Chapter Eighteen: If There Is a Next Life

  To avoid being checked by the teaching office, Yun Hai Fan still left the classroom after school.

  After school, the entire campus was shrouded in a massive barrier, making it impossible for students like Yun Hai Fan to enter or exit. Therefore, if you want to find Wen Zhan, you can only stay behind at school. The only place that is not closed after school is the earthen slope at one corner of the school, where all kinds of evergreen trees are planted. Unlike the roadside greening, which is often taken care of by people, the unpruned and unpainted trees look like a dark green ink in winter, and when dyed with sunset, they become a somber gray. Yun Hai Fan sat down on the stone bench halfway up the slope, gazing out at the setting sun sinking slowly over Kuai Xing Lake.

  She didn't have any special preference for sunsets, it's just that this was the only decent view she could use to pass time now. Every time she saw a sunset, for some reason, she seemed to be able to hear her own heartbeat pulsating in sync with the setting sun, and the whole world was left with only the sound of heartbeats and the rumble of blood.

  The sunset, which dyed the world with fresh blood, is the final fate of the sun.

  Yun Hai Fan felt a strange resonance between nature and herself, as if the full moon was calling to her, making her do irrational things. She stretched out her hands, with her palms facing each other, and spiritual energy flowed slowly between them. With a flick of her right hand, she stirred up the sand not far away. Seeing that controlling it with one hand was a bit difficult, she used her left hand to gather the scattered sand. The sand gradually took shape, but just as she was about to throw it further away, it suddenly dispersed.

  Failed again.

  She spread her hands, and the sand that had been stirred up instantly returned to its original place. With a flick of her hand, two paper men flew out of her bag, and with a slight movement of her index finger, they danced along a predetermined path. The white paper men were tinted with a faint golden color in the fading light of the sunset, and she had cut them out with great precision. If there were passersby, they would surely mistake these fluttering paper men for forest fairies. Yun Hai Fan pointed to a nearby tree, and the two paper men immediately flew over to pluck down some green leaves, dusted off the floating dust, and presented them to Yun Hai Fan's face. Yun Hai Fan lazily raised her hand, and the paper men dropped the leaves and flew back into the bag.

  Looks like you can already handle paper people with ease.

  These days, she has been practicing against the book, and although her innate talent is not high, she has made remarkable progress. Moreover, she has always felt that there is a subtle power within her body that seems to be sealed by something, which becomes more and more restless as she practices deeper. The only difficulty lies in controlling intangible things, after all, she cannot rely on the power of elements to achieve balance, but can only use more spiritual energy to tame them.

  After the delay, the sunset had already taken its last ray of light and sank heavily into the opposite shore of the lake, completely out of sight. The darkness without the sun didn't last long, winter nights came especially early, the vast and empty sky had no moon or stars, only a few twinkling stars that seemed to form a constellation. Yunhai Fan didn't understand astronomy, but she knew the night was not deep enough yet, her target was probably still at dinner time, so she took out the bread she had prepared and nibbled on it hastily, considering it as tonight's dinner. In order to prevent other flavors of bread from leaving other smells on her body that could be detected by Wen Zhan, she specifically chose plain toast bread. The bread that should have been spread with jam was now dry and tasted only of oats, almost impossible to swallow.

  She simply settled for dinner and shouldered her bag, merging into the dark night.

  Just as Yin Xu said, the office where Wen Zhan was located indeed emitted a dim light. She quietly lay down at the windowsill and only then discovered that all the light in Wen Zhan's office came from seven white candles placed in the center of the room. The white candles were slender and long, their flames swaying gently in the windless space, while Wen Zhan was prostrated on the ground, seemingly devoutly drawing a magic array.

  Seven candles...

  Yun Hai Fan felt that his line of sight was a bit blurry, and he didn't know if it was because he had concentrated for too long, causing dizziness. However, he forced himself to recall the shape of the magic array painted by Wen Zhan - the Seven-Pronged Star Magic Array.

  The power gathering magic arrays used for general elemental magic are all six-pointed star magic arrays, with different elements having different drawing methods and sequences. Light and dark magic and puppetry often use a five-pointed star as a power gathering or summoning ritual, where the drawing process often involves auxiliary methods such as prayer and sacrifice.

  There are few records of the seven-pointed star magic circle, and very few people can draw a perfect seven-pointed star. It is said that a perfect seven-pointed star can be drawn in one stroke, and those who have drawn a perfect seven-pointed star in one stroke say they saw the Queen of Hishi, some say they saw the Devil's Tempo, and others say they saw the sacred object of the Rifu Shrine, the Genmu Ring.

  So, Wen Zhan's repeated erasing and re-drawing was probably because none of the seven strokes were satisfactory. Yun Hai Fan thought to himself as he felt his temples throbbing with pain, the blood vessels on both sides bulging, as if they would burst at any moment.

  Terrible...

  These days, at this time, Yun Haifeng's head would ache so much that she wanted to hit the wall to stop the pain. The curse from before was forcibly suppressed by Ge Hui, but it only made her not faint again, and enduring such torture when conscious seemed even more cruel. At this moment, Wen Zhan's movements seemed to be responding to hers, as Wen Zhan's magic array was about to succeed, Yun Haifeng felt herself in so much pain that she was almost going to pass out...

  The pain was like this, her ten fingers tightly grasped the snow-white windowsill that had been brushed with lime, her fingernails deeply embedded in the layer of lime, the powder covered with dust irritating her skin, making her win some clarity in discomfort. Even so, she could not stop her limp body, the fingernails that gripped the windowsill tightly gradually unable to support her fall, the sound of the fingernails breaking was drowned out in the silent night, except for the pain, all this seemed to have never existed. And the unbroken fingernails on the windowsill drew out long and deep marks, the feeling was like hearing the sound of fingernails scratching a blackboard, sharp and piercing, as if something sharp was stabbing at her heart, making people unable to help but want to go crazy.

  This situation had been going on for an unknown amount of time, Yun Hai Fan only felt that something was quietly flowing out from his body again, even though he wanted to hold on tightly, but all he held onto was a handful of emptiness.

  Perhaps this is the passage of life.

  She had never felt so close to death, yet at this moment, she burst out laughing, her face radiant with joy, her pale cheeks flushing with color. She remembered a saying she once saw, if every person is a book, then her youth should have been a romance novel, but the passage of time was inexplicably interrupted.

  If there is no afterlife, then I am a medium-length abuse novel.

  If there is still an afterlife, I must live a life of rebirth.

  Yun Hai Fan closed his eyes in despair, his tightly clenched fists slowly loosening...