Our Grave

Night. The teaching building was empty, with only the occasional yowl of feral cats coming from the bushes downstairs.

"Meow~" Lin Yue bent down and gently stroked the orange cat at her feet.

"Want to pet it too? It might help you relax." She looked up at the black-haired girl leaning against a round pillar nearby.

All the cats at the university had been fed until they were plump by the students, so they basically had no desire to use their claws.

Chen Xi glanced at her. "Not in the mood."

Hearing that, Lin Yue picked up the orange cat and dangled it in front of her. "Come on, relax a little~ Don't always keep such a straight face."

"Meow~" The orange cat in her arms happened to let out a cry.

"Mm." After casually petting it to appease Lin Yue, Chen Xi changed the subject.

"Are you ready, Lin Yue?"

"Uh... ready at all times?" Lin Yue tilted her head at her.

Chen Xi was briefly speechless. "I mean, Wu Xin might take this chance to attack us. We've both advanced to first-rank Transcendents, so we most likely meet her hunting criteria already."

"Maybe." Chen Xi studied the moonlight, a trace of worry on her face. "This might be our grave."

Seeing her like this, Lin Yue put away her earlier playful attitude.

"It won't be." She looked at the black-haired girl before her, her expression solemn.

"We will definitely, definitely kill her."

"Perhaps."

After putting down the cat, the two did not take the elevator, worried that Wu Xin might ambush them.

As for the Stitched Monster, Lin Yue was no longer afraid of it. If she could not beat it, she could still run.

That monster looked so bulky that it definitely could not fly. If they really ran into it, she could just use her tentacles to carry Chen Xi away.

Carrying a certain sense of anticipation, Lin Yue waited outside the classroom door.

"Are you sure a Shadow Dweller will really appear?" Seeing how certain she looked, even Chen Xi began to waver.

Could there be some kind of cheat?

Lin Yue had originally planned to agree right away, but after catching Chen Xi's suspicious expression, she chose more ambiguous wording instead.

"It's just a feeling. Trying won't hurt."

So there was no certainty after all.

Chen Xi did not continue bantering with her and quietly waited for time to pass.

When the time displayed on the screen finally reached 11:45, Lin Yue hurriedly pushed open the classroom door and looked toward the corner bathed in pale moonlight.

Nothing.

There was no movement at all in the corner of the classroom.

Chen Xi, who had followed her inside, teased, "Where's your Shadow Dweller?"

Slightly disappointed, Lin Yue smacked her lips. "Maybe it saw Lord Rain and got so scared it ran off with its tail between its legs."

"Forget it, let's head back." She shut the classroom door and pushed the black-haired girl from behind.

Before the Shadow Dweller showed up, the Stitched Monster might get drawn here instead.

"Why did you stop moving?" Because of her angle, Lin Yue could not see the corridor ahead.

Chen Xi sighed and stepped aside to let her out. "Lin Yue... we might not be able to leave."

Following her gaze, Lin Yue's heart jolted—in the corridor not far from them, Wu Xin sat motionlessly on the edge of the railing.

Her already snow-white hair looked as though it had been dusted with a thin layer of frost beneath the bright moon, making Wu Xin's naturally aloof aura seem even less human. She looked like a puppet being controlled by someone else.

Wu Xin turned sideways to watch them, her face flushed red. "Little Xi, you still couldn't resist advancing, huh?"

"Then I'll dig in!!!"

With a light curl of her finger, Chen Xi's heart was instantly shredded into pieces by threads.

"Pff—" Blood surged up Chen Xi's throat, and her body staggered uncontrollably.

She hurriedly used flowing water to mend the damage to her heart.

"I can hold on for one minute." Chen Xi exchanged a glance with Lin Yue, and the two launched their attack on Wu Xin in perfect tacit understanding.

The blonde girl contracted her tentacles beneath the soles of her shoes and sprang forward like a spring.

Chen Xi activated the Monarch ability at just the right moment. Ring-shaped streams of water surged around her, and with a thought, high-speed water jets burst forth, shooting straight for Wu Xin's face.

"You didn't die?" Wu Xin watched their attacks with interest.

Invisible threads layered together into a spiderweb shield, effortlessly blocking Lin Yue's tentacle drill.

With a light tap of her index finger, white spider silk materialized out of thin air, then surged like a tidal wave to collide with the water jets.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!!!

The spider silk was battered to tatters by the rushing water, letting out cracking sounds under the unbearable strain.

"Pointless struggle." Wu Xin watched their movements coldly as ice spikes mixed into the threads, raining down upon them like a storm of pear blossoms.

"Wash away the obstacles over there!" Lin Yue shouted, placing her shadow tentacles around Chen Xi's wrist.

Chen Xi immediately understood and compressed the water jets into thinner streams, clearing away all the spider silk and ice spikes to their left as easily as cutting through vegetables.

Once the obstacles were cleared, Lin Yue extended a tentacle from her right hand and latched it onto the trunk of a tree outside. Like Spider-Man, she held Chen Xi in one arm and swung over to the corridor of the opposite building.

"How much longer can you hold on?!"

"Fifty seconds." As Chen Xi answered, she continued trying to use the water flow to break through Wu Xin's thread shield.

But the gap in strength between them was simply too great. Other than wasting her water, the attempt was completely useless.

"We can't drag this out any longer. Use your tentacles to throw me back."

Drip. A drop of water fell onto Chen Xi's eyelashes.

A torrential downpour gradually began to fall from the sky.

Chen Xi no longer deliberately restricted the range of her ability, directly covering an area dozens of meters around the teaching building.

Rain Lord's all-destroying Rain Calamity descended from the heavens, mercilessly devouring Wu Xin's threads.

A curtain of rain rose from the four corners of the cluster of teaching buildings, forming a barrier domain just like that day.

Because Chen Xi had poured nearly half of her ring-shaped water flow into it, the rain immediately intensified to its highest level.

Seeing this, Wu Xin extended her hand out into the corridor. The raindrops directly pierced through half the center of the fingers on her right hand.

"So that's why I hate rain the most." She shook her hand expressionlessly.