Chapter 65: The Theater (9)

After crawling past the first ventilation opening, a long stretch still awaited Everly.

The moment she thought about the video already being released and how the masked men might activate the ritual at any second, her heart felt as though it had been thrown into a pan of boiling oil, tormenting her. Worse still, from all the crawling earlier, the skin on her fingertips had been completely worn raw. Wherever she had passed, faint streaks of blood marked the joints of the ventilation ducts.

Even though Everly had a high tolerance for pain, the injuries to her hands still slowed her down.

Faster, faster—just hold on a little longer… Don’t give up. The second vent is just ahead!

Forcing herself to forget the pain in her hands, Everly clenched her teeth, maintained a steady crawling posture, and continued forward.

Just as the vent was less than half a meter away, a low, coarse voice suddenly rose from directly beneath the stage—the man in the pig mask.

“The numbers are about right. Begin the ritual.”

“!!!”

No. It can’t start! The formation is too close to me—if it begins, I’ll be the first to be swept in!

At a moment like this, she couldn’t worry about whether moving too fast would expose her. Her heart pounded like thunder, adrenaline surged through her veins, and the muscles in her arms tightened to their absolute limit. At a speed beyond human limits, she seized the duct joint with her left hand and pulled hard. Her other hand shot forward, and as her body lunged ahead, she reacted instantly—hooking her fingers around the vent grate. Muscles bulging, she dragged herself to the opening in just a few swift motions.

The sudden movement inevitably caused the nearby ductwork to emit a sharp creak. Fortunately, at that very moment, a loud click echoed throughout the hall, covering the unnatural sound—the masked men had switched off the stage lights.

With the lights extinguished, the performance hall was instantly plunged into dimness. The pitch-black stage was illuminated by only a single spotlight shining straight down onto a massive inverted pentagram painted in blood.

Chaotic footsteps echoed through the vast performance hall. Aside from the masked men guarding the hostages, all the others with freedom of movement instinctively gathered around the magic circle. Forming a circle, they bowed their heads and, under the lead of the man in the pig mask, began chanting incantations with utmost devotion:

“You are the creator of the prison of darkness, the destroyer of sacred light, darker than dusk, redder than blood, more chaotic than chaos… I beseech you here, I swear to you here, I will offer the blood and life of living beings as sacrifice, and beg for your mercy…”

Under the dim lighting, as the masked men chanted, the magic circle—imbued with the fears and grudges of the dead—glowed ever more vividly. Its red lines began to swell like real veins, pulsing and contracting while emitting a strange, ominous crimson light.

Time was critical. Everly curled her body into a sideways position, and with her still-bleeding hands, quickly undid her pants zipper and pulled them open. With the fastest motion of her life, she located the soft silicone beneath her, pressed and freed it from tight contact, and removed the menstrual cup.

The semi-transparent silicone cup contained half a cup of red menstrual blood.

—“The pure virgin’s menstrual blood”—this was the only thing Everly carried that could disrupt the magic circle.

Though in Everly’s previous life, people in her hometown generally considered menstrual blood dirty and impure, in Western occult traditions, a woman’s menstrual blood is actually a powerful protective substance.

Because menstruation synchronizes with the moon’s cycle, ancient peoples often regarded menstrual blood as a symbol of a woman’s sacred spiritual power and fertility.

In ancient Rome, Africa, and Siberia, many protective rituals involved menstrual blood—for instance, smearing it on door thresholds to shield a room from curses or black magic. Some female shamans even deliberately performed ceremonies during menstruation, as the blood could make their magical power stronger.

And in situations where one battles evil, the power of a pure virgin’s menstrual blood is greatly amplified. This is exactly why the exorcist Rebecca consulted had placed menstrual blood alongside other sacred relics.

Everly was immensely grateful that she had chosen a youth-sized menstrual cup instead of a pad. Otherwise, she could barely imagine herself using her bloody hands to squeeze blood from a pad… Using the cup made the process far simpler: just open the stopper at the base, squeeze the cup firmly—and through the gaps in the vent grate, the bright red blood streamed out in a steady trickle. Most of it fell into the magic circle below, while some, due to the angle, splashed onto the heads of the masked men beneath.

Everly: “…”

True to its certification by an exorcist, the blood worked like a powerful talisman. Wherever the menstrual blood fell, the magic circle reacted violently—as if drenched in concentrated sulfuric acid, thick black smoke hissed upward. At the center of the blood, the faintly “living” crimson lines instantly turned black, withering and shrinking, until they resembled charred lumps of coal. Large black patches, almost alive like mold, spread rapidly across the formation. In the blink of an eye, nearly one-third of the circle had been devoured!

“What’s happening?! The connection to my master just broke!”

“Why is the formation suddenly malfunctioning…”

“Someone destroyed the circle, who did it?!”

Shouts of alarm rang out. One follower felt something unusual above his head, reached up, and noticed fresh blood in his palm. Alarmed, he looked upward.

Coincidentally, this person was the elephant-masked man who had previously noticed the falling dust.

Had it not been for the earlier dust incident, the elephant mask might have assumed the blood came from accidentally spilling during outside executions. But with two successive “objects falling from the sky,” his suspicion was thoroughly triggered. Before the others could react, the elephant-masked man raised his hand and pointed directly at the still-dripping vent pipe.

“Someone’s on top!”

“What?”

“The ventilation duct—it’s still dripping blood!”

Alerted by the elephant-masked man, more and more masked figures lifted their heads to look upward. The pig-masked leader raised his hand and fired a shot toward the vent. Bang! The bullet scraped the pipe, narrowly hitting the ceiling and scattering a shower of dust.

Damn it—they’ve noticed!

Everly couldn’t linger. She grabbed the duct joint ahead and scrambled forward as fast as she could.

The pig-masked man fired a second and third shot in quick succession, hitting the vent opening. Luckily, Everly’s reflexes were sharp; she pulled her legs back just in time. The bullets, hurtling with thunderous force, tore through the vent grate and continued upward, smashing through the opposite end of the duct and flying straight toward the ceiling. Inside the duct, metallic impacts echoed violently, making Everly’s ears ring.

But at this moment, she couldn’t cover her ears.

The gunfire was like a signal. Following the pig mask, more masked men raised their pistols and fired at the upper vent ducts. The thickness of the pipes was no match for the bullets’ penetration. Clang! Clang! Clang! rang out as a dense row of circular bullet holes appeared along the duct behind Everly.

Some bullets that pierced the bottom layer of metal couldn’t penetrate the second layer due to the angle. They ricocheted inside the square ducts, creating dangerous bounces that further increased the chance of Everly getting hit.

Damn it… good thing she was fast!

So Everly pressed on, crawling through the duct amid the hail of gunfire. To speed up, she ignored the usual considerations of weight distribution, propping up her upper body and using both hands and feet, swinging through the duct like a monkey. Wherever she went, the fragile ducts slowly sagged, the pipes striking the surrounding metal plates with precarious creaks and groans.

“She’s there! Up ahead, shoot over there!”

As Everly’s figure passed through the third vent, a sharp-eyed masked man immediately spotted her and gestured to his companions. The masked men still firing at the rear section of the duct quickly redirected their guns and opened fire at the third segment of the pipe.

At this point, only a little over two meters remained to the exit. If she could clear that distance, Everly would leave the suspended duct and enter the wall itself. With the wall shielding her, she could escape much more safely.

Faster… just a bit faster… almost there…

As Everly urged herself on, a sudden clang rang out. One bullet, by sheer misfortune, struck a metal plate holding the duct in place. The screws on the plate gave way under the impact, losing their support. The section of the duct she was on dropped sharply. The surrounding plates, pulled by the sudden force, began to loosen as well.

Crackling… rattle… clank…

Amid the terrifying sounds of tearing metal, Everly’s eyes caught a sudden glimmer—light from the spotlight outside was streaming in through a gap where the duct had torn away from the wall.

Creaaak… creaaak… The sounds of the splitting iron grew louder and closer. Everly pressed herself against the duct, feeling her body rapidly sink with it—no, this section wouldn’t hold much longer; she was about to fall!

Perhaps adversity really does awaken hidden potential. Faced with life and death, Everly performed a move she had never attempted before: she adjusted her posture, facing the wall opening of the duct, pressed her legs against the pipe walls, flexed her leg muscles in unison, and leapt lightly into the air like a rabbit.

Her slender body arced gracefully through the air, landing precisely at the wall’s duct opening. Her bloodied fingers, like iron pincers oblivious to pain, clutched the jagged remnants of the metal frame. At the last possible moment before falling, she stabilized herself, hanging securely from the opening.

The masked men below, seeing this, aimed their guns at the airborne girl. Just as they were about to pull the trigger, the upper duct gave way first, bringing down iron fragments, screws, and debris with a deafening clatter, blocking their line of sight.

By the time they could aim again, Everly had executed a flawless pull-up and, like a nimble rat, crawled into the duct, vanishing from sight.