Chapter 498: Going This Big?

Behind you?

Everyone in the room was shocked. Without a second to think, Arabella Donovan, hearing the shout, instinctively took a step back, just in time to dodge the blade that lunged from behind her.

The others then saw the scene behind her and simultaneously gasped.

Cassandra Lynch, who should have been locked up in a police station, was somehow standing behind Arabella Donovan, holding a fruit knife. Her delicate, pretty face was twisted with malice and excitement—a chilling sight.

Her first strike having failed, Cassandra Lynch didn’t give up. She tightened her grip on the handle and lunged at Arabella Donovan again with swift movements.

Arabella Donovan hadn’t expected Cassandra Lynch to suddenly appear, either. It was just as Mrs. Donovan had said before—she had teleported to her side with a weapon in hand, making it impossible to defend against.

Now, seeing Cassandra Lynch brandishing the knife and charging at her, looking as if she wouldn’t stop until she was dead, Arabella Donovan subconsciously pushed Mrs. Donovan and Eloise Donovan, who were close to her, aside.

She then dodged Cassandra Lynch’s swinging blade again, raised her hand to grab her wrist, and twisted it down hard, trying to make her drop the knife in pain.

But unexpectedly, Cassandra Lynch, completely consumed by hatred, seemed to feel no pain at all. She twisted her hand back and tried to cut Arabella Donovan’s hand, forcing Arabella to let go.

This scene was clearly beyond everyone’s expectations, especially the Donovan Family’s. They knew better than anyone how strong Arabella Donovan was.

A burly man rippling with muscle might not have been able to withstand that grip, let alone Cassandra Lynch, a sickly girl who had been on medication since birth.

But at a moment where life and death hung in the balance, they had no time to dwell on it.

As someone who had been stripped of her protagonist’s halo and sent to do hard time, Cassandra Lynch’s hatred for Arabella Donovan was no less than Guinevere Rhodes’s. Especially after being brainwashed by the Providence, she blamed Arabella for all her current suffering, and her knife strikes were fast, precise, and ruthless.

In the blink of an eye, she had pinned Arabella Donovan against the counter of the open-plan kitchen. Both of their hands were on the knife handle, its tip aimed straight at Arabella’s head. One pushed up, while the other desperately pressed down.

‘I was careless. The Providence’s buff wasn’t on Guinevere Rhodes at all; it was all on this psycho.’

‘…’ ‘This is no time to be thinking about useless things. Staying alive is what matters!’

The Donovan Family wanted to help, but they were held back by Guinevere Rhodes and the people she had brought with her, unable to break free. Mrs. Donovan and Eloise were barely able to protect themselves.

At the critical moment, Caspian Rhodes—the one who had just shouted a timely warning—strode forward, trying to push Cassandra Lynch off of Arabella. He had recently bought the apartment next door as a precaution, and having just noticed the sound of her door being broken down, he had rushed over to help.

Who would have thought that several large, black hands, gnarled like dead branches and brandishing their claws, would suddenly appear behind Cassandra Lynch? They instantly enveloped Arabella Donovan, Cassandra Lynch, and the approaching Caspian Rhodes.

“Serena!”

The crowd’s terrified shouts couldn’t stop the black smoke from consuming them. In just a moment, they watched as several living people vanished before their very eyes.

The instant she was swallowed by the black smoke, Arabella Donovan’s mind couldn’t stop its wild train of thought. ‘What kind of Providence is this? Its kidnapping methods are so lame, like a classic final boss villain.’

And the scene she saw next only confirmed her suspicions.

‘What kind of “good guy” kidnaps someone and shoves them into a place that looks like a sewer?’

Arabella Donovan could even smell the faint stench wafting up from a nearby cesspool and hear the DRIP, DRIP, DRIP of sewage falling from not too far above.

Although she wasn’t a neat freak, Arabella Donovan felt her skin crawl for some reason. She instinctively tried to find an exit out of the vast darkness, only to discover she couldn’t move at all.

Looking down, she saw that she had been trussed up at some point and was completely immobilized.

The realization sent a chill down her spine. She felt like a piece of meat on a chopping block, at the mercy of others, liable to be killed at any moment.

The Providence’s Consciousness, hidden in the shadows, seemed to sense her thoughts. A cold wind suddenly swept through the empty corridor, howling past her ears like a triumphant, mocking laugh.

The moment the wind passed, her surroundings suddenly lit up, allowing her to see the scene before her clearly.

It was a square space, about twenty square meters, filled with upright, gleaming blade tips. It was even more exaggerated than the beds of nails that ancient petitioners had to roll over to file a complaint. If you accidentally fell in, you’d probably be turned into a sieve!

Arabella Donovan: “???” ‘Damn, are they really going this far? Can’t they just give me a quick death? They have to torture me first, is that it?’

It was obvious that a certain Providence truly hated her guts.

Before Arabella Donovan could react, she felt her bound body begin to float, carrying her toward the mountain of blades.

Watching the blades rush toward her face as if in fast-forward, Arabella Donovan squeezed her eyes shut in terror.

‘Damn it! Even if this fall doesn’t kill me, it’ll ruin my face! My life is over!’

But soon, Arabella Donovan felt herself bounce off something soft. Her whole body shuddered from the impact, but she felt no pain.

‘What’s happening?!’

Arabella Donovan froze for a second, then tried to crack her eyes open to look down. She almost gasped. The cold, gleaming tips of the blades were stopped less than five centimeters below her.

But in that five-centimeter gap, it was as if something was holding her up, preventing the blades from harming her in the slightest.

Arabella Donovan could feel an invisible hand above her, trying to press her entire body downward. As a result, the thing separating her from the blades was swaying back and forth, like being in a moving car.

After an unknown amount of time, the giant hand seemed to give up. Arabella Donovan’s vision blurred, and the scene before her underwent a world-shaking transformation.

In the bright, square room, the dense forest of blades had completely vanished. In its place was a gigantic cauldron of oil, propped up high. The firewood underneath burned fiercely, and looking down from above, one could vaguely see small bubbles rising in the oil.

As if this scene wasn’t intimidating enough, the entity that had arranged all this deliberately tossed a moth in. It fluttered unsteadily to the top of the cauldron, then plunged in. Before it could even touch the oil, it was vaporized into a wisp of black smoke, which a puff of wind blew away, leaving not a single trace in this world.

Arabella Donovan: “!!!”

‘First a mountain of blades, now a cauldron of oil. You really hate me, don’t you, you damn Providence!’