Chapter 44: Already, Fearless

When the last Disaster Beast roared and vanished, Yinluo finally let out a breath. She then descended from the sky, and deafening cheers and celebration rose up from the Disaster Control Bureau on the mountain below.

Although none of the beasts had been particularly strong—none even reached B-rank—Yinluo’s condition was so poor that even clearing several C-rank Disaster Beasts had been a struggle.

On her flight back to the Bureau, many staff wanted to come welcome her, but Yinluo only waved them off lazily and forced a smile. She did not linger.

She flew straight to the Supervision Department and only then landed, leaning against the wall as she coughed violently.

It took her a long while to straighten up. After wiping the blood from the corner of her mouth, Yinluo took out her Miracle Seed and glanced at it.

Half of it had already turned black.

What on earth was going on...

When had it been polluted?

She should have removed her transformation as soon as possible and continued using mana—otherwise the Miracle Seed would be ruined.

But she hadn’t found her sister yet.

Yinluo forced herself to push open the Supervision Department doors. As soon as she entered, she saw several Incubators bustling up and down, operating machines; the staff members who normally handled the electronics now lay lifeless against the wall, placed there by the Incubators.

The entire Supervision Department reeked of blood, death, and an ominous, polluted magical energy.

Seeing Yinluo enter, a pink Incubator flew over. “Yinluo! Yinluo! You’re finally back! We thought you were dead...”

Yinluo looked at the corpses and inhaled sharply. “What happened? What occurred here?”

“We don’t know. The Disaster Beast attacked and the Disaster Control Bureau was thrown into chaos. By the time we discovered something was wrong with Supervision, it was already like this...”

Her heart seemed to leap into her throat; Yinluo had trouble breathing. “My sister—my sister, have any of you seen her?”

The pink Incubator shook its head repeatedly. “We don’t know. When we arrived, Supervision was already empty.”

Yinluo turned and rushed for the door. “I’m going to find her.”

“Wait!” the pink Incubator cried immediately. “Your mana is off, Yinluo. You need to remove your transformation and rest.”

“After I find my sister! I’ll be right back!”

“Yinluo! Come back!”

Watching the girl fly away, the pink Incubator scratched its head and sighed.

“Ugh, another seed wasted.”

...

In a quiet little grove, Yinluo stared dumbfounded at the purple-haired Magical Girl and only then moved after a long pause.

“A male became a Magical Girl?”

Her voice was dry, almost as if speaking those words took great effort.

Then Yinluo burst into a laugh, unable to contain herself. “Even a man can become a Magical Girl!”

Her laughter had a tinge of madness to it.

Even Susan felt a flicker of pity.

Those who knew how much Yinluo had sacrificed to become a Magical Girl could understand the anger and madness that now gripped her.

If even a man could do it, then why couldn’t I...?

The laughter faded and Yinluo’s gaze turned cold. “You really played us for fools, Miss Shion, Mr. Jiang Si. A man using the body of a Magical Girl to fight—aren’t you ashamed?”

Susan didn’t know whether Jiang Si would be embarrassed. She only knew that whenever she thought back to how frantic and jealous she’d felt over Jiang Si and Shion’s date, she wanted to crawl into a hole.

Her toes ached as if they’d be worn through the ground.

Thankfully she hadn’t jumped out that night to threaten Jiang Si—Jiang Si probably had no idea what she’d felt. If he ever found out and teased her about it now, Susan was sure she’d bash her head against a wall.

The thought that the girl who had saved her that night turned out to be a boy churned a thousand feelings in Susan’s chest.

“Tell me the captain’s location.”

But Shion had no interest in answering Yinluo’s questions. Power was power—man or woman, Disaster Beast or Witch—no difference. How could anyone be ashamed of the power they’d obtained?

Yinluo, meanwhile, had no intention of answering.

“When you were at the Bureau you acted innocent to make me defend you; when you fought Dujuan in the suburbs you pretended ignorance and came to inspect the scene, tricking me into believing you had used polluted mana to strengthen yourself; and then you staged that whole little performance—your sweet date with yourself...”

Yinluo grew angrier as she spoke. By the end her voice had sharpened, filled with endless resentment and humiliation. “You really made me a fool! You crazy, messed-up lunatic!”

She had once assumed Jiang Si was like her: because he couldn’t obtain the Magical Girl power, he trained desperately and sought other power. She thought he might pity her and, out of that sympathy, genuinely wanted to recruit him into the Witch Association.

That made Yinluo furious and frantic.

How often had he secretly mocked her while she sincerely cared for him, thought for him, and risked trying to recruit him? Had he laughed a thousand times in his heart? From beginning to end, was she the only clown?

“Is mocking me fun for you?”

Shion remained silent and continued, “Tell me where the captain is...”

“Go to hell!” Yinluo snarled.

The polluted mana that filled the grove churned and twisted, coiling tighter like a tornado. It trapped Susan and Shion within and continued constricting, trying to grind them both to pieces.

Yinluo was not reckless; she had considered the risks. Shion’s renown was widespread—no matter how furious she was, she would not be that careless. After all, Shion had made such a name for herself in Beihai partly because the city lacked any Magical Girl at the Blooming tier.

As both a member of the Witch Association and the Disaster Control Bureau, Yinluo knew Shion’s strength better than most. Both organizations agreed that another Blooming-tier Magical Girl could restrain Jiang Si. But Shion was not alone—she had the Azure Cloud Sect behind her. One Blooming-tier girl alone wasn’t enough; to deal with Shion, one would need to remove the Azure Cloud Sect as well, or else it would mean stronger retaliation.

With the city’s Disaster Beasts occupying most Azure Cloud Sect members, Yinluo wasn’t afraid of a one-on-one fight with Shion—because Yinluo herself used a Blooming-tier Miracle Seed.

As the rough polluted mana compacted, dots of purple light began to appear at its center. The purple light swelled until the entire tornado took on a violet hue.

Then it exploded with a thunderous boom.

Purple flames burst like fireworks, sprinkling the forest. Dead trees flared into fierce fires, yet the flames refused to spread—clinging to trunks like festering sores in the wind. When a trunk burned away, the fire quietly vanished.

Such beautiful mana. Such a beautiful Magical Girl.

Even the enraged Yinluo, for a moment, watched in a kind of dazed admiration. Amid the scattered violet sparks, the graceful silhouette elevated the whole scene, lending it a poetic air.

She glanced down at her own black, viscous, mud-like mana and outfit and felt her throat tighten.

Why...

That thought rose again, and she snapped her head up, ready to pour out more mana.

But the moment she looked up she froze. The purple-haired Magical Girl who had been dozens of meters away in front of Susan had, with a single lift of her head, already reached her side.

Shion merely lifted a hand in a blocking motion, and the small, fair fist struck with terrifying force. Wrapped in purple flames, the shockwave exploded outward in rings. Yinluo was hurled like a cannonball—becoming a meteorary streak that crashed into a distant building. When the shockwave dissipated, the sky was marked by a long trail of cloud.

Even though she had been mentally prepared, Shion’s sudden burst still startled Susan. Then she could only marvel: Shion truly was worthy of being Sect Master. Her power, speed, mana control, and precision—looking worldwide, few Magical Girls could match her.

“Shion!”

With a scream, Yinluo burst from the ruined building and hung in midair, staring at Shion from afar. Her polluted mana swelled monstrously with anger and hatred. Although this was her first transformation, after sustaining it for so long and watching how the two Magical Girls used their mana, Yinluo was not a fool—she’d been a prodigy from childhood, far surpassing her sister. She quickly mimicked their techniques, compressing and shaping her chaotic mana into a crude spear-like form.

But shaping mana requires high precision. The spear’s outline kept shifting—it would become a stick, then stretch, then disperse. With all her might she barely kept the mana confined in that blurry, changing spear, and the terrifying power within made even Yinluo feel shaken.

“Shion.”

Madness filled Yinluo’s eyes as her thoughts scrambled. “Die. Just die!”

She leaned back slightly, raised her right hand clutching the mana spear, and made a throwing motion.

Susan’s pupils shrank and she shouted, “Watch out! Shion! Her ability is—”

But it was already too late. The purple-haired Magical Girl had already stepped forward in an instant and stood before Yinluo. In stature Shion was actually shorter than Yinluo, only reaching her chest, yet floating midair her cold gaze pressed down so heavily that Yinluo struggled to breathe.

Yinluo’s throwing motion could not be adjusted in time, but she tried to redirect the force and angle toward the suddenly close Shion. When she pushed to release halfway, her right hand jammed in midair. No matter how she strained, she could not send forward even an inch. Shion’s delicate right hand had precisely seized the twisted, deforming mana spear. The polluted mana rallied like a beast roaring in her palm, thrashing wildly—but that small hand gripped it tight and it could not move.

“You...”

Under Yinluo’s slowly returning rational yet terrified gaze, Shion’s slender fingers suddenly clenched. She crushed the terrifying mana spear in her palm.

The violent mana stuttered for a moment and then exploded outward furiously! The dead trees around instantly disintegrated into dust, swept by the shockwave. The previously black mana erupted into a blinding aurora that made Susan flinch and close her eyes. Although she transformed in time and again used her technique, the Glazed Sea Realm lasted only a few seconds before being swallowed by the raging energy.

Everything nearby—bricks, plants, steel—turned to dust in that torrent of force.

Susan expected to die, but warm violet flames burned around her, allowing her to survive the onslaught.

She lay on the ground a long moment before climbing out of the crater, shaking dust from her hair and clothes as she looked around in a daze with her mouth agape. The forest was gone, replaced by a vast pit of scorched earth. She stood at the pit’s center in a world of uncanny silence; even the wind had vanished. Only a hot, dead stillness remained.

The blast’s boundary had stopped in the middle of the building Yinluo had crashed into, leaving one half of the structure vanished. Concrete blocks and tangled wires fell in random showers.

A breeze finally drifted in and cooled the heat a little, bringing Susan back from her stupor.

Far above, a dark figure fell and smashed into the crater’s center. Another violet figure descended gracefully and landed lightly on a charred stone at the crater’s bottom. Susan licked her dry lips and looked up. The dark figure was Yinluo, who had been so arrogant moments before. Her magical outfit had been blasted to tatters; as she struggled to stand, the outfit melted like muddy water and dripped from her body. In moments the transformation had fully undone.

Staggering, Yinluo’s expression was bewildered and blank. “Why... are we both Blooming...”

“Only a low Blooming beginning.” Shion glanced at the white Miracle Seed in her hand—pure, with not a speck of pollution—and then put it away. “You dare to contend with Blooming at its peak.”

As everyone knew, the gap between late Golden Core and early Golden Core is greater than that between Golden Core and Foundation Building. Web novels never lied.

With pale purple nails, Shion lightly touched the bloody cross-shaped wound on Yinluo’s forehead. Heat gathered at Yinluo’s brow and she suddenly smiled.

“Yinlian—her love letter, you...”

Before she could finish, purple flame pierced through her skull, spraying behind her like a blood blossom!

Her body went limp and she sank down, kneeling on the crater floor, her pupils empty and vacant.

Susan’s lips moved but she only turned her head away. Then she froze, noticing someone had appeared behind her—Yinlian.

The captain of the Magical Girl combat team now stood at the crater’s edge with a dazed expression. Her Magical Girl outfit was dissipating. She staggered forward, and when the outfit completely vanished she slipped because of the crater’s steep edge, tumbled into the pit, and then struggled toward her sister.

“Sis...”

“Sis!”