Chapter 2798 - 1019: Van
"Ahhhh!!!"
A deafening scream echoed through the small dormitory, almost piercing the eardrums.
Tuan Tuan jumped up from the bed, tail raised, back arched, fur bristling, looking around warily.
The other two people in dormitory 403 also rolled out of bed—Xin Fat Man’s body already took on a faint blue hue even before he got out of bed. By the time he got down, his head was already touching the dormitory ceiling, and the red-and-black checked robe he wore to sleep had been torn to shreds by his suddenly enlarged body, looking quite comical.
"What is it?"
The Fat Wizard hunched over, his thunderous voice making the entire dormitory hum and buzz.
Tuan Tuan finally couldn’t stand the continuous noise pollution, yanking open the window and darting out.
"What happened?"
Xiao Xiao had also opened his Bamboo Slip Law Book, but because he got up too hastily, he hadn’t had time to put on his glasses, so he squinted at people, looking drowsy.
Zheng Qing held up a Nightmare Doll.
Xin Fat Man bent his head down and his body shrunk back a bit—by this time, he realized nothing life-threatening happened, or else Zheng Qing would have pulled out his Charm Gun.
Xiao Xiao turned back, fumbling for his glasses by his pillow.
By the time he put his glasses on and returned to Zheng Qing’s bedside, Xin Fat Man should have known what had happened, cursing and swearing, shrinking his body bit by bit: "—Howling like that so early, I thought someone died! Don’t you know turning into a Blue Giant is an extremely painful process? Yes! I usually don’t show it, but use your walnut-sized brain to think, what does it feel like for someone’s bones, muscles, even organs, blood vessels, and nerves to be stretched to the limit in an instant? Don’t know? Then do the splits! Multiply the feeling of doing the splits by ten thousand times, and that’s what I feel when I transform!"
He rambled on, full of resentment.
Zheng Qing looked embarrassed.
Xiao Xiao took the Nightmare Doll without needing Zheng Qing to explain; he’d already seen the empty eggshell in the doll’s arms, and from the nearly dried egg liquid inside, he knew the ’thing’ inside had left long ago.
"Didn’t you feel anything when it hatched?"
Xiao Xiao picked up a piece of eggshell fragment with tweezers, brought it under his eyelids in the sunlight, and examined it closely—its outer shell was gray-blue, the inner layer slightly yellowish, with twisted patterns vaguely retaining some spell marks, but perhaps because the shell’s host had left, those patterns had become somewhat chaotic—suddenly, he seemed to notice something, raised his eyebrows slightly, then rubbed the edge of the eggshell with his fingertips, brushing off a bit of something as colorful as butterfly scale powder.
"—It’s most likely a snake egg." Xiao Xiao spread the powder on his fingertips and finally gave his guess.
Diviners always leave lots of room for interpretation.
"I didn’t lay the egg, why should I feel anything when it hatches?!" Zheng Qing found the earlier question unworthy, as he fastened his belt and worriedly glanced at the remaining eggshell pieces in the Nightmare Doll’s arms.
Just as the Doctor guessed.
He also felt what crawled out of the eggshell was likely a little snake.
But unlike the Doctor.
He deeply knew how terrifying the identity of the big Green Snake living in his ear was. Therefore, upon waking with a scream, he immediately sank his mind into the conscious sea to confirm whether that snake was still there.
Just like the countless times he snuck peeks last night.
The green figure remained quietly coiled on the already-grown Tree of Forbidden Curse. Perhaps noticing the boy’s unhidden gaze, the branches of the expanded Tree of Forbidden Curse swayed slightly, the forbidden spell aura it emitted hadn’t even dispersed from the tree crown before being completely consumed by the green figure. And as it absorbed this touch of forbidden spell aura, an extremely tiny scale fell from it, dissolving into dust mid-air.
The eyes might deceive.
But the aura of forbidden spells and the feeling when they’re annihilated do not deceive.
Which means, the obsession of R’lyeh still lingered within his body—so, what about the eggshell? Whose was the eggshell? What crawled out of it?
Just the thought made Zheng Qing feel a headache coming on.
"There’s no trace of anything."
Xin Fat Man put away his law book, shaking his head. While being woken up for nothing was annoying, as the auxiliary hunter of a professional hunting team, he still used ’Revealing Spell’ and ’Watch Four Directions’ at the first opportunity.
The former was a ’Revealing Spell,’ forcing hidden entities nearby to reveal themselves; the latter a ’Supervisory Spell,’ generally used by hunters in hunting grounds to locate prey, applied here it felt somewhat overkill.
"Can’t track any clues either."
Xiao Xiao put away his Crystal Ball, shook his head, then hesitantly reminded Zheng Qing: "—Or, have Furry Bean help find it? Biological tracking is sometimes more effective than divination magic."
Zheng Qing’s eyes lit up.
"Furry Bean!"
He shouted.
Poof!
A grayish dog appeared spinning at his feet, tail wagging joyfully, meowing nonstop. Although he had heard it many times, Zheng Qing still felt a mental disturbance.
"Find it! Quickly!"
The boy passed the last bit of eggshell fragment from the Nightmare Doll to Furry Bean’s nose, reminding: "—Don’t act rashly once you find it, just come back and tell me where it is... it’s very dangerous!"
"Meow!"
Furry Bean answered happily, sniffed the eggshell, glanced at Zheng Qing, then sniffed again, giving him a bewildered look.
"Go find it! Why are you looking at me?" Zheng Qing felt unnerved being stared at, unconsciously straightening his back and shoulders, turning his head as if suspecting the little snake was hiding on him.
Found no abnormalities.
"Is it on me?" The boy had to ask.
The dog hesitated, shook its head.
"I think its meaning is, the eggshell has your scent, so..." Xiao Xiao kindly reminded from the side.
"Shut up!"
Zheng Qing scowled, cutting off the Doctor’s idle speculation, then looked down intending to reprimand the wandering dog, only to find it had vanished without a trace.
The next moment.
Poof!
The grayish figure abruptly appeared, shook its head at the boy, sniffed the eggshell again, then ’poof,’ it disappeared once more. Repeating this process over ten times, Zheng Qing finally lost patience.
"I should have known it would end like this."
He sighed, stopping Furry Bean’s futile search efforts, then turned to Xiao Xiao: "—Let’s not look anymore, if it is what I think, Furry Bean won’t be able to find it... I’ll go to the pedestrian street at noon... let’s do the morning exercises first."