate the City Center immediately to avoid being caught in the crossfire!"

Ke Mingqing looked outside. The entire street was shrouded in the shadow cast by the Night of Finality.

In the darkness, the advertising light boards and the LED screens atop the high-rises diffused a blinding red light, displaying the Hero Company evacuation logo: a shepherd maneuvering around a male lion with a rope.

Then, starting with the Super Hero Company and the Magical Girl Company, the skyscrapers in the City Center let out deafening roars one by one. The screens on their facades lit up, broadcasting the exact same emergency evacuation notice.

At the top of the evacuation logo were two enlarged, bold red letters: "SS."

This meant the danger level of this disaster was the Catastrophe Rank, the highest in the Hero Company's hazard rating scale.

At this very moment, the cluster of skyscrapers in the City Center roared like a group of emaciated giants, their immense volume waking the slumbering city.

Chaos erupted in all directions. People who had been resting in their apartments a second ago popped their heads out of their windows; one glance at the scene outside scared them out of their wits. They slammed their doors and rushed out without even putting their clothes on, pouring toward the ground floor in throngs.

The stairwells were packed with panicking, fleeing figures. Down in the crowds on the streets, there were still a few suicidal people raising their phones, looking up to film the stage structure hovering overhead like a supermassive UFO.

Superheroes in bodysuits and magical girls in various colorful dresses flew above the chaotic, clamoring streets, coordinating with the police to direct the crowds.

Ke Mingqing took a deep breath, drew his gaze back from the window, and pulled his softly vibrating phone from his windbreaker.

[Ke Mingwei: I'm already on my way. How is Little Li?]

[Ke Mingqing: A witch took her away. She should be above the Night of Finality right now. I have to go find her.]

[Ke Mingwei: What? Don't panic. Wait until I get there.]

Ke Mingqing glanced at the message and strode out of the library. 'They shouldn't do anything to Xia Zili for the time being. I have to save her before her Witchification happens—'

Thinking this, he walked down the long street against the rushing current of the crowd. But a moment later, he abruptly raised his head, his eyes widening slightly.

"What is that now?" Ke Mingqing muttered.

He saw it. Intense flashes of light suddenly erupted from the north, south, east, and west. Immediately after, dazzling pillars of blazing white light shot into the sky, illuminating the dreary city and the heavens above!

But strangely, these four pillars of light didn't cause any physical destruction. Instead, like auroras on the horizon, they quietly illuminated four empty plazas in the cardinal directions.

Staring at this unbelievable sight, Ke Mingqing raised an eyebrow and immediately opened his phone to message Ke Mingwei.

[Ke Mingqing: Old man, what's this commotion?]

[Ke Mingwei: Don't worry, it's our people. To guard against the witches' attacks, the Magical Girl Three Giants prepared "Void Realms" in every direction of the City Center ahead of time. This is the highest-tier Magic Card in the magical girls' arsenal. The crowds that enter the pillars of light will be teleported to open grounds several kilometers away.]

[Ke Mingqing: They came pretty well-prepared.]

Sending the text, Ke Mingqing looked up from his phone. 'So they actually have this kind of evacuation method. Why haven't I seen it before? Is it because the details of every major event are kept strictly confidential?'

He turned onto a long street, casually helping a fallen girl off the ground and handing her up to a superhero in a silver-white bodysuit with wings on his back, who was flying overhead.

He then looked at his phone once more.

[Xi Ziyue: Is Little Li with you?]

[Ke Mingqing: No. I didn't react fast enough just now and let the puppet witch take her away.]

[Xi Ziyue: Is that so... It's fine. I placed a "Talisman" on her. That card will activate when necessary. Since the card's effect hasn't been triggered yet, it means there's no need to worry about her safety for now.]

[Xi Ziyue: Also, as you can see, the Night of Finality has already unfolded. We aren't sure what will happen next either. We hope you can be of assistance to us.]

[Ke Mingqing: I don't care about the rest. I'm only responsible for getting my sister back.]

[Xi Ziyue: That is enough. I hope you can find her. Next, we will gather our forces to attack the Night of Finality's stage and pin down those three witches.]

'The problem is how I'm supposed to get up there. I can only use White Jack's top hat...'

Ke Mingqing locked his phone as he pondered, raising his eyes to stare at that magnificent "birdcage stage" suspended in midair. It was then that he suddenly noticed something jarring, involuntarily murmuring, "Wait, what are those things making up the 'outer birdcage net' of the Night of Finality?"

Indeed, upon closer inspection, Ke Mingqing realized that the strip-like objects forming the semicircular "outer birdcage net" on the periphery of the Night of Finality weren't actually giant pillars.

Those strip-like things were swaying faintly in midair like kites, kicking up massive waves of air that blew away the clouds.

"If they aren't pillars, then what exactly are those things surrounding the birdcage that look like iron bars?"

Following this train of thought, Ke Mingqing frowned, took his phone out of his windbreaker pocket, opened the camera, and pointed the lens at the sky.

With a click, he snapped a picture of the stage structure, the "Night of Finality." Then, zooming in on the photo by more than ten times, he finally got a clear look at what those elongated monoliths forming the "birdcage net" on the periphery of the Night of Finality truly were—

"Are those... giants?"

Ke Mingqing's pupils shrank slightly. He slowly opened his mouth, whispering hoarsely.

The zoomed-in photo revealed narrow, elongated humanoid figures towering over one hundred and fifty meters tall. They had humanoid silhouettes, but the proportions of their upper and lower bodies were severely mismatched, making them look like colossal paper cutouts.

Red magical veins crawled across every single one of these narrow giants' bodies. Intricate patterns spread outward from the jagged rifts in their abdomens, covering their limbs, right down to their palms and the soles of their feet.

The most bizarre part was their heads. The giants' faces were completely blank, save for a single, massive button eye.

'No, these things aren't giants—'

Staring at the button eyes on their faces, Ke Mingqing quickly figured out where these giants came from. 'Could it be... they're all puppets created by the puppet witch?!'

That was right. The Night of Finality wasn't originally a birdcage-shaped structure. It only looked that way because the puppet witch had created a massive number of super-giant puppets along its edges.

These puppets encircled the periphery of the Night of Finality, with one super-giant puppet towering at set intervals. They bent their bodies, bringing their heads together at the very peak of the Night of Finality. From afar, they looked as though they had woven together into an "outer birdcage net."

Realizing this, Ke Mingqing drew in a sharp breath. "With such an absurd number, that crazy woman must have been preparing for this day for a long time. No wonder there hasn't been a peep from them for the past month—when women go bad, they're truly ruthless."

In the next instant, a thunderous rumble echoed through the air. The super-giant puppets suddenly moved.

Ke Mingqing tilted his head back, his pupils contracting slightly as he watched the massive puppets' frames begin to violently shudder, causing the entire stage structure to quake along with them.

Then, the puppets began to separate their clustered heads at the very peak. They no longer hunched over to rest their heads against one another; instead, they stood bolt upright on the perimeter of the Night of Finality, like towering signal towers.

Once upright, the head of every single puppet pierced straight through the clouds in the blue sky. Like Grim Reapers, they lowered their gaze through the ethereal clouds, looking down upon the crowds on the earth below.

'Crap, these puppets can actually move? What's going to happen if they drop to the ground...' Ke Mingqing couldn't help but wonder as he met the gaze of one of the puppets.

Just as he thought that, the scene he least wanted to see unfolded—out of the twenty-odd super-giant puppets, five of them suddenly moved. They bent their bodies and sat down on the surface of the stage.

Then, they slightly bent their legs against the ground and hugged their knees with their freakishly long arms. Maintaining this eerie knee-hugging posture, they pushed off with their toes with all their might, launching themselves forward from the edge of the Night of Finality stage structure.

"What the hell?" Ke Mingqing was stunned.

Like massive intercontinental missiles, those five super-giant puppets plummeted straight down from hundreds of meters in the air! They scattered toward every corner of the City Center.

The giant plummeting overhead was like a massive meteor, casting a shadow that blotted out the sun and completely engulfed Ke Mingqing's figure.

In the darkness, the ever-expanding giant shadow reflected in his pupils. The shrieks of the crowd and the explosive boom of the air tearing overhead echoed in his ears.

The howling gale whipped up Ke Mingqing's hair and clawed at his cheeks.

'Should I use the Blended Lightning form?'

He froze for a moment, shifting his gaze away from the giant puppet that was about to land, looking instead at the crowds on the long street that hadn't completely evacuated yet.

People craned their necks, staring in terrified despair at the mountain-like monolith pressing down on them.

Ke Mingqing's windbreaker snapped wildly in the fierce wind. 'There are too many people. I won't have time to save everyone. The impact when the puppet lands will completely obliterate the ground for hundreds of meters around... Only by using Blended Lightning will I have a chance to block this thing. But if I use it here, what do I do later...'

'I still have to go save Xia Zili. I don't have time to waste here.'

Ke Mingqing stared wearily at the figures on the street. Deep blue lightning sparked from the darkness, illuminating his form.

In the profound, absolute silence of the darkness, he starkly became the most eye-catching existence on the entire street. A little girl cradled in her mother's arms popped her head out, staring curiously into his eyes.

"Mommy, it's Blue Pigeon..." the little girl murmured. Her mother was already too terrified to speak.

Every single person on the street was blown to the ground by the air pressure sweeping down from above. Only Ke Mingqing stood quietly in place.

He silently looked into the girl's eyes, then suddenly took a deep breath.

Ke Mingqing raised his right palm. Pitch-black lightning, like thick ink, slowly flowed into the blue lightning, attempting to blend with it.

However, at that exact moment, a deafening roar suddenly tore through midair.

Ke Mingqing froze for a second, then snapped his head up to look. Entering his vision was a slender, humanoid figure bearing blood-stained teeth. It was as tall as a residential building, entirely pitch-black save for its blood-red teeth. Of course he remembered this shadow; it was Rain Crow's Shadow of Saturnus!

"Old man?" he murmured hoarsely. The lightning on his body that was just about to blend dissipated in an instant.

At this very moment, Rain Crow was standing atop a high-rise. He manipulated the Shadow of Saturnus into throwing its arms open upward. The shadow's arms extended endlessly, welcoming the super-giant falling from the sky in an embracing posture.

BOOM! The instant the two collided, a deafening blast rippled in all directions.

A miracle occurred.

That arrogant, magnificent giant, towering well over a hundred meters tall, was simply caught by a shadow that was almost negligibly tiny in comparison.

The world fell utterly silent. It was perfectly quiet on the long street. Everyone stared blankly upward at this miraculous sight.

In the next second, the Shadow of Saturnus slowly split its mouth into a grin, revealing its bloodstained teeth. It hoisted the giant puppet high into the air, piercing its claws into the puppet's body and ripping it apart right from its very foundations.

The massive puppet was instantly torn into thousands of human-sized chunks. It was like a snowfall of pure white rain. There was no blood inside those ghastly anatomical structures; the puppet's severed hands, feet, chest, and head simply plummeted straight toward the Shadow of Saturnus.

The Shadow of Saturnus suddenly opened its mouth, inhaling every single one of the puppet's body parts down its throat, like a glutton downing an entire lake.

"How absurd. So this is an S Rank..." Ke Mingqing murmured.

In the next instant, the Shadow of Saturnus vanished from the top of the high-rise. In its place, a voice altered by a metallic voice changer rang out from behind Ke Mingqing: "A'Qing, are you alright?"

"I'm fine, old man." Ke Mingqing turned his head, looking at the figure entirely shrouded in a pitch-black cape. "But what about the other puppets?"

As he spoke, he pointed at the other four super-giant puppets still plummeting through midair.

Rain Crow merely raised his head slowly, speaking in a low, hoarse voice. "Someone will deal with them—"

Hearing this, Ke Mingqing froze for a second, then followed his gaze upward.

He saw a tall, slender figure hovering in the sky. It was a woman dressed in a Russian military uniform and sporting a Russian military cap. She held down the brim of her hat with one hand, hugging her opposite shoulder with the other.

At this moment, a red and white super-human species interface hovered above the woman's head.

[Super-human species codename: Officer Girl (esper)]

[Description: She is a Grim Reaper born for war, a flower of slaughter from the frozen rivers of Siberia, and a member of the Superhero Roundtable Council. Her esper ability is to manifest and manipulate an array of firearms and cold weapons.]

[Hazard Rating: S Rank]

"Officer Girl—" Ke Mingqing's eyes widened slightly.

Officer Girl's long platinum-blonde hair whipped wildly in the gale. She looked up from the shadow beneath the brim of her hat, staring at the Night of Finality stage overhead with keen interest.

It was as if... she had never even spared a glance at the four super-giant puppets plummeting down.