Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

To describe it in more detail... it's roughly like having a telepathic connection.

[So, is that why you immediately chose to retreat upon discovering Imhotep's presence near O'Connor, and then subtly hinted this information to Chu Xuan?]

Patchouli clearly understood her intentions and gave a corresponding response.

"Yes, that's exactly right. Chu Xuan said I could remind him when necessary, and I believe he has taken my advice to heart. The triggering of the main quest is his answer to me; now it depends on whether they can get away with it. Anubis is, after all, a unique god, at least at the fourth rank, and a fifth rank is not out of the question... To face an opponent of this caliber right from the start, even if the opponent has no ill intentions... is still a difficult task for him."

"There's nothing we can do, what can we do when he's Chu Xuan?" Patchouli smiled gently.

"Yes, that's because he's Chu Xuan." Alice responded with another smile, then her brows immediately furrowed again.

“Uh… Patchouli, did I forget something?” Alice gently tapped her head. “I remember I was supposed to do something important when I received the quest prompt.”

“No.” Patchouli shook her head. “Aside from abandoning Mingyanwei after throwing her off the gyrocopter, you haven’t forgotten anything important.”

"Oh, that's good... What!?"

....................................

Shadowverse tried joining the Holy Lion Cult... For three consecutive games, I drew cards to the limit, but I couldn't draw a single Temple card even after ten mana!

So, my dark complexion isn't just because I'm a useless dog?!

Section 21: Not only does it not hurt, but it also feels wonderful.

Britain, no man's land, at ground level—after Alice landed from the gyroplane, she did not spot Ming Yanwei in her field of vision.

[Her tracks have vanished, but her coordinates can still be sensed. The protective barrier and trigger spells specifically placed on her are also functioning smoothly.] Alice habitually tapped her temple. Although she was currently in the form of a vengeful spirit, she could still transmit what she saw to Patchouli on the gyroplane through message sharing. [...Just as we expected. The other side took this obvious bait.]

She spoke softly, her gaze sweeping across the desolate landscape before her—the ruins of an abandoned early 20th-century city came into view. Undoubtedly, there was no sign of any normal life in this ruined city. Apart from the pervasive, faint electromagnetic interference, only the cold wind howled among the endless ruins.

Clearly, the witch wouldn't be distracted by suddenly seeing the God's quest notification. She had deliberately delayed her descent and temporarily withdrew her attention from Ming Yanwei to give something in the no-man's-land an opportunity to act. Otherwise, she wouldn't have wasted time giving Ming Yanwei extra training and deliberately strengthening her mental defenses.

She is the bait, a bait wrapped in sugar, and within that sugar lies a protective barrier. She will reveal the true location of the alien creatures, and this will serve as her intensive training before returning to the Main God Space—Alice has high hopes for her and considerable confidence in her growth.

Alice, naturally, wouldn't do nothing while Mingyanwei was being used as bait.

She heard the wind whistling through the exposed steel bars and saw the withered leaves tumbling across the broken ground. As she took a small step forward, the wind on the entire street suddenly stopped, and the numerous withered leaves all fell over in an instant, hiding in the cracks of the ground like startled little animals, disappearing without a trace in the blink of an eye.

“Mental pollution,” Alice murmured, seemingly to herself, or perhaps to something hidden in the shadows.

We need to find Ming Yanwei quickly.

She was very familiar with this kind of thing, or rather, she was deeply impressed by it. Because this was the change brought about by the arrival of outsiders from other lands in this world. Among those things that crossed the threshold were definitely not just time-space hounds, because hounds emphasize the ability to hunt and prey, and do not alter the surrounding environment the moment they arrive, nor give everything around them a false existence.

The wind came alive, using its sharp air currents as claws to prey. Dead leaves formed colonies, like army ants, embodying a collective will to greedily devour all living things. And not only them, but most of the buildings in this ruined city may have also become alien life forms. Windows became eyes, doorways became mouths, and the mortals who lived within them naturally fell into their stomachs from the very beginning.

One of the things that came with the hounds became the mother, Gaia, creating an ecosystem incompatible with this world. Although it was severely damaged by Death, its creations still survived, protecting… or rather, depending on their 'Gaia'. They became its breeding ground, its parasites, its barrier. And since they are living beings, they naturally possess the instincts of living beings. They know what is strong and what is weak.

Alice is strong, the outsider is weak.

The outsider is strong, Ming Yanwei is weak.

The weak can prey on the weaker, but when they encounter the strong, they can only avoid them.

They can't escape it, so they choose to remain silent.

Alice reached out and gently touched the air in front of her. A simple wave of information was immediately stirred up, breaking through the ubiquitous, minute electromagnetic interference in the urban ruins and sweeping across everything within her field of vision. And then…

No feedback was received.

【really.】

She stomped her foot angrily on the ground, and the ground within a radius of hundreds of meters suddenly cracked open. Countless root-like things broke apart underground, spraying out a thick, foul-smelling, yellowish-black liquid. Something seemed to let out a sharp cry, but the cry immediately stopped, like a rooster being choked.

Sure enough, the strange object that had descended was well hidden. Her information detection couldn't find any trace of it in the world. Perhaps it didn't even exist in the current spatial plane, or worse, it wasn't even in the current timeline.

—The witch frowned angrily.

The instant she furrowed her brow, the creatures in the city's ruins, endowed with pseudo-life, trembled slightly at her will. They watched her menacingly from the shadows, yet feared all her actions.

"They are protecting their mother's location. Clearly, they possess considerable intelligence. They know the best strategy now is to pretend we don't exist. Whatever you do won't elicit a reaction from them, because they know that even if you kill them all, as long as the mother survives, they will regenerate. And if you kill the mother, the ecosystem, without Gaia's support, will have no chance of survival in this world." Patchouli's voice echoed in her ears, recounting the truth of the city.

"Because I can indeed kill it. Given the current extent of the mental pollution and its influence, it will surely die once I find it," Alice answered in her mind. As if sensing something, she reached out and manipulated her force field to draw a hidden leaf from a crack at her feet. Her gaze immediately pierced through it, and the instant she held it in her hand, she saw the sharp mouthparts and dozens of eyes hidden beneath the leaf.

The leaf remained motionless, even after she crushed it into powder.

Tsk, what a stubborn guy.

She casually tossed the fragments aside, raised her staff of control, and pointed it in a random direction. With a slight boom, a seven-colored magic cannon shot out from the end of the staff, rapidly expanding, extending, and growing into a beam of light as thick as a bucket. Upon contact with an obstacle, it disintegrated and melted it, followed by a violent explosion.

'Boom—'

A building that resembled a church was pierced directly by a magic cannon, and the unstable magical structure triggered a massive explosion inside. Accompanied by the wails of what sounded like hundreds or thousands of souls, hundreds or thousands of faces, streaked with blood and tears, suddenly appeared on the church's exterior walls. Seven-colored light then burst forth from their eyes, igniting them all into chaotic torches.

They screamed, and things that looked like hands and feet extended from the torches and waved them around. There seemed to be a strange rhythm to their waving, as if the light and shadow alone could construct a hymn that sounded like a prayer. But the song stopped abruptly as Alice looked at it, and the torches quickly burned out, their contents turning to pure ash.

There was prayer, but no salvation.

Seconds later, the entire church completely collapsed and shattered. Countless vein-like structures emerged from the broken walls, spewing out a yellowish-green turbid liquid. This liquid was ignited, transforming into flowing fire that seeped into the building's walls and floor. The seven-colored stream of light continued forward, barely dissipating after piercing through a factory, three large apartment buildings, and more than a dozen other buildings of unknown purpose, leaving a kilometer-long molten groove in the ground.

The wind scattered in fear, and with the sounds of collapse and burning, Alice's vision expanded considerably from this attack. However, just as she had predicted, even after she had slain so many clearly alien creatures, the remaining aliens remained oblivious to her. There was no resistance, no struggle, as if she were merely a natural disaster. And natural disasters can only be avoided, not fought against.

If they don't resist, they won't reveal any extra information. If they don't reveal any extra information, the witch won't discover the location of the mother.

Alice felt a pang of melancholy, which she outwardly masked with an even more intense anger emanating from her eyes. In her perception, Ming Yanwei's coordinates continued to shift. Initially, the changes were along the real number line, but now they had even entered the realm of imaginary numbers. And since the shift from real to imaginary numbers naturally represented a difference in the spacetime dimension.

"You guys are really infuriating."

She raised her hand, and a massive magic circle materialized above her. Accompanied by low rumbles of thunder, dark clouds gradually gathered in the sky, and countless thick bolts of lightning leaped among them. A massive static electricity phenomenon then appeared in her vision—she could almost visually perceive the sparks and faint blue-purple flashes of electricity constantly erupting from the ground. The clouds in the sky grew denser and slowly churned at her will, and with a slight push forward, the churning clouds transformed into a gigantic vortex. It looked as if an enraged witch intended to indiscriminately destroy everything in her sight in order to reclaim her lost companion.

She remained calm, though she appeared furious, she was actually carefully observing everything on the ground. And just as her feigned calmness and anger remained unchanged, the horde of alien creatures inhabiting the ground also remained silent.

They are fearless.

—【Pachi, report Mingyanwei's current coordinates to me.】

—【Confirmed, the number axis is 767i,252,1. The spacetime axis is 戌丁亥庚甲甲辛.】

—【Help me adjust the impact point of a lightning strike. Ignore the imaginary position, set the intensity to just enough to kill her, but offset it two units to the side. Then arrange some camouflage.】

The witches' thoughts swirled and passed in a flash.

In the next instant, dozens of lightning bolts, each as thick as a bucket, plummeted from the sky. Accompanied by deafening roars, explosions, and fires ignited by the lightning, nearly one percent of the entire abandoned city's mass was instantly destroyed, reduced to basic dust incapable of sustaining life. Following these dozens of preludes, more lightning bolts began to gather, rain began to fall, and many smaller, yet still destructive, bolts descended, rapidly and chaotically dismantling everything in the city.

A bolt of lightning struck the warehouse, igniting the dried-up oil and setting it ablaze. Withered trees burned with a creaking, groaning sound, their dry branches waving like hands reaching for the sky in distress.

A bolt of lightning pierced through the apartment building, and many old clothes were blown up by the blast wave, billowing in the air as if they were being worn by people, and then burning in the flames. The flames wriggled and transformed into terrified faces.

A bolt of lightning destroyed the old bridge, and the rotten, dilapidated carriages beneath it rolled away with their broken tires. The rain-soaked leaves clung together like refugees pleading for help, tightly binding the carriages as if that would allow them to escape.

The entire ruined city was engulfed in destruction by lightning. Though deserted, the streets seemed to echo with the terrified screams of countless people. They ran, struggled, and desperately tried to escape the lightning's reach. But destruction... destruction would not cease.

Alice hovered silently in mid-air, observing everything that was happening below. She repeatedly unleashed massive lightning strikes towards the vicinity of Ming Yanwei's coordinates, sometimes hitting her precisely without any deviation. Yet, in her perception, Ming Yanwei's location coordinates remained unchanged. They existed, and continued to move.

The aliens revealed no information whatsoever, except that the mother must be in the no-man's-land, they found absolutely nothing.

So……

She blinked.

—【Patch, how are things now?】

—[The location coordinates on Ming Yanwei are still changing, clearly indicating that she hasn't been transported to the side of that descended creature yet. Perhaps she's currently playing hide-and-seek with a bunch of unknown things in some spatial rift. Or perhaps these beings are deliberately creating a diversion.]

—Should I act even more urgent now?

—[That's enough. Continuing further might be counterproductive. The no-man's-land is vast; even if we destroy this city, many areas will remain. Perhaps we can recall Ming Yanwei and then adopt other strategies.]

"That won't do." Alice's mind raced with a negative thought. "We must resolve this issue before completing the Scorpion King main storyline over there. Only then can we change Anubis's Trial quest to unlock the Scorpion King prequel storyline. Otherwise, Anubis's Trial will most likely require us to fight this enhanced version of the alien creature. While we might not necessarily lose, Chu Xuan will come after us for the disruption to our plans—he's not so easily fooled. Or would you rather settle accounts with him?"

Patchouli remained silent for a few seconds.

—【Alice, what should we do?】

—[How is the restoration of the Grand Library going? Is the Hongpao ready for use?]

—【It's very difficult; the damage is too severe.】

—【…Well, there's nothing we can do about that.】

Alice gently closed her eyes, then opened them.

—【Compile the Book of Revelation, Patchouli. This area is close to Northern Europe, so using the Church's spells isn't a problem. Let's choose 'Ragnarok' as the title. If all else fails… then we'll wipe the British Isles off the map to eliminate any possibility of that alien species surviving outside our borders. In the meantime, I'll try to track that guy down through Mingyanwei, and whether Chu Xuan will cause us trouble later is up to you.】

—【…It will take about seven days to chant, Alice. I will negotiate the timing with Chu Xuan.】

Alice pursed her lips. Seven days… Patchouli probably wants to push the entire British continental shelf back into the seabed. Oh well… whatever.

She took a deep breath, which she didn't need, and began tracking the coordinates on Ming Yanwei's body.

Not long ago, somewhere on Earth, in a place whose exact location is yet to be determined, Ming Yanwei, having just recovered from the weightlessness of falling from a great height, opened her eyes.

"Achoo!"

She suddenly sneezed.

"Hmm..." She gently patted her helmet. "I have a bad feeling... Where did Miss Alice go?"

She suddenly looked around.

Where am I?

..........................................

Ah... I was repeatedly hung up and beaten by the vengeful ghost _(:з」∠)_

Painful _(:з」∠)_

Damn it, the Book of Revelation! Damn it, the immortal kin of yours! Damn it, the pretentious Yulias!

Ugh... I can't take this injustice QAQQQQQQQQQQQQ

Chapter Twenty-Two: Ah... My brain is trembling!

What came into Ming Yanwei's view was a silent city. The moon was high in the sky, and the city was lit by a few lonely, silent stars under the night sky. She was standing on the desolate outskirts of the city, with a broken tree at her feet and a large crater next to it where she had fallen.

Without a doubt, this was not the ground she should have landed on.

“I at least remember that I jumped off the gyroplane at noon, but now it’s the middle of the night.” She took a deep breath, gathered her strength, and in the blink of an eye, she activated the miniature radar and communication system built into her power armor. The ‘no signal’ notification that followed told her what situation she was in.

She looked up and, as she had predicted, saw no gyrocopter in the sky.

"Oh no, it seems I've fallen into some kind of illusion. If that's the case... no, that's not right, this might not be an illusion." She instinctively wanted to lower the visor of her helmet—a subtle sense of curiosity drove her to want to feel the cold night air for herself. However, before she could act, a warning flashed through her mind, forcibly stopping her from doing so.