Chapter 634: Pink Fluffy Bunnies Fill the City

As Qing Ji unleashed his slash, a pitch-black fissure slowly opened before Lu Yibei. It was as though a pair of invisible hands had brutally torn a hole in the curtain called reality.

The fissure writhed like some grotesque cavity, spewing enormous numbers of Pink Fluffy Bunnies in rhythm with its breathing.

Along its edge, pitch-black lines impossible to distinguish as real or illusory tangled together without order. They twisted, thrashed wildly, and extended in every direction.

At the ends of those lines, Lu Yibei could faintly see flowing radiance and rainbow colors scatter, while countless bubble-like scenes appeared and vanished.

To her astonishment, she had seen a similar sight before…

It had been the first time she met the PL girl, and because it was the first, the memory was especially vivid.

Back then, on the rooftop of that ruined, crumbling high-rise, similar chaotic, twisted black lines had drifted around the PL girl’s half-real, half-illusory figure!

Had time been severed on that occasion too?

What exactly was the PL girl…?

The more she thought, the more horrifying the implications became. Lu Yibei stopped her thoughts from spreading any further. The current situation gave her no time to dwell on them.

Collecting herself, she frowned at the black fissure and chaotic lines before her.

The PL girl told me to ask Ancestor to help and slash time apart… We’ve succeeded, but what comes next?

How am I supposed to taint Pink Fluffy Bunny’s belief?

Stuff something filthy inside? Damn it, I’m not that pesky little sister. I’m no good at anything involving piss, shit, and farts!

“Leave the rest to me…”

An ethereal voice spoke behind Lu Yibei. “In a moment, you need only focus and recall the Calamitous Corruption as you remember it.”

The voice said Calamitous Corruption, yet what reached Lu Yibei’s ears was Pink Fluffy Bunny.

That voice… the PL girl? She froze and was about to turn when the voice warned her sharply, “Don’t look back! If you refuse to listen, ten lives won’t be enough to save you.”

Lu Yibei shuddered. Her neck, already turned a fraction, stiffened as though petrified.

From the corner of her eye, she could vaguely make out the silhouette of a tall, slender figure. Several strands of pale hair streamed in the wind.

A murmur of unclear meaning drifted through the air, as though spoken by a dying girl…

The ominous, eerie, icy voice plainly could not have come from the living.

The sound gradually grew clearer. The girl seemed to be chanting an ancient, mysterious song.

Like the legendary song of a siren, it bewitched the mind. Despite the chill within it, one could not resist seeking its source, even if death waited at the end.

As the song echoed, a thick, suffocating stench of blood spread through the air.

The temperature around them plummeted. The rain suspended in midair froze at a visible pace into long, slender crystals.

Then an intense chill swept over Lu Yibei. For an instant, an image flashed through her mind of a sea of blood churning violently and raising a scarlet tsunami.

Atop the blood-red wave stood a long-haired, silver-haired girl, palms pressed together and eyes lowered as she chanted devoutly. Figures flickered within the roiling crimson, all of them naked, enchanting girls who resembled demons.

They laughed, wept, screamed… Slender arms bathed in scarlet stretched forward as though to drag everything they could see into that sea of blood.

While the song beside her ear and the illusion in her mind left Lu Yibei’s thoughts swaying, a hand reached from behind her. Its five fingers were slender, its skin pale and faintly gleaming like ice crystals. It seized her wrist and guided her hand into the black fissure ahead.

Pain—agony that pierced to the marrow.

It felt as though countless sharp teeth were gnawing and grinding her apart. The instant the black fissure swallowed her arm, marrow-deep agony tore through it.

With that pain came a dizzying noise that exploded inside her mind.

She heard tens of thousands of people calling.

“It knows every secret, for It peers through the wind, through the water, through every molecule. Nothing can be concealed, nothing can deceive It, nowhere can escape It…”

Those were the countless devotees of the Calamitous Corruption calling to the being they worshiped.

“Lu Yibei, now!”

At the PL girl’s soft cry beside her ear, Lu Yibei endured the agony in her arm and the terrifying noise, then silently recalled her impression of Pink Fluffy Bunny.

What was Pink Fluffy Bunny like? Lu Yibei wondered.

First, it obviously had to be pink, with lots and lots of fur—as much as an Angora rabbit. Its ears had to be huge and long, and when necessary, it could fly by flapping them. Its eyes had to be big, bright, and watery…

It was a haunting, so there was nothing excessive about giving it an exaggerated appearance… A body as round as Totoro’s in the animated film wouldn’t be going too far, would it?

Finally, it always wore an infuriatingly smug expression and loved pranks, but never meant any real harm…

Thought after thought flashed through Lu Yibei’s mind. An adorably foolish yet faintly comical being, with a personality like a little devil, gradually took concrete shape there.

Then, amid the calls of tens of thousands, a discordant murmur suddenly appeared.

“Pink Fluffy Bunny knows everything, because Pink Fluffy Bunny is peeking through the wind, through the water…”

As though trying to refute this “heretical doctrine,” the devotees’ calls to the Calamitous Corruption instantly strengthened, rising from soft invocations into thunderous shouts.

Countless cries converged into noise so dense it was almost tangible, as though it would grind the listener’s consciousness to pieces.

And yet…

More discordant murmurs soon appeared among the countless shouts.

“Pink Fluffy Bunny knows everything, because Pink Fluffy Bunny is peeking…”

“Pink Fluffy Bunny…”

The discordant voices multiplied, gradually matching the original invocation and then overwhelming it.

“Pink… It… Fluffy Bunny…”

At last, after a brief deathly silence, the invocation erupted anew. Countless mouths now spoke with only one voice.

“Pink Fluffy Bunny knows everything, because it watches with huge, watery eyes, through the wind, through the water, through every molecule. Nothing can be concealed, nothing can deceive it, nowhere can escape it…”

At that moment, the hand holding Lu Yibei’s wrist slowly released her.

In her peripheral vision, the silver-haired figure quietly faded, dispersing into nothing like smoke blown apart by the wind.

The instant the figure vanished completely, a voice whispered beside Lu Yibei’s ear like wind passing by, almost an illusion. “See you later, Lu Yibei. I need to… rest for a while.”

The next moment, time—which had briefly stopped after Qing Ji’s astonishing slash—began flowing again.

The black fissure ahead contracted violently and swallowed all the chaotic black lines. In the end, only a thin dark line remained, slowly fading like a pencil mark erased from paper.

The rain frozen in midair once more answered gravity’s call and fell into the earth’s embrace. It struck the ground, shattered with a patter into pale crystal powder, and scattered everywhere.

Lu Yibei: “…”

The whole aesthetic of that power’s description suddenly became cute and playful!

The aura the PL girl radiated just now was extremely similar to a witch-type haunting’s true-body core…

Could she have tainted Pink Fluffy Bunny’s belief so quickly by using enchantment?

At that thought, Lu Yibei suddenly felt as though a door to an entirely new world had opened.

Ever since discovering that she possessed enchantment, Lu Yibei had used it in a simple, crude, almost instinctive way to influence a target’s mind.

But after witnessing the PL girl use a similar ability, she felt she had faintly touched upon an advanced application.

Enchantment was not limited to beguiling others with beauty and immersing them in lovely illusions. Taken one step further, it could make a target indifferent to reality and distort their perception of it.

It was like the difference in color perception between a color-blind person and someone with ordinary vision.

The PL girl had exploited this property to spread Lu Yibei’s understanding of Pink Fluffy Bunny among its countless devotees and assimilate them.

It resembled a hallucination, yet was different. It fundamentally erased the target’s original understanding of something, much like the Inverse-Form Evil Blossom Gu manipulating a target’s senses.

The haunting remained the same haunting, but its devotees’ understanding of it had been overturned. This was the contamination of belief!

Belief being contaminated and ultimately altering the haunting itself had happened throughout history. It was like Gnostics reshaping the Messiah according to pagan myths, eventually helping the New Testament arise and flourish while the Old Testament gradually declined.

To a haunting’s power, this was like contracting a virulent virus and falling gravely ill. Most recovered eventually, but they inevitably suffered severe damage.

Lu Yibei’s idea of Pink Fluffy Bunny was the original viral strain, while the PL girl used power resembling a witch-type haunting’s true-body core to strengthen and accelerate its spread.

Against psychics and hauntings that drew strength from belief, such an ability was lethally effective.

Once devotees became burdens or threats and inflicted real harm, then from the psychic’s or haunting’s perspective, they were a genuine man-made calamity no different from provoking conflict or causing disaster!

Lu Yibei could already imagine the PL girl learning an enemy’s power description, swiftly contaminating their belief during battle, weakening their power and reducing their strength.

It would be like spending an entire team fight under a Weakness debuff, unable to deal any damage and suffering miserably.

Still…

I probably can’t do that yet. But if I combine it with the Inverse-Form Evil Blossom Gu…

Against a single target with a similar psychic energy fluctuation level, I should be able to distort their perception. I’ll need more practice before I can use it in real combat, Lu Yibei thought.

Huá Sāng’s voice sounded behind her and interrupted her thoughts.

“What… happened just now? Where is Senior Qing Ji?”

Lu Yibei looked at Huá Sāng and shrugged. “The old man went to chase after his little Yanzhi.”

She turned, took a few steps, bent down, and picked up the completed Pure Lotus Sword from the ground.

The next instant, the sword seemed to melt under sudden heat. It became liquid and floated above Lu Yibei’s hand, writhing and changing like a mass of living mercury.

Lu Yibei: “???”

What’s going on? What is this? Where did my enormous sword go?

While she stared blankly, the liquefied Pure Lotus Sword abruptly erupted with dazzling silver light and changed form in a breath.

A slightly curved diamond-shaped tower shield as tall as she was appeared in her hand, followed by a vambrace almost fused with the shield, a heavy phoenix-wing full-face helmet, triple-ring neck armor, and heavy armor layered over mountain-pattern chain mail…

Once the full set appeared, she looked as though her upper body had been stuffed into an iron barrel welded from twenty-five-centimeter steel plates while she also held an extra-thick tower shield!

Even Huá Sāng, an expert in defense, silently gave her a thumbs-up and acknowledged a fellow professional.

“…”

Could this be… Fuck! No way?!

Only then did Lu Yibei remember Qing Ji once telling her that the Pure Lotus Sword possessed intelligence. After accepting a wielder, it changed shape according to that person’s nature…

Before it was completed, Qing Ji still counted as its wielder, so it had retained the form of the Broken Sword.

Now that the remnant soul inhabiting the final fragment had dissipated, Lu Yibei had finally become its new wielder, and the Pure Lotus Sword naturally changed form.

Her most outstanding trait was her fear of death, so the Pure Lotus Sword had become this monstrosity.

Lu Yibei: “…”

Even so… doesn’t that mean all my practice with The Diagram of the Gentleman Sword of Taihe was wasted?

Does anyone know where I can learn “shield techniques”?

Please DM me if you do. It’s urgent!

Inside the Calamitous Corruption’s Divine Land.

Thunder beat like drums amid the chaos.

The vibrations of the roar alone shattered boundless chaotic colors.

Deep-blue lightning spanning more than ten kilometers then traced dazzling paths through the chaos and scattered countless destructive branches.

Zhang Huainan did not know whether the message he sent could stop the unknown call from awakening the Codename F haunting. All he could do was keep fighting and damage it as much as possible to delay its awakening.

After an unknown length of time, space shook violently.

Silver-white sword energy without visible beginning or end seemed to fly from the void and sweep across the entire Divine Land.

Everything in sight abruptly froze.

As though his memory had skipped, Zhang Huainan felt his consciousness disappear for several seconds.

The instant awareness returned, he seemed to remember something. He looked toward the direction the silver-white sword energy had come from. His eyes suddenly reddened, and his trembling lips murmured, “That was Senior Brother Qing… Qing Ji’s…”

Just then, traces of pink quietly appeared within the seemingly endless chaotic colors scattered throughout the Divine Land. The pink multiplied until dense spots covered every chaotic hue in sight.

It looked like a severe skin disease.

Zhang Huainan recovered from his melancholy, noticed the countless pink spots, and knitted his brows.

Once spotted pink, the chaotic colors’ psychic energy fluctuations plummeted. The purpose of his message had been achieved, though by a method rather different from what he had imagined…

Then the Evil God, once driven into a corner of the Divine Land by the chaotic colors, sounded the first call to counterattack.

An immense shadow emerged. A savage fish like a mountain took shape in the chaos, and countless dark-green tentacles extended from its gills.

Those thick tentacles, each more than a hundred meters across, thrashed like long whips lashing clusters of chaotic color and released shrieks like steam whistles.

At the sound, Zhang Huainan focused himself and looked toward the brightest mass of chaotic color, surrounded by countless factories and machines. His eyes narrowed.

Now it was time to suppress this monster… Zhang Huainan thought.

Meanwhile, in Amsterdam.

The sky was gloomy. Lead-colored clouds blotted out the moon, and fierce winds howled mournfully.

Ink-dark clouds rolled through the sky like ranks of surging waves, like countless beasts escaped from cages and fighting to smash into the ships flying overhead.

Within those violent clouds, a monstrous black vessel faced four slightly smaller ships.

Aboard the enormous ship, black from bow to stern, wound with waterweed and carpeted in viscous dark-green flesh, Brusma stood tall in an ornate dark-red captain’s coat. He stared grimly at the four ships arrayed in a fan around him.

Wordless Book had warned him that the Codename F haunting would corrupt every “object.” He had responded cautiously and even painfully judged dozens of members, but that was plainly not enough!

Only after receiving Zhang Huainan’s message from Wordless Book and reluctantly taking action did he discover that the Codename F haunting had corroded the Tulip Club far more deeply than he imagined.

Besides their deity, the Tulip Club’s regional supremacy depended on seven ships from different eras.

Those legendary vessels had sunk into the deep sea and, over long years, gradually become special existences between hauntings and psychic artifacts. Paired with a “captain” whose Spirit Pattern suited them perfectly, they formed a terrifying force.

Yet six of the seven ships had suffered varying degrees of corruption. Only the Vengeful Black Swan, granted by their deity and personally captained by Brusma, had escaped.

When Brusma discovered the six corrupted ships, he realized the Codename F haunting had never sought the Tulip Club’s wealth. It had most likely come for the vessels.

Two of the seven ships that formed the Tulip Club’s foundation had already been torn apart by the haunting Wordless Book had transformed into. Faced with the remaining four, Brusma could not decide. He could only exploit the Vengeful Black Swan’s overwhelming speed and keep circling them.

As a Class A psychic controlling the strongest of the seven vessels, Brusma was highly confident he could sink all four. But doing so would devastate and drastically weaken the Tulip Club.

Moreover, the ships were not merely the club’s foundation. To these descendants of pirates, they were family and trusted companions.

“I never expected someone like you to hesitate. If you cannot decide, I can do it for you…”

A hoarse, low voice sounded behind Brusma.

He heard it but did not turn. He knew it belonged to Wordless Book, and that her present form could give any local nightmares for at least a month.

“Let me think. Fuck, let me think…” Brusma growled.

Wordless Book watched his back, pondered briefly, then shook her head and prepared to destroy the four ships herself. At that moment, an abrupt change occurred.

The vessels began to shudder violently, stirring the air into deep roars like growling beasts.

The next instant, pale flesh attached to the ships and gleaming with chaotic colors suddenly exploded. Pale pus arced through the air, bursting with brilliance like fireworks across the sky.

Then…

As the streaks of light fell, they strangely transformed into furry, round pink rabbits with infuriatingly smug expressions, releasing bursts of bizarre laughter.

“Heeheehee—Yahoo—!”

Wordless Book: “???”

While she stared in confusion, pairs of enormous pink rabbit ears popped from the four huge ships.

They now looked like floats in a carnival procession.

Brusma: “???”

India, Pashupati Temple, at the end of a filthy, narrow alley.

A blood-soaked psychic leaned against a broken wall and shakily raised his fists.

Less than ten minutes after the helicopter crashed, only he remained of the six Aptya members.

He had watched his companions be devoured by the pale beast, torn apart by strange birds, and consumed by backlash from their own psychic artifacts. The bloody, bizarre scenes had nearly broken his mind.

Now he too was nearing his limit.

Through eyes swollen with pooled blood until only narrow slits remained, he saw pale color covering everything—the ground, buildings, sky… and the strange figures fused with objects.

Then, one second before consciousness left him, the pallor in his vision suddenly became pink, like a hallucination. Furry pink covered the whole city.

At that instant, he thought the terrifying haunting had finally driven him insane…

On the mountain road around Zhenwu Mountain Scenic Area.

Two shared electric scooters raced along at astonishing speed.

Under ordinary rules, an electric scooter’s maximum speed was limited to twenty-five kilometers per hour. Some reckless people modified theirs to reach sixty, but even that approached the vehicle’s limit.

Of course, those were only ordinary rules. Miracles lay outside the discussion.

The riders were Shem and Salih, and they had reached an astonishing one hundred and twenty kilometers per hour.

They had created this “miracle” because they sensed the Flower of Miracles blooming. Upon reaching Zhenwu Mountain Scenic Area, they saw from afar the sacred, dazzling golden flower blossoming magnificently across the sky.

The Flower of Miracles’ fragrance drifted dozens of kilometers to Shizhou City.

“Faster, faster, faster!” Shem urged Salih loudly. “That is the direction of the Great Pure Palace. A Flower of Miracles this enormous must mean the Holy Son is creating a miracle there! If we’re late, we won’t witness the glorious moment of its birth!”

“Understood!” Salih shouted, turned his handlebars, shot off the road, and plunged into a pitch-black mountain ravine.

Shem slammed on his brakes. Sparks flew from the wheels as he stopped by the roadside, craned his neck over the bottomless ravine, and scrunched up his face.

“Young people these days really have no sense! This is the moment for the Holy Son to create a miracle, not you. Why steal the spotlight now?”

After muttering to himself, he restarted the smoking scooter and rode deeper into the scenic area. Before long, both wheels caught fire.

From afar beneath the night sky, he resembled Ghost Rider from a movie, with occasional shrieks of burning pain drifting through the darkness.

…

Several minutes later, Shem—his backside charred black—and Salih—scraped all over—slipped into the Great Pure Palace amid the chaos and met near the mountain gate.

They saw numerous disciples fighting monsters whose bodies had fused with objects, pale flesh everywhere, and deeply disturbing psychic energy filling the vast palace complex. From this, they drew two conclusions.

First, the Great Pure Palace was definitely finished this time.

Second, the Holy Son truly deserved to symbolize miracles. She had seized this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create an unparalleled miracle inside the Great Pure Palace.

With those conclusions and their yearning for the Flower of Miracles, the two used the chaos to sneak toward Chili Hall and then… witnessed the “miracle” with their own eyes.

Beneath the night sky, the burned remains of a tower rose high. At its summit stood a graceful figure enveloped in golden light. Behind “her,” an enormous golden flower that blotted out the sky bloomed, its tens of thousands of overlapping petals dazzling the eye.

“She” stood there freely scattering the Flower of Miracles’ fragrance, as though enthroned at the summit of the world.

Countless strange figures and masses of pale flesh hurtled toward “her” like moths to a flame, only to suffer accidents before touching her body.

Golden light abruptly intensified. Within its brilliance, the strange figures and pale flesh froze in midair, then sprouted an alluring shade of pink from nowhere.

Countless figures with pink rabbit ears and palm-sized pink rabbits resembling cartoon plush toys fell from the sky like a pink rainstorm.

Bizarre laughter capable of polluting the mind rang throughout the storm.

What was a miracle?

Shem and Salih looked at each other and found the same certain answer in each other’s eyes.

This was a miracle!

The Holy Son was invincible. They would gladly devote their lives to following at her side!

Scenes like those in Amsterdam, Pashupati Temple, and the Great Pure Palace unfolded across all seven regions corrupted by the Calamitous Corruption.

That night, Pink Fluffy Bunnies filled every city in all seven regions…

Late at night, inside the bamboo-slip illusion.

Deep in the forest, a black and ugly bizarre fish floated before a desk. Pale cyan light glowed at the tips of its long fins as it wrote furiously across the illusory paper before it.

“Battle Plan 3,792, also known as Version 632 of the [Super Magical Girl Demon-Slaying System] quest…”

The situation was racing farther and farther from its original course, and the system understood less by the moment. The series of plans it had made before were plainly no longer applicable.

Fortunately, its rich experience confronting the seven world-ending factors still supported it, allowing it to revise the original plans in time and respond to every possible change.

Time passed. After the system wrote more than ten thousand words and neared completion of the preliminary revision, Gu Qianqian descended from the sky on Gu Jinhua and landed beside it.

“System, System…”

“Don’t bother me, Gu Qianqian!” the system snapped. “Didn’t I just tell you not to disturb me unless something happened?”

“But…”

“No buts!” the system interrupted again. “If you keep causing trouble here, the rewards for your next three quests will be halved!”

“…” Gu Qianqian fell silent for several seconds, then pouted and asked tentatively, “What about this one?”

“What do you mean, this one?” The system looked at her blankly.

“This reward won’t be halved, right?” Gu Qianqian asked softly. “I just completed a quest.”

The system: “…”

Did this girl get her brains knocked loose by a pig?

She had never left the bamboo-slip illusion. Where could she possibly have completed a quest?

Suspicious, the system opened the quest list—then froze.

[Legendary Quest III: Awakening from the Dream, Calamity and Woe (Completed)

Time Remaining: 46:45:23 (Stopped)]

“System, System, where’s my reward?” Gu Qianqian asked, pursing her lips.

The system: “…”

After several seconds of silence, it slowly shifted its gaze to the illusory sheet before it and released a heavy sigh. Then it shrieked like a lunatic and slashed its fins like knives, tearing the paper to shreds…

Fuck this! What the hell was that?!